Introduction to Recumbents

[emily_in_nc]

You're living the good life, so it seems. I'd love to travel around in an RV and when my DH retires, I hope that'll be on our bucket list. I almost made it to FL a couple wks ago to meet up with my photography forum for a photo shoot in the Everglades, however, I caught a cold right before the tripand decided to postpone the trip for when I felt better. I love the Everglades for birding, gator watching and photography in general. Also like to ride the Shark Valley Trail and take pics along the way. If you get down to the glades do consider riding that trail, it's amazing. http://bikeflorida.net/sharkvalley_everglades_trail.htm

That sounds nice (well, except for the gators!) We aren't planning on heading south, though. We are parked in a campground in Winter Garden, west of Orlando, and will eventually be heading north from here in a general path towards my mother's home in western NC, to pick up our other bikes and more of our stuff (tools, etc.) that we need in the RV. We will not head that way until it warms up, though; it's been cold for us here! There are great bike trails here: the West Orange Trail and the Lake trail in Lake County (we're very close to the county line so can go in either direction). Lake County even has hills, which was a surprise. Both trails are just gorgeous, well-maintained, wide, and not crowded during the week.

Yes, we are living the good life (OUR good life, wouldn't work for everyone). We get restless if we settle down anywhere for too long, so this works for us for now. We are amazed how many other folks are living nomadically these days, not only in RVs. During our year of travel in the US, we rented condos and homes through VRBO and Airbnb, but that was a bit more difficult as we had to find pet friendly accommodations for our dog AND within our budget, which limited our selection and places we could go quite a bit. Now we have more options.

Do you own folding bikes for the convenience of transport? I have three folders at the moment (2 Dahons and one Citizen) and used to own a Bike Friday New World Tourist and a Brompton, both which have been sold. My go-to bikes are the Dahons since they're well made, in my opinion, lightweight and very affordable.

You have a lot of bikes! We originally bought the Bike Fridays in 2004 to do a self-supported tour in upstate NY, and yes, we wanted them for ease of transport. Since then we've mostly used them as our utility bikes, to haul groceries, etc. And we took them to Mexico and back in their suitcases on the plane. Love them for that! But that was actually the first time we'd flown with them. Before we'd folded them into their soft-sided bag and carried them in our various cars.

I'm familiar with Mt. Airy Bikes, having lived in MD and No VA. In fact I took one of Larry's Tour Easy's out for a test ride along the country roads of Mt. Airy before buying my TE. I'd also done a group ride or two that Larry hosted in Washington, DC -- the Moonlight Monument Ride. It was a fun time as we rode along DC streets on a weeknight, so the streets were fairly quiet, going from monument to monument.

That sounds like a blast!