Rick: "So what is that thing? Who invented it? Can it go forward at a decent speed, or is it just good for fooling around in circles?"
Ed: I've posted hundreds of times about trikking on trikking Web sites. A Trikke is a very deep metaphor with very wide applications. Easy to see the Trikke as a spiritual program, or even as a Master, for instance. I can get up to about 15MPH comfortably for at least a few miles, cruise for hours at about 10MPH, and climb up to a 17% grade hill. One can carve a three foot wide sidewalk, or do huge 20 foot wide "swaths of Doom." It's all fun. Here's me doing about 10 - 15 MPH going up a 12% hill and back down: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KbXRXYxo-Zk Also, I do dozens and dozens of tricks on the Trikke -- but most of the tricks are too subtle for a non-trikker to really appreciate. Going down a curb, for instance, takes more than just a dollop of courage when one is first learning it, and it's not learned with a few attempts -- takes 50 - 100 times before one can "just go down a curb" without intense mindfulness of the action. And there's many ways to go down a curb -- some very artistic, some very athletic. Like that the Trikke, for four years, has had me out there "every day" nuancing my skill set. In the above video, you'll see me jump over a speedbump -- nothing but net. That took a lot of practice, let me tell ya, yet, it's almost nothing to the casual observer who has probably seen skateboarders etc. do such amazing things, but, if you want your heart in your throat, try jumping a speedbump with a Trikke for the first time. The emotional thrill of trikking is an all time reality, and one can jack it up or tamp it down at will by changing one's carving style. Risk management is a constant palpable dynamic. One chooses amount of risk as much as one chooses amount of effort being expended. This makes the Trikke into an artist's tool. How one dances around a neighborhood with a Trikke is different every time. "Every day" means any day above 20 degrees with dry surfaces available. And additionally on many days below zero, or with slush everywhere but enough "islands of dry" to trikke from one "traction area" to another. Like that -- gotta trikke! I can't think about the Trikke without wanting to get on one NOW. It's buttah! Discuss amongst yourselves. I use my Trikke mostly around the neighborhood, but I'd say, most trikkers like to get out there and carve for serious distances -- 5 -15 miles in a session. I like to do about five to ten miles a day futzing around locally, but one guy trikked across the United States, then did Europe, and now he's doing the United States again. Other folks have done over 100 miles in a day, and one guy did 350 miles NON-STOP over, say, 36 hours of trikking. So the Trikke will be to you what you want it to be when it comes to "having fun getting fit." I can just carve my driveway and be in a desperate, out of breath, 170 heart beats per minute, drenched in sweat state in FIVE MINUTES FLAT if I really put the oomph into my carves. Aerobically and weight-training-wise -- I just cannot think of any machine that can get one as fit across so many muscle groups with so little stress on the body. Anyone who can think a thought can meditate, and anyone who can walk can learn to trikke. Walking is "always falling," right? Twenty minutes a day three times a week will be more than anyone needs to stay fit, and 20 minutes EVERY DAY will be the minimal addiction to trikking if one "gets into the poetry" of it. Gotta have it. It's dancing -- see Fred Astaire's dance with the coat rack. http://youtube.com/watch?v=xbBdgSnPkGI A full body workout with almost zero impact on joints. I've lost over 50 pounds of fat and put back on, say, 10 - 15 pounds of muscle. My love handles are almost gone now despite still being about 30 pounds overweight. Trikking impact "core" bigtime. I lose weight immediately if I diet and do my normal trikking. Just gotta stop shoving goop into my pie hole, but sigh....the Trikke doesn't teach one that skill. I burn about 400 calories in a 30 minute session, and, sheesh, that's merely a soft drink and a bag of chips worth. Easy to shovel it in, but at least trikking has upped my metabolism and I can actually eat quite a lot without gaining weight. Not that I would ever do such a thing of course. Ahem. Observers are hard pressed to tell how it works when first encountering trikking. It looks like almost no effort is being expended for the speeds obtained, yet it is a much more demanding workout to muscle the machine around than a bike presents -- if one wants that -- or easier than a bike -- if one wants that. One decides how taxing it is, second by moment by second. And one decides if the whole body, upper body, lower body is emphasized. One can trikke using almost no muscles but the arms, or just the legs, if one wants. And the Trikke can be made very hard to use if the tires have only half the pressure they ordinarily should have. Over a few weeks, I let my tires gradually leak out air until they're down to 40PSI; and it gets harder and harder to carve; then back up to 90PSI and the Trikke turns into a drag racer once again after all that low pressure slogging as if in molasses. Slogging builds muscles, let me tell ya! Or, hell, keep your tires fully inflated and just do a lot of hills. I'm always asked, "Where's the motor on that thing?" One is always getting a free ride downhill on the Trikke. It looks like magic provides the propulsion. Unlike a bike where one tries to maintain one's balance, on the Trikke one is always falling to one side or the other, and one's trikking balance is defined as an intensely "lived" relationship between gravitational and centrifugal forces. Trikkers love to fall out of balance in a balanced way. One gets the same free ride down the gravity-well that surfers, skiers, snowboarders, skateboarders get on their respective slopes, and even rollerbladers who are essentially getting a free ride falling from side to side as they stroke along. I see those folks doing those things, and I feel it in my own body with remembered trikking feelings. I see someone flying a kite, and I know what the kite would feel like to ride it. I see birds landing and know their arcs intimately. I see a tree bend in the wind, and I know that kind of stretching groaning reaching the end of a tensile strength -- as when I'm doing my hardest carve and my tires are just beginning to slip and I'm at the bottom of the gravity well and have to shift my weight over to the other footpad to get ready for the next ride down. So, gravity does most of the work, but the trikker must put body mass on the correct scooter -- the one that's going downhill. That's where the work of the trikker is done. So a trikker is shifting weight constantly from 100% on one footpad down to zero while the other footpad gets the body's full weight on it. It's a constant flowing of mass shifting to another center of gravity and back. Never static. The Trikke is two scooters joined, and only one of the scooters is going downhill at any given time. So, getting the body to the correct scooter ON TIME, is absolutely important to trikking. You gotta dance with this gizmo. And when I watch Fred and the rack, again, like watching so many other "gravity relationships in real life," I just get all these "memories of feelings of trikking" stirred up. I can feel Fred's balance shifting in time with the rack. Verah nyce! And if one misses one's "cue," and if one doesn't arrive "on time" on the correct footpad, the Trikke speaks back to one FORCEFULLY. The Trikke is an uncompromising master in telling you about the LEAST mistake in timing while being quite forgiving in terms of forward momentum. You can be a pretty poor trikker and still go, say, 7MPH forwards, but if you really want to get some speed going, gotta have timing. Without decent timing, a very very very slight slope will stop you cold. The Trikke is a supremely sensitive slope detector. Once one has "hill chops," one has arrived. Once one's muscles have grown to match the needs of carving, hills change from humiliating challenges to dance floors. If you mess up, the footpads "come alive" and seeming push back at you -- in fact, overwhelmingly push back at you, and one cannot beat the Trikke into submission -- it cannot be "muscled out of" its functionality. It will tell you about your least error. After a few months of practice, a trikker can tell instantly if the Trikke is needing a bolt tightened or if a brake is dragging ever so slightly or if the handlebars have become a bit torqued, or if one's feet are a bit more forward on the footpads. Any change is felt immediately. It's art! It's engineering. Trikking is like getting the two halves of the brain to talk to each other. The design is a set of concepts -- ala Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- that must be surrendered to as axioms that are both understood intellectually and proprioceptionally. The mind must learn not to argue with physics and what the Trikke's spectrum of possibilities are, and the body must learn to feel the Trikke and be in harmony with its sense of time. GAWD I want to trikke so badly right now, cuz of attentioning it, but there's a rainstorm out there right now! Arrrgh! I burn like Spock in the Time of Pon Farr!!!! Here's a few Web pages I put up about trikking -- during my first year of trikking. Haven't added more there since, but have posted extensively elsewhere. On these pages, you'll get a feel for my experiences of trikking even though, nowadays, I have a more matured appreciation for trikking, my beginner's vision of it was still close to my take on the Trikke today. Don't miss my Trikke graffiti and Trikke cartoon sections. http://duveyoung.com/trikking/ Anyone in Fairfield, Iowa who wants to learn to trikke, get one, let me know, and I'll drive to town for a visit and schedule a session with ya and maybe I'll be able to light your afterburners with a few instructions and observations. Trikking is orbiting.......12 inches above the earth. It turns out to be a very long distance to fall. Edg PS. The Trikke was invented in Brazil by Gildo Beleski circa 1990, but it only really got marketed from 2001 onwards. Go to trikke.com for the Trikke Tech company Web site. Tons of info there. I know the company very well. First class operation. Very very honest folks. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Duveyoung > Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2007 1:24 PM > To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com > Subject: [FairfieldLife] Rambling reply to: "Hey, Edg...what music did you > pack to?" > > > > I posted a couple new trikking vids: > > HYPERLINK > "http://youtube.com/profile?user=TrikkeGuy"http://youtube.com/profile?user=T > rikkeGuy > > so what is that thing? Who invented it? Can it go forward at a decent speed, > or is it just good for fooling around in circles? > > > > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.0/959 - Release Date: 8/17/2007 > 5:43 PM >
