9.25 mile bike ride tonight, and I’ve made an Executive Decision: this weekend, I’m going to go to a bike shop and rent another bike, maybe a recumbant, to test out. A 9 mile bike ride left me with numb fingers and a sore spot under my right shoulderblade and a sort of distressingly thick spot in my lower back (it doesn’t hurt, it just feels … thick) and I’ve decided I’m not going to spend a whole summer biking like that. I don’t know if I’ll ultimately rebuild the mountain bike I’ve got into a touring bike or if I’ll buy a touring bike or what, but I’m going to spend a few weekends testing out other types of bikes and see what I like. I don’t know if I want to sacrifice my mountain bike to a hybrid or not, but, well. I donno. I don’t do /that/ much trail biking. I’ll have to think about it. But I’m going to start testing out other bikes, because bah. This is no good!
I decided that every 4 miles of biking equals 1 mile of walking, so:
miles to Rivendell: 16.5
Trail riding on a recumbant sounds kind of scary. Could you see where you were going when headed uphill?
If you don’t do much trail riding, a non-mountain bike would probably be a good idea. They give you a lot better milage for the same effort (think gas in your jeep vs. in my toyota) and the posture of some of the other types is easier on you than that of a mountain bike. If you go for a hybrid, you can still do some trail riding, as long as the trail isn’t truly dreadful, just not singletrack stuff.
Oh no. I wouldn’t go trail biking on a recumbent. *laugh* That’d be suicidal.
But yeah, the whole posture thing is clearly going to be an issue. Bah. Anybody know anything about touring bikes? :)