| Product: BikeE |
Company: BikeE Corporation |
| Web: www.bikee.com |
Phone: 800-231-3136 |
| Platform: The open road, baby! |
SRP: US$650
Street Price: US$500 |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
"A lot of bikes had chips in them nowadays, in the shocks or the braking or in reactive hubs, but bicycles simply weren't like computers. Computers were black boxes inside, no big visible working parts. People, by contrast, got sentimental about their bike gear. People were strangely reticent and traditional about bikes. That's why the bike market had never really gone for recumbents, even though the recumbent design had a big mechanical advantage. People didn't like their bikes too complicated. They didn't want bicycles to bitch and complain and whine for attention and constant upgrading the way that computers did. Bikes were too personal. People wanted their bikes to wear." --Bruce Sterling, "Bicycle Repairman"
***
Years ago, I was driving along in the foothills of Portland, Oregon, when I suddenly saw some guy on a freaky-looking bicycle. His helmet had a plastic squirrel glued on top and the handlebars were under the seat! I was amazed and slowed down to watch him ride for a few seconds. It looked bizarrely cool -- I wanted one (the bike, not the squirrel helmet). I found out later that he was riding a Vision recumbent bike made in Seattle. I checked out the local shops and the Net, and found out that few recumbents worth riding were no less than US$900.
So I kept tabs on the industry, waiting preditorially for prices to drop. Five years later, BikeE of Corvallis, Oregon obtained a production contract with the Giant manufacturing company of Taiwan and began selling their flagship model for $650. Ka-ching! A few hundred quick trips to the Human Powered Vehicle For-Sale list later, and I eventually found one being sold by a frequent upgrader at a very reasonable price ($500).
The author's BikeE CT 2.0 rests against his shabby outbuilding.
Why ride a recumbent? For starters, you get to belong to yet another technically-oriented fringe group. In 1934, recumbents set world records, only to be banned from further competition by the forces of bad-technology hegemony in the form of the UCI (Union Cycliste International), the recumbent equivalent of the evil empire and Microsoft rolled into one. Riding a recumbent isn't just a way to save yourself from wrist, neck and butt pain, it's a strike against stodgy luddite bureaucracies everywhere. Or at least that's what we like to tell ourselves.
The frame of the BikeE consists of a single extruded aluminum beam with molded rails that allow the seat to slide and quickly accomodate a wide range of riders. The gearing is interesting -- the BikeE designers chose a freewheel and a Sachs 3-speed internal hub to provide 21 speeds with very little gearing overlap. One advantage of the internal hub is that you can switch through those three speeds while the bike is at a standstill, which comes in handy if you forget to downshift before you stop at a light or before a large hill. In order to keep the seat height comfortable, the rear wheel is 20" and the front is 16". The bike has a sort of chopper feel to it. You lean back when you ride, and instead of focusing on the few feet immediately in front of your wheel, you're free to look around while you move down the road. This is not only safer but makes touring a lot more fun.
The BikeE isn't perfect. The company has fielded complaints about seat comfort, which they've remedied in new models by completely redesigning it and adding a monoshock. Also, at 34 lbs., the BikeE isn't especially lightweight (although you can get lighter and faster models if you spend more money). For $650 for the low-end model, the BikeE isn't especially cheap, either. Personally the trade-offs have been worth it, simply because the bike is such a joy to ride that I spend more time on the road than I otherwise would.
Recumbents tend to generate the kind of devotion usually found only among Mac owners and Capybara breeders. The postings to the Human Powered Vehicle list reach the level of complexity and passion sometimes witnessed among Shop Talkers discussing stripe aerodynamics. For example, week-long threads on the benefits of being carless or the merits of different seat fabrics will often develop.
Speaking of seat fabrics, a big part of the recumbent scene is the home builders contingent. These are the folks who are either trying to bypass the overhead of a commercial model or are interested in even more radical design changes such as front-wheel drive recumbents or making your own carbon-fibre frames.
Like tooling around in a classic car, riding a recumbent is a social event. You can generally judge how much life-force is left in a person by their initial reaction. Children, drunks and kids at heart usually respond with cries of "Cool!" or "That bike is tight!," while "grownups" make a conscious effort to *not* act surprised. Meanwhile I'm grinning like an idiot, reliving parts of my childhood and peddling away outside the big metal box.
- Mark Crane [10/13/99]
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