Tuesday, October 14, 2008

A week in the forest

From one monday to the other one: Photo Jørgen Aas.

Jørgen just spent an entire week in the forest with his sled dogs and his three year old kid, Felix, and sendt me this picture. Take a look at his rig! If I'm not mistaken it's a standard dryland musher's trike (a Hahdi, perhaps?), but modified by Jørgen with a welded bow above the front wheel for increased luggage capacity. Felix, who by now has spent a grand total of 81 nights outdoors, rode in the trailer which was connected to the left rear wheel.
As there are no pedals on the trike, all the wheels are symmetrically dished, so they can take a beating. On normal bikes, the spokes on the backwheel are asymmetrical to accomodate the chain and freehweel, which invariably weakens the wheel, especially when under stress from a lot of luggage.
That rubber thingy hanging in front of the handlebars is, I believe, Jørgen's homemade drag brake, fastened with a chain and dragged between the rear wheels. By stepping on it, you can regulate the speed. Relying solely on rim brakes while being pulled by a team of sled dogs can easily end very nastily.
With this lightweight setup Jørgen transported food for his whole team (four alaskan huskies and possibly also his chocolate lab, Bark), two people, tent, camping gear and his heir.
Pretty impressive.
Felix at the helm: Photo Jørgen Aass.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Impressive: men så har jo Jørgen noen alldeles eminente, stabile, hardtarbeidende, lydige og vennlige bikkjer fra Inni Granskauen's oppdrett bl.a.----så da så.......

Northmark said...

Heh. Mange gode gener der i gården.

Andy in Germany said...

Damn. Now I'm feeling pretty wussy about my attempts to camp thus far.