I realised yesterday that my bike is about as energy efficient as an inefficient thing. This however, is not exactly surprising as it as set up for off-roading with high, wide bars and 2 inch knobbly tires that sound like a swarm of angry wasps when above 12mph.

I borrowed my brothers bike at the weekend (he won’t be using it for a while as he has a broken leg and a 345mm titanium bar bolted inside his tibia), and went for a cruise round one of my old routes. His machine is a tourer of the same vintage (’93, evidently a good year) so the main differences were 700c skinny tires and drop bars. The results were surprising, the ride was (not unexpectedly) harsher, but on average about 4mph faster. The prospect of an average speed close to 20mph is attractive as my goal is the 19.4 miles each way to work.

I was thinking about looking into picking up a road bike for riding over greater distances, when a vision of the past appeared in my mind.

Many years ago, I got Richards Ultimate Bicycle Book, and contained within was a section on Human Powered Vehicles (HPVs). Taking up a large section of one page was details of the WindCheetah, a three wheeled speed machine from the mind of Mike Burrows, who also designed the ’94 Olympic ‘Lotus’ bike.
There was also a section on the mythical (75.6km/h) Kingcycle Bean, containing the description:

[...] fairing designed such that air rejoining at the rear, can in theory, provide thrust [...]

Fast, efficient, weird and comfortable¹, recumbents have been an object of desire ever since.

A bit of hunting around turned up a few possibles – HPVelotechnik’s StreetMachine GTe, Optima’s Dragon and Nazca’s Fiero. All are pretty expensive², but then again they are not produced in the same volume as normal bikes. Dealers are not exactly widespread either, but there is one a few miles from my parents house so I will pay them a visit. I doubt I will be walking out the shop with one, but you never know.

Posted in General | Tags: HPV, recumbent | 0 Comments