I rode a diamond frame bike for 40 years until I injured by back at work with an L5-S1 disc herniation. Six months later I had a laminectomy where they basically cleaned out the ruptured material and sewed the lamina of the disc back up. Since it was a worker's comp injury and I was considered to have a 5% permanent partial disability I ended up receiving a payment of about $5000. I had commuted to work by bike for years on your basic store DFs but I now decided I was going to shop and search for a good quality bike.

I knew I didn't want a speed bike with its drop handlebars and wedgie seat because I found that to be uncomfortable before I injured my back. Then I stumbled upon recumbents, a type of bike I'm sure I had seen before but had never given any consideration. This searching was during a Wisconsin winter so I knew I had some time before I would be doing any actual riding. I first tried a short wheel based recumbent at a LBS and they took me into a parking lot across the street to try it out--a small parking lot. Needless to say, I was having trouble with it and felt like an idiot which was not helped by the 3 middle school boys who were watching me (go away kids, you bother me!). This was not for me.

But a week later another LBS had their spring bike show at our civic center in a very large room with plenty of area to ride and get going. The recumbent they had was an Easyracer EZ Sport long wheel based bike--I rode it, got the recumbent smile, and loved it so I bought it right then for $800 in 2001 and I've ridden that same bike for 16 years now with no back pain, no butt pain, no wrist pain, and no neck pain. I've never regretted the purchase for a moment, especially this past summer when I had it in the shop for its free yearly tune-up (did I get a deal with that, or what?) and I had to ride a hybrid DF as a back--pain in the butt, shocking wrist pain. My LBS was all backed up and a free tune-up didn't rise to the top of their list and they had my bent for a couple of weeks but after the first week of having to ride that DF (I have no car) I went on Craigslist and bought another EZ Sport, same year as mile but with less use, for $130--a real deal from a guy who lives maybe 7 miles from me and delivered the bike. He's a recumbent collector and I think his wife got on his case to get rid of some that had been sitting around.

Frankly, I cannot for a moment understand why anybody for whom comfort and pain-free riding is important would overlook a type of bike that would provide that based upon the prejudices against recumbents that I so commonly read about in other forums here even to the point where they would claim they don't think recumbents are even bikes (2 wheels, a handlebar, a seat, with a chain to drive the wheel along with different gears sounds like a bike to me).
But I'm happy with mine and will never be riding anything else as long as I can still ride.