I bike to work all year (9000 km per year), for transportation not
sport, but I like speed so I push hard on the pedals
I bought my first recumbent in January (USD 500 in Texas but I payed
half more in Switzerland with taxes etc.)
It's a highly effective bike. Slightly faster than a high-end upright
race bike (at a fraction of the cost), and so comfortable (no more
back-aches; even after 150km). It takes a few minutes to learn how to
ride a recumbent... but a few weeks to build the dedicated muscles
(not the same muscles that you use when biking on a diamond-frame
bike). Heartrate when biking on a recumbent is much lower than on an
upright.
A recumbent is the bike of choice if you want more miles for the same
amount of energy spent on the bike. Not the right choice in very
dense traffic (not a bike for a courrier), or on ice. In fact, I kept
my singlespeed Swiss army bike (23kg, designed in 1905, though mine
was built in 1979) for stormy weather biking.
If a recumbent was to bicycles what a TLR is to cameras, then the
Rollei would be an M5 (http://www.m5-ligfietsen.com/main.php?
sNewLang=GB).
And the 2.8 Planar would be a carbon low-racer (http://www.m5-
ligfietsen.com/main.php?sNewPage=Low_Racer_Carbon). Now, THAT is a
bike...
Cheers,
Fred
On Jun 7, 2006, at 10:09 PM, jon.stanton@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
When I lived in San Jose I would on Sunday mornings head for the Farmers Market in Los Gatos....There was always a sizeable crowd of bicyclists outside the local coffee bistro...I'll bet anyone of those bikes cost more than the last 4 automobiles (collectively) I have owned...titanium frames, custom painted and the guys dressed in panty hose or some silly outfit....with their spiked shoes...
My Schwinn which I rode and delivered newspapers on for 8 years in all kinds of weather probably weighed 60lbs. I think these guys are the younger siblings of the "Urban Cowboy" crowd...with their $300 Stetsons and $700 Luchesi boots ..... (Am I self rightous or what? Sitting here with a 50 yr old Rollei...and a 45yr old Leica!) Sigh!
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