I normally ride two wheeled lowracers and tend to be performance oriented. However, when I ride my trike, I become Mr. Laidback smoothie. Today, I ran in to a guy on a heavy duty delta trike. He must have weighed near 400#, I kid you not. He was going about 4 miles an hour and barely turning the cranks. As I approached him, I waved and gave him a thumbs up. The guy got the biggest grin on his face that I ever saw as he returned my wave. I got to give the guy credit for trying and sharing trike brotherhood with him was a pleasure.
I don't have a recumbent
yet and two months ago I didn't even know a trike existed but it solves all my [touring] problems and so a Trike is what I will buy next.
I sold my car just over a year ago and got this old 71 Schwinn (10 spd) for $30. Sure it's way too big for me, weighs in at 34 pounds (stripped) and is poorly designed but, it got me riding 50 miles a week to 200 a week in about 6 months. It wasn't until I moved closer to work (and a 40 mile bike trail) that I started riding more for pleasure [and pain] then just commuting.
When I first started riding the trail I had a great attitude and really started pushing myself to do better.
I thought the bicycle culture would be like my old days when I rode a motorcycle. We commonly wave to each other when passing because it's a whole culture "we ride because we love it". I thought for sure it would be same in the bicycle world, boy was I wrong. I couldn't believe how different cyclists could be. Someone on a cruiser would smile, someone on a Bent would wave, an older commuter would say hi but those were few and far between. Most of the riders were the spandex wearing kind with their $5000 Carbon Fiber sub 15 pound bikes. In the beginning they thought I was an alien; geesh! the looks they gave me. So what if I'm a chick, good looking, and young , why the f*** did they treat me like I was some purple, two headed alien they'd never seen before. Well fortunately for me (and bad for them), I am a very independent chick who doesn't need acceptance. So I quickly learned who to be polite to and who to ignore plus whenever I came across one of those "snobs" walking their bike because it had a flat, well............. I surely didn't help them!
From everything I've heard about the "typical" Bent rider
, I hope they're still polite when a cute chick half their age is riding one too!
