"Why do you ride a bike like that?"
"How do you steer it?"
"Hey, did you have trouble putting that kit together right?"  (A JPL engineer watching me ride by.)
"Look at that guy, he doesn't have handlebars.  Hey, Mister!  Are you too cheap to get handlebars?"  (A couple of sixth graders.)

There are also the people staring at me on the street.  Sometimes I nearly know how a blonde must feel.  I consider it a safety bonus.

Also...

Here's a little of my history with recumbancy and most of what I know about the current marketplace in such machines:

Mine is a Ryan Vanguard, built by Dick Ryan of Ryan Recumbents (no longer in business) about 1991.

I bought it from Ted Iskenderian, a colleague at JPL, in 1996 and have put something like 7000 miles on it myself in the last thirteen years.

I was first seriously exposed to these bikes through Steve Roberts, when we were both presenting at an amateur radio satellite conference in Weed, California in 1987.  He had built a major, computerized, travelling home base on a Vanguard in the 80s.  He called it the "Winnebiko" and toured the country on it, eventually even writing a book, "Computing Across America."  (The bike is in the Computer History Museum now.)

The computer was a hacked TRS-80 Model 100.  The book is considered a nostalgic history of "ancient" computing these days, but there's that Ryan Vanguard pictured right on the cover.

This grew into an even larger project for Steve: Behemoth, which is an acronym, the last three letters of which are for "only too heavy"!

Roberts attempts even crazier "nomadness" things these days:  The Microship.

Anyway, back to reality.

My wife has finally convinced me not to try to maintain the Vanguard myself, except for field repairs, and so nowadays I take it to "Bent Up Cycles", a recumbents-only shop over by Van Nuys airport.  Dana, the proprietor, is an expert in bicycles in general and recumbents in particular.  I highly recommend a visit to his shop for the kind of consultation a potential buyer would be looking for.

You can test drive anything he has on the floor right there in his parking lot and he has encyclopedic knowledge and connections in the business too.

Since selling the Vanguard to me, Ted has a new recumbent, a Barcroft Dakota.  It is short wheelbase but does not have under-seat steering.  Another interesting design is the Haluzak Horizon.  I've often toyed with the idea of getting a tandem for family touring.  The Barcroft Columbia is a possibility, if I could get myself into one of those riding positions.

A few years ago the seat on my Vanguard broke and it was out of service for several months as a result while I puttered around trying to repair it myself.  Finally I got Dana (at 'Bent Up') involved.  He was able to get suitable (but not exact) replacement parts from Long Bikes, (the heir to Ryan and the legacy of his model lines) and did all the work to get me back on the road again.  The cost for this repair was about the same as I paid for the bike used in 1996 which was half of the 1991 new price.  I get the impression by surfing and shopping around that you don't buy new recumbents these days under $2000 (implying a factor of 1.5 to 2.0 inflation over 10-15 years)  but I bet there is a big used market, and I bet Dana knows all about it.

I learned in this process that all of the Ryan Vanguards were hand-built and had subtle differences.  You can't just say "Ryan Vanguard" (or "Ryan anything" I wager) and know exactly what parts are needed.  You have to inspect the actual bicycle.

Looking at that Long Bikes site, I see "The Eliminator G2" which appears to be short wheelbase, under-seat steering, though the grips are up at hip-level.  Frankly, I think that under-seat steering is the greatest thing that ever happened in bicycle design.  It is so much better than pounding your hands all day, not to mention saddle issues!  Where the grips go, high or low, is, I think, a matter of personal preference.  There are discomforts or 'adjustments' to recumbent riding too, but they are easily understood and negotiated, nothing like the neck-craning, back-breaking, rides-like-a-horse conventional cycles.

But now I'm preaching.

There are a few other guys at JPL who ride recumbents sometimes.  We exchange a few words as they pass me up on the street.  (I'm no athlete, I'm a typical F.O.G. 'bent rider myself!)

==========

The Big Bike Rides With Rob -- 1975, 1976.

I learned to ride on an upright American Flyer class two wheeler in Henrietta, Texas.  I felt I was ready to travel about as I pleased when I reached the stage of being able to do a U-Turn in the street without falling over.  Certainly, that first U-Turn was from one ditch to the opposite one, but the ditches were shallow and full of grass, and it had been dry long enough that they weren't a hazard themselves, long as you didn't get into the squish at the very bottom.

In Taylor, I went to school on the bike, first the Junior High (7th grade) then the middle school (8th grade) then the high school (9th grade, different, new campus in 1970-71).  I also had my first paper route there, which I did by bike.  This is where I met Rob, (see more at ham radio biography).

After moving to Hubbard, Rob and I schemed to do major biking adventures together.  For the first, June 1975, after our freshman years in college my dad drove me to Taylor in his truck Friday and left me there.  Saturday afternoon after Rob got off work at the local library we started out to ride the 100 miles to back up to Hubbard.  We knew it would be overnight, but we didn't know how we were going to handle hardly any of the trip.  Indeed, we spent the first 90 minutes lost near Taylor and Rob was ready to bail on the whole plan when we finally stumbled into Davilla which seemed to be in the middle of a forest.  This was on the planned route, or at least we knew where we were, and it was still daylight, so Rob could be prevailed upon, barely, to continue.

I had had a five speed (with an automatic hub upshifter that made it a ten speed) while living in Taylor but that bike was old and worn and I had bought a new Schwinn Varsity (about $100) for this trip.  Rob was on his brother's $300 Gitane, one of Ted's lesser bikes.  ("No, Rob, you can't ride the ($500!) Raliegh" was the refrain at his house while Ted was in the Navy.)

Somewhere between Rogers and Westphalia and Lott, it started to get dark we stopped for the night at a gravel pile near an intersection.  We had little to eat and little to protect us from the night.  We set up on the side of the pile away from the road a few feet up on the gravel to stay out of the dew that would collect in the weeds during the night.  I didn't sleep much at all, but remember the calculating from star movements that I had dozed off possibly from 3:00 to 3:30 a.m.  At first light we started getting ready to go and were underway again by 6:30 Sunday morning.

To this day, when we see a gravel pile by the side of the road we say, "A staying place!"

We had wanted to make more than 30 miles the first day but that looked like about all we had done.

I no longer remember the intended route, but do remember that we missed a turn on the way to Ben Hur and went five or ten miles towards Groesbeck before realizing the error and having to stop and discuss what to do.  The decision was made to try to get back to our planned route which we did succesfully.  This error would make this day more like 80 miles rather than the 70 that we thought might be our endurance limit.  After Midway and Kirk, we came to Prarie Hill and bought a few items (probably less than $5 worth between us) at a store, then continued on to Mt. Calm.

Dad pastored both the church at Hubbard and the one at Mt. Calm.  I had ridden by the back, gravel road between the towns several times and felt that because we were here in familiar territory we were safe.  We stopped at the church around 4:30, found it unlocked and unoccupied and refilled all our water containers, including some ice from the kitchen freezer.  While we were on the way from Mt. Calm to Hubbard on the main highway (no longer feeling adventurous enough for gravel) dad was on the way to  the evening service which would be at 6:00, by the back road, thinking he might see us there.  He did not and we were recuiperating at the house when he got back to Hubbard for the evening service there at 7:00.  Next morning we loaded up and drove back to Taylor, this time with Rob's bike in the back.  Neither of us was interested in mounting a bike for a picture.

One of my fantasies for this trip was for us each to start out from our homes and meet in the middle, using 2 meter hand helds for rendezvous.  Rob had such a hand held radio, but it didn't have a simplex channel.  My 2 meter radio was a converted taxi-cab GE Progline which was barely suitable for mobile use.  The hundred pounds of batteries and equipment would be unwelcome on a bike.  He once talked me into Taylor on the radio and, when we arrived at his house, walked out front and dumped his radio through the window onto the truck seat.  That was the closest we ever came to such a thing.

Sleeping bag?  Provisions?  Bah!

In 1976, this time after our sophomore years in college, we wanted to do something bigger and better.  Having dad's truck at college, I loaded up and drove myself from summer school in Waco to Taylor.  Viann, needing a ride to Austin (actually, to Houston, but her brother was in Austin and that would be workable), had flagged me down in the Penland parking lot.  So, all my stuff and all her stuff were in the truck as we proceeded down I-35.  Her green sitting pillow blew out on the road and I heroically rescued it just before someone else stopped to retrieve it.  We still have that pillow as a memoir.

After dropping her off at Whitehall, the co-op where her brother Michael lived, I went back up to Taylor where Rob and I made preparations.  This had been a Wednesdsay in June 1976.  Thursday we drove the truck over the intended bike route to Fredericksburg and left it parked there at the police station (by prior arrangement, arrived at in the mails) and took a Kerrville Bus Company bus back to Austin, then a connecting bus  to Taylor.  We were now "committed to the ride, which commenced Saturday morning, after a test campout in a "very dense" forest (the Aanstoos fireplace woodpile) Friday evening.  This time I had another new addition, a long, red Sears sleeping bag.

Saturday we rode all the way to Burnet, over 50 miles, and camped that night in the city park.  We didn't really know how we should do this but tried to stay out of sight so that drunks and law enforcement wouldn't easily find us.  We did nearly have an encounter with a drunk in the middle of that night, but they didn't seem to see or be interested in us.

Sunday we rode to Inks Lake, ate in a park, then went on to the north end of Buchanan Dam where we camped.  On the way we stopped at a store that was about to go out of business to buy their last bottle of pickles, some peanut butter and a few other necessities.

Each of us had about $50 on us and the agreement was that we would trade off paying for things, keep records, and settle up the difference at the end.

Lake Buchanan was high, and we waided out with soap for a little light bathing in the twilight.

Monday we rode to Llano and stayed that night in a city park south of town.  Tuesday we rode from there to Enchanted Rock, the trip goal.  Riding through Oxford, a ghost town, we joked about the dormitories and academic buildings -- barns that were either collapsed or about to.

This was when Enchanted Rock was still in the Moss family.  You could visit for the day for $0.50 or camp overnight for $0.90.  There were no particular restrictions on where you could camp.  Some people (other students, one from UT) were camped in convenient places up on the rock itself.  We camped down on the creek (collecting more tics in the process), and climbed and explored the rock that evening and the next morning.  We talked with the UT student about our vaporous nature, when measured in geological time.

This was my first visit to Enchanted Rock.  I would come back in later years to explore more of the park, would lead a Halley's Comet viewing expedition there at the 1986 apparition, and would, in November 1976, take Viann there on a day trip (not a date!) before proposing to her around midnight that night back in Waco.  The first documented spark was possibly from this present trip, however.  From the Lake Buchanan Post Office, I had written Viann a post card and in protest for ever escalating postal rates, had put nine one cent stamps on it.  But I also signed it, "love, Courtney," and she had noticed and had asked her mother what that might mean.

Wednesday morning we broke camp and headed the less than twenty miles (but up and down hill after hill) into Fredericksburg where dad's truck was faithfully waiting.  We were on our way back towards Taylor within the hour but before we were even out of town a thunderstorm came up.  I wanted to try to "outrun" it, but Rob insisted that the Gitane (which was Ted's, not his...) was not permitted to get wet, so we spent an hour under a gas station awning before the rain cleared and we were able to continue.

Back at Rob's house in Taylor, Rob's mother, who seemed more anxious about all this than I thought she should have, insisted that I call my parents to tell them that all was well and I would be on the way back the next day.  After cleaning up, I totalled up our finances.  When I was ready with the settlment report, Rob said, "Don't tell me who owes, just tell me how much."  It was twenty five cents.  On hearing this he said, "Oh, then you owe me.  If I had owed you it would have been two or three dollars."  I had in fact been hoping to get a couple of bucks back, but he was right.  I owed him  the quarter and by settling up, gave him more than half the money I had left!

Rob and I, mostly by radio, did some planning work for an even bigger trip for the next summer.  We would drive to Colorado and do some sort of circuit there that he knew of.  This didn't get beyond about three planning sessions.  I had a fiancee, we both had big senior years coming up in '77, I had a summer job as an announcer at KEFC, six night shifts a week (but did often ride my bike to work).  We did a handfull of Amateur Radio Field Days together in various places and with various people over the next decade but we never did anything of the magnitude of the legendary "Taylor to Hubbard Ride of '75" or the "Enchanted Rock Ride of '76" again.  (Forget the Bike-Centenniel, that didn't even go through Texas!)

Recounted:  cbd 2010 February 9