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The El Paso Test Ride - March 15-18 2022

March 15, 2022 - Day 1
I was loaded up and on the bike by about 11am, March 15, 2022. Obviously I wanted to get a good start in the morning, but by the time I had everything on the bike, and locked up the house etc, hey, at least I was rolling! I had a few stops, but rode pretty steady pace, and got to Fabens, TX., which is on I-10 toward El Paso. There were some stops to make adjustments, get things to ride better, but for the most part things went well the first day. I rode on Highway 20, which runs parallel to I-10, down along the border for most of the day, so there was much less traffic. Because I got a late start, it was getting dark as I got to Fabens. Dark is bad enough on a bicycle, worse on a solar bike, so the battery pack wasn't getting a charge the last hour, and I actually had the battery go off line just before I got to the truck stop for the night. I had planned to ride a couple more miles, to a rest area, but I've stopped at this truck stop before, so it was there, it was familiar, and I knew they had clean restrooms and good coffee. I found an out of the way spot, under the gas price sign for the freeway, and set up camp. The battery pack I'm using is 36 volts, made of three smaller 12 volt packs, wired in series. When I checked voltage, 2 of the 3 were still doing ok, so I just redid the connections to wire the packs in parallel, that let the two good packs give the low pack a jump start. I left them connected like that for an hour, then wired them back to normal series, for 36 volts. The next day when the sun came up, they charged as before, and things were fine. As you can expect for a truck stop, it was a kind of noisy night, and it got kind of cold, so the sun in the morning felt really good. For this trip, I don't have a tent, but I do have a folding Army Cot, and a sleeping bag. That gets me up off the ground, the cot is surprisingly comfortable, I slept on it for a couple of years when I first got to Austin, so I'm used to it.

March 16, 2022 - Day 2
Today was the "easy" day. I was pretty close to El Paso, my plan was to hit a Wal-Mart as I came into town to get a few things I needed, then ride through El Paso, and finally into New Mexico by the end of the day. At the Wal-Mart I got 3 pair of spandex biking shorts, a new bike seat (saddle?), a Gatorade and a Coke, and some solar garden lights, just because I thought that would be fun! You know, solar lights on a solar bike? Also while in the Wal-Mart, I uploaded a video, because they usually have really good wifi. And I downloaded off line maps of my route out to California on the phone, so I don't need to rely on cell signal. Out of the Wal-Mart, I got the phone gps into bike mode, and plotted a path from one Wal-Mart to the next Wal-Mart, on the opposite end of town. I used to camp at that Wal-Mart when I was working in town a couple years ago, so figured that was a good back up plan if I didn't make it out of town. The GPS was very helpful, in that it found every single bike path, or walking path, or chicken path between where I was and where I wanted to go. The problem was I was constantly slamming on the brakes trying to get into the paths I wasn't seeing fast enough. I'm still used to driving to an intersection and turning, not looking for sidewalks through parks that are also bike paths. So that took some getting used to. Finally I stopped for a while and scrolled along the map to see where it was really taking me. Then at least I'd know what to expect! At one point we were looking to go up a very scenic and big hill. With my fully overloaded bike trailer, I really wasn't sure I'd make it up that one, so I stopped, and looked for a better route. Back down the hill we go, sure am glad I took the time to put on the disk brakes on the front of the bike! All was good, until it wasn't. I had to make a bracket to mount the disk brake caliper to the forks. About half way down the hill, the bracket bent and tore itself off the forks. Now I have no front brakes, which is bad. What was worse is now the bracket and caliper is swinging around on the end of the brake cable, bouncing off the spokes of my front wheel. And I'm still going down the hill. The bike has back brakes, which are good for a bike, but no match for the heavy trailer, so I was still accellerating down the hill. The best idea I could think of was a Fred Flintstone stop. I needed one foot on the pedal for balance, and the trailer was really unstable when going fast, but I managed to keep the bike upright as I gently put my foot down on the ground and slowly added pressure until finally I got stopped. That scared me worse than rattlesnakes. Great, now I'm half way to the next Wal-Mart, and no front brakes, and more hills. So I spent probably half an hour on the side of the road, first removing what was left of the front brakes, inspecting the damage, the front disk rotor got pretty bent, so I'll have to swap that out. Its ok, I have 3 spare motors, they were cheap so I bought a few, someone was apparently selling a fleet of ebike motors on Ebay, so I got 4 wheels with motors, plus 2 more spare motors. Just in case! Next, adjust the rear brake a bit tighter, still not very good. For the rest of the day, I walked the bike down most of the hills, and mixing in with traffic was pretty dicey. Eventually I got to a Wendy's that I used to eat at pretty often when I worked in El Paso, ate some tasty burger and fries, then got over to the Wal-Mart and set up camp. That was all going pretty well until about 12:30 am, when the very nice security officer woke me up and said I can't camp there. Oh, bummer! Took me a few minutes to really wake up, so we got talking a bit. Before Covid, that Wal-Mart had been open 24 / 7, so they didn't clear out the parking lot. Now, they close at 11:30, so it took a while before they started the patrol. Anyway, as I was picking stuff up, and trying to think of somewhere else I could set up in the dark near by, she came back and said, hey, you still have to leave ... but that tree over there is the edge of the stores property. If you were to camp over there, I won't bother you! Hehe! Oh, thank you very much! So I set my army cot and bike up in the land scaping between the Wal-Mart and the bank, and then when the sun came up and the store opened again, I moved back into a proper parking spot. Then it was just a matter of letting the sun charge up the batteries, and walk into the store to refill my water bottles, use the restroom, and hit the little in store McDonalds for a coffee and breakfast.

March 17, 2022 - Day 3
So, like I said, I woke up as the sun was coming up, parked the bike back in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and grabbed some breakfast at the McDonalds in the Wal-Mart. By now I've covered over 100 miles, I really should have gone further, but I'm not in shape for this yet, and Day 2 was really slow going through El Paso, plus the brakes falling off meant I really shouldn't go any speed faster than I wanted to run into a parked car. I think most days I should be able to do 70 to 80 miles, but a lot will depend on load, wind, and if there are clouds blocking the solar. Anyway, I was enjoying the ride, but I was also dealing with broken things that I really needed to work. So after thinking about it all night, I made the decision to go back home, and spend a week fixing things and making some changes. There is nothing like a proper long test ride to really get a feel for things. Looking at the map, I saw if I followed the border, it looked much less hilly than the route I'd used to get through El Paso the day before, so I plotted my own course this time, and set off, had wheels rolling by 8am. I'm getting better at packing the bike already! About half way through town, I'm in the old Down Town area of El Paso, this bright yellow Hummer pulls up next to me at the traffic light. Hey, is that electric? And Solar? Dude, that's so cool! Yup! Told him I was getting about 50 miles a day range on it. He seems impressed. Then I look at him, Hey, How much is gas now? He just looks at me and starts laughing. Light goes green, we drive off, life is good. A couple miles later, some guy on the side of the road waving me to pull over. I figure I'm either getting a fan club or about to get robbed. Either way, it should make a good story, right? So I pull over, we talk, I explain the bike, and tell him of my 22 states plan, for the 22 Veteran, he gets a picture of me and the bike, and I show him the website URL I wrote on the bike with a sharpie. Now I have a tail wind, and I wasn't even using electricity going through town, still pedalling but letting the battery charge. Except, science. I was going mostly East. I'm casting a shadow back onto the solar panels, so I'm not really charging. I'd left camp pretty early, so the batteries were low still from yesterday. No worries, just weird to see all that sun but not get a charge. By about Noon I was back to the first Wal-Mart, on "my" side of El Paso, did a quick stop for drinks and snacks, and was just about to hit the road when I big SUV pulls up and asks me if I want a burrito. I smile, no, thanks, sorry, I don't have any cash. No, no, here, we're just giving it to you. At this point your torn, you've been told your whole life not to accept candy from strangers. But its lunch time and this is a burrito! hehe It was very good, by the way. Anyway, we get talking, I tell them what I'm doing, give them the link to the website. Now we're all friends! While parked, I had the bike leaned toward the sun, so I'm just about fully charged by the time I'm ready to get rolling. And oh wow, do I have a tail wind now! It was windy enough it was tough to ride, but most of it was behind me, kind of a tail and crossing tail wind. I was rolling so good I didn't even think of stopping in Fabens, where I had stopped the first night, I kept going to a few miles past Fort Hancock, where I used to work at the Post Office. From the Post Office, I knew it was 50 miles to home, so I knew I'd have an easy ride home from there. I parked near the on ramp back onto I-10, the highway crew had left a big pile of gravel, which made a great wind break. I stopped a couple hours before sunset even, so was able to park the bike aimed at the sun to top off the batteries. At some point, I lost the piece of pipe I'd been using to keep the bike parked upright, so I just layed the bike down on its side, which put the panels aimed nicely at the setting sun. Just before sunset, the wind finally stopped blowing, so I thought I was in for a quiet night. About the time I actually crawled in the sleeping bag, the wind started, but from a different direction, so now the gravel pile wasn't blocking anymore. Wind blew hard enough the sleeping bag was flapping in the wind, with me in it. And dust was flying a lot, so I pulled my "neck gator" over my head to keep the sand out of my eyes. If you see any pictures from Desert Storm of the troops sleeping next to their battle tanks, they were doing the same thing, it does seem to work pretty well!

March 18, 2022 - Day 4
I woke up ahead of sunrise again, which is important on a solar bike. That way I could be sure to get the bike pointed in the right direction to get as much charge as possible. Especially useful today, as I'd be going up the big hill! Again I was rolling by about 8am, the forecast said I'd be hitting a head wind today, to balance out the tail wind from yesterday I guess? But at first it wasn't blowing, so I wanted to get on the road and get a few miles before it started! You really notice being over loaded, when you don't have enough battery charge, plus you have a head wind. But that's what the trip is about, it won't always be easy. I'd ride a few miles, then stop and catch my breath, lean the bike on a sign post or guard rail, and let the batteries catch up. Drink some 2 day old coffee from my thermos, eat a snack, then get on and try again. I think I did about 4 miles per hour, but walking is only 3 miles an hour, and I don't think I could push the bike that fast, so I call that a win! I stopped in Sierra Blanca and got a coke and a gatorade, and a Snickers bar, took a break, but by then the clouds had rolled in, so not much solar charging at that point. Nothing left but the last 12 miles to the ranch, which is mostly down hill, so that was nice! The first 6 miles is paved road, then 6 miles of pretty chucked up washboard gravel and sand road which isn't too bad in a truck, even the motorcycle did ok there, but its really tough on the bicycle, and even worse with the full trailer. It got to the point I just pedalled, the electric boost was going too fast for the bumps, and I actually had some bungees pop off and the army cot came off the rack it was mounted to. I think I got home by 4pm, so plenty of day light, I thought I'd be home closer to noon, but I was just happy to be home with nothing else breaking or falling off!

March 19, 2022 - First Day back at the ranch
Really didn't do much of note today! Worked on some small projects, like setting up an automatic water system to fill the bees and birds water dish. I started that before I left the first time, but kept running into stuff that wasn't working. This time, I set it up with 2 of the little HF solar panels, an old battery, and a charge controller that had a night timer feature, that would turn on lights after sunset. In this case, I wired that output to a little water pump, so every day at sunset, the pump will come on for an hour. I set the dishes above the tank, so they just overflow for 59 minutes back into the tank. 1 hour was the minimum setting, so a bit clunky but it did work. This after I spent some time earlier designing and making a Raspberry Pi Pico and a MOSFET to run the same pump. That I liked, I could program it to fractions of a second, but the MOSFET wasn't able to start the pump. Later I realized the MOSFET could probably turn on a relay, that could turn on the pump. Anyway, bees seem happy. Birds don't trust the new set up yet. Mostly I realized I really did need a rest day.

March 19, 2022 - Second Day back at the ranch
Woke up ahead of the alarm again. Feel much better, ready to get to doing stuff! Spent today working on the bike, I had a whole list of things, like almost everything on the handlebars had to come off, so I could make some changes. I am removing one of the front lights, will keep one though, I like the option if I do need to ride in the dark to make a campsite. Then, took EVERYTHING off the trailer. I set up the solar, charge controllers, and battery packs on the bench and let them charge up while I worked on other stuff. When I built the trailer, I realized I had welded the rear wheel on kind of crooked. But in testing it didn't really seem to cause any problems, so I just left it. Like the recumbent bike experiments, things work ok in the gravel, the problems show up more when you're on pavement, with a load, and going more than 4 miles per hour. So in addition to the trailer being loaded too heavy, things are not quite straight, so that means the trailer won't go straight, or wants to wobble and weave. I also experimented with some ideas for changing where I put the loads, and think I came up with a better plan for the next test ride. I'm going to replace the big black cargo box, with 3 or 4 backpacks. I think I can pull the backpack out of the trailer easier than the whole box, and I could also just open a zipper to find things as well, on the trailer. The wind was blowing a lot of dust today, and by 2pm I was just tired of being outside. As I was already picking things up, the wind blew the trailer off the work bench, so I figured, yup, good time to quit for the day! So I came inside to type this instead!

So What's Next??
Figure a day of welding and cutting and grinding to get the trailer wheel sitting straighter. I can see how far to move it, now that its on the work bench, so that should go pretty easy. Then I'll pull the front fork off, and weld a better front brake bracket to the fork. And probably just swap front wheels, for a new motor and new disk rotor, since I have spares. Batteries were another issue to deal with. Some options, take the big pack, but its not tested much yet. Take the small pack, and don't push it as hard. After it went off line the first day, I rode day 2, 3, and 4 without problems. Last idea is I ordered some electric tool batteries I will test on the bike and see how they do. They are usually made pretty well, but we'll see. I want to do at least a couple test rides before I hit the road again for the actual trip. The final part is to reduce my load more, I've been sorting gear in the evenings, and have made some cuts. For example I had bought a tablet for the trip, that didn't even make the first ride. I bought a little camera, because I didn't want to just use my phone all the time. But the camera has memory card, card reader, extra batteries, and a charging cable. On this test ride, I did all the video on the phone, except for testing the GoPro