Completely self indulgent post. This week I said goodbye to my fujin SL2, complete with the Burrows mono blade and VK2 fairing box. I have got too fat, heavy and unfit to ride it anymore and it's been sitting in the shed judging me for the last few years. Lockdown has made me realise it's tim eto move on.
Now it is in the hands of a younger, fitter and significantly lighter man who will I think make it fly again. (after he's benched it for a bit)
I had the best adventures on that machine. I only got into recumbents because of back problems - and then had a Renaissance, going further, and faster than I ever did on traditional bikes. It was a glorious 10 years. At one point I actually got properly fit too.
I nearly did a great PBP but tendonitis hit, which saved me from ending up in hospital from to much proplus.
Mostly what I loved was that in the right conditions, on the right sort of roads - it was/is a missile. No upright can offer that experience. Road Luge.
I enjoyed the constant workshop needs - the fact it was never a 'bike' but more of a constant prototyping experiment.
The rush of burning past cyclists far better and stronger than me never paled. Crowning in a long descent on the Costa Blanca where I built up enough speed to fly by a German national team chaingang giving it their all - I can still hear the 'whoop whoop' and the dropping of the chasers before I made a sharp turn into a cafe stop. Total joy, still makes me smile. In some way I never stopped being 12 and this bike was a time machine.
I loved the years I was in audax and the lonely nights where one might see a red tail light far away, and the dawning light, the intense smells of lonely lanes in the small hours. Stopping for a coffee and staring at the floor like all the other middle aged chaps.
Plus good people, because to ride this way demands a certain ability to defy convention, to want more than to look like Armstrong (although that's exactly what I wanted when I started the adventure).
Very happy days.