March 13, 2006

Tornadoes in southern Missouri and southern Illinois killed two people whose pickup truck was blown into a propane tank as the twisters flattened homes along a 20-mile path, officials said. Several others were injured.

The worst damage was along a rural stretch Highway 61 in Perry County, about 80 miles south of St. Louis, where the victims had been driving, emergency management director Jack Lakenan said. The force of the wind wedged the truck beneath the propane tank, he said.

The tornado also split a brick ranch home in half, tossed mobile homes, caved in garages and snapped dozens of trees. Several people were hurt; two were taken to a hospital in St. Louis.

Part of my route is a 405-mile stretch from Murphysboro, Illinois to Girard, Kansas that cuts across the entirety of Southern Missouri. I do hope they're done with all their tornadoeing by the time I get there.

In other, less death-defying news, I took the trike out for another ride on Saturday, which wasn't quite as nice as Friday, when I was stuck in a cubicle being irradiated by my monitor while the temperature-measuring devices outside topped 70 degrees. But Saturday put in a a good effort. The stray patches of undissolved salt in the winter-dead grass and the vast bolus of incipient leaf-mulch drying by the curb were the only evidence that municipal plows had recently ground their way down our street, leaving filthy snow and rotting autumn debris mixed together in convenient piles at the end of the driveway.

Whenever possible I'm putting myself in less than ideal riding situations, to see how I can handle them on the trike: narrow or rough shoulders, high traffic, steep downhills with curves in them. So far, the "steep downhill with curve" scenario is the one that gets my heart racing. Supposedly, the increased rolling resistance from the third wheel and the heavier weight of a trike slow it down quite a bit. I don't have a bike computer mounted yet, so I have no real data about how fast I'm going...but when you're barely eight inches off the road, it doesn't feel very slow at all.

The faster the trike goes, the more sensitive it becomes to steering corrections. Johannes, my recumbent dealer, warned me about that, saying that first-time trike riders have a tendency to overcorrect at high speeds, causing a loss of control.

So: I pedaled downhill in my fastest gear until I reached its limit (called "spinning out"), and then clicked the internally-geared rear hub up to 3, which is the trike equivalent of hitting the nitrous button on a car. I was now pedaling with a much bigger gear, and my speed increased substantially...wind hitting my face, the fairing and trailer bouncing and rattling along, my six-foot rainbow Kiri Kard snapping and crackling straight out from the antenna mast.

Every pedal stroke resulted in a slight swerve, because I was gripping the handlebars at my sides too tightly. At any moment I might careen across the road, hit the special hidden jump ramp, then sail through the air in a slow-motion spiral before I crashed into a ditch and exploded. I experimented with a looser grip on the controls, but soon realized that the best solution was to just stop pedaling and coast. Even then: I caught up with an Infiniti SUV that had passed me earlier, and I had to slow down to avoid rear-ending it. This made me angry, so I launched a fusillade from my anti-jerk cannons, and the trucklet swerved off the road, hit the special hidden jump ramp, spun through the air in slow motion, then hit the ground and exploded.

All right, maybe not so much with the "less death-defying."

From what I've read, the portion of my Missouri route that cuts through the Ozarks has lots of short, steep hills...up-and-down sort of riding. Hoosier Pass (11,450 ft.) in Colorado is going to be a different experience - mile after mile of steady downhill, the sort of riding that can make disc brake rotors heat up until the fluid in the brake lines boils and locks the brakes, so that you skid out of control, crash through the guardrail, and tumble over the cliff's edge. Then you have to jettison the trailer and deploy the parasail.

That would suck - all my stuff is in the trailer.

So I'd better hone my mad trike-handling skills now, while I'm closer to sea-level.