Erik Fetch, spotted Saturday at the Scotts Valley Farmers Market, rode a standard bicycle the equivalent of 10 times around the world before he decided to try a recumbent bicycle. That’s the kind you lean back on and pedal with your feet in front rather than down below.
Like most cyclists, he thought recumbents were quirky and weird.
But his experience riding his new Bacchetta Corsa changed his thinking.
Now he loves to “torture” riders on traditional bikes by either passing them up or toying with them on hills. The older recumbents were awkward and slow, and did poorly on hills. The newer ones he sells through his Bike Doctor mobile repair business couldn’t be more different.
“The old thinking of slow and inefficient is no more,” said Fetch. “These bikes are not your old recumbent. They are, in some categories, more sporty and quicker than a typical road bike.”
His Corsa has a shorter wheel base that puts you over the wheels instead of between them, he said. You lean back a bit more and pretty much look straight at your feet.
“That’s fantastic for aerodynamics, which makes these bikes faster than a typical road bike,” he added.
It’s like sports car handling compared to that of a Cadillac, Fetch said. You get used to it and end up loving the quick response.
Fetch typically recommends that riders try out one of his bikes for a week before deciding to buy one. If you are new to this type of bike, it takes a few days of riding to really get comfortable, he said — a recumbent has a much different ride than a standard road bike.
“Most people have recumbents in a category of strange,” said Fetch, a former road racer with more than 250,000 miles of riding under his belt.
“All they know is that it looks odd and that it looks comfortable. I guess with over 100 years of seeing people on a standard road bike configuration, anything else would look odd.”
Fetch’s recumbents cost about the same as a quality road bike, between $1,200 and $2,000, depending on the model.
For information: 408-202-8833,[email protected] or www.thebikedoctor.net/.
