a.twiddler
Veteran
Mr Perineum takes a holiday. Or, a year with an Iowa Linear Recumbent.
Amazingly, I realised yesterday that I have had the Linear for a year now. How time flies when you are having fun! Here is a bit of a summary.
To the Darkside
After many years of pounding a leather saddle with my tender posterior I had come to the point where it was becoming uncomfortable. My inner masochist kept telling me “ride more, ya wimp” and perhaps it was true, as my once comfortable saddle was now making contact with the parts that other beers could not reach. As my mileage diminished over the years, so had my once mighty buttocks, resulting in less padding where the “me” meets the saddle.
I’d had a hankering to try a recumbent for some years but either they were way out of my price range or were miles away. There was certainly no opportunity for a test ride. On a whim I made an offer on a Linear LWB recumbent which was within lockdown travelling distance and surprisingly it was accepted.
Thus in June 2020 I acquired this aluminium girder with a garden chair on top and some bicycle bits on each end. It had been languishing in a barn for the last ten years after the previous owner had bought a SWB recumbent. Various thoughts came to me once I got it home. It was certainly an odd looking thing. I wondered if it was such a terrible bike that the owner had just stopped riding it when he got something “decent”? Or if, despite being described as basically sound, that there was some terminal problem with it?
Linear as bought
There was a useful if basic information sheet with it and I was gratified to learn that a version of it was still in production, with a wealth of information on the internet, some of which I’d mined before I made my bid. I learned from Peter Stull, aka “The Bicycle Man” that the original Iowa Linear design from 1986 had a number of recumbent firsts including being the first to:
Have an aluminium frame
To be made from custom tubing (well, not tubing, exactly)
Fold
To have a seat with a cushion and a mesh back
To have a built in pocket behind the seat.
I had minutely examined the frame for any signs of cracks and over the next couple of weeks while cleaning it up and removing generations of defunct insects I satisfied myself that it was sound. The hub gear worked positively, the wheels and bearings were good, the seat and steering rod adjustments from the tall previous owner to my diminutive self were easy. I changed the tyres, replaced the rear mudguard, and experimented with mirror positions all over a period of time.
I became a four year old again while learning to ride it and scared myself witless until I’d got the hang of it. I well remember my first ride. Several attempts to get going and wobbling around. Once up and pedalling I had to ride for several miles as I wasn’t confident that I could stop without falling off. Starting and stopping and changing direction were scary prospects. It really felt like flying, and I was like someone who had somehow accidentally taken off in a light aircraft and had no idea how to land it. Add to that that the controls were under the seat and invisible to the rider, and it was like waking up from a dream having no recollection how I got there. As it happened, I came to realise that stopping was the easy bit.
Amongst the other impressions I had was that it was surprisingly quiet. I expected my ride to be accompanied by all sorts of creaks and squeaks from the aluminium frame but all I could hear was tyre noise and a faint tic tic tic from the hub gear. The previous owner had advised me to keep the folding joints well greased and tight and I had followed his advice, and it worked.
In the first 6 months there was a steep learning curve which gradually lessened. Stopping and starting in various situations were the most challenging, but learning to relax and just go with the flow were the most important things. Getting going on steep uphills in traffic is probably still the hardest thing, where it is more a matter of confidence than anything. I have had to make myself “just do it” on several occasions and done it easily when my rational mind has still been struggling with the impossibility of it. Manoeuvreing in tight spaces is still a bit challenging as you need some wobble room.
A lot of forward planning and thinking about what other vehicles might do was necessary.
Initially every trip came up with at least one new challenge and I learnt that although the Linear is surprisingly good on tracks and trails it’s definitely not an off roader. It’s impressive what you actually can ride on though.
Being in the right gear is very important as you don’t have any “boost” as on an upright where you can stand on the pedals to overcome an unexpected obstacle. The hub gear is useful here as if you end up at a standstill you can still get into its low gear if you have to.
This bike came with a triple chainwheel on the front but no front changer. It has a Sachs 7 X 3 on the back giving 21 gears from 27” to 110” -ish. 27” is not a bad bottom gear on an upright bike but I felt I needed lower gears. I got hold of a front changer with the aim of reinstating the triple which would have given 63 gears with a range from 20” to 150”. However, I had issues getting the full range to change cleanly. As I was less likely to use the large chainring I tried removing it and was rewarded with an easy changing double chainset. This gave 42 gears with a range from 20” -110” ish which allowed me to get up anything.
I felt invincible until I had an encounter with Alsagers Bank in Staffordshire and did not so much run out of forward motion as lose the ability to steer. I have since fitted a 24T small sprocket which gives a bottom gear of 17.5” or so. The rationale for this is that smoother pedalling in an even lower gear may allow for less disturbance to the straight line ability at such low speeds. I have not had the opportunity for a re match yet.
The gear changers were originally a non indexed thumb shifter for the rear hub and a non indexed shifter for the rear derailleur, mounted on the USS handlebar. They were a slight stretch for me so I have progressed to long bar ends with a Sturmey Archer bar end shifter on the left and a thumbshifter for the front changer lower down, and a non indexed Suntour bar end shifter on the right. This has the added advantage that I can now see the lever positions. So far, this system works well for me.
The brakes were originally a Sachs drum on the front and an unnamed and rather weedy caliper on the rear. I managed to improve it a bit with various cable adjustments and re routing, including reversing the cable run from bottom pull to top pull. I also changed the MTB brake lever to a road lever as the cable pull is better matched. It still remained rather weedy, particularly when you consider that with the weight distribution on a LWB recumbent, the rear does most of the braking. Thanks to @recumbentpanda it was replaced with an old school BMX brake, a DiaCompe Big Dog which being a twin pivot design has plenty of bite. Hence the name, I suppose.
It had a short length of handlebar attached to a quill stem at the front end (some Linears had Above Seat Steering which worked like conventional bike steering, though the bars were huge ape hangers) and the legacy of this dual design is that you could fit an accessory bar to the steering stem if you had USS. This I have used for a light and a large chrome bell. This was initially operated by an extra brake lever and cable from the underseat bar end but I have since adapted it to use one of the spare thumbshifters by winding back the friction knob. It works just as well, but saves space.
The latest change has been to fit a used 406 drum brake (Sachs) front wheel to allow a better choice of modern tyres, which now has a spare Schwalbe Big Apple 406 X 50 on it which I just happened to have. This has made the front end feel more planted and looks good, despite being nominally wider than the rear tyre.
I read a lot about the need to clip your feet to the pedals as when your legs get tired your feet are supposed to fall off them. This has not happened yet. A combination of exceedingly serrated good sized pedals (which were on it when I bought it) and ordinary shoes works for me. Of course the bottom bracket isn’t particularly high, it might be different on a SWB lowracer with a high bottom bracket. There is definitely no danger of whacking your shins on them as with an upright bike.
This bike has undergone some changes over the past year to make it “mine”. The Linear more than most recumbents can be moulded to suit individual riders’ preferences. Just as well really as I didn’t initially know what they were, being so new to recumbents when I first bought it.
I have made a lightweight front rack by cannibalising an old MTB rack and clamping it to the steering head.
When I first had this bike the biggest worry for me was the lack of rear view. I could hear traffic coming up behind, but couldn’t track them in the mirror. This has become much less of an issue, and if the mirror on the front accessory bar is reasonably adjusted I am not too concerned. I use a mirror that clips on to my glasses from time to time but this is now a bonus rather than essential.
When someone says that they’ve never looked back since they took up recumbenting, it’s probably literally true.
Some things I have learned over the last year. Recumbents are rare. LWB ones are rarest, SWB marginally less rare. If websites such as ebay are to be believed, it is trikes that are the least rare among the tiny sales quantities of recumbents. and getting more popular to the detriment of recumbent bike sales. Usually when you buy a vehicle of any sort, you start seeing them everywhere but this hasn’t been the case since I bought this recumbent bike, a testimony to their rarity.
Although I’ve got used to the appearance it still makes adults do a double take when I roll up on it and as for kids and adolescents, something strange goes on in their heads when they see it. Even for a recumbent bike, it stands out. Other road users go out of their way to give me plenty of room in passing.
It has a rather nonchalant hands-in-pockets style due to the invisible handlebars.
So many passers-by have asked me what it is and I’ve had to tell them that it’s a “non standard human powered vehicle or NSHPV, specifically a Linear long Wheelbase Recumbent Bike, made in Iowa, USA” that I did think of getting an information card printed and attached to the bike, but it would make it look like a museum exhibit. Questions like “What sort of contraption is that?” (See above). “Did you make it yourself” (No). “Where are the handlebars?” (Down there). “Is it comfortable?” (Yes). “Is it fast?”(Define fast. Probably not with me on it). “Is it hard to ride?”(It took a while to get used to).“Can you get up hills?” (Yes). “How many gears?” (42). “Go on. Do a wheelie!” (Get lost.)
It certainly makes me smile, and it has that effect on others too. There are longer recumbents, lower recumbents, faster recumbents but where are they all? I have fleetingly seen three in the last year, and two of those were trikes. It would be interesting to meet other recumbent riders and compare experiences. Fortunately I am content with my own company, and don’t usually do group rides.
So, verdict so far? On paper, it’s just a bike but somehow it’s more than “just a bike”. It is more than the sum of its unlikely collection of parts. Its most striking feature is its length. Even @Mr Magoo has described it as a “Dutch Barge”. There is something boat like about it, but also a curious sensation of flying along 2’ off the ground. It was a lucky choice for a new recumbentist like myself. Would I be faster on a lighter short wheelbase ‘bent? Possibly, but how much would I have to spend for what gain? I must admit to being curious about other types of recumbents. Something that folds smaller than this one would be interesting. Would I be comfortable riding something more twitchy? I have a long way to go with exploring the possibilities of this one yet. Still, for me, having sampled the Darkside of 'bent riding, there is no going back.
To return to the subject of my poor battered perineum. With this comfortable seat, it’s definitely having a better time, as are my neck, hands and feet. The Linear probably is only marginally faster than my steel tourer (same power unit) unless into a headwind or downhill but there is less need to stop and ease the aches and pains. So the overall average is probably better, and it’s a very comfortable ride. The limiting factor now is bladder capacity. As this bike has all the stealth capabilities of the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba it’s not so easy to just stop and disappear behind a hedge unnoticed.
Amazingly, I realised yesterday that I have had the Linear for a year now. How time flies when you are having fun! Here is a bit of a summary.
To the Darkside
After many years of pounding a leather saddle with my tender posterior I had come to the point where it was becoming uncomfortable. My inner masochist kept telling me “ride more, ya wimp” and perhaps it was true, as my once comfortable saddle was now making contact with the parts that other beers could not reach. As my mileage diminished over the years, so had my once mighty buttocks, resulting in less padding where the “me” meets the saddle.
I’d had a hankering to try a recumbent for some years but either they were way out of my price range or were miles away. There was certainly no opportunity for a test ride. On a whim I made an offer on a Linear LWB recumbent which was within lockdown travelling distance and surprisingly it was accepted.
Thus in June 2020 I acquired this aluminium girder with a garden chair on top and some bicycle bits on each end. It had been languishing in a barn for the last ten years after the previous owner had bought a SWB recumbent. Various thoughts came to me once I got it home. It was certainly an odd looking thing. I wondered if it was such a terrible bike that the owner had just stopped riding it when he got something “decent”? Or if, despite being described as basically sound, that there was some terminal problem with it?
Linear as bought
There was a useful if basic information sheet with it and I was gratified to learn that a version of it was still in production, with a wealth of information on the internet, some of which I’d mined before I made my bid. I learned from Peter Stull, aka “The Bicycle Man” that the original Iowa Linear design from 1986 had a number of recumbent firsts including being the first to:
Have an aluminium frame
To be made from custom tubing (well, not tubing, exactly)
Fold
To have a seat with a cushion and a mesh back
To have a built in pocket behind the seat.
I had minutely examined the frame for any signs of cracks and over the next couple of weeks while cleaning it up and removing generations of defunct insects I satisfied myself that it was sound. The hub gear worked positively, the wheels and bearings were good, the seat and steering rod adjustments from the tall previous owner to my diminutive self were easy. I changed the tyres, replaced the rear mudguard, and experimented with mirror positions all over a period of time.
I became a four year old again while learning to ride it and scared myself witless until I’d got the hang of it. I well remember my first ride. Several attempts to get going and wobbling around. Once up and pedalling I had to ride for several miles as I wasn’t confident that I could stop without falling off. Starting and stopping and changing direction were scary prospects. It really felt like flying, and I was like someone who had somehow accidentally taken off in a light aircraft and had no idea how to land it. Add to that that the controls were under the seat and invisible to the rider, and it was like waking up from a dream having no recollection how I got there. As it happened, I came to realise that stopping was the easy bit.
Amongst the other impressions I had was that it was surprisingly quiet. I expected my ride to be accompanied by all sorts of creaks and squeaks from the aluminium frame but all I could hear was tyre noise and a faint tic tic tic from the hub gear. The previous owner had advised me to keep the folding joints well greased and tight and I had followed his advice, and it worked.
In the first 6 months there was a steep learning curve which gradually lessened. Stopping and starting in various situations were the most challenging, but learning to relax and just go with the flow were the most important things. Getting going on steep uphills in traffic is probably still the hardest thing, where it is more a matter of confidence than anything. I have had to make myself “just do it” on several occasions and done it easily when my rational mind has still been struggling with the impossibility of it. Manoeuvreing in tight spaces is still a bit challenging as you need some wobble room.
A lot of forward planning and thinking about what other vehicles might do was necessary.
Initially every trip came up with at least one new challenge and I learnt that although the Linear is surprisingly good on tracks and trails it’s definitely not an off roader. It’s impressive what you actually can ride on though.
Being in the right gear is very important as you don’t have any “boost” as on an upright where you can stand on the pedals to overcome an unexpected obstacle. The hub gear is useful here as if you end up at a standstill you can still get into its low gear if you have to.
This bike came with a triple chainwheel on the front but no front changer. It has a Sachs 7 X 3 on the back giving 21 gears from 27” to 110” -ish. 27” is not a bad bottom gear on an upright bike but I felt I needed lower gears. I got hold of a front changer with the aim of reinstating the triple which would have given 63 gears with a range from 20” to 150”. However, I had issues getting the full range to change cleanly. As I was less likely to use the large chainring I tried removing it and was rewarded with an easy changing double chainset. This gave 42 gears with a range from 20” -110” ish which allowed me to get up anything.
I felt invincible until I had an encounter with Alsagers Bank in Staffordshire and did not so much run out of forward motion as lose the ability to steer. I have since fitted a 24T small sprocket which gives a bottom gear of 17.5” or so. The rationale for this is that smoother pedalling in an even lower gear may allow for less disturbance to the straight line ability at such low speeds. I have not had the opportunity for a re match yet.
The gear changers were originally a non indexed thumb shifter for the rear hub and a non indexed shifter for the rear derailleur, mounted on the USS handlebar. They were a slight stretch for me so I have progressed to long bar ends with a Sturmey Archer bar end shifter on the left and a thumbshifter for the front changer lower down, and a non indexed Suntour bar end shifter on the right. This has the added advantage that I can now see the lever positions. So far, this system works well for me.
The brakes were originally a Sachs drum on the front and an unnamed and rather weedy caliper on the rear. I managed to improve it a bit with various cable adjustments and re routing, including reversing the cable run from bottom pull to top pull. I also changed the MTB brake lever to a road lever as the cable pull is better matched. It still remained rather weedy, particularly when you consider that with the weight distribution on a LWB recumbent, the rear does most of the braking. Thanks to @recumbentpanda it was replaced with an old school BMX brake, a DiaCompe Big Dog which being a twin pivot design has plenty of bite. Hence the name, I suppose.
It had a short length of handlebar attached to a quill stem at the front end (some Linears had Above Seat Steering which worked like conventional bike steering, though the bars were huge ape hangers) and the legacy of this dual design is that you could fit an accessory bar to the steering stem if you had USS. This I have used for a light and a large chrome bell. This was initially operated by an extra brake lever and cable from the underseat bar end but I have since adapted it to use one of the spare thumbshifters by winding back the friction knob. It works just as well, but saves space.
The latest change has been to fit a used 406 drum brake (Sachs) front wheel to allow a better choice of modern tyres, which now has a spare Schwalbe Big Apple 406 X 50 on it which I just happened to have. This has made the front end feel more planted and looks good, despite being nominally wider than the rear tyre.
I read a lot about the need to clip your feet to the pedals as when your legs get tired your feet are supposed to fall off them. This has not happened yet. A combination of exceedingly serrated good sized pedals (which were on it when I bought it) and ordinary shoes works for me. Of course the bottom bracket isn’t particularly high, it might be different on a SWB lowracer with a high bottom bracket. There is definitely no danger of whacking your shins on them as with an upright bike.
This bike has undergone some changes over the past year to make it “mine”. The Linear more than most recumbents can be moulded to suit individual riders’ preferences. Just as well really as I didn’t initially know what they were, being so new to recumbents when I first bought it.
I have made a lightweight front rack by cannibalising an old MTB rack and clamping it to the steering head.
When I first had this bike the biggest worry for me was the lack of rear view. I could hear traffic coming up behind, but couldn’t track them in the mirror. This has become much less of an issue, and if the mirror on the front accessory bar is reasonably adjusted I am not too concerned. I use a mirror that clips on to my glasses from time to time but this is now a bonus rather than essential.
When someone says that they’ve never looked back since they took up recumbenting, it’s probably literally true.
Some things I have learned over the last year. Recumbents are rare. LWB ones are rarest, SWB marginally less rare. If websites such as ebay are to be believed, it is trikes that are the least rare among the tiny sales quantities of recumbents. and getting more popular to the detriment of recumbent bike sales. Usually when you buy a vehicle of any sort, you start seeing them everywhere but this hasn’t been the case since I bought this recumbent bike, a testimony to their rarity.
Although I’ve got used to the appearance it still makes adults do a double take when I roll up on it and as for kids and adolescents, something strange goes on in their heads when they see it. Even for a recumbent bike, it stands out. Other road users go out of their way to give me plenty of room in passing.
It has a rather nonchalant hands-in-pockets style due to the invisible handlebars.
So many passers-by have asked me what it is and I’ve had to tell them that it’s a “non standard human powered vehicle or NSHPV, specifically a Linear long Wheelbase Recumbent Bike, made in Iowa, USA” that I did think of getting an information card printed and attached to the bike, but it would make it look like a museum exhibit. Questions like “What sort of contraption is that?” (See above). “Did you make it yourself” (No). “Where are the handlebars?” (Down there). “Is it comfortable?” (Yes). “Is it fast?”(Define fast. Probably not with me on it). “Is it hard to ride?”(It took a while to get used to).“Can you get up hills?” (Yes). “How many gears?” (42). “Go on. Do a wheelie!” (Get lost.)
It certainly makes me smile, and it has that effect on others too. There are longer recumbents, lower recumbents, faster recumbents but where are they all? I have fleetingly seen three in the last year, and two of those were trikes. It would be interesting to meet other recumbent riders and compare experiences. Fortunately I am content with my own company, and don’t usually do group rides.
So, verdict so far? On paper, it’s just a bike but somehow it’s more than “just a bike”. It is more than the sum of its unlikely collection of parts. Its most striking feature is its length. Even @Mr Magoo has described it as a “Dutch Barge”. There is something boat like about it, but also a curious sensation of flying along 2’ off the ground. It was a lucky choice for a new recumbentist like myself. Would I be faster on a lighter short wheelbase ‘bent? Possibly, but how much would I have to spend for what gain? I must admit to being curious about other types of recumbents. Something that folds smaller than this one would be interesting. Would I be comfortable riding something more twitchy? I have a long way to go with exploring the possibilities of this one yet. Still, for me, having sampled the Darkside of 'bent riding, there is no going back.
To return to the subject of my poor battered perineum. With this comfortable seat, it’s definitely having a better time, as are my neck, hands and feet. The Linear probably is only marginally faster than my steel tourer (same power unit) unless into a headwind or downhill but there is less need to stop and ease the aches and pains. So the overall average is probably better, and it’s a very comfortable ride. The limiting factor now is bladder capacity. As this bike has all the stealth capabilities of the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba it’s not so easy to just stop and disappear behind a hedge unnoticed.
