No bents in Holland?

My mom is on a two week bike ride of the Netherlands. Talked to her last night and she's seen TWO
recumbents (riding together) in 9 days in country! I had told her she'd see all kinds of neat
bents! Yowza!

 

MLB <[email protected]> wrote:
: My mom is on a two week bike ride of the Netherlands. Talked to her last night and she's seen TWO
: recumbents (riding together) in 9 days in country! I had told her she'd see all kinds of neat
: bents! Yowza!

Umm anybody have pointers to bent statistics? I'd still suppose .nl bents number in some odd
thousands?

Even my Dutch friends tell me if they've seen an unusual bent, so not everybody has them there...

--
Risto Varanka | http://www.helsinki.fi/~rvaranka/hpv/hpv.html varis at no spam please iki fi

 

A friend of mine is known as the "Flying Dutchman" former racer and Senior Olympics Champ at 73
years young. Last month he returns to the Netherlands yearly. This year he was honored by his
hometown cycling club for 50 years of membership. I had told him that the Dutch were very into
recumbent design and produced great recumbents. He remarked that he had not seen very many. However,
he is a Highlander and he mentioned that they might be more prevelent in the Lowlands. He was in my
shop today but I was very busy building up a custom STRADA so we didn't talk much. I had planned to
look at the map and see where the majority of the locations were for Optima, Challenge, M5 etc. but
one must make a living.

My next project is a large Strada with a M5 FG seat with a beefy 559 wheelset and linear brakes
front and rear. Lower gearing than the stock one. Good price too!
--
Jude....///Bacchetta AERO St. Michaels and Tilghman Island.. Maryland Wheel Doctor Cycle and Sports,
Inc 1-800-586-6645 "MLB" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> My mom is on a two week bike ride of the Netherlands. Talked to her last night and she's seen TWO
> recumbents (riding together) in 9 days in
country!
> I had told her she'd see all kinds of neat bents! Yowza!

 

On Wed, 21 May 2003 17:46:09 -0500, MLB <[email protected]> wrote:
>My mom is on a two week bike ride of the Netherlands. Talked to her last night and she's seen TWO
>recumbents (riding together) in 9 days in country! I had told her she'd see all kinds of neat
>bents! Yowza!

I think you get a very skewed view on the Internet. Based on what you read on the newsgroup, one
would also expect American cities to be full of recumbents. I've visited three American cities in
the past year and spent at least 5 hours riding a bike in each city, and only saw a total of 3
recumbents on the streets and bike paths. (Kona, Houston and Boston/Cambridge, in case you're
wondering.)

Ken Kobayashi [email protected] http://solarwww.mtk.nao.ac.jp/kobayashi/personal/

 

g
> club for 50 years of membership. I had told him that the Dutch were very into recumbent design and
> produced great recumbents. He remarked that he had not seen very many. However, he is a Highlander
> and he mentioned that they might be more prevelent in the Lowlands.

She also said that most all of the bikes seemed to be of the same company? Not much/any variation in
styles or makes. Also that they sit up much higher than we do on our bikes.

 

MLB <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:<[email protected]>...
> My mom is on a two week bike ride of the Netherlands. Talked to her last night and she's seen TWO
> recumbents (riding together) in 9 days in country! I had told her she'd see all kinds of neat
> bents! Yowza!

Tell her to look down- all the Dutch ride is lowracers. ;-)

When I was in Amsterdam (a couple years back), I saw one Flevo in three days of strolling around. So
two in 9 days sounds about average...

Jeff

 

MLB wrote:
> My mom is on a two week bike ride of the Netherlands. Talked to her last night and she's seen TWO
> recumbents (riding together) in 9 days in country! I had told her she'd see all kinds of neat
> bents! Yowza!

Yes, certainly there are recumbents in The Netherlands. But, every Dutchman owns (average) more than
one bike, which gives a total of (at least) 18 million bikes. On a total of maybe 15000 recumbents
... you will only occasionally see one. My average on spotting a recumbent is about 1 or 2 per week.

For models available in Holland have a look at : http://www.ligfiets.net/ and choose 'modellen' at
the left side of the page. Best Known brands are: Alligt, challenge, M5, nazca, optima, sinner

All 20" wheels are becoming very common. Seathight between 17" and 21".

--
Greetings from Holland, a real Dutch rainy day today, leendert
-----------------------------------------------------------------
__________________________________________
-<\\\ leendert
| . @ _ goes by bent \\\/ \_ .
=|=\x/=|=# gaat per ligfiets
____(_)___(_)____________________________ flevobike fifty-fifty

 

Saw 17 recumbents, though if you want to be picky that'd be 12 liegfiets and 5 liegerfahrads.

Optima Stinger with a rear rack with a beer crate outside a shop in Aalst (NL).

3 Carbon Alleweders and an unknown SWB bike in the rain between Nijmegan and Winterswijk (NL).

Peer Gynt locked with a really cheap lock in Munster (D).

Anthrotech, Velvet Quix, Hase Lepus and Hase Kettwiesel trikes ridden by 4 elderly people near Munster (D).

M5 Citymate near Enschede (NL).

M5 20/26 on the Grevelingdam, near Bruinesse (NL).

Batavus Relaxx in Brouwersdam (NL).

2 unknown SWB bikes near Brielle (NL).

2 LWB Sinners parked outside a shop in Brielle (NL).

 

MLB wrote:
>
> My mom is on a two week bike ride of the Netherlands. Talked to her last night and she's seen TWO
> recumbents (riding together) in 9 days in country! I had told her she'd see all kinds of neat
> bents! Yowza!

Currently there are something like 30,000 recumbents in the Netherlands. That is one recumbent for
500 Dutch people. Or one recumbent on every 600 bikes.

If your mom is still in the Netherlands coming weekend, she could go to Lelystad Saturday and
Sunday, to Cycle Vision, likely the biggest recumbent event in the world. Likely to see several
hundreds of recumbents overthere, including dozens of velomobiles, three wheeled extremely
comfortable and fast fully faired bikes.

For more information look to http://www.ligfiets.net/cyclevision (if your browser is set to English,
the page will be in English, but also available in German and -obviously- Dutch

Kees, Dutchman abroad, van Malssen