Cyclists Pedal Hard to Gain Respect for Recumbent Bike

Children laugh when they see Gary Anderson on his bicycle.

“They yell, ‘Hey, what is that thing?’ ” said Anderson.

He doesn’t blame them. Adults stare, too, as he commutes several times a week on Orange County streets to his job as an electrician--about 20 miles each way--on a bicycle that resembles a go-cart from another planet.

Instead of the standard bike seat, it has a mesh-back chair on which Anderson sits upright, stretching his legs in front of him to reach the pedals and gears mounted near the front wheel.

“Because you are upright, you can see everything in front of you,” said Jim Wronski, who sells this type of bike, called a recumbent (which means reclining, according to the dictionary). “All the pressure is off your groin and your neck, back and hands.

“The first time I saw one, I said, ‘This is the bike of the future.’ ”

Maybe so, but they already have a past. Recumbents have been around since the mid-1880s, long ago proving themselves not only roadworthy, but also speedy, mostly because of their aerodynamic design. In 1934, recumbents were banned from bicycle races as being unfair competition and in 1986, a fully enclosed model became the first human-powered, single-rider vehicle to reach 65 mph.

Still, recumbents have, for as long as they’ve existed, been considered more of a curiosity than a serious mode of transportation.

No one knows this better than Wronski, who five years ago opened People Movers, a small shop in Orange that is one of a handful in the nation specializing in recumbents.

“A regular bike shop might sell hundreds of bikes a month,” he said, standing outside his strip mall store in an industrial section of Orange. “We sell hundreds in a year.”

But lately, Wronski and other die-hards have had reason to hope that a new era of respect, or at least notoriety, for recumbents might be at hand.

Bicycling magazine, the most prominent general interest publication in the bike world, ran a feature article in its July issue on recumbents. Then, in its next issue, which is already on the stands, one of the magazine’s best-known writers disclosed that he had switched to a recumbent because he believed years of riding long distances on a standard bike seat had caused him to become impotent.

His supposition was backed by a urologist who has done an unpublished study of the possible connection between bike riding and impotency.

“Our level of phone calls certainly went up,” Wronski said.

(For all those male bicyclists who just panicked, several other doctors quoted in the magazine were skeptical that bike riding, alone, could cause impotency. The sports doctor at Bicycling’s own cyberspace site on America Online advised that using a properly designed seat minimized any possible danger).

But there is another reason recumbent fans are optimistic. “Boomers,” said Wronski. “They are at the age where riding a regular bicycle might be not so comfortable anymore, but they want to keep up their fitness.”

Anderson, at 54, is a bit over boomer age, but is representative of riders who switched because of health problems. “I had been a fairly long-distance cyclist for about 20 years,” he said. Then, about three years ago, he developed lower back problems and prostatitis.

“Rather than quit riding,” he said, “I wanted to try something different.”

Although getting used to the new riding position took some doing, Anderson eventually took to recumbents with gusto. Last year, he rode in a local bike club’s “double century”--200 miles in one day--a feat that few nonprofessional riders attempt.

Kevin Karplus, who teaches computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz and by choice does not own a car, switched after 30 years of standard riding. “I have tendinitis from too much keyboarding,” he said. “This puts a lot less stress on the wrist.”

Even recumbent boosters admit their bikes do have some disadvantages. They are relatively expensive (quality recumbents start at about $800) and heavy, and their bulkiness causes problems when transporting them by car or on mass transportation. Although recumbents can at least hold their own on flat routes and down hills, most riders can’t climb hills as fast as they did on standard bikes.

The many different types of recumbents can be confusing. For example, buyers have to choose between short and long models, as well as between above- and below-seat steering, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. There are recumbents designed for short trips around town and others made for speed or long tours. There are even tandems.

According to a buyers’ guide published by the Seattle-based Recumbent Cyclist News--the only periodical devoted to the bikes--recumbents from more than 20 manufacturers are available domestically.

They are also sometimes objects of derision.

“These testosterone-filled jock riders sneer when they see one,” said Robert Bryant, publisher of Recumbent Cyclist News.

“They say, ‘When are you going to get a real bike?’ They can’t understand how a bike that doesn’t cause pain could be any good.”

Bryant thinks the biking world is not ready to accept this type of bicycle en masse. Although there have long been rumors that one of the major bicycle manufacturers would begin making recumbents, he is not optimistic.

“They are just too different,” he said of recumbents. “Right now, the people who are attracted to them are the people who like to explore something different.”