New wheels

[xela]

Two weeks ago I sold my car. Today I took delivery of my new wheels. A much sportier model.

I saw a velomobile (probably an early Cab Bike) while I was on vacation in Seattle seven or eight years ago. I thought it was a really interesting idea, but there was next to no US market at the time; as best I could tell, the only way to get one in this country was to order it, at prices starting at $4k, from one of the Dutch or German companies that had an English web page and was willing to ship to the US. I also noticed recumbent trikes at the time: velmobiles seem to have started life as recumbent trikes with fiberglass shells. But even they were almost entirely a European phenomenon, with next to no US market and prices starting around $3k. I made a mental note to try to arrange to test ride some when I was in Europe some day, "once I get into shape". And I didn't give it much thought again til a few months ago.

Back in July I was balancing my checkbook. And there, as every month, was the $125 preauthorized withdrawal to pay for my car insurance. And I found myself thinking beyond my habitual annoyance about Massachusetts' regulated insurance market, where I, with a spotless driving record for more than 20 years, subsidize insurance for idiots. I thought: I'm driving less than 5,000 miles a year these days, and even most of that's unnecessary. And I'm paying $3,000 $1,500*** a year just in insurance for the privilege. It'd probably be cheaper if I took cabs or used zipcar when I really do need a car, and certainly be healthier if I walked or took the T or rode a bike when I don't. Plus, I fucking hate driving in Boston. Why am I doing this? Within a couple of weeks I'd decided to go car-free.

And naturally, decided to look into velomobiles again. They're still damned expensive, and almost unheard of in the US. But recumbent trikes, while still a tiny market, were now a much bigger tiny market, with US and Canadian specialist dealers online. Most interestingly, a Tiawanese company had started selling cheap but sturdy recumbents. Including a knock-off of one of my favorite German designs, the Hase Lepus — at about a quarter the price. A little more digging and some tripping over a of out-of-date information on the 'net (leading to, among other things, a phone call to what turned out to be the home phone of a guy who no longer runs a bike shop on the South Shore) I found out that Belmont Wheelworks has them in stock. Including a display model.

So last Tuesday, for the first time in 40 years,* I rode a tricycle. And absolutely loved it. There's a phrase you run into repeatedly on recumbent bike and trike discussions online: the recumbent grin. It is absolutely real. Riding the trike is fun the way riding a bike was when I was a kid. I'd been concerned that I'd feel be too low to be seen by drivers, and part of the reason I liked this design before I ever tried it was that it seats the rider a good deal higher than most others — though still a lot lower than on a bicycle. But the reality turned out to be just fine. Most people who ride them (at least the ones who talk about it online) feel that drivers give them more room than bicyclists; my experience on last week's test ride tended to agree with that. By the end of the test ride I was pretty much sold.

So today I went out to Belmont, did some final fitting stuff, and rode it home in the sunshine. 8.4 km in 52 minutes, including stopping once to turn the trike on its side and try to figure out where a noise was coming from, twice to get off and look at my map (I was on an unfamiliar route), and haven't figured out a way to keep stuff like maps within reach while in the seat), and eight or ten times for stop signs or traffic lights. Drivers generally did seem to give me more room than they would a bike. There were the only two assholes, both, stereotypically enough, in full-size pick-ups.** And overall, I had a blast. I am really looking forward to life with this as my primary vehicle.

---

* For the record, that is the first time I have ever said "for the first time in 40 years". I suppose it won't be the last.

** When I was a kid, guys drove pick-ups because they had to haul shit. And there are still such guys. But for the most part, guys seem to drive pick-ups because it gives them delusions of adequacy.

*** Buries face in hands.

Comments

[siderea]

And to think, with all this weight loss stuff, I was afraid you were going to lose your nerd cred.

Never mind. :D

[alierak.livejournal.com]

Well, he did go overboard with python and gnuplot...

[siderea]

Good point.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Heh. Wouldn't want that.

[nakor.livejournal.com]

Of course drivers give you more room. You-in-your-car would give a guy on a trike more room. He's naked on Boston roads. He is insane. Maybe in a good way---but a madman with a vehicle and a great big insurance rate hike pointed at you and your car. You could strip nude and paint yourself blue and tell them nothing new. Drivers will continue giving you a wide berth, because you are clearly more brave, more wild, more mad, maybe just more of a man.

Nice ride.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I wouldn't give a guy on a trike more room: I give bicyclists enough room that if they topple over sideways, I won't run over their head.* Plus a margin, so roughly eight feet. And I'm content to follow a reasonable distance behind a cyclist til I can pass what I consider safely (which I know makes cyclists paranoid sometimes; I don't know a solution to that.) I'd give a guy on a trike or a velomobile the same room. What I've found so far riding the trike, is that average drivers give me as much room as I would.

you are clearly more brave, more wild, more mad, maybe just more of a man.

Well, I have to say, the main thing that's kept me from riding more around here in the past is fear. A couple of month-long vacations in Seattle are the only times I've ridden regularly since the mid-90s, until now, and even before that, my riding in Boston was almost entirely on routes I knew well and knew to be wide. I'm not less scared now, but I've made a conscious decision to be less governed by fear.

As for the "more of a man" thing, see my forthcoming post entitled "Fag-baiting".

[danj17.livejournal.com]

$3000/yr for insurance, with a spotless record? that's insane. were you insured against running into a diamond-crusted SUV full of lawyers? i was paying half that living in cambridge at step 13, with reasonably high, but not paranoid, coverages.

anyway, you bought a trike! cool! how does the energy required compare to a bicycle? on the one hand, it would seem you need the same energy to go the same speed, but how does eliminating the need to balance over two wheels change things? it is an interesting compromise for stop and go traffic...

[alierak.livejournal.com]

Hmm. $125/mo * 12 mo/yr == $1500/yr, so he was paying half of that?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I fucked up. I got it right when thinking about it in July; yesterday the mental process went something like "$125 is a thousand every ... four months; so that's $3k a year..." Just a really dumb braino. That's why you're supposed to check your math.

Crawls off to a corner to die of embarassment.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

The energy requirement question is interesting. It's a seriously heavy trike (65 lbs IIRC; one of the things paying 3x as much for the German one would get me is around 40% less weight), and getting started is really slow by bike standards. Once in motion, the energy to keep it moving seems about the same. (Comfortable crusing speed feels faster, but that may be on account of being closer to the ground. And it's confortable in ways a bike, at my weight, just isn't. Since I have my bike set up for an upright profile (I like to see where I'm going, and hate the crouched racing stance anyway), my aerodynamics on the trike are significantly better: I'm still in an upright posture, but presenting less forward-facing surface area, and less of that is perpendicular to the direction I'm moving.. They say 90% of a racing cyclist's energy is spent fighting the air....

Eliminating the need to balance over two wheels has a couple of good consequences. One is that no speed is too slow to be stable: Given a low enough bottom gear, there would be no hill I couldn't climb. (I just rode up one of the approaches to my place that I've always had to get off and push the last 100m or so of on my bike.) But one of the biggest attractions for me is that I don't need to worry about unclipping when stopped. That's always annoyed me, and since the stroke, getting into my left clip has been a serious pain. With the trike, the only time I need to put my feet down is to get off of it. Given that, I actually bought bike shoes, cleats, and clipless pedals, which I haven't used on a bike since I got run off the road in them when I was 21 and went down in sharp gravel without being able to unclip. Yesterday's ride was in them, and went just fine. (Todays was in street shoes, which has a few minor issues, but is overall fine.)

[alierak.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Wasn't there also a shop in your old Waltham storage place that was making something like that?

Re keeping things in reach, maybe velcro-strap them to your arm, or figure out how to add a pocket under the seat?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Somerville, but yeah. "Special Purpose Vehicles". I was reminded of that by the recumbent guy at Wheelworks, who recommended them as a possible source for a modification I was thinking aloud about. (Which will almost certainly be unnecessary, as it turns out. The trikes are very much a sideline for Wheelworks; most of their staff have never even taken one around the block, and even "the recumbent guy" was far more interested in swoopy recumbent bikes where your butt's three inches off the ground than in the utilitarian trikes. I was wondering about how to attach a trailer and he suggested they could modify the trike to give me a way to attach one. Later I noticed the rear of the fame has two eyelets, about the same distance apart as the rear dropouts on a conventional bike, and the same height. I reckon attaching a trailer is exactly what those are for.)