Retro- can you ride a diamond-frame bike?

Personally, all the hand-wringing I've ever seen over recumbents has all been online. In the local randonneuring group, some people ride upright bikes, some ride recumbents, some ride tandems, and nobody much cares what the others ride or gives them grief over it.

I ride an upright bike and have a beard. Right offhand, I can't think of any of the recumbent riders that do.

Oh, just have to share this quote from Bicycling Magazine, November 2010, page 45:
"Someone noticed my BICYCLING jersey and said she'd start reading the magazine 'when you start covering recumbents'".
And by golly, that's true. They just don't. They don't cover much of the bicycling world, come to think of it.

LOL, ya gota be "TOUGH" to ride a hybrid, I mean even "recumbent riders", seem to look down on hybrid riders. We take abuse from all the "sub-catagories" of the BICYCLE. Nice thing is that if your the "bottom of the food chain", your always looking up!

Might check out "BICYCLETIMES" mag., it's got a nice mix of bicycles they ride, test, etc. https://www.bicycletimesmag.com

I suspect the ratio of recumbents (sorry for previous spelling errors) to regular bicycles (aka "diamond frames") is on par with the ratio of albinos to non-albino humans (1/20,000) but we don't have to go around calling non-albinos "melanin-rich humans" or anything like that. They're just normal and then we need another term for the rare case that doesn't conform.

(I think a black sheep vs. sheep metaphor was technically better but abandoned it since black sheep has a negative connotation I don't intend. but to require black sheep to be described as black sheep doesn't mean that they aren't sheep. The adjective is just necessary because they aren't what most people picture when they hear the word sheep. And just as 99.99999999% of the world population will picture "diamond frame" bicycle when they hear the word bicycle, no such adjective is needed: they are simply bicycles, and only things of other shapes require further description.

Buycycling used to cover recumbents. And tandems, too. One of the editors owned a recumbent, and even wrote, "To recline is divine." That was enough of that. I'm guessing that some of the larger (upright bike) manufacturers put the pressure on, because the month after that embarrassing blurb, the rag was under new management. By most accounts, the various changes they made lost them half their readership, but becoming a quality publication, committed to their slogan, "Mountain Bikes. Road Bikes. All Bikes." was worth it! Dropping their recumbent coverage was only one of many reasons for ending my subscription.

I see a couple of bents on almost every ride I take on our extensive trail system around here. I don't know the statistics, but I haven't seen any albino recumbents.

I don't really remember seeing anything about mountain bikes in the issues I looked at. It looks like the same publisher has a Mountain Bike magazine. I do recall seeing some cyclocross stuff, though.

Now are you talking about the clueless public at large, or about a shepherd? The shepherd may want better information than you are providing. According to Sheep 101

"There are more breeds of sheep than breeds of any other livestock species. Worldwide, there are more than one thousand distinct sheep breeds. There are more than 40 breeds in the United States. Sheep come in all different sizes, shapes, and colors.

Breeds are usually classified according to their primary purpose (meat, milk, or wool), the type of fibers they grow (fine, medium, long or carpet wool; or hair), the color of their faces (black, white, red, or moddled), and/or by specific physical or production characteristics."

So obviously sheep can only be used as an overall category. Those who know, will desire more information as does a discerning bicyclist desire to know more about a bicycle.

Now I suspect that you haven't taken a poll of a representative sample (10,000,000,000 people to get the accuracy you specify or roughly 140% of the world's population) to back up your assumptions of what 99.99999999% think of when the word bicycle is mentioned. Nor have I, but it's possible that like my ex-wife, a non-cyclist, they relate bicycles to whatever they rode as a child or a simple bike. So they might think of a Sting Ray or a step through frame beach cruiser, neither of which are your typical diamond frame. We can make no assumptions of what stereotype people may have in their heads unless we have taken the effort to verify it.

A little. It just hurts my elbows too much for me to want to ride very far. I've still got 3 (a road bike, a fixed gear and my beater) hanging up in the basement. I guess that means that I haven't given up on riding diamond frame bikes forever.

RG has 16,962 posts and one would have thought by now he would learn the BF makes little sense and typically has nothing to do with reality on the road. I can say that I do not see many recumbent riders in the mountains although I have seen two in 4 1/2 years of riding 5 times a week. I have passed a couple of recumbent climbing and they were going very slow. I have not been passed by a recumbent uphill or downhill. That may be due primarily to the few number of recumbents.

It strikes me the technology is heavier and the drive train much less efficient. One cannot stand to accelerate and I suspect fast cadence is not possible i.e. 100 to 150 rpm. The advantage is the low profile and great aerodynamics. Rbents would be great for flat areas where one can keep the speed up with a lot less power. It seems ideal for long flat rides where comfort would be nice to have.

It is great that technology exists that offers alternatives and give riders with structural problems an opportunity to keep riding or like to do it just because they can as an alternative to road bikes.

I ride DFs and bents. Suppose that makes me a bi-cyclist.

There are a couple of recumbents in my area, as I see them occasionally on the MUP. I haven't seen any on the organized rides I've been part of. I do see a sprinkling of tandems. I haven't ridden a 'bent, and perhaps because of that, I look on them purely as an option if I develop a physical limitation that prevents me from riding my road bike. But hey guys, isn't it a sign of having a chip on your shoulder if you require an adjective to be placed in front of the vast majority of bikes, to try and put your relatively rare version on an even 'adjective footing'?

Perhaps because I haven't ridden one, I admit I would be nervous alongside a 'bent on a group ride. It seems the handling must be 'different', and that difference, whether it provides better or worse handling, is a matter of concern, when you are already in an activity that is worthy of concern. How can you bump shoulders with someone on a 'bent? Plus, I think it'd be too easy for a 'bent rider to reach over and steal my water bottle. As we always told my Dad: "Only weirds have beards." Me, I only have a goatee, and we all know that's different. Wait a second, now that I think of it, my goatee should just be called a beard, and full face coverage should be called a "full beard". Especially since a goatee looks better.

(no smiley, because, if you have to use a smiley when you are poking fun, it takes all the fun out of the poking!)

From the national bicycle dealers association website.
2009 sales all wheel sizes 14.9 million

mountain 27.8%
comfort 10.3%
hybrid 20.4%
cruiser 3.3%
road 700c 14.9%
youth 21.3%
other 1.8%

I assume recumbents would be part of the 1.8% others.
Road bikes weren't near the top of the list either.

I guess that's my point. Given the choice between bent and not riding at all, people settle for recumbent. In a choice between and diamond frame, virtually everyone (with a few exceptions) would choose diamond frame. I think the popular view of recumbents is that they a bikes for people who can't ride "real" bikes anymore. The hubris of youth sees recumbents as geriatric and they mock them. Sad but true.

That list points that using a moniker like "diamond frame bikes" is ludicrous. There is too wide a variety for the term to be useful. If we want to go all moniker-nazi, then we need a list of this sort:

Classic Road Bike
Compact Road Bike
Mountain Bike
Beach Cruiser
Street Cruiser
Hybrid
BMX
Tandem
Recumbent

Personally, I have no idea how a comfort bike differs from a cruiser or hybrid. I'm sure there are almost limitless sub-categories.

Subtract X-Mart sales out of that and I wonder what it looks like.

I actually got some pretty good exposure to recumbents at my LBS which is currently the largest bent dealer for more than a hundred miles, but is closing in two weeks. They liked the shop, the liked most of the customers, they didn't enjoy the 60 hour weeks so much and didn't make enough to hire a manager to take the load off. After three years in business, they're done. They did say, however, that where they made money was on the bents.

How do these two differ?

Classic= straight top tube
compact= angled top tube

I'm one of those "few exceptions". If not for achilles injuries which seem to be aggravated by riding my 'bent, but not my df's I'd still be on the 'bent exclusively. Yes, it's slower up hill. It's also faster everywhere else, less influenced by unfavorable winds, more comfortable, and just plain more fun. As an aside, it's not what most folks picture when they think "recumbent": https://www.performer.com.tw/2010/use...p=05&sno=00164 It's a pretty seriously high-performance bike by almost any standard.

IME, most folks would not choose a 'bent in large part because they've never ridden one. And they've never ridden one because no local shops carry them. And local shops don't carry them because there's no demand. Because nobody's had the chance to ride one and decide if they like 'em or not. Because no local shops carry them....

SP
Bend, OR

And let's not forget that there are recumbents:


and there are recumbents:



and then there are recumbents:


If anything, 'bents are even more diverse than conventional bikes, so calling them all the same thing makes even less sense than calling all df's the same thing.

SP
Bend, OR

ps - my 'bent is kinda like the second one.

^Only one reason why I like this tribal brother so much!
He even rode with me on my "Hello Kitty" bike!
Gotta agree with everything TSL says. And the only reason I don't have a recumbent yet is I haven't found one cheap enough to buy and try!

I just have not experienced any real bias against bents. I"ve ridden 6 to 7 thousand miles on one, and have only noticed curiosity from others, particularly kids ( hey cool bike ). I seem to be ridding my upright much more now due to it's better handling qualities.

I think they kept their slogan for a few years after they switched formats. It's not up there at the top of the cover anymore, that's for sure.

Edit: The bike in my avatar is more like bobbycorno's #2, but I've also got one that's different from the three he listed.

I do refer to traditional or compact frames, when it's germane to the discussion.