Having the trike back

My trike's been in for service for a wee while now, but I finally picked it up from my local bike shop today. Having taken it out in the snow and ice quite a lot over the New Year period (attempting (& succeeding) to master powersliding through corners) & put it away to move house, I neglected to removed the corrosive grime. Which killed the chain completely...
Actually, it's 3 chains joined together, so replacement tends to get a wee bit pricey...
Anyway, all is mended & functioning & lubed now & it's riding fairly well. I just need to sort the gearing now. The main problem is the wee 16" wheels, which make storage very easy, but getting decent gears fairly difficult. The trike is set up with a triple chainring (30-40-52), an 11-25 9-speed cassette and a Dual Drive hub gear (3-speed: -33%, straight through & +33%). This gives a decent range of gears (15.4"-103.5") & 81 gears, so no shortage of choice, however, most of them are squished in the bottom end of that range: I have 6 gears that are less than 20"; 23 (total) that are less than 30"; & a total of 42 that are less than 40". Given that coming home today, I was carrying over 10kg of luggage & only got down to about a 40" gear on a 6% slope, it might be a trifle under geared...
I'm lucky to have a good local bike shop who know me & are happy to look at solutions for problems I have with my "strange bikes." They are currently checking whether the front mech post will accommodate a 62t chainring & then how I can lose the granny ring (which is 104mm BCD, with the others being 135mm). This would give me a 19-123" gearing range, which is far more sensible & means I won't spin out at the first sign of a reasonable hill. The alternative to this is a Schlumpf high-speed drive, which are expensive & might not be happy working with my Dual Drive hub gear. Still, I don't need to check that out yet!
All that notwithstanding, the trike is a hugely enjoyable ride & it's no slouch either!
I've recently got a Garmin Edge 705, so will attempt to use it on my three main machines to compare & contrast speeds over my commute & post the differences up here.

Autumn Days

Having returned from another holiday, getting up this morning to walk the dogs was a very depressing experience. I get up at 0630 on a work day & roll straight out the front door with the dogs. This morning, it was only just light. Having checked sunrise times, it seems that, from Monday, it'll be dark at that time in the morning until sometime in March.
I find Glasgow in winter very difficult with the sheer lack of daylight (if it's overcast, it barely gets light for about 2 months), so the obvious shortening of the days tends to lead me to feel quite melancholy.
To combat this, I'm starting to plan my winter cycling. My Fujin will be put away until spring before too long, so I've booked my Greenspeed X5 recumbent trike in for a service. My trike is incredibly heavy, but a solid workhorse, that's great fun to ride. The additional climbing in my commute, now that I've moved should be amusing on a bike that weighs about 16.5kgs. I also have 3 panniers that I carry. This is great for having space to move stuff, but I just tend to fill the available space, so end up with around 25kgs of bike & baggage, compared to 10-12kg on my summer bike, which makes quite a difference when the road heads upwards! Saying that, as currently set up, it has a bottom gear of 15.4", so there's probably not an awful lot that I couldn't climb, I just might not be particularly fast.
I'm going to try to re-organise the gearing on the trike at its service & get some shiny new bits put on it & try not to look too ridiculous on my first ride hitting the hill on the way home!