When the cruciform on my trusty 2008 ICE Q trike failed at about the 20K mile mark, I decided to use the opportunity to upgrade my ride. In fairness to ICE, I’m pretty hard on my equipment– the early demise is almost certainly related to a 4500 mile ride across the US pulling my daughter on a Trets recumbent tagalong plus about 200 lbs of our worldly possessions for the duration of the 6 month odyssey. That’s a lot of mass that no doubt put an extraordinary twisting motion on the main cross tubes where the failure occurred. Besides, ICE cut me a good deal on a replacement cruciform which allowed me to resurrect the Q (now an HDQ, gotta love ICE’s modular frame design) and give it to my wife. A thinly veiled and likely unsuccessful attempt at smoothing over this outrageously expensive project with her.

Having tinkered with and put a lot of miles on recumbent trikes over the past decade or so, I have a pretty good idea where I want to push for my next trike.  This site is an account of my definition of the “perfect ride” and my latest attempt to get there using commercially available products.  Maybe someone will find something useful here.  Or save me from myself.