A few years ago, I bought a Trek Pure model of "comfort bike" so that
I could exercise a sprained knee without putting any weight on it.
It's been useful several times since: It makes an excellent granny
walker, and if a hill gets too steep to draisine, the extra-high
handlebars and the deep notch in the middle of the frame make it a
good rolling cane. I rode it around the block one day when I needed a
walker to get to where I'd parked it, and at least twice I've bungeed
a cane to the back.

And it's also a dandy toy: it sits in the garage ready to go, and if
I feel like a little spin, I can hop onto it in whatever I happen to
be wearing, as long as I'm willing to leave the house in it. If the
pants I'm wearing are already shabby, I don't even pin my ankles to
keep my hems from rubbing on the sprocket guard.

If I'm feeling poorly on a Sunday, I'll ride it wearing floor-length
skirts -- but I do have a special pair of pedal pushers to wear
instead of pettipants on those occasions; I have to hike the skirts up
quite a bit, and don't want to show white ruffled underwear.

The Trek is so un-fussy about footwear that I took a lap around the
block barefoot. The pedals got to feeling rather rough before I got
back, so I've run back for sandals ever since, but I also insist on
wearing footgear for walking. (Tried leaving home barefoot once;
found there's nothing to walk on but sharp gravel and hot asphalt.)

So the Trek would seem to be the ideal just going someplace machine --
if one could go someplace on it.

During my first rehab, I rode one point six miles to the grocery store
twice, going by way of the emergency room seven tenths of a mile
farther away the second time. The first trip was an achievement and
the second was an expedition.

I've lost count of the times I've walked to that grocery, but I think
that the number of trips by Trek Pure will stay at two. If I'm
feeling good, I've got a real bike, and if I'm feeling bad, I have a
car and a truck. Or I can phone for pizza.

Why? For openers, it's so slow to start moving that going through a
stoplight is terrifying; if I ever do ride it out of the village
again, I'll get off and take the sidewalk to the pedestrian crossing.

The Trek doesn't climb worth a nickel; I have to use its bottom gear
on slopes that I had never been aware of on my Fuji. And that bottom
gear is fairly low; the problem is that one can't apply any force to
the pedals -- which is a major feature when the machine is used for
rehab; you can't strain anything without trying to.

The "comfortable" upright posture forbids you to use any of the large
muscles in your legs, and the "flatfoot" feature means that the seat
is so low that I get only half a stroke of power out of each rotation
of the pedals.

And there is only one way to hold the handlebars. When I get tired of
that position, the ride is over.

With the drop bars on my Fuji, I can sit up when the going is easy,
shift to the tops of the hooks and lean forward a little, or get down
on the drops and lean forward a lot. Male riders have an intermediate
position on the brake hoods, but since I have small hands, I have
"junior" brake levers, which have no hoods.



--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.