(MUP - multi-use paths - often crowded with non-motorized traffic, and a beautiful thing for many uses, but also things that drive me nuts when I'm trying to get somewhere with intentions of efficiency.)
Loaned the commuter out to a visiting friend this week - so, with a pending backpacking trip and a lurking bit of bike lust, I'm riding Ben's recumbent trike this week. Use different muscles, continue nursing my crabby hip, try a new-to-me-bike. (Okay, Trice, if you want to be picky...)
Ben demonstrating trike-as-tamale-chair at Sunday Parkways in East Portland.The general mechanics are such that it feels slower, yes - but also calmer and fun in ways that a standard bike just can't match. You're low to the ground, legs far in front of you - so it feels (and looks) a bit silly from the start. The bike has great pick-up from a standing stop; you can easily outsprint cars, although they pass shortly thereafter. And ... once you get up to a good clip, take a sharp turn. ZOOM! Corners like a champ.
Observed: cars tend to yield to me more (confusion, amusement, perceived multiabled* individual? who knows...), and I get far more peanut gallery comments, including a family riding down Multnomah this evening (I love your bike!), a pack of high school kids on BMX bikes (Wanna trade? This has four pegs! You can carry people!) and a particularly extroverted fellow down at Muddy Rudder (who offered me $20 to let him ride it - I passed).
Rocking the trike, complete with Sunday Parkways nametag and the "I forgot my glaaaaasses" squint.I rode home (Hollywood) from Sellwood this evening, after meeting Em for a beer - took the Springwater/Esplanade all the way upriver to the great Lloyd Center transit exchange, then bike boulevards home. It took some large number of minutes, yes - but was also a delightful way to end a Thursday. Sun setting over the Willamette as I'm slowly rolling down the path, past runners/walkers/cyclists, blooming flowers, folks settling down for the evening on the riverbank, artsy-types photographing the skyline, so on, so forth.
Yes, this is a large and awkward machine, and I can't park it indoors [too huge!], and hills are more humblingly slow than ever. But, while I miss my speedy commute - I also dig the easy chair+bike feeling, the I-can't-stop-grinning-this-is-so-fun-and-silly, and being forced to slow down a bit.
*My brother, who rocks some chunk of the autism spectrum, coined this term and prefers it to disabled, differently abled, etc - so I'm trying to put it into use on his behalf.
I can see that the recumbent trike has a lot of advantages, especially in poor weather (3 > 2); it also lessens strain on those flexors. With more experience Nitsirk may be ready for NASCAR-like speeds and terrorizing pedestrians.
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