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/
