Why I Got Bent... (a.k.a Save the tiny planets... hug a recumbent)

It's taken me a while, but I finally realized that I should be doing more long rides on a recumbent bike. 

Background - My First Recumbent

About 10 years back my dad called me about a weird bike that he thought I might be interested in at a local auction. It was a Sun EZ Tandem recumbent and as he described it to me over the phone, I looked it up online and thought, hey that might be fun to fool around with. So I ended up getting the highest bid at $325 and later that afternoon it was sitting in my carport.

"What could you possibly want with that?" my wife Ellen asked. She wasn't too excited that I'd just dropped a couple hundred on a bizarre bike that she had no interest in riding herself.

                       JJ and I riding through Loch Raven                           

Over the next couple years I got the recumbent in decent mechanical shape and would take friends for rides on various bike routes near us, most often on the NCR trail that goes about 42 miles from just north of Baltimore and finishes in York Pa. It's fun to have passengers (stokers) in the back seat and casually talk with them while you take in beautiful scenery and listen to music (I usually carry a nice bluetooth speaker on the back rack). 

Over time I've just grown to love this bike. It's possibly my favorite material possession aside from a couple banjos ;)

With Ellen and Andrew on the Western MD rail trail 

Andrew and I on the Great Allegheny Passage

Issues With Other Bikes

But the tandem recumbent was mostly a novelty thing. My main biking was still on traditional diamond frame bikes where the rider leans forward over the handlebars. I did some commuting on a road bike. I'd ride a nice mountain bike through trails around Loch Raven behind my house and I often went for more physically demanding road rides with my wife or other friends on a lightweight road bike.

Within the past couple years though, I've noticed a couple issues with my various bike rides. My back, neck and shoulders were constantly getting sore and most alarmingly, my hands/fingers would often go numb after intense rides. 

Ellen and I actually set up some appointments with specialists to examine the fit on some of our bikes and make recommendations to help eliminate some of our sore areas. And while the "bike physiologist" (that was his actual title) did seem to fix the primary numbness in my hands issue, I would still get sore shoulders/neck/back after 20 miles of riding and will often find myself sitting up with no hands and doing stretches while riding to help ward off some of the more intense soreness.

I Need Something Different

A couple weeks ago, I started looking into a European bike ride with my wife that could potentially last 3-4 weeks. She doesn't really like riding on the back of the tandem (it scares her not to be in control of the bike), so if we do this multi-week ride, I'd probably be dealing with 3 weeks straight of bent over solo bike riding and lots of soreness.

This prompted me to start looking at touring bikes with more relaxed seating and high handlebars.I was surprised that most of the bikes with components and features I was looking for would still put my body in a fairly aggressive forward leaning position that would keep me sore for the bulk of our European trip. There were a couple tour bikes from Germany and the Netherlands with higher handlebars and gear boxes and belt drives instead of chains that looked really nice, but they were priced to start around $5K before shipping and taxes which was kind of a non starter. It just seemed silly that I couldn't find any relaxed fit bikes with the types of components I was looking for.

Another thing I started to think about... If I got a mostly upright relaxed fitting bike. It would probably be a lot slower then other bikes. The more upright you ride, the less aerodynamic you are which can make a big difference with the speed of the bike. I'm not a speed demon, but I like to be able to keep up with most groups without expending a ton of energy pedaling too hard.

I started thinking a little more about my tandem recumbent. I'm always comfortable and relaxed when I ride the recumbent. It's got nice bucket seats and backrests. So I usually feel GREAT when I hop off the bike... no soreness... even if I've ridden 40 plus miles for the day. I've always attributed my preference to ride the recumbent tandem on long trips with social aspects of having a friend along for the ride. But subliminally, I think I was also appreciating long comfortable pain free rides.

Waitaminute... my tandem recumbent is comfortable and relatively pain free. I can ride long distances without getting sore. Why haven't I been looking for a new recumbent (single rider) bike?

I started thinking about it. My recumbent tandem can move pretty quickly, but we always fall behind other riders when we start climbing hills. Maybe there are tandems that attack hill climbs more efficiently. I also feel that lots of recumbent riders tend to be lower and harder to see for cars when you're sharing the road. But I think my current tandem recumbent is relatively large and easy to see and maybe I should be looking for a recumbent that sits a little higher. And for the most part, I think for the purposes of my next touring bike, I'll probably still ride on trails with no cars or in larger groups on roads where it should be easier to see me in a cluster of riders. 

So I began looking into recumbents that were a little more upright and good at climbing hills. Soon I found a specific brand of recumbent that has an interesting front wheel drive train supposedly giving you better than average hill climbing capabilities and these bikes also seemed to have a rabid following...

The Cruzbike...

I joined some forums and discovered Cruzbikes were fast. They win lots of races, set lots of records and their fanatical user base were doing long pain free rides in comfort that weren't possible with traditional diamond frame bikes they'd used in the past. I started thinking I'd like to try a Cruzbike. This might be my magic answer to multi day pain free tour rides on a solo bike that would allow me to keep up with faster riders... even on steeper climbs. I think this is what I've been looking for. 

Great! Let's look into getting a Cruzbike... but waitaminute... it's not that easy. Recumbent bikes aren't that widely bought and sold and therefore generally more expensive than traditional bikes. Even more daunting, the Cruzbike company has a patent on their front wheel drive train configuration and consequently they're the only brand making front wheel drive train recumbents and they're even more difficult to acquire. Cruzbikes are also significantly more expensive. The specific Cruzbike that I think would best meet my touring needs (pictured above in blue and orange) is $4-5K new (Yikes!)

How Do I Get One of These Things?

So I started looking into used Cruzbikes. Maybe if I was lucky I might be able to pick up a used Cruzbike for half price, (which is still a fairly large chunk of change for me to spend on a bike). So I'm wondering if I could try one out somewhere before committing to that type of money. However, the nearest dealer I could find with Cruzbikes available for test rides was in Northern NJ. So I started asking on forums if there were any Cruzbikes in the Baltimore\DC area that someone would be willing to let me try... I didn't really get any responses. 

On top of difficulties finding a test ride, most of the classified listings I'm seeing for used Cruzbikes are from states like California, Oregon, Washington, Texas and Florida. I'm not seeing any used Cruzbikes near me in the mid Atlantic region. So I'll probably have to deal with shipping or maybe I'll be looking at a long trip in the mini van to pick one up a couple hundred miles away.

It's getting more and more complicated for me to think about getting my hands on a Cruzbike. But I'm not really in any huge rush, maybe it will take a couple months before something pops up for me.

Boom! Got One

Then lo and behold, last Monday someone in Northern Virginia listed a 2014 model Cruzbike for $700 in the Cruzbike forum classifieds. I got an alert feed for the listing and I quickly called the guy and told him I'd like to buy it. I think he listed at 9:42 AM and I talked to him and had agreed to buy it by 10:15 AM... modern technology in action.

I drove down to Chantilly last Friday and picked it up. The guy selling it was super friendly and insisted on taking me for a couple of loops around his neighborhood giving me some riding tips. With the front wheel drive train and moving bottom bracket, it feels a lot different than traditional bikes and you almost have to re learn to ride Cruzbikes from scratch. It usually takes folks a 100 miles or so before they get really comfortable on these things. 

My new (to me) Cruzbike Q559 3.0

I took it for a small ride around my neighborhood when I got home, then made some seat adjustments and took it out for a 20 mile ride on the NCR Sunday. I'm still working on fitting the seat and handlebars to my body specs a little better, and I'm having difficulty when I first start pedaling, especially if I'm headed up hill. But already I can tell this is gonna be a killer bike that will be GREAT for long trail rides.

Can't wait to do some more rides with friends as the weather warms up around here

Summary - Benefits of a Recumbent

So to wrap this up, I just wanted to leave you with a quick list of benefits gained by riding recumbents as opposed to traditional diamond frame bikes. Maybe some of you might be interested in trying a recumbent.

1. Less pain/soreness
2. More overall comfort 
3. Less chance of developing ED and related issues which are increased with heavier traditional frame bike riding - Study on Bicycling and ED
4. Easier natural viewing angle for your head. Your head's naturally at a comfortable angle to look up and out when you're riding a recumbent in a laid back position. When you're bent over, you're generally looking down and it requires more effort get your head up and looking around especially towards the end of long rides.
5. Less harmful crash positions. When you're on a recumbent, your feet are in front of you and unlike most crashes on traditional bikes, it's very difficult for you to go headfirst over your handle bars. Unfortunately I've had a lot of experience with crashes on both types of bikes and I can attest to this.
6. Recumbent bikes are less likely to get stolen. There's fewer people riding recumbents and there's much less of an aftermarket for them. I had a guy break into my carport a couple years back and steal my mountain bike. It seems like he used it to just ride around the neighborhood while he broke into other cars and tool sheds. He ultimately ended up dropping it in a neighbor's front yard and I got it back. But I guarantee you if he broke into my carport today, he wouldn't be able to take my new Cruzbike out for a joyride.
7. More comfortable clothes. Specifically you no longer need to ride with tight padded shorts and you also don't have to worry about slathering your nether regions in chamois butter