My friend Bill and I took a nice ride up and back on Highway 1 between Rincon and Ventura today. This ride is a perfect velomobile route. It is very flat, the pavement is perfect and the views are great.

I’ve mounted a rear facing video camera on the DF just in case I ever need evidence of a misbehaving driver. On today’s ride, I captured a fun little clip. Bill and I were cruising along at about 18mph. We were caught by a small group of 3 bike riders. As they came by, I asked if I could hang behind them. They were OK with that. I stayed back for a short while and decided to jump to the front to pull them along. I stepped it up to about 22mph for a mile or so. Here’s how it looked:

You’ll notice in the distance that Bill also passed them and left them behind. We never saw them again. This is the kind of fun that you can have riding a velomobile. Imagine how fast these younger, stronger riders would go if they got their hands on a velomobile.

I usually log into my job at around 6AM from my home office (the dining room). I like to get going with my work, then take a short ride when the sun comes out. At that time, the bike path to Goleta Beach is pretty vacant. I can do the short round trip in the DF at a pretty quick pace without worrying too much about congestion on the path.

Today, it was a bit chilly so I thought it might be fun to try out the race hood. Staying warm is not a problem with the hood. Here is a picture that I took this morning after arriving at my daily destination. That’s the UCSB campus in the distant background.

I’ve had the DF XL about a month now. Most of my rides have been short sprints up to Goleta Beach early in the morning when I can sneak away from my computer. I’ve got the velomobile pretty well dialed in to my liking. It’s very comfortable, it shifts well and it’s fast.

Today I took a 32 mile ride down the coast and back with my friend Jon Gray, owner of (standard) DF #36 and the first DF to land in the US. The ride is very velomobile-friendly. It’s totally flat with very smooth pavement. As an example of the benefits of following a faster velomobile pilot, today’s ride ended for me with 21 new Strava personal records. Here are a couple of pics: