So today I took my recumbent’ish bike out for the first cruise. Nice weather in the afternoon, partly cloudy, temperature around +8ºC and almost no wind.

I’ve had been doing some work and maintenance on it during these last couple days.

Tires seem to be fine. The other is 20″ and front one 18″ and what I have read about the 20″ is quite common and can be easily be replaced with different kinds of tires, but the front 18″ is a bit more uncommon size and might cause problems later. This also means that for a longer trip I will need to pack 2 tubes, one 20″ and one 18″ with me, instead of one spare if the front and rear tires would be of same size.

The gears, chain and brakes, everything was in working order after some adjustment and alignment.

I then fitted the bike with a proper headlight and taillight and installed a speedometer with nifty functions like trip meter, max and average speeds, etc.

One thing that I noticed is that this bike needs a mud guards. The roads here in Finland in end of March are still wet and partly still covered in snow and ice, so there will be wet dirt and mud and water flying.

The 9,7 km trip I rode today took about an hour to complete, speed averaging around 11 km/h and topping at 30 km/h.

The gear rations and small wheel size sets the comfortable top speed on tarmac around 25 – 30 km/h, so this bike is not a street racer, but a very nice cruiser and as you can see my average speed was way below 20 km/h.

I also did couple stops on my way to get the mud guards and to eat some burger on a sunny terrace, as this is one of the first warm days of this spring.

Next thing on my to-do-list is to find a way to attach panniers or some sort of bags on this bike. As it does not have a rack on it’s back and has rear suspension I need to come up with a some kind of a DIY contraption to fit some panniers and/or bags on this bike. I really need a way to haul my camp stove, sleeping back, and other camping gear with me if I go for a longer ride someday.

But this is a start. First 10 km completed and so far so good.