A tour

 Well, the kids are rather too big to sit in a cargo bike (or trike) and get pedaled around now, so mostly one nihola goes down to the store, and mostly the other hides in the garage.  There is however one remaining additional use: transporting small dogs.  Small dogs do have legs, but we have ambitious goals.

Three people and two small dogs went out on a tour a couple weeks ago, myself on a nihola and two others on fatbikes.  (Those are very comfortable on gravel, BTW.)  The forests north of Oslo have a lot of paths, although unfortunately its hard to make round trips on paths which are easy to ride on.  I have tried a certain number of uncomfortable paths with a nihola, to be clear, but thats not a long-distance option.  There was one feasible gravel road I could see, about 70km.

(Actually there is another also, a bit over 40km round trip to "the queens view" but we've done that a number of times.  I could write about that some day.)

I have used Google maps to put together a representation of what we did.  So there you have it, 68km with 950m of climb, almost all gravel, on hills ranging up to 540m over sea level, done on a nihola by a regular guy.  We carried water, food and a good set of tools in two Ortlieb bags on the nihola.  The dogs had a combined weight around 15kg, but walked on all the significant climbs.

The uphills were work, even the downhills took time.  On one of those, I set a personal record for highest speed on two wheels with a nihola.  Long downhills and corners you see, I felt like there was some mild drifting in the gravel, and so I pushed it a bit.  (Didn't try that a second time.)

My advice on nihola tours: just turn the pedals and the kilometers will pass.  (It does help to have a quality gearing system installed.)

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.

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.