My new bike!

I confess, I’m a latecomer to the world of bikes. Since moving to Portland 14 years ago, I’ve been the non-biker in a world of very bikey folks. All of my friends bike, they transport their kids by bike, and in 17 years of employment, my sweetheart has never yet commuted by car. In fact, when we were promoting an album, I had to make it a condition of our touring together that he let me teach him to drive. He was 25.

With extreme positive peer pressure as a constant, friends have marveled at my bike-free existence. For years they couldn’t believe I’d rather ride the bus or spend 45 minutes walking to work when it was a 15 minute bike ride. It all comes down to the fact that conventional bikes don’t work (never have worked) for my body. Doesn’t matter what kind of saddle you put on the thing; I can’t ride it. Why not a recumbent? Because recumbents never seemed right to me. It always struck me as too risky to sit below the height of a window in a car door, and just thinking about the posture required to ride a recumbent makes my neck hurt.

Enter crank forward. A few years ago I rode the Giant Revive and fell in love. Finally! A bike I could ride! After years of feeling left out of all bikeyness, it was crazy liberating to tool around Portland with the wind in my face. The crank forward design (along with a super-wide seat, good shocks and lumbar support) worked perfectly for my body. And unlike recumbents, this bike had me at the level of other cyclists and sitting entirely upright. Only after a couple of years with my Revive did I begin to mind that it weighed 45lbs. and had only 7 gears.

So, last weekend I handed off the Revive to a friend who struggles as I did with conventional bikes, and treated myself to a Rans Fusion. I gave up my shocks and lumbar support in favor of a bike that weighs half as much and has 3X the number of gears. What makes the Fusion work for me? It’s the crank forward thing. I’m a bit of a zealot now about this design, but I feel compelled to spread the word. I know there are tons of folks like me who never spent one comfortable minute on a conventional bike. Maybe they never thought about it long enough to know why. So pass it on: crank forward is the next wave. Sure, they look pretty goofy. But so do helmets and grease stains on your calf. That never stopped bikey folks.