moonrise

Thanks! We first saw a pair of recumbent trikes last year when we were driving through a local park, and I couldn't believe it! I've got a bad knee due to a fall in the shower several years ago, and riding a regular bike isn't possible, but I was sure I could ride a recumbent trike. We hurried home, did some searching on the internet, thinking they'd cost maybe $500 or $600. We were ready to buy two of them right then and there! But we were shocked when we found how much they actually are. The ones like we saw in the park are $2,200 each just for the basic model, and the prices skyrocketed from there! OUCH! That wasn't in the budget at all. But we kept looking, and read online that some people had built their own. DH is quite handy, and we found some plans online, so he gave it a try, and within just a couple of months, he had the first trike built, and the second one followed shortly afterwards. We ended up spending around $500 for both of them. We had to buy a welder, steel, vinyl for the seats, various odds and ends, and some used and broken bikes (some free; some not) but $500 is infinitely better than spending $4,400 or more.

Here's a video I made a couple of months ago. It's loud for the first couple of seconds. A noisy truck was passing by on the road behind us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR2YBfkGc_I

And here's a rather funny video of the very first time DH took my freshly-built trike out for a test ride. It still needed lots of adjustments, especially getting the gears right, and he couldn't initially climb our hill. He pedaled as far as it would go, then said, "I'm stuck". The way he said it still cracks me up! The seat was just plywood at that time, and the steel was bare metal. He didn't want to paint it or do the seat covering until the mechanical kinks had been worked out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwZ5Yv6BXkA

We've had a BLAST with them!