Sunday, July 4, 2010

My Mango Sport arrived

P1000989
My Mango Sport has arrived. With just 2 weeks to go for the STP I now have to ride a lot to get used to the mango. I spent Saturday tuning and riding the Mango. I took her to the Farmer's Market in Redmond:
Mango Parked

I saw a number of exotic cars and found a car gathering, they decided that the Mango was an exotic and placed her on display with the Ferraris:
Mango with Ferrari

After I took my groceries home, I headed out on a ride to Seattle. I stopped at Matthews Beach:
Mango Ride

I then continued on to Gasworks Park where I saw some of the Zombies from Fremont. Unfortunately I didn't get any good zombie chase pictures. The mango did escape the zombies and we took a rest at Log Boom park on the way home:
Mango Ride

So far the Mango Sport has been a dream. The suspension is great and really smooths out any chipseal, potholes or railroad tracks I find on route. I am slowly getting use to her handling. For the first 30 miles or so my cadence was much lower than my regular cycling cadence. But now after some seat adjustments and getting used to the velomobile I find my cadence going back up again. The gearing is great. Everything fits so well inside, I love to run errands with the Mango. I am very happy.

5 comments:

stradaatje said...

Congrats on your new ride, many happy and safe rides ! I like the "Dutch" color of your velomobile too ;-)

Duncan Watson said...

Thank you very much. I love the Netherlands Orange as well. I had a great ride around the lake today, a metric century (100km) to see how my big bike ride in 2 weeks will go (340km).

Brad Niemeyer said...

WOW!

How smooth does it accelerate? Any trouble sliding through the bike trail barriers?

Very cool!

Duncan Watson said...

It accelerates slower, in fact that is one of the issues I need to get used to. I tend to put out a lot of power to get to my cruising speed and then stay there. Bad habits. With the Mango I have to keep a good cadence and I notice the speed just increasing and increasing for longer than I am used to.

Regarding the bollards, I haven't found any yet that are too tight. I rode from Redmond to Gasworks park with no problem. I have also done the lake washington loop and it went well. Even the bollards where there are 4 posts instead of 3 posts are doable, though I slow down for those.

I feel confident that there will be no bike barrier issues on the STP for me. But I do need to get used to the bike for the STP. So far I have about 170 miles on the Mango Sport, I need to avoid over stressing myself but still get comfortable on her. So far so good.

Carolyn Watson-Dubisch said...

Your new mango makes for great posts! Godd luck on the STP!