"Peter Clinch" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Bicycle types: BMX, Mountain, Street, etc

How abouta new category: "Highway"
because:
The fastest bicycle in the world is the Varna Diablo recumbent which
broke the official world speed record on October 6, 2001 achieving the
incredible speed of 80.55 mph
Highway bicycles would be: Cannondale, Speedmachine, Trek, Rans, etc.
Get rid of the name recumbent.

Half right IMHO.
I think a lot of the problem is that keen cyclists see most bikes as
functional types: you have a city bike for the city, a touring bike for
touring, a racing bike for racing etc. And that leaves as a "recumbent"
as, well, something you lie back on? It's divorced from what the bike
actually /does/, which could be city, touring, racing etc.

I think it would help if "recumbent" was seen as an adjective rather
than a plain noun. I ride a recumbent tourer. It's very different from
a recumbent racer. You'd not get most cyclists confusing a tourer and a
racer, but they lump recumbents all together regardless of functional
design.


The only people confused by any of this are the noobs (feel free to decide
which type of noob)..

I have a cycling buddy who has a RANS Stratus XP and a Catrike 700 which he
has both configured for touring (they don't need to be). He also has a
Velocraft VK2 that he considers a good metric century road bike even though
he just completed the 1-day STP on it. Of course, he had a Trek Project
One, two other Treks (one is for off-road use).

Now, which ones are recumbents and which are not?

BTW, which could be good for racing (just pure racing, not anything
"official")?

Bottom line: the word recumbent really has little to do with the marketing.
Recumbents are just such rare things and most people are willing to blaze
trails.