What’s in a name?

There are times when “doohickey” just doesn’t do the job.

It’s been over a year since I’ve been able to use the trike. (Here’s a picture to remind anyone what it looks like).

Last year, I had partially figured out the problem–the axle on the electric motor wheel would start rotating and pull the wires loose from the battery. Annoyingly, generally after I had ridden the trike down the hill. Believe me when I say that sucker is heavy, so pushing it up the hill to home was no fun at all.

Other projects and priorities intervened, so the trike languished in the garage ever since. Which was in part a blessing, because it gave me an excuse to acquire my ebike, which I love and which I have used both at home and on trips, and will continue to use. It’s much more manageable when traveling, much easier to unload and load onto its rack, than the trike was, and I am correspondingly more likely to use it. So it’s ok not to have the trike, right? One could argue that a car, a van, and an ebike are sufficient vehicles for one old woman. And this is true enough that if I didn’t already own the trike, I wouldn’t buy one now.

However, I do own it, and it does have a niche in my vehicular universe. For running errands here in town, it’s the perfect vehicle. It always feels like overkill to get the car out to drive 3.5 blocks for groceries, but groceries tend to be bulky and heavy enough that neither walking nor biking work. With summer here, the season is right for getting out the trike once again. So I took a closer look at the axle situation. And discovered this.

See that gap there? Which allows the axle to turn, even though that doohickey is obviously supposed to prevent it from turning? And which has obviously gotten reamed out just enough to no longer do its job?

So I took it off and down to the hardware store, not particularly hopefully because it’s a specialty item. And sure enough, they had no idea what it is and carry nothing similar. They did have some helpful suggestions in case I couldn’t find one though. Love the hardware stores around here.

I couldn’t look online because I had no idea what to search for. “A doohickey that looks like this”

wasn’t going to cut it.

Not too hopefully, I called the Ebike Store in Portland, who had put the etrike kit on the trike for me back when, and began to describe the problem. The guy knew immediately what I was talking about–he literally interrupted me to say “There’s a part that’s reamed out, right?” or some such. He told me to order a torque preventer and gave me the name of a company where I could get it.

But the company was Canadian, and who knew how long that would take? So, armed with the power of knowing the name of the item, I searched online, and found options. The one I ordered happened to come from Monterey California, and arrived yesterday. Not bad, since it was ordered on Saturday and thus didn’t get mailed until Tuesday. Got here two days before the beginning of the window Amazon gave me for its arrival. (Just giving a small plug for the USPS there–they take the hits when things are late, why not give a little credit for being early?).

So now the trike is sporting a shiny new ebike torque preventer (or ebike torque arm).

Simply knowing the name saved me having to try to haul the trike to an ebike dealer in Eugene or Portland, which would have been an enormous amount of work, to say nothing of the time or money involved. What’s in a name? Rather a lot, in this case.

Trike is back in business. And if it just stops raining, I’m going to run some errands with it today.