Rodders wrote:
> Can someone tell me what the pleasure is lying on your back riding a cycle?.
Parker Knoll seem to have been making a decent living for themselves
making reclining chairs that appeal to people with their obvious comfort
for a good long while now. For some reason many riders of
conventional upright bikes don't make a connection between comfort on a
bike and comfort in any other form of seating for anything. I don't
know why...
Aside from taking your weight along your whole back rather than on a
combination of sit bones and arms, another advantage is the default view
tends to be where you're going rather than the road just in front of the
front wheel, so despite being lower down you often tend to see more.
There are levels of wall and hedge where you'll see less, granted, but
where they're a bit lower you don't have to make any special effort to
look up and over them like you do on drop bars.
> I think I would feel so vulnerable.
So I'm often told, but so I don't particularly feel. First, note there
are different values of low. Mine's a tourer and my seat puts my head
at about car driver's level. So though people tell me I must feel very
vulnerable "down there", in that case "down there" is right where they
often are themselves. And where I get much better eye contact with
motorists compared to one of my uprights.
The Taifun is quite a bit lower than that, but still no need to feel any
more vulnerable than on anything else. People can see cats running
across the road in front of their vehicles, so they'll hardly miss a
recumbent bike by literally overlooking it. People don't see bikes when
they don't look at all, not when they look over the top of recumbents.
None of the regular 'bent riders here have reported feeling like they're
overlooked more than on an upright. Generally the opposite. So never
mind the FUD, give one a try and see how it feels. I found my arms,
neck and wrists weren't sore after 100 km so I'm not going back to road
touring on uprights now. Being comfortable takes away some ****les that
can dent the fun of riding upright.
Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net
[email protected] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
