Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Unbearable levels of awesomeness

My friend Radar (yes! like in M*A*S*H!) is not only a nice guy and a pilot, but also sold me his Greenspeed GTE tadpole trike at an extremely reasonable price. No man can be better than this.

We biked together from his place to my place, a cool 300 k (186 miles). That's Radar in the picture above, next to his upright, and the trike in front.

Almost all pictures from this trip are of us eating or camping. Judging from the documentation, we seem to have munched and slept our way from his home to mine. I would have loved to film those 60 km/h (37 m/h) descents but the thought of removing my hands from the brake levers never entered my mind.

I have never even tried a recumbent before, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. Very comfortable, gives a great view and those three wheels do make sense in a country with hardly any flat areas, no danger of going slow enough to tip over.

An extremely odd thing about tadpole trikes is that while they look like incredidbly beautiful and sophisticated machines expertly crafted to maximise human power, most people on them look like absolute dorks. I am no exception, I am actually probably at the extreme end of dork-dom.

It can't be helped.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now you're done ...
You've become a recumbent cyclist ;-)
For the rest of your life ...
Welcome to the dorks !!
;-)

Northmark said...

Haha! Thanks!
It's all downhill from here!

Anonymous said...

I've never tried one, but think I'd love it. Glad you scored one—looks fast and twitchy!

Anonymous said...

I'm filled with envy! I've spent 2 years thinking about investing in a recumbant, but other less important things (bills, food etc) keep eating into the recumbant fund!

Northmark said...

Dylster: Thanks! Yes, it is rather twitchy, despite indirect steering.

Anonymous: I know the feeling! I feel so lucky I'm alomost embarassed.