"Chalo" wrote in message
...
Tom Sherman wrote:

Chalo Colina wrote:
[...]
The BikeE is violently unstable. Its front end has an intrinsic
tendency to whip to the side and dig in at an oblique angle from the
direction of travel. If this were allowed to happen at speed, it
inevitably would result in a crash. The range of steering angle
within which it does not try to flop the front wheel one way or the
other is so narrow as to be like balancing on a knife edge.
Increasing speed does not have a pronounced stabilizing effect on the
BikeE as it usually does on a poorly configured, unstable but
otherwise normal bike.[...]

This does not describe the handling of any of the several BikeE models I
have ridden, but then I am not 2 meters tall, nor do I have a mass of
ca. 170 kg. I believe that Chalo was both too tall and too heavy for the
BikeE CT.

For what it's worth, the reason I rented a BikeE during my trial visit
to Seattle was because it was the only rental bike that could be
adjusted to fit me correctly (correctly being a relative term in this
case). The resulting weight distribution may have been a factor in
the bike's handling, but it was within the bike's design limits.

I suggest that you may have accustomed yourself to the compromised
handling that is typical of recumbent bikes. In my chopper bike club
in Seattle, there were a few members who were known to be able to ride
bikes that could not generally be tamed by the rest of us. When
queried about how they did it, they would say things like "you gotta
get your weight back and go real easy on the handlebars", or some
variation thereof. Which, oddly enough, is almost exactly the same
advice I have heard from recumbent riders when they offer their wisdom
about keeping the rubber side down.

_Somebody_ can ride just about any ill-tempered bike, no matter how
nasty its disposition. Why they'd want to is an altogether different
matter.

Chalo

I agree with everything Chalo has said about the quirkiness of recumbents,
but he misses the one and only thing that matters to me and to most all
other recumbent cyclists - and that is the comfort factor. Most of us don't
much give a damn about speed, handling or any of the other deficiencies of
recumbents. The one and only thing we do give a damn about is comfort.

It is why Jon can ride his recumbent 15,000 miles in a single year and why
most upright cyclists cannot stand to be on their bikes for more than a few
hours at most. Not to be able to ride a bicycle for as long as you want and
to be perfectly comfortable on it while doing so marks you as an idiot. Viva
recumbency!

Regards,

Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota