A New Toy

We'll say it was in an effort to keep me active and healthy, but anyway, Brombeere recently talked me into getting a new bike. And not just any bike; a recumbent bike.  Maybe it was a safety concern as well.  After all, it's much harder to fall over on a recumbent tricycle.

I've dreamed about recumbents for years.  Years and years, since before I had ever actually had seen a commercially manufactured recumbent bike.  Recumbents have been around since the 1890s but I had never seen one until much later.  I used to image how to make my own but I'm not an engineer, nor have I ever had ready access to the  machining and welding tools it would take to make my own recumbent.  Actually, what I used to envision was a four wheeled recumbent, which I still have never seen commercially available.  But two and three wheeled recumbents are now readily available so when we decided to get one we just went to the store.  Much easier than making one of my own.  And likely much more efficient and better built.

So we bought it but had to come back the next day to take delivery on it.  I ended up going in myself to pick it up because Brombeere had somewhere else to be.  So I picked it up and promptly went on a short ride.  That was fun.  I also learned right away that, while it uses many of the same muscles as an upright bike, it causes me to use them a little differently.  So in some ways it's easier, in other ways it's just as hard.  But I don't think it's any harder than an upright bike.

So over the next several days we went on several bike rides around our usual haunts, riding the roads and trails we usually ride on where we live and gradually I began to get more familiar with riding a recumbent and some of the differences that are involved.

We've also taken it on a couple of excursions we've been on.  We took it to a place called Terrell's Island, which is a place I've had on my list of places to go for a few years.  That was a fun ride.

We also took it down to Chicago to ride the Lakeshore Trail on Lake Michigan with Erdbeere and her kids.  That was quite an adventure. That was actually another ride I've thought for some time would be fun to do.  Erdbeere was kind enough to indulge me on that ride. That involved some mechanical difficulties that we had to deal with, that were the result of me still learning the ropes with this new toy.  But we managed and, all in all, had a good ride.

So we've cruised around on our bikes and we've been having lots of fun, near ...

... and far, on old familiar trails and some new ones.

Getting back to some places I haven't been for a while ...

... and some I've been to frequently.  Yes, I even persuaded Brombeere to stop with me at my favorite ice cream shop. 

Yep, I think I'm going to like this new toy, the more and more I ride it and get more familiar with it, the more I like it.  This is going to be good.