Bicycling

It's not much heavier than a standard DF bike, the frame is a very thin walled aluminum extrusion and I find it easy to carry by picking it up just in front of the seat where it stays fairly balanced. I usually pick it up with my right hand and steady the steering column with my left, no need to heave it up since the wheels are about a foot off the ground with your carrying arm straight.



Since I posted in Feb I have bought another recumbent from Craigslist, a DH1000 which is a Rans-style long wheelbase. It's long enough that it would be a bit awkward carrying it up stairs but the weight isn't that much of an issue at least for me. Getting it on a car carrier would probably be fairly easy but it would stick out past the sides of the car most likely. On the other hand the ride is superb, the chrome moly frame is supple enough to absorb quite a bit of vibration and the geometry is such that it's more stable at both low and high speeds than the bikeE. It's really the seat which makes the biggest difference in weight between many recumbents and DF bikes, you just can't make a lounge chair as light as a postage stamp sized bar stool. The frame on the DH1000 doesn't have all that much more tubing than a DF bike and the other components are basically the same (Shimano Deore with old school friction shifters).

My DH1000 was also made in the USA (Texas) while the bikeE was made in Taiwan.



I wanted to get a short wheelbase bent but couldn't find one during the winter in my lowish price range, the Rans V-Rex is a good example of a SWB bent and the reviews seem to be uniformly positive. The V-Rex would easily fit on a car carrier and I don't think carrying it up stairs would be a problem either.



As for climbing on a bent, if you are a spinner rather than a masher you'll do better, my knees are fine with spinning but hurt if I try to mash so it works for me. In fact I'd like to get a set of cranks more like 140mm or so than the standard 170-ish so I could spin even faster in a lower gear. It is possible to push from your hips and shoulders and mash your way over rolling hills but it takes quite a while to learn to do it as naturally as standing on the pedals and as I say it makes my knees hurt.

I'm starting to think that the taller you are the more sense a bent makes, tall riders on a DF bike have more aerodynamic resistance than a shorter rider but height makes much less drag difference on a bent. A tall rider on a DF bike also has a higher center of gravity and is more likely to go over the bars in a crash or hard braking maneuver.