Interesting Personal Transport



check this out!!

easy-glider.com

Weird trike looking thing… but it looks like fun!

Yeah that easy-glider does look cool but it has a motor. :slight_smile:

Ok motor has its place too but as an old HPV one want muscle driven bikes.

I’ve seen the Trikke on video but the wide rocking action necessary to move it forward seems impractical to me. Also your hands are needed to steer it. For the about the same price I’d get a Magic Wheel instead. No hands to steer. No rocking back and forth to move. If you can skateboard, you’ll be up on this in no time.

Magic Wheel do look great. i’ve seen the video too.

Yes it looks awesome when he rides it but doesn’t it take an awful lot of practice to become so good at keeping balance?

Don’t read bikeforums reaction to that Magic Wheel. They where rolling on the floor and couln’t bear themselves over how ridiculous they found it to be.

I felt bad about the designer if he reads it. I thought the MW to be an innovative thing to come up with.

To use it in public transport maybe even a 20" wheel would be even better than 26? easier to put into a bag if the authorities on the Train or bus get into rules on No Skating allowed here.

So you have actually ride the thing? How long took it for you to master it?

Are you good at LongBoards and such.

No, I don’t use a longboard or any skateboard for that matter, not since I was a kid anyway. I’ve never tried a Magic Wheel but I have one on the way to me only because I got it really cheap and plan on making it a gift to a young skate-boarding nephew. Maybe I’ll get to try it out, too, and let you know my thoughts on it. I don’t imagine it would be suitable to anyone who had trouble balancing a Strida, though. I had a 10-second learning curve on my Strida 5.0 and have been very comfortable with its handling ever since.

If you have balancing problems, maybe you should consider something with three wheels. If you’re still looking at a folder, I see that Pacific Cycles has a trike version of their Carry Me called the Carry All.

Yes and no. :slight_smile:

Yes I very much do consider to buy a Carryall from Pacific Cycle when they become available late summer 2008 or so. They still have not presented the specification for it on the homepage. They still have no entry there, only early news that it is planned to be available. They still test ride it and make late changes to it.

It would suite me very good when the streets is icy and snowy here.

But No! :slight_smile:

I have no problem with ordinary bikes. Me jump on any standard bike
in the bike shop and have no problem keeping balance on them.

I have seven and have had 9 ordinary bikes and have no problem
with any of these. I’m disappointed with one of them but have no problem keeping balance on that one either.

So sure I am not as good at balance as the rest of you but I’m not that
bad that I have trouble with standard bikes. The ride ability of a Strida
is not standard. It is a bike that is a bit unusual.

Though most people do learn it in ten seconds. Standard brains
are that flexible while mine is not. So standard bikes are built to
even allow me to ride but non-standard bikes need the great
learning flexibility of a standard brain.

Take such thing as a mono-wheel. Not everybody get good at
balancing on such either.

Steedman who bought the rights to own design of Strida? he wanted
the geometry of the Strida 3 to be fine tuned so more people would
accept it’s odd behavior and people do recognize that it behaves better
than the original Strida does. So they managed to make it easier to learn.

I’m still too slow in head though. Attention deficit or what it could be. :slight_smile:

(was his name Steedman or Steadman? Sorry)

I didn’t mean to imply you can’t ride bicycles. You’ve stated many times how you were not able to ride a Strida so I suggested the CarryAll, which you already knew about, because three wheels would eliminate balance issues and still allow you to fold the thing up.

When I began riding recumbents years ago it took me a while to learn, about 10 minutes just to avoid falling over and several days to become comfortable enough for long rides. I now race an Optima Baron where I’m almost fully reclined on my back while riding. Some of my friends have gravitated to recumbent trikes because they like them, not because of balance problems. Yes, the Strida was a little twitchy at first, but my first recumbent was much more so - I’ve never fallen from the Strida but can’t say the same about the recumbent. I persevered and now ride both comfortably.

Yes ,sorry my English is so and so which comes in our way sort of.
So me didn’t imply things either. I fail to smooth talk in English.

I come through very soically clumsy. :slight_smile:

Yes recumbents seems to require practice for most people.
That is a known thing but none told me in advance that Strida
was like that. ten seconds they told me. At most 15 seconds
so me are different.

Maybe Strida could be used to diagnose ADD or ADHD problems?

No apology is necessary for your English, which is fine. I can’t even attempt Swedish, Cantonese, Thai, Indonesian or any of the other native languages of the posters here. I count myself lucky there are those here that can easily communicate in the English. It makes me feel pretty dumb really.

The Strida may just take more time for you to adjust to than it does most others. Your test rides seemed too short to determine whether you could ultimately succeed. It has nothing to do with ADD.

I wrote an email to Strida in UK. Here are their answer about steering.

That could be their polite way to refer to people like me with ADD tendencies.
I am sure of that I don’t look at birds I am one hundred percent concentrated on riding but my brain fail to keep up with the challenge.

I’ve been slow like that my whole life so it is not an attitude. I don’t think it is practice either. I’ve practiced playing music instruments my whole life too and I am still too slow to be able to play with others. I’m lagging behind in tempo. Not on time. :slight_smile: A weakling indeed.

Here is the part in my original email to Strida UK.

Most reviews that ever mention this “difference about Strida” insist it only take at most 15 seconds but private correspondents say it took them minutes and some even more.

So I did test it for two minutes in the shop. None said that two minutes would be too short to get the hang on the balance.

So I am not sure of what to think of the hiding of this fact. Strida kind of downplay that Strida is very different. Only recumbent bikes have this “learning” curve but that is usually admitted by their supporters. Some of them admit it took hours to learn it and some say it took a week to be confident enough to get out in traffic with their recumbent.

This wikipedia text try to explain what makes a bike behave well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_geometry

This one maybe even better text?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynamics

I wish me could understand such technical text.

Is this how the Strida is built?

Does the Strida have negative trail?

I dont think Strida has particularly weird steering geometry… Bikes geometry is covered by the tests they have to pass.
The most unusual aspects are short wheelbase and upright riding position.

This is covered in the inventors TIPs which is on Strida UK service site.
(this was also put in another discussion … and yes i must join … but a couple less passwords to do each day helps :smiley: )
http://www.strida.co.uk/media/uploads/faqs/strida_faq_197_Strida_Tips_V3_from_Mark.pdf

He makes the point that many bikes are designed more for racing which is not good around town due to bent back and neck.

I like the way Strida handles it feels fun to me, and great for in traffic.
I guess that if you got one you would soon get used to it and then other bikes will not feel so fun :smiley:

that is not as I see it :slight_smile:

I have used a Microbike (Swedish design now out of biz) for
some 10 years and that one have even shorter wheelbase
and same upright position.

Steedman when he bought the rights from Mark Sanders
did it with the agreement that they together would find
out a better geometry and do much testing to find the best
compromise. They make a test Strida that had every part
adjustable.

I wish somebody who know these things could measure
the known bikes and tell us the numbers of each so one
could compare them.

I’m trying to find the wheelbase for Strida.
MB has 950 mm some 37.5"
Strida 16" wheel and my old MB has 12" wheels

I’ve found that it is not a Trikke actually. It is called SLIDER The UNscooter.
They are similar in appearance but are totally different in structure and principle.
unscooter.com
youtube.com/watch?v=L42UPF_gBHM
youtube.com/watch?v=DTiOxfbk3vc

Unscooter vs. Trikke vs. Wave vs. PowerWing
youtube.com/watch?v=VaaFn4sjDtc

Trikke vs. bike
youtube.com/watch?v=XBv_47RSbCs

Former US President Jimmy Carter riding his Trikke:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ruKPiEAzz4