It was a great day to drive to Sequim.  Grey, drizzly, heavy overcast...Jim (jimali) and I headed for Mike's Bikes in Sequim to look at a TerraTrike.  In the past couple of weeks I've had inquiries about mounting my neck rests on ICE, Sun, Trident, TerraTrike and ActionBent trikes.  Having all these possibilities is a great way to begin the year.

We already know the kits fit on ICE trikes with mesh seats, and it looks like it'll fit on at least the Sun model I was asked about.  We have a Trident seat on its way from Tom Flohr to make sure we have a kit that will fit all Tridents including the new Spike.

The day trip to Sequim was to see whether there's an easy way to mount one of my neck rests on those trikes.  The good news is that they all use essentially the same seat, Rover included.  So one mounting mechanism will work for all.  The other good news is that Sequim is in a rain shadow on the Olympic Penninsula, so while it was rainy and grey everywhere else we got to spend a few hours in a pocket of scattered clouds and, yup, even some sun.  That alone was worth the trip.

Sequim's right on the Olympic Discovery Bike Trail, and Mike's is conveniently located about a block off the trail.  It's a really nice shop with a great selection of bikes, gear and accessories...and they rent bikes and helmets if you're just up for a day ride.  http://www.mikes-bikes.net/  Mike wasn't around but the mechanic couldn't have been more helpful.  He pretty much said, "There's the TerraTrike, enjoy yourselves."  He said that if we wanted to take the seat fabric off so we could see better that was fine with him, and he obligingly got a new Rover seat out of a not-yet-assembled Rover's box so we could see it was identical to the Cruiser.

Jim's good company and was a never-ending source of, "Well what about doing it this way..." suggestions.  In the end we came up with a possible solution good enough for a prototype.  The challenge is to find a good mounting location high-enough on the seat back to keep the lever forces of leaning against a neck rest to a minimum.  The seat-back brace tube is actually two side-by-side small diameter tubes so the mountain bike stem won't work.  Plus I think it's too far from the top of the seat and a rider's neck...too much moment arm force would be applied to the braces.  My original idea of using the open tops of the two vertical seat braces to attach a new horizontal brace to mount the stem won't work either.  The caps look like they're too difficult to remove, and there's a smaller diameter inner tube in each for mounting a flag.

If anyone's actually reading this I can just imagine how incomprehensible it must be.  I'll upload the photos I took and a drawing of the prototype later.

It turned out to be a perfect day - really nice drive in beautiful northwest country, great company, good conversation...and a fine dark beer with a friend before catching a ferry home to Ms. Penni, Travis and Gomez.