There are lots of them here in Madison. I thought I'd warn you.
September 20, 2005
Exactly how dorky...
Is a recumbent bicycle?
There are lots of them here in Madison. I thought I'd warn you.
There are lots of them here in Madison. I thought I'd warn you.
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18 comments:
Dude, recumbent bicycles are totally cool. The only trouble is they're low to the ground; I wouldn't care to ride one in traffic.
I have long wanted to get a recumbent bike. Because of back problems, I can no longer ride a conventional bicycle. But I can handle a recumbent. And actually, I think they look sort of cool, too.
Let me put it this way - 75% of the people on this album cover ride recumbent bicycles.
Yeah,dorky, but the ultra-cool Christopher Walken rode around one in 'Brainstorm'. Even the dorkiest of devices can have their moment of glory.
Well, yeah, lmeade, but THIS GUY thinks they're cool, so I think he wins out.
It's not that they are dorky as they are redolent of vintage mid 70s academic style institutional counterculturalism.
I've seen these quite a few times here too (in Santa Monica), but I don't think I've ever seen anyone ride one who didn't have a close cropped grey/light brown beard or under the age of 50.
Their appeal is obvious to engineering types of a certain age, and absolutely no one else.
Professor Froward
Solution for being so low down - tall flag, typically a long whip like antenna with a florescent flag attached to the end. May not help their own visibility.
Also, many such riders seem to have the rear view mirrors attached to their helmets.
I see them all the time in Madison where I work, and they scare the hell out of me. They don't look very maneuverable so I can't depend on them to get out of trouble by themselves. Now my car isn't maneuverable in the least but its got airbags and a ton of steel protecting me. Even with the long flag poles they are hard to see. Some day I'm going to have a geek-sized greasy smear on the bottom of my car and I'm going to have to undergo therapy to excise the guilty residue inside my skull from squashing one of those dudes.
"There are lots of them here in Madison"
Dorks or recumbent bicycles?
Take a look at the Greenspeed recumbent trikes. The pictures look uber-dorky, but after seeing one in person during a bike ride, this is one badass machine. Next bike I get will be one of these.
Dorky, schmnorky. The problem is that they're durned expensive.
All three of the guys that ride these in Manhattan are have close-cropped grey beards!
They are the bicycle equivalent of the dreaded umbrella hat.
Art: I used to bike to work. On a regular bike, of course. It is actually quicker for me than driving (considering the parking and walking entailed in driving). But I don't do it anymore because I consider it dangerous. I would rather take 10 more minutes and walk if I'm going to avoid driving. But I stopped walking to work because bicyclists who considered it dangerous to stay on the street where they belong kept crowding me on the sidewalk, making walking dangerous. Which is why I drive. I'm protected inside metal, in a pleasant temperature-controlled space that I find quite nice.
I see them around Iowa City all the time (or at least the same one multiple times). This last time, it was the dead of night and I only saw it because of the rider's helmet-mounted headlight.
And yes, they are dorky... and it's precisely because of their association with said "mid-70s academic-style institutional counterculturalism".
We have several of them in the Salem area.
I personally wouldn't mind having one - I don't have any hills to worry about, and I've noticed at the gym that the recumbent stationary bikes don't hurt my knees as much as the vertical ones do.
I'd hope for the same result here - perhaps that, plus the price, is why you seem to only see old guys riding them.
damn, sippi, that's just harsh.
There are a decent amount of them in Washington, D.C. as well. I'd like to try one out, but I'm only 32 with a full head of hair and not even a shred of grey yet.
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