Why Ride Recumbents 4: After Injury or Illness

• published: 23 Nov 2015
• views: 430

Why do people ride recumbent bikes and trikes? One reason for many people is that injury or illness can make it very uncomfortable or impossible to ride a standard diamond-frame bike. Recumbent bikes and trikes are much easier on the back, neck, and seat. Recumbent trikes can be ridden even if you have problems with balance. The five stories in this video are just a few examples showing how recumbents change people's lives by allowing more people to get out and ride. This video is part of a series of videos sponsored by both Catrike and Easy Street Recumbents of Austin, Texas. We are grateful for their support. A few words about making these videos: The interviews are mostly culled from several hours of interview footage collected at the 2015 Heart of Texas Recumbent Rally. The unexpected weekend Texas freeze cancelled all of the riding events this year, so we all had to make do with visiting, eating, and drinking in Austin. Everyone I talked to said they had a great time! But this also left a lot of time for interviews, so it was fortunate that Phil Allen and I had come down on Thursday with his lighting, mikes, backgrounds, and camera equipment for the interview setup. My wife, Patti, tried to come down on Friday morning and the highways from Dallas to Austin were closed! A word or few about Phil: Phil Allen is a professional videographer and editor, with (among other awards and accolades) a Texas Emmy under his belt for the documentary "A Fair To Remember" about the history of the Texas State Fair. Phil did all of the "studio" interviews you see in these videos. Ironically, there are also a few outdoor interviews of his that we are using from the 2010 "Texas Catrike Rally" in Dallas, the first rally organized by Jane Knight, that preceded the Austin-based Heart of Texas Recumbent Rallies. This is ironic because I has asked him to come by and film this group at the Sonic while we were stopped for lunch, since it was near his house, and he might be able to use it as a a documentary subject. 5 years later and here it is finally getting used. Phil also provided technical and creative guidance on assembling these videos. And Phil created the 30-second commercial intro used on each video, including the narration. (I just replaced his stock video clips with riders from my video archive.) I have been filming Catrike and HOT Recumbent Rallies since about 2010, and started editing and posting them just for fun. I have also been collecting video footage at various riding events since 2010 (sometimes riding with 2 or 3 cameras going) and that archive has come in handy for this project. After the first HOT Rally video posted, Mike Librik (Easy Street Recumbents owner) asked me to keep doing it each year. Mike kept wanting more interview footage, and I finally got him to bring in professional help from Phil in 2015. While I have spent many weekends planning out these videos and editing them together from the hours of interviews and years of riding video archive, I could not have put this together as well without Phil's guidance and insights. Phil and I have known each other since our kids started in school together in 1999. This is the first video project we have been able to work on together and I am very happy with the results. I hope you are too. Steve Erickson