Rest, recovery, bike reconfiguration day

July 25, 2021

View from above of setup with battery on rear rack and under rack bag, That curved piece of black plastic is the front of the battery.

A shot from the front. The battery is not visible from the back.

While i was in Madison. I took the panniers off my bike for local riding. i put them back on before heading for Owenton. When I headed for Owenton. I immediately noticed that I had switched sides when I put them back on. I noticed because the bike now leaned to the right instead of the left. I was able for a while to compensate for the new shift by maintaining very erect body posture, but, when the serious climbing started, I was having serious problems with the new shift. These problems quickly led to back pain, pedaling weakness, and exhaustion

After my night in the woods, all of these problems got worse and I was really hurting. I needed more assistance and that had used more battery energy so, for the first time I needed to switch batteries. I waited until I was back on the road - US127 has great shoulders - to switch batteries. That was quick and easy, done in maybe 15 minutes. But my body was hurting even more than it had been so, as I described in the last page, I needed to stop and rest often - every few miles - just to be able to continur to ride. When I got to the motel in Frankfort - the same one I stayed at on my way up to Madison - i took the more discharged battery out of the camping pannier and put it on the charger. Carrying the spare battery in a pannier made it impossible to equalize the pannier loads and that was definitely causing me serious problems.

So where could I put it?

See the image above for my first solution. Using the strong bungee cord that I had already been using there, I realized that, if I twisted the battery sideways and padded it with my pack towel, its weight would be centered and I could equalize the load between the panniers to avoid the bike tilt that was causing me problems.

I don't like having the weight of that battery up so high, but, because of its length, the only other pace to carry it centered would be under the long chain stays which would be a rather dirty and wet place for it. I haven't reloaded the panniers yet, but I will this afternoon and see how it feels. I also realized that I already had weight pretty much equivalent to the battery weight in my rack-top rear bag and it didn't bother me, so I'll try to move most of that weight down to the panniers.

Some further cogitation and poking around with the bits involved led to a better solution with the spare battery held down on the folded pack towel by the bungee and the rack top bag mounted on top of the battery.

I'm hoping I'll be able to continue my tour tomorrow with a short day - 30 mi- to Harrodsburg. I'm not in very good shape and it is quite hot out there now, so I'm happy there is a relatively expensive motel at 10 miles if I need it. If I'm feeling good, I may go on to Danville at almost 50 miles.

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