But when we got it, I did a little practice riding in the parking lot before setting off the 4+ miles for Christy's home, and promptly rode it down a hill and into a large stone-lined depression. This was caused by the fact that it pulled very badly to the left. For a few minutes I despaired of riding out here at all, thinking I'd have to go cold-turkey for the week.
But Michelle walked back over to the Bike Library (about a block away) while I stayed with the trike, and Kelly, the woman who had helped us, came out to make some minor adjustments which improved it markedly. Finally, after a bit more practice riding, I set off for Christy's home, with the map they had emailed me. I needed to use it fairly quickly, in fact, because instead of riding south on Mason, I inadvertently got headed west on Laporte (the Bike Library is at Mason and Laporte), and only realized this a few blocks later after I crossed Shields and realized that I shouldn't have, so I stopped, consulted the map, and righted myself, retracing my route back to the Bike Library and then setting off in the correct direction.
Kelly had noted that the extremely short stem on the trike made it steer very sensitively, so that if I veered off to the left (as it continued to do), I was liable to over-correct and shoot off to the right. This was true, but as I continued to ride I got increasingly accustomed to how to deal with it. It helped that I kept it conservative and slow, avoiding "Borton speed," as Michelle asked me to do.
So, this gave me a glacially slow 6.7-mile ride in 58 minutes, but it was accomplished safely, and I guess that's what counts. And, it pushed me over the 900-mile plateau for the year.
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