When I went looking for a trike, after 1 year 2 months, my choices were a cool looking recumbent or the staid upright. I really wanted the recumbent because it looked cool and fast and nothing I was doing anymore was fast.
But there was no way I could hold my left foot on the pedal unless I wanted to get biking shoes with the builtin clips and the pedals to go with. And since I can't tie shoelaces that ruled this out. So I got the staid one.
This is an upright trike with the huge basket in back. Talk about feeling ancient. I took it out on the bike path that runs along the West River road in front of our house. I got about 100 yards down the bike path when I tipped the trike over. So Emma went back home for elbow pads and bandaids. It comes with a coaster brake, single speed, and a single brake lever for the front wheel on the right handlebar. With 20+ years of bicycle commuting I figured I knew how to ride, but I needed to unlearn the idea of turning the bike by leaning and also to relearn how to use the coaster brake. From one of the websites selling 3 wheel adult trikes comes this quote.'Enjoy cycling without the need to balance'. I think for those of us who come to this from many years of regular biking, this is an extremely dangerous piece of equipment, at least until you retrain your old habits. Speed is definitely not something that will occur on this trike. You have to constantly be on the alert to make sure it is pointing straight ahead, there is no margin of error. There are biking trails on old railroad beds near our house, great for practicing on level paths. Year 2 of recovery I would do an 18 mile loop in 4 hours. In year 3 I got it down to 3 hours mainly because I finally got a 3 inch longer seatpost so I could have better cycling form. In year 4 the loop still takes 3 hours, I haven't done enough riding this year. You can read about my plans to get back to a two-wheeler here.
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