By the end of April 2002 I have made 2149 km, mostly exercise rounds of 25-30 km and day tours of up to 140 km. I have not yet made any overnight tour, or any camping tour. The text here reflects my experiences so far.
Triking was as fun and relaxing as I had imagined. Most of all, the riding experience is different. Instead of constantly examinating the structure of the paving and taking the occasional glance at the landscape, I am now able to constantly experience the beautiful sceneries I travel past. Without bending my neck until I almost crack my spine!
I also found that the one problem I had anticipated, the inability to take road bumps on a recumbent by standing, was no great one. It seems that while a diamond frame translates shocks into vertical motion, a trike will instead roll sideways when bumps are encountered by the front wheels. Neither are shocks from the rear wheel much trouble; the seat fabric seems to absorb the edge of the blows. I would actually say that up to a certain degree the Trice manages rough roads better than a (non-suspended) diamond frame bike. I have ridden forest paths that I would have managed on a diamond frame only by standing on the pedals all the time. My conclusion now is that the Trice Explorer is quite suitable for touring even on comparably rough roads.
I cannot make any conclusive statement about hillclimbing. However, the Trice's weight is high compared to a standard diamond frame touring bike, it weighs about 50% more then the one I have. Nevertheless, I think weight is less of an issue on touring. My guess is that the lower wind resistence will compensate for the higher weight and the higher rolling resistance, so that at the end of the day I will have covered the same distance with the same effort on my Trice as I did on my diamond frame. The Trice's wide range gears (see below) makes a clear difference on climbing ability, since it is possible to wind oneself up at very low speeds. I thus can climb steeper or longer hills on the Trice that I would manage without getting off and push my diamond frame.
So far, my experiences with the Trice's gears is that I tend to sit with my arms relaxed, hands around the bar-end shifters. Thus, I can change gears up and down with ease, a new experience to me. On my up-right, I could only change either the front or the rear derailleur, since I could only reach one of the levers. Thus, I had to make major changes, involving both derailleurs, in two steps. This caused unnecessary loss of speed since I couldn't pedal with force for rather a long time. On the Trice, all this is much faster.
My Explorer has three gears, one derailleur at the pedals, one derailleur at the (rear) wheel and a internal gear hub (SRAM) inside the rear wheel.
I use the hub gears as a 'primary mode selector', i.e. I change it only in exceptional conditions. I normally ride in the middle hub gear, which is supposed to be more efficient since it is direct drive, i.e. it neither increases or reduces the gear. If the road is exceptionally steep, I chose one of the other gears as applicable.
I use the rear derailleur as my main gear, shifting up or down as the road changes, trying to keep the cadence and pedalling resistance even, without bothering about speed.
The Explorer (as well as many other recumbent trikes and bikes) has a 20 inch driving wheel, which is smaller than the standard bike size of 26 inches. This makes the gearing somewhat low, since standard components are used. Some recumbents therefore use larger than standard chainrings to achieve a normal gearing range. Instead I have the internal hub to provide the high gears. As a bonus I also get some extremely low gears, so low that they would be useless on a bike where balance is an issue at low speeds.
The geared hub also allows the sizes of the rear sprockets to be closer spaced, while still providing a large range of gears. The close spacing is adds comfort, since it enhances the probability to find a suitable gear.
Some people say that internal gear hubs are inefficient, that they add too much resistance. While all mechanical devices have resistance, the question is if the resistance is noteworthy or not. I cannot tell, since I haven't tried my Trice with a traditional freewheel hub. Some people have done some tests, and strongly argue that gear hubs are to draggy. Others only use gear hubs...
