Norway's Auto Union

I randomly happened to see that NAF ("Norway's Auto Union" - Norges Automobil Forbund) reviewed some cargo trikes a couple years back.  (naf.no)  I am apparently a bit slow on these things.  Its written in Norwegian, so maybe not super useful to most of the inhabitants of this fine planet.  I thought however that I could comment.

 (One of those moments where I speak into the vast uncaring void of the internet.)

They rated Nihola as OK.  I note in particular three points: (1) stability wasn't great, (2) the electric motor was a bit eager, and (3) they seemed to want child heads to be entirely enclosed in walls.

1. Stability - I can totally believe it.  A Nihola with an empty box is a bit tippy, especially for a new rider.  Then add a heavy battery directly over the rear wheel, the most tippy place, and its not going to help matters.
   
2. The electric motor - Yeah, you have derailleur gears on your heavy e-trike (or a heavy e-bike) and one way to make it do something when you're stopped in the wrong gear, which seems likely to happen, is to make the motor super excitable.  (Just guessing thats what happened.)
   
3. Kids need walls - My kids got to look around and feel wind in their hair, they did not cycle around in a bunker.  The roof usually stayed at home (or at least under the seat).  In any case, kids sit inside an elbow-high steel cage, that has to be good enough.  Better than any grown cyclist.  (Note also that it gets a lot harder to tip the thing with passengers up front.)
   

On points #1 and #2, what I think is that too many people are choosing e-trikes based on perceived needs, and getting a worse experience for it.  Sure you can zip right along, but these things are best slow anyway.  You get a less stable, more jumpy, more expensive, heavier, more tempting theft target, that is more likely to break.  Just go with a Nexus 8 hub and feel the zen.

 Obviously though, trends, culture, and ideas stampede onwards without much concern for making sense.  I spent many hours in Copenhagen this past summer, saw a bunch of e-trikes with those derailleur gears.  Almost totally flat city, a hive of hub gears, considerable tradition of not-electric bikes/trikes, and boom there are lots of people choosing derailleur-gear e-trikes.  (Screams at the internet.)

Reelight in 2023

 This isn't Nihola specific, but Reelights are great lights for utility cycles, so here goes.  (Also in two of the following photos, a Nihola is in the background!)

I have a lot of Reelight lights, the ones that go on racks ("cargo carrier", whatever) are especially good, as they are protected against damage.  Both Niholas have had one of those for years, I suppose a whole decade now.  There can be a little fiddling with spoke magnets, and the generator-cylinder can be pushed around by accident, but mostly things are great.  Then they improved things.  Not sure what year that happened, but in 2022 I got my first fancy new Reelight Nova.

The new generator goes by the rim, there are no spoke magnets, and the cable can be replaced.  The replaceable cable especially sounds good, as I have personally ruined 2 or 3 Reelights by pulling out or otherwise damaging the cable.  (In at least one case, destruction involved falling over on ice.)

Here we have the generator mostly installed.

I had, in 2022, the need to equip a pre-teen bike for winter school commuting.  I got a rear Reelight Nova for the cargo rack and installed it, zip-tied the cable like I should.  It worked OK.  I'm not so sure the light effect was better than the old models, but it was sufficient.  It started out blinking and went to steady light.  Could have blinked a bit more at low speed.  The generator needed to be installed quite close to the rim, which is potentially problematic for the rear wheel in front-facing dropouts.  The wheel can move if the nuts loosen, and it would take hardly any movement for the generator to rub on the rim.  In practice, the kid was light enough, and I tightened the nuts enough, that the wheel stayed put.  The generator was also not a problem when removing the wheel to change the tire, and was only rarely bumped into the rim.  Overall not so bad.

It ended badly however, due to some series of events that only my kid knows.

This is how it went.

One end of the cable is still in the light.

I think I'll get a new cable for the light some day to get it back in service.  I should point out that the cable exits the light housing sideways at an angle, which is less ideal than the old cable, which left the housing centered.  The large plug probably required this change.  In most cases this could be better, but specifically for the rear rack-mounted light, it exposed the cable to more risk.  After leaving the light, the cable had to traverse an air gap, near the outside edge of the bike, before it could be tip-tied to the rack.  This is the first time a rack-mounted Reelight has failed in this household.

Before that unfortunate event, it turned out that the inlaws had, for Xmas, bought a front version of this light, and found it didn't work at all for their needs.  They wanted to illuminate a bit of where they were going, which was not even slightly in the cards.  I scored that light, and on it went ... to replace a different front light that broke during a winter crash (or something).

Nice happy new front light (installed upside down for cable clearance).

I have high hopes that the new front installation will last.  For one thing, the light itself contains no battery and is therefore lightweight, and unlikely to get much of a shock if the bike should fall.  But also I like the placement of the generator better than a rear installation, high and mostly out of the way (its at top of the wheel, just visible under the snow).  The front wheel also has no need to move, so placement should be quite static.

The functionality as a light is pretty good, if your goal is to be seen, rather than to see.  It provides a sharp noticeable light spot to any eye that points its general direction, because it doesn't focus light into a narrow beam.  This works well for being seen out of the corner of an eye, I can confirm, and of course it always flips on automatically, being driven by the generator.  Overall pretty good.

So that is a story about Reelight and a kid bike.

Another winter

So another winter is starting is Oslo, in Lommedalen its a moonscape of tracks frozen into ice, sprinkled with gravel.  Really rough stuff.  On the roads, conditions range from bare pavement to black ice to thick rough ice.  The Nihola remains a good tool for hauling kids to and from birthdays, school and daycare.  I haven't put on any winter tires yet, but the tires are a bit soft and do the job well.

Oslo seems to have a growing cargo bike movement. But Norwegians as a rule are very serious about being hardcore, transforming stretchpants into every day attire, and when it comes to cargo bikes, they prefer two wheels. I assume to be sporty. I did see one of those turn-tilting trikes (Butchers & Bicycles) around. I don't understand it myself, but I presume because corning fast is very important. Nice bikes I'm sure, I'd buy a Bullitt myself except before that I'd get some other bikes. Priorities...

I think all the cargo cycles I've seen are electrified, sensible on hills of course, and important if you are to achieve high cornering speeds up hill.  However all the electric two-wheelers are vulnerable when traction fails, even for a short distance.  Trikes, including those with electric motors, suffer a much smaller penalty when they come into a situation where the drive wheel spins.  Its also pretty harmless to corner at a speed where the steering tires slide.  Icy ridges are amusing, not scary.  I think people in Oslo under-valuing this.  (Edit in spring: cargo bikes were invisible all winter.)

So I can screw around on icy ridges and steep hills with no winter tires.  I can use 100% of the available traction, no need for a safety margin (except for braking distance).  The winter tire (the back tire) can wait for winter to really arrive, and I can still get all the way to the center of Oslo safely.  Those two 20" winter front tires probably will go unused for the 3rd Oslo winter.  Long live the trikes.

(There is still the trouble that Niholas have poor front brakes, so I can't really say they are a obvious choice in Oslo.)

Small tour with 7 & 4 year olds

A person might wonder how long a Nihola can be used for child-hauling.  In part, this has a lot to do with what other options you have.  Here in Oslo, its pretty well impossible to take the kids on a bike tour because of the abundance of hills to climb, in addition to the rather hazardous state of the bike path network.  So, I had the day off work, two kids, very nice weather... and I wanted to buy some Lego plates from a toy store in Røa, 12km away by car.  Needed those Lego plates, and who really wants to drive to get them anyway?

So the main problem is what to do with a 20" wheel bike, a running/balance bike and two kids (7+4) when the hills get steep, or they otherwise want a rest.

One self-propelled kid

Zero self-propelled kids

Not entirely pleasant, but it works.  This is what makes a ~24km round trip on hills work.

The Nihola vs The Snowy Hill

My son is always ready with the snow shovel.

After a snowless holiday season, Oslo finally reached freezing and stayed there between the 11th of January and the 2nd of February, which was three full working weeks.  Strangely enough, snow fell almost every day, ranging from dust to 10cm/4in.

About when this was all starting, I actually went out with a 60cm/2ft level and tape measure, and made a few measurements of the slope that I need to haul my son up, to reach his daycare.  Of course I didn't want to spend too much time looking ridiculous measuring the public path, so I only measured the most interesting spots.  To jump to the numbers, I can now say that I have definitely climbed slopes over 25% with two kids in the box (lets say 50kg of cargo total) on my 15 gear-inch Nihola.  I can also confidently say that a 15% slope is doable with the same load on my 21 gear-inch Nihola (with a Shimano Nexus 8 hub, nothing exotic).  So thats good to keep in mind.  Niholas can do hills.

The more interesting question to a year-round utility cyclist might be how steep of a slope can be managed when its covered in snow.  I've been testing this the past three weeks, but first a little about the hills I've been climbing.  On the way to the daycare, there is in fact a small bit of 25% slope, rising suddenly after a tunnel under a road.  This flattens to nothing in 40m or so, but its a definite problem spot.  After some modest climbing, a 200m stretch that is up to 10% slope starts, then a stretch of 70m at 12% slope, with a measured max of 15%.  Overall > 50m in < 600m with an average slope of 8-9%.  On the opposite side of that hill, without children, I climb/descend 175m in 3km with slopes up to around 15%, and once in this period I also took a long way home, which ended up being un-plowed for 2km averaging 3% slope.  Now none of this is epic on the scale of hills where snow accumulates, but its plenty hard enough, and since I don't see a lot of people doing it, I might as well share what I have observed.  Perhaps people think its harder than it is.

First observation: I can pedal my Nihola some places and conditions where mountain bikes carrying no particular cargo can't be ridden.  I shouldn't be too proud of myself; sometimes it might be faster to just pick up a bike and walk, than grind through the snow on a trike.  But anyway, if a person is intent on bringing their trike with them, it can be done, and it doesn't involve falling over.

This unstable snow caused a lot of trouble for bikers.
The dark mark is where someone had to fight to remain upright.

Second observation: Light fluffy snow on relatively flat ground is not a problem, given appropriate preparation of the Nihola (rear tire type and inflation, weight in back).  If the snow gets deep enough so that the steering linkages or cargo box start dragging, then forward progress becomes markedly more difficult (depending on how heavy the snow is).  The box bottom is about 15cm/6in off the ground, the lowest steering components are around 11cm/4in, and the pedals go down to around 8cm/3in.

This amount of new snow was no particular problem, even with a shifting foundation underneath.

Further observations: A 25% snow-covered slope is in reach if the conditions are right.  For example, on hard-packed snow, when the temperature was -15C/5F, starting from being almost stopped at the bottom, on a Nihola with around 23kg of stuff in front, 10kg of stuff on the rear rack, 21 gear-inches and a Schwable Snow Stud for traction, I could manage.  You could say that the snow conditions were favorable, providing a firm surface for the tire the bite in.  The relatively sparse studs on that tire were likely of little use in these conditions.

The condition of the road surface is of paramount importance.  On the same section the following day, I had a lot of trouble with the other Nihola.  In that case, the snow was fresh (less than an inch), the temperature was more like -5C/25F, I had closer to 37kg in front, 10kg in back, a more impressive Nokia Extreme (26x2.1) rear tire, and 15 gear-inches to work with.  I had to make multiple attempts at the climb, and only succeeded on the less-steep side of the path and with significant tire slippage.  As the days passed, I continued to climb that nasty spot through various forms of snow, and generally higher temperatures, up to icy melting conditions this morning.  In looser snow, this often meant spinning and digging, with very slow progress and sometimes with rolling backwards to use the excavated trench to build a spot of inertia.  This morning with maybe 17kg in front and 6kg in back (I weighed my bag to see), on wet soft ice, I needed a run at it to clear the steepest parts and could make a little progress from a standstill somewhere over (estimated) 15% slope.  I was carting both kids up the hill, and the older one had to walk there.  Three-wheel balance allowed me to thoroughly confirm that there was no way I'd make it with both kids; usually after a run I was sliding backwards with all three wheels locked up.

Here, the rear tire has scraped up snow shavings from a hard-packed surface.

Here we have dug a trench in semi-packed snow.
Heavy load in front, not much on the rack.

With 2-3 inches of unpacked snow on top of packed snow, around -8C/18F, I had to roll backwards a few times on the 20-25% slope.  Its important to be mindful to push rider weight as far backwards as possible.  The 15% slope areas were difficult but steady, lots more pedal turning than actual forward progress.  I set rear tire inflation quite low, which might have helped.  I doubt I could have it without the 15 gear-inches, but rolling the pedals backwards was unnecessary.

I met various forms of snow in these three weeks, from unpacked to hard packed, and with lots of foot-trodden mushy middle ground.  Obviously hard packed is preferable, but when that was not available, I was not able to determine if it was better to drive where people have made a mess, or where the snow was undisturbed.  Lots of slow work in both.

On soft ice, the advantage of 15 gear-inches is reduced compared to something more like 20 gear-inches, because it was necessary to be very careful with the torque, to maintain traction.  On the other hand, having really low gears allows comfortable crawling while waiting for all the kids sliding down the icy hill to get out of the way.  Its best to keep moving, rather than stopping.  Rolling the pedals backwards was possibly essential in really delicate situations, to avoid breaking traction and starting a backwards slide.

I suspect that hauling kids around on hills in the winter is not an activity that is about to go mainstream.

The snow is melting away, and messy.

Ray's theory of hills

I have this idea, lets call it Ray's Theory of Hills.  My thought is that once balance is taken out of the equation, and assuming there is sufficient traction, the steepness of the hill that can be climbed is inversely proportional to the gear ratio expressed as gear-inches or meters development, and also inversely proportional to the total weight to be propelled up the hill, including trike and riders.  (This is basically a statement about torque and not horsepower.  We're not talking about racing up hills.  The claim is that your own weight, converted to torque, must be greater than the weight of the cycle and everything in/on it.)

So, you want to take a trike up a hill that is 50% steeper?  Loose 33% of the mass, or lower your gear-inches by 33%.  Or, want to carry 50% more junk?  Lower your gear-inches by 33%, or slopes by 33%.

What does 33% of the mass of a loaded trike add up to, anyway?  So lets say 35kg of Nihola, 75kg of driver, 40kg of kids and 15kg of stuff for a total of 165kg, of which 33% is 55kg.  So by removing all kids and stuff, the same trike and driver could theoretically climb a hill that is 50% steeper (so a 15% slope instead of 10%).  Or put another way, adding the kids and stuff reduces the maximum slope by 33% (so a 10% slope instead of 15%).

Or here's a fun one.  How about removing 10kg from the steel trike by making it an aluminum bike (i.e. swap the Nihola for a Bullitt).  Using the same cargo, that should boost hill climbing potential by 165/155 = 6%, so a 10.6% slope instead of 10%.  This is essentially nothing, of course, and the fact is that freedom from balancing is powerful at low speeds.  For these two reasons, I consider even the sporty Bullitt to be a poor choice for moving kids on steep hills.

(Of course I would buy a Bullitt to find out, if I could justify the expense.)

Consider the effect of carrying just one child, lets say 15kg of kid, no cargo, 75kg rider and 35kg of Nihola for 125kg.  Compared to the empty trike, this only harms climbing by 110/125 = 12%, so if you could climb 15% empty you can climb 13% with the kid.  I've often been surprised when I try to race up a hill with a "lightweight" empty Nihola, because I can't go nearly as fast as I feel like I should be able to.  The 15kg kid makes less than a single gear of difference.

Niholas off road

A nice thing about bikes is the freedom.  The rider can do whatever they like with it.  For example, taking a cargo cycle off the pavement, maybe even way off the road.  Its a crazy idea.  Imagine taking a minivan into a mud bog: it would get stuck immediately, dirty inside and out, would be expensive to retrieve, and might be damaged by impacts, scrapes, water, even overheating of components.  But on your cargo cycle, there's nothing stopping you except your level of enthusiasm.

Relaxing path.

When the nose hits the mud, you stop.

In the world of cargo cycles according to Ray, only those with front boxes matter, and of those there are just a few kinds that matter.  Of course there is the Nihola, but also the Bullitt occupying the go-fast end of the spectrum and Christiania trikes at the utilitarian end.  Also there is the Dutch angle on this, the WorkCycles Cargobike springs to mind, but its as heavy as a trike without the balance advantage, so it is best left to boring tasks on firm, level ground.  This, according to Ray.

A Nihola is particularly well suited to going on crazy adventures with kids.  This is mostly due to two things: (1) unified frame (2) three wheels.  You can find larger three-wheeled conveyances (Christiania), or faster two wheeled ones (Bullitt or a long-tail), but a Nihola is (IMO) the best platform for hauling your offspring out into the local tamed wilderness in search of righteous mud.

But let me quality that a bit.  A Nihola is unlikely to be much fun where a mountain bike can't be ridden.  The tamed wilderness should have sufficiently firm and smooth ground, moderate to mild hills, mild side-slopes, 90cm+ gaps between trees, and relatively few fallen branches.   Mud, roots and rocks are OK in moderation.  In Denmark, this means just about any mountain bike path I've seen, plus a lot of walking and horse paths, and sometimes the forest floor itself.  So lets get started.

Slopes.

Climbable.

Just how nuts can a person go on their Nihola out in the (tamed) forest with two kids up front?  This will depend in part on some specifications of the Nihola in question: 1) low gearing, 2) grippy rear tire, 3) lowered inflation pressure in rear tire.  Also one should not neglect to put some weight over the rear tire: snacks, water bottles, spare clothes, diapers and so on.  Finally the driver needs to understand: 1) balance, 2) rocking, 3) wheel placement, 4) ground clearance, 5) approach angle.  With these points in mind, with maybe 40kg of children in the box, I have gone through mud that mountain bikes avoid, up hills that mountain bikes struggle to climb, on many km's of winding paths, and gained many hours of happy children time.

So to start with the mechanical side of things, a person needs low gears for the most pleasant Nihola offroading experience.  I can say from experience that 15 gear-inches is a lot better than 21 gear-inches, which is a lot better than 26 gear-inches.  Its also convenient if your gearing solution: 1) doesn't break into bits under heavy loads, 2) lets you roll the pedals backwards freely, 3) lets you change gears while stationary.  (That's because if you start a hill in the wrong gear, you can quickly become stationary.)  Shimano Nexus 8 or Alfine 8 is almost certainly the most sensible choice.

If your ground surface is wet or soft, knobby tires are a really good idea.  Relatively smooth tires, such as a Nihola is delivered with, give up quickly off pavement.  On a hill, one can often work around a lack of traction by rolling a bit backwards downhill in order to attempt a new approach.  In mud, a lack of traction leaves rocking as the only escape short of dismounting and pulling.  Lowered tire pressure in back is a useful traction aid, along with some weight on the cargo rack.  I suspect the Schwalbe Marathon Plus MTB is an excellent choice of tire.  Either the 26x1.9" or 26x2.1" version should fit in the frame, but the fatter one will be a close call.  My own experience with this comes from a 26x2.1 Nokian Extreme 294 (a winter tire), and I have a 26x2.0 Schwalbe Marathon Tour that I intend to try this summer.

This thin wet grass on greasy mud would only need a little slope to stop an unprepared Nihola.  But we are prepared.

So to conclude the mechanical side of things, we can say there isn't a lot to do.  Get the lowest available gearing, a knobby tire, lower the inflation in back, and carry something on the cargo rack for best results.  (The cargo rack also makes a good handle, and should be considered essential by any serious owner.)  Driver technique is more complicated.

First of all, its good to keep the rubber on the road.  Happily, children in the box have a powerful stabilizing effect.  Not so happily, weight on the cargo rack has an opposing effect, though a less significant one.  Also happily, with three wheels, the rider is free to get into positions which are atypical for a cycle of any kind.  For example, I have sometimes pedaled with my behind next to the saddle, not on it.  Balance downhill is pretty easy, although a few times I was afraid of tipping the whole trike over its nose, not just nose-down but entirely upside down, and so I did what I could to sit as far back as possible.  Balance uphill is easy so long as there is no side-slope.  An uphill side-slope renders a Nihola helpless embarrassingly easily, because the rider's weight can easily end up being outside the balance triangle formed by where the tires contact the ground.  So when climbing a steep hill, the rider needs to constantly be aware of the danger of tipping.  As the rider's body moves here and there while turning the pedals, the tipping risk changes.  The possibility of doing all pedaling with only the up-slope foot is one reason that being able to roll pedals backwards is an advantage.

Does that look like a hill?  Zero of four MTB's that we saw biked all the way up it.

Rocking is basically a trike-only trick, and very effective.  Its not so hard.  The rider throws his or her weight forwards and backwards while using the pedals to assist.  This can be an effective way to "hammer" through mud and snow, in addition to being handy at stoplights.  Again, pedals that freewheel backwards are helpful here.

Wheel placement is important for a number of reasons.  I'm not a mountain biker, but I think we can say that riding a Nihola is "technical".  You go slow and pick the places where the wheels will work best.  Things to consider include balancing, finding small climbable parts of the terrain, trying to have only one tire climb any obstacle at a time, avoiding crashing the steering components (under the box) into rocks, keeping the nose clear of the ground, and (depending on the gearing) arranging for the pedals to be in the right places at the right time.

Closely coupled to wheel placement is the issue of ground clearance.  The lowest point of a Nihola is actually a pedal at the bottom of its travel, and these can definitely come into contact with nature.  The steering arms are another possible point of concern, as are the linkages from the steering arms to the plate at the bottom of the steering tube.  Often the most exposed point is that plate, which is located at basically the central point between the wheels, and ripe for high-centering.  The plate seems to be well made, but I have actually bent it on the blue Nihola while navigating down some rocks.  Still works...

There is more.  The approach angle of a Nihola, or in other words the steepness of slope that the nose can clear, is a point of interest.  The nose of a standard Nihola sticks out pretty far (though not as far as the 4 seat model).  Its a common place for me to loose paint, sometimes even in civilization.  In the forest, if the nose hits the mud, its like a ship running aground.  Dismount and pull.  At one point I wanted to get a round-box Nihola, which has no protruding nose, for the purpose of driving in the forest with the kids.  That model is generally intended for older people who have difficultly with balance, so there would be some irony in mountain biking with one.

So, where does all this leave an adventurous Nihola rider?  Its still harder to take the kids onto the mountain bike trail than it is to take just yourself.  With two kids, a person could easily end up pedaling 60kg more than they would solo on two wheels.  You probably don't want to be on a trail with long uphills.  Some trails are easy, some are fun, some are really a pain, you'll know when you try.  Regardless of that, kids will likely have a good time.  Oh, and wear your rubber boots.

Mmm, mud.

A rest for the weary.

Pleasant tour with two kids.

A little day tour in late November

Winter is late in Oslo.  Its December and I haven't gotten out the studded tires for the Niholas.  But perhaps that is not so impressive; a Nihola has three wheels so a bit of ice is not likely to cause anything surprising to happen.  The other weekend, we even took a little day tour (maybe 25km on significant hills) in lovely sun with a bit of snow and ice on the ground.

Out on a little tour in November with a bike, a Nihola, and two kids

There are a few things to note in order to minimize problems with this.  First, there should be a good load on the rear tire, in this case, several liters of water and hot tea, kilos of tools and random junk, and sometimes a running bike.  It also pays to keep the tire pressure a little on the low side.

Oh, and the kids can get really cold sitting there so bring all sorts of warmth accessories.  We brought an old blanket, a foam mattress for the floor, and left the roof at home.

Anyway, its kind of interesting to spin a tire on a trike.  Its more of a curiosity than it would be in a car, because you're sitting right there looking at the tire and the road, everything is fairly quiet, and you can really feel the interaction of inertia, tire and ice.  Often enough I am going along and start slipping (with the back tire), make it a bit farther, then start sliding backwards and either use the front brake to stop the backwards slide, or just slide into an area of traction.  The idea is then to plot a new course for the back tire, avoiding the ice.  It isn't necessarily helpful to get off and push, because probably you can't do any better on foot than on the pedals.  However it can sometimes be useful to move the rear sideways, onto a better surface.  While this is all going on, you can have a calm chat with the kids.  Lets all sing the praises of three wheels.

But that is kind of off topic.  On this little tour we took, I found only a small area that was icy.  There was also one good climb where I was happy to use the 15 gear-inches ratio, and which also was on snow, ice and gravel.  I could feel the tire slip here and there, but things went well enough.  So the studded tires are sitting in the basement, for now.

A Morning Tour

I took the two kids on a little Nihola tour before lunch on Sunday.  Two kids, a running bike, a plastic trike, snacks, water, spare clothes, rain clothes for everyone, spare footwear for the kids, a saw, a bucket and my usual heavy bike toolkit.  Its nice not to wonder how everything will be carried, or what it will weigh.

Of course since I'm writing about it, I pondered the weight anyway, which I estimate to be about 45kg of stuff, children included.

So off we went without much of a plan.  I wanted to go over to the next "mini-valley" (Mærradalen) and have a look at a tree we had seen fallen over across a path.  (An excellent opportunity for socially acceptable destruction.)  Getting over there means climbing and descending hills.  Now, some people have said trikes are no good on hills.  That might be true if a person doesn't need to carry anything, and indeed a lot of the bikers in Oslo aren't interested in carrying so much as a fender on their bikes.  But I have children, and we're carrying stuff.  Trikes are awesome on hills.  (Awesome in a slow, steady kind of way.)  We climbed and descended our way over there.

So we went to the tree, cut it apart, and made some little tree swords, which went into the Nihola with everything else.  Off we went to the next destination.  My son spotted a path going off from the main path.  Imagine yourself there on a two-wheeled cargo bike, 45kg of crap in the box, you can either go on the nice wide path, or the smaller one that disappears into the trees, at the bottom of a valley.  So we went on the smaller path.

Starting a little climb into the unknown.

Going back down, with the scout returning to report.

The little path had some rocks on it.  I didn't think it was so bad, but I did pinch-flat a tube in front, as I later discovered after the patch I applied didn't stop the leaking from the second hole.  Thankfully I carry a tire pump.  (Obviously, right?  Why not.)  So the hill got really steep.  My son jumped out and pushed.  We cleared the first hill, descended a hill, and then came to an even steeper hill.  More pushing.  This was getting a bit epic, with stalling, coasting backwards, and a slipping rear tire.  I got small blisters on my hands, such was the force I applied on the handlebar, while trying to force the pedals around.

Then we stopped for a while to pick raspberries and look at big fat brown slugs, before we came to the next hill.  As befitting any respectable story, this hill was even steeper, and my son wanted to go up it with the Nihola.  So we started.  He pushed, I pedalled, and little sister sat in the box.  Maybe 1/3 of the way up little sister had to get out.  We continued.  Maybe 1/2 the way up, I couldn't turn 21 gear-inches on a trike with less than 10kg of stuff in it, and a ~20kg boy pushing.  And to be perfectly clear, not being able to turn the cranks on a trike doesn't mean going slow enough to loose balance.  It means forward movement is impossible.

So I parked it there and took a picture.  My son thought this was all very nice.  We then went back and pushed it up the hill, which was quite some work for us on that slope.  I was worried about slipping and subsequently being run over.  I could see that the vehicles that drove up this hill had been leaving rubber on the exposed rocks.  (We can credit the nearby military installation, I suppose.)

Scaling the big hill.

Finding a place for snack time.

So it was then snack time, and we went back home on a mostly paved path.  That is the story of our little pre-lunch tour.

Rain

At 6:30 this morning dark clouds and thunder were rolling in.  This leads me to write about how a Nihola works in the rain.

Niholas of the child-carrying forms have steel frames, plastic box sides, and aluminum box floors.  The optional child seat is plastic with an aluminum bar underneath, with an optional removable cushion on top.  There is an optional rain cover made of strong fabric with plastic windows, supported by two aluminum bows.  The only thing here that is effected by standing around all day in the rain is the cushion; it will soak up water if the roof is not installed.  It dries out easily enough.

The roof itself appears to withstand any amount of rain for any number of days, so many people (maybe most people) in Denmark never remove it.  I think this is a poor idea.  The roof stands between the rider and any human cargo, making it harder to see or hear.  Its visually huge, it wiggles a bit on bad bumps, and it pushes around a lot of air to allow its passage.  The roof works on my mind, making the whole trike seem bigger, clumsier and slower.  It also gets ugly with time, getting bleached in the sun and stretched in the rain, and the windows can deteriorate.  I always take it down when its not actually raining (or unless there is some other good reason, perhaps to protect cargo in a parked trike).

So, its good news that it can be taken down and put up easily.  The supporting bows sit snugly on the floor of the Nihola, where they rattle only a little, because they flex slightly when being laid down, thereby holding themselves in place.  The rods can be removed while the seat is installed, but there isn't a lot of extra room for maneuver.  Cargo and children in the box makes it harder, but children cargo can sometimes cooperate and lift up their legs on command.  The roof itself can be folded or otherwise mashed under the seat without difficulty.  The process is easy, repeatable, and without surprises.

The bows in storage position.

The bows without the roof.

Roof up!

When the roof is up, the ends of the bows sit in small cylindrical holders in either side of the box.  There is nothing holding them in there except the roof.  They will wiggle themselves free if left to themselves, and probably they would be easily damaged anyway.  They are just aluminum rods, after all.  The rods and roof seem to reinforce each other somewhat.

We have two different models of the rain roof.  The more fancy one has a strap that allows the "front door" to be rolled up and held in place.  Otherwise, the door can be pushed behind the heads of child cargo without being rolled up.  It can also be draped backwards over the top of the roof, but the Nihola company advises against this, because it can apparently harm the zippers.  Better yet, the whole roof can be taken down.

The easy way to get the door out of the way.  Not recommended.

Lots of headroom.  Not a lot of options for partial openings.