What are the chances of that?

Two recumbent riding commuters using the same minor road in the middle
of Oxfordshire every day? We have only met twice because I usually
start a bit late. An incentive to leave earlier, I think :-)

The other bike is a Haluzak, probably a Horizon by the looks of it
url:http://www.haluzak.com/products/horizon.htm. Rare in the UK.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

Two recumbent riding commuters using the same minor road in the middle
of Oxfordshire every day? We have only met twice because I usually
start a bit late. An incentive to leave earlier, I think :-)

I'm seeing more and more in Harrogate. I have one and have been using it a
bit lately. Someone else where I work has a red two wheel, and I saw a
black tow wheel recumbent zooming off down Whetherby Road the other day. I
know there's also a Kettweisel and a hand trike in town somewhere.

They must be catching on. I note that ICE now have an entry level model
aiming more towards the mass (or more mass) market perhaps. For an "entry
level" it doesn't look at all bad.

I'm still not sure which vehicle is faster, if any. Wall-clock time getting
to work whether by upright, tandem upright (with Lindasy on the back) or
trike is about 25 minutes. The trike does go back down the hills going home
very fast though. The journey to work is all uphill.

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot com
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
Two recumbent riding commuters using the same minor road in the middle
of Oxfordshire every day? We have only met twice because I usually
start a bit late. An incentive to leave earlier, I think :-)


Going the same way? Have a race!

Simonb wrote:
Going the same way? Have a race!

That would hardly be fair, with Guy on his Stinger and the other guy on
the Horizon. Unless Guy loads up his panniers with lead weights :-)

I'm going a different way tomorrow morning (going to see a customer in
the centre of Bristol, rather than going to the office), so I'm curious
to see what bikes I'll see.

--
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine

"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote:

Two recumbent riding commuters using the same minor road in the middle
of Oxfordshire every day? We have only met twice because I usually
start a bit late. An incentive to leave earlier, I think :-)

A few years back when riding along a quiet coastal road in southern
Portugal, a group of friends from a local rival club came out of
nowhere, heading in the opposite direction.

John B

Cool! Got any quality links on pros and cons of recumbants versus
normal bikes?


--
KakenBetaal

In ,
KakenBetaal typed:
Cool! Got any quality links on pros and cons of recumbants versus
normal bikes?

Things must have changed around here* if someone can make a post innocently
requesting information about recumbents, instead of having been flooded with
'get a recumbent' propaganda from the first time they saw the place.

To KakenBetaal: I'm sure someone will post with more information. From my
point of view: Pros: look very nice; my bum doesn't always work with
saddles; go faster; more relaxed
Cons: never tried one; cost far too much; too cumbersome; look out of place
enough riding a bike anyway, where I live

Hope that helps

Ambrose

*here being uk.rec.cycling, which has utterly *no* affiliation to
cyclingforums.com who fraudulently use our postings to get advertising
without attributing the fact that we made them without the intention of them
being used by people who aren't told that they're using newsgroups.

For a better and more honest interface to this newsgroup on the web, try
url:http://groups-beta.google.com/group/uk.rec.cycling

Ambrose Nankivell wrote:

To KakenBetaal: I'm sure someone will post with more information. From my
point of view: Pros: look very nice; my bum doesn't always work with
saddles; go faster; more relaxed
Cons: never tried one; cost far too much; too cumbersome; look out of
place enough riding a bike anyway, where I live

They're getting cheaper now that more people are making them, and they're
slowly becoming more mass market. Designs are also improving year on year.

They are comfy, even for quite long rides. They can also carry luggage well,
and my trike tows a big trailer full of shopping or rubbish without
problems at all. I took the empty trailer over a stone which threw one if
its wheels into the air and didn't feel a thing on the trike, so as a
workhorse its great!

Then again, that ability was quite a big requirement when I bought it. We
like to go camping. That said, I could have got a lighter racier machine
and trailer combo for the camping trips, but liked the soft seat on the ICE
XL and didn't want to go too low in traffic.

The XL is quite a good compromise general purpose quite fast trike. Speed
wise, on my uphill ride to work, I do it in about the same time on my ICE
XL, my aluminium hybrid or the upright tandem with Lindsay. On either one I
could push harder and do it faster.

There are a lot of different types to choose from, all with their pros and
cons. It depends on what you want to do with it, and unfortunately at that
price it will take a bit more saving to be able to have different types for
different uses.

Some examples:

Tadpole Trikes, like ICE (ice.hpv.co.uk), Greenspeed (www.wrhpv.com in the
UK) and Windcheater, are nice stable and can be quite fast. Each range has
different models ranging from sporty to serious workhorse. The
suppliers/manufacturers are very helpful and its worth while taking to them
all.

Delta trikes like the Kettweisel (http://www.hasebikes.com/) are also
interesting, and I think there's a reasonable second hand market in them.

Then there's the two wheelers, which look fast and could be well worth
trying out. They're a bit higher off the ground, tend to have suspension,
and can still carry a fair amount, perhaps even 4 bags on some or a pair of
the Radikal bags which ICE have on their site.

http://www.bentrideronline.com/ is interesting to look at. (American's don't
have the same meaning of "bent" as we do)

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot com
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

Ambrose Nankivell wrote:

To KakenBetaal: I'm sure someone will post with more information. From my
point of view: Pros: look very nice; my bum doesn't always work with
saddles; go faster; more relaxed
Cons: never tried one; cost far too much; too cumbersome; look out of
place enough riding a bike anyway, where I live

They're getting cheaper now that more people are making them, and they're
slowly becoming more mass market. Designs are also improving year on year.

They are comfy, even for quite long rides. They can also carry luggage well,
and my trike tows a big trailer full of shopping or rubbish without
problems at all. I took the empty trailer over a stone which threw one if
its wheels into the air and didn't feel a thing on the trike, so as a
workhorse its great!

Then again, that ability was quite a big requirement when I bought it. We
like to go camping. That said, I could have got a lighter racier machine
and trailer combo for the camping trips, but liked the soft seat on the ICE
XL and didn't want to go too low in traffic.

The XL is quite a good compromise general purpose quite fast trike. Speed
wise, on my uphill ride to work, I do it in about the same time on my ICE
XL, my aluminium hybrid or the upright tandem with Lindsay. On either one I
could push harder and do it faster. Downhill the trike has the advantage as
it can get to the speeds where drag becomes significant on the others. I
may try, as the weather's good, removing mudguards and spare racks from the
XL and seeing if that has any effect.

Apparently a trike is roughly equivalent to a racer on a road bike in tuck
position, without the discomfort. In terms of level cruising, I'd say the
fastest thing we've tried is the Greenspeed Tandem, followed by our upright
tandem, then the trike and the hybrid but its hard to compare as the
computer on the hybrid died some time ago and speed feels different in the
two positions. You can double your speed on the trike, and not feel as if
you're going much faster - more stability perhaps.

There are a lot of different types to choose from, all with their pros and
cons. It depends on what you want to do with it, and unfortunately at that
price it will take a bit more saving to be able to have different types for
different uses.

Some examples:

Tadpole Trikes, like ICE (ice.hpv.co.uk), Greenspeed (www.wrhpv.com in the
UK) and Windcheater, are nice stable and can be quite fast. Each range has
different models ranging from sporty to serious workhorse. The
suppliers/manufacturers are very helpful and its worth while taking to them
all.

Delta trikes like the Kettweisel (http://www.hasebikes.com/) are also
interesting, and I think there's a reasonable second hand market in them.

Then there's the two wheelers, which look fast and could be well worth
trying out. They're a bit higher off the ground, tend to have suspension,
and can still carry a fair amount, perhaps even 4 bags on some or a pair of
the Radikal bags which ICE have on their site.

http://www.bentrideronline.com/ is interesting to look at. (American's don't
have the same meaning of "bent" as we do)

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot com
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:45:53 +1000, KakenBetaal wrote:


Cool! Got any quality links on pros and cons of recumbants versus
normal bikes?

There are as many different types of 'recumbent' as there are 'upright'
bicycles, so they defy generalisation.

The pro they (mostly) have in common is that they are more comfortable
than uprights.

The con is that in general they are more expensive than other bikes. You
can't weightshift much, so bunny-hops and other mountain bike stunts are
out of the question.

Most shops that sell them will let you test ride recumbents. Try
www.bentrideronline.com for an overview / reviews.

AC