Hi,
I am freshly subscribed to this mailinglist. May I introduce myself?
My name is Ralf Weigel, I'm 39 years young, married and got a 17-year
daugther. I make my living as engineer, running a large X-ray research
instrument and giving support to scientist when they perform experiments
there. I was born in eastern Germany, have worked for many years in Bavaria
and then in Grenoble/France. Now I work close to Karlsruhe while still
living in France. Though my main professional subject was electronics, I
also successfully designed and built high pressure research equipment and
mechanical parts for detectors and sample environment. I also write
occasionally software for experiment control and hardware interfaces.
My interest for recumbents goes back about ten years, but it is only 3
years since I actually tried one and two years since I bought the first
one. This was a Peer Gynt, long wheelbase. It soon turned out to be too
slow and too tiring for daily commuting (2x36km). After inquiries of many
recumbent riders I decided to go for a Speedbike and succeded to get a
frame from Munich. It took about 8 month to get the bike assembled, I also
had to get my workshop, which was only equipped for small goldsmith jobs,
up to cycle-building standard. The Speedbike is still a rolling
construction site, next thing to do is a tailbag with good aerodynamics.
But it already cut the time for commuting form 1:40 to 1:15, I hope that
one hour is within reach.
Recumbents are dangerously contageous: 6 months after I bought my first, I
assembled another long wheelbase "Zugvogel" for my daugther from a
framekit. April 2003, when we went home from the SPEZI, my wife had caught
a serious "Kettwieselitis", which inevitably led to the purchase of such a
trike. Since the 2004 SPEZI I got my own Kettwiesel as well, which I prefer
to use whenever I have to go to the city center of Karlsruhe and for
leisure rides with my wife. The garage is full now, I've to build some
bicycle lifts to gain space.
When I met the Karlsruhe recumbent group, I learned about center-steered
bikes. They're still very intrigueing. I had a go on a airbike a couple of
times, I finally managed to ride some hundred meters along a quiet street.
Turning is still a miracle. A friend of mine, who's riding Flevo and built
the Flevo tandem, told me: build one for yourself, and you will learn how
to ride it....so, here I am, ready to learn about the Python and perhaps
eventually building one myself. What attracts me is the seat height (I like
lowriders a lot and find them much easier to ride than higher seated
models) and the steering principle. I plan to build the bike from stainless
steel tubes, as I could get them with small wall thicknesses and they are
easy to weld with my TIG station.
So, that should be enough for an introduction. You could write to me in
German, English and French, if you like...
Cheers
Ralf
============================================================
This is the Python Mailinglist at freelists.org
Listmaster: Juergen Mages jmages@xxxxxx
============================================================
