Trikke - Day 1

Well, my Trikke arrived yesterday. I got the T8.5 Air which has real tires as opposed to the polywhatever wheels which don't have to be inflated.

After taking a good hour to put it together I was so tired that I postponed riding it until today. This morning I packed it up in my car (it just about fits on the back seat of my Corolla 03) and went to Walmart to buy a bike helmet. Found a blue one (yey!) and set off to a gas station to inflate the tires properly (in order for the Trikke to be safe during transport, the tires are not totally inflated). I drove around about 5 gas stations looking for air but only at the 6th did I find a column with air. Paid $.75 for 3 minutes and after hurting myself trying to get to the valves, I managed to inflate the Trikke's tires properly.

And then off I went, to the paved parking lot of an old stadium here in Nashua. It was almost completely empty so I took the Trikke out, hurt my hands again trying to lock the footholds into place (or unlock them for that matter. The mechanism is a pain in the ass!) and finally got up on it and stood for a while, just to get a feeling for it. I moved the handlebar left and right a few times to get a feel for that also and then followed the instruction manual and pushed myself off a little to get some speed.
Well, if I thought it looked so easy and it must be easy to do too, I was wrong. Try as I may, I couldn't get the trikke to move anymore than it wanted to from the pushing off. I read the manual again and starting moving the handlebar from left to right rapidly and sort of got a teeeeeensy bit of a movement out of it.
They say some pick it up instantly, others take longer. I'll definitely take a LOT longer. Not one to give up so fast though, I kept starting again and again and again, pushing myself off to get some speed going and trying to figure out how to use the weight balancing thing and the arm movements right. After about half an hour of trying, I was drenched in sweat and had managed to get an idea of how it should be. Far be it from actually making it work though... this is going to take a long time to perfect to make it look like all those people riding it carelessly at 18mph.

Look out, world! ;-)