Enlarge image

I’ve been riding a recumbent for about 4 and 1/2 years now. While I still have my mountain bike, I spend most of my riding on my recumbent. In fact, I trippled my riding distance when switching to my recumbent. Part due to the recuded rolling resistance of the thiner tires but mostly due to the nicer support. I usualy ride for at least two hours and sometimes more and while I’ll be tired afterwards, I’ll never have saddle sore.

My first and current recumbent bike is a Haluzak Horizon. I chose it for some very specific reasons. A) short wheel base allows for mounting in standard bike racks, B) Under the Seat Stearing (USS) provides me with a more natural position for my hands on long rides, C) maker’s reputation – Haluzak is well known for making high quality recumbents, D) standard componants – the Horizon uses 26″ rear wheel, Shimano 105 cranks and LX componants making it easy to fix and maintain E) comfort.

I did try out several other recombents including the Vision R40 which can convert between long and short wheel base configuration and a Linear which used non-standard componants for it’s smaller wheels and has since gone out of business. I liked both but for different reasons. The R40 is very cool for it’s conversion ability. I like the option you have to set up a short wheel base for short rides and city riding while having the ability to convert to a long wheel base for extended trips and touring. However, I did not like the method of direclty conecting the handle bars to the front fork for the steering and prefere the linkage used by Haluzak. The Linear had a nice simple rectangular tube-frame construction that made it light and strong. It’s long wheel base made it fast and stable but the non-standard componants and the fact that it was going out of business made me think twize about getting one.

I took a trip to New Mexico to visit my sister and her family who where living there and the time and was able to test ride the Haluzak there at the now closed Absolutely Recumbent store. Teh chance to ride confirmed my appreciation for the engineering and feel of the bicycle and I was tetermined to get one.

I would like to start to build one of my own. I am intrigued by low racers in general but find the design of the Python very interesting. The Python has center steering and automaticaly finds “center” via it’s angled pivot design. This enables the rider to not use their hands for riding and infact, the designer’s implementation has handlebars which are not used for steering but for breaking and shifting only.

If you’re interested in recumbents and other Human Powered Vehicles (HPVs as they are widely known) there are several resources: International Human Powered Vehicle Association which has many mailing lists and #hpv on irc.freenode.net.