Get a properly fitting bicycle, recumbent or not and you'll have no pain. My first bike is a touch big for me and it took a while to get comfortable. I had to make many, many changes and adjustments to make it fit, but I finally did. My new mountain bike fits me perfectly and all I needed to do was swap the stem, handlebars and of course put a Brooks on there.

I have arthritis in my knees and hands...I also have previous work injuries to my wrists that makes them prone to some numbness. Yet on a 20 mile mountain bike ride on wednesday I experienced NO PAIN in any part of my body. Why? Because my bike fits me like a glove.

No butt pain here (thank you Brooks), no neck pain ever. I do get occassional numbness in my hands, but the problems with that would not be fixed by riding a bent.

+1. My Brooks B-17 and Champion flyer are more comfortable to sit on than most of the chairs in the house.

I have the same problem when I sit on hard flat surfaces. The couch isn't a problem, then again I'm not on there often enough lol.


+1

-There is an enormous difference in the supportive surface area of a recumbent seat over a upright bicycle saddle. To imply that they are equivalent in comfort is just to show your inexperience with at least one of them.

The only good reason to stick with an upright bike is if you are one who competes in sacntioned races that require them. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and get rid of the thing. You'll be surprised to find out how far you can ride when it isn't painful.
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Why exactly is this?
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This kind of post is guaranteed to attract all-too-predictable answers from the Brooks saddle people and from the recumbent crowd. They are markedly similar.

There are lots of other reasons. While I have never ridden one, I have seen them ridden and they seem to be very slow. Seems to me that transportation of the bike could be a problem, especially on airlines, but I have never tried it so I don't know for sure. There is also the visibility factor, an upright bicycle is invisible enough, I can't imagine how invisible you become with your whole body a couple of feet lower.

-With the same pedalling effort, some are faster and others not. Which one did you see?
http://www.norcom2000.com/users/dcim...ide/bents.html

Recumbents are generally a bit more trouble to transport--but most people who casually ride don't transport their bicycles much, and most 2-wheel recumbents can knock down into a pretty small case. A few recumbents are specifically sold as "folding"--and for a fee, some other upper-end companies (that make their frames in-house) will put S & S couplers into a frame if it is possible.
Unlike upright bikes (which are all very similar) recumbents cover a wide variety of designs. With some, your eye level is less than eight inches lower than it would be on a typical road bike. Of course lots of bicycle riders of all types get whacked in broad daylight, and it's very debateable if there was anything the bicyclist could have done to help driver inattentiveness--but with most recumbents, you are seated at least as high as someone in a car is.

....Riding a lowracer in urban rush-hour traffic and being eye-level with cars' tires would be pretty scary (at least to me) but then, that type of bike for that type of riding would be a poor choice anyway. With poor roads and interruptions of car traffic, you'd never be able to make use of that bike's high cruising speed anyway.
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Since the OP is asking for advice on dealing with two new bikes they already bought, suggesting two more new and expensive bikes isn't a very helpful solution.

Because your legs and to a small extent your arms support part of your weight.

It may be true of pro riders, but it's simply not the way that ordinary people use bicycles.

The saddle pain they describe is caused by too much pressure on too small of an area--and as for the "arms supporting weight" business--that leads right into the numb-hands problem.

And it doesn't exactly wash with pro riders either: if your rear-end (on a bicycle) was under less pressure than it would be sitting on a normal chair--then your choice of bicycle saddles should be even LESS particular than of chairs. But that's not how it is now, is it? You could pick any three major saddle companies and they'd probably have at least ten seats each on the market--but Park Tool only makes one shop stool, and it doesn't look anything like a bicycle saddle.

You an minimize riding pain on an upright bicycle, but you can't ever eliminate it.
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