Did you take a photo or video of my bike?

Great! I like my bike, too.. If you don’t mind, I’d like a copy of your photo/video, please send the file(s) or a link to dfxl@sparced.org , thank you!

What is it?

It’s a bicycle.. Well, technically, it has three wheels, but it has spoked wheels, pedals and a comfy recumbent seat. The fairing makes it look a bit like a car, but it has no motor and is legally a bike.

Did you build it yourself? Is it expensive?

No, I did not build it myself, but I bought it at InterCityBike in Dronten in the Netherlands. It was built in Romania, because more than a hundred hours of manual labour went into this bike and to keep the price down, it was built there. It isn’t cheap, but still on par with better road racing bikes.

How fast does it get?

It depends on who is driving it 😀 With my current state of training, I can go somewhere around 35km/h for a couple of hours if the conditions let me. My average speed is usually somewhere between 20 and 25km/h for 100km, because I have to speed the heavy bike(~25kg) up at every traffic light and climbing is not much fun either. But the descent after the climb is great and the bike easily reaches 50-60km/h.
My gearing allows me to comfortably pedal anywhere between 6 and 60km/h.

Isn’t it dangerous? Don’t you get overlooked a lot?

With its three wheels, the bike is very stable, even at higher speeds and due to the large contact area with the seat, I pretty much know what’s happening with the bike.

Should I be involved in an accident, the carbon fibre shell will take some of the impact and I will be skidding on the shell, not on my skin. Also: My feet are in front, not my head like on a regular road racing bike.

Unlike on other bikes, car drivers respect me, because they think I’m one of them, only very slow like a tractor. Instead of trying to squeeze past me with only a couple of centimetres to spare, they often change lanes to overtake me like any other car.

As for not seeing me: I chose the colours for my bike very carefully. The bright red is well visible in broad daylight and the bike is about the same size as a fridge/freezer combination. Whoever doesn’t see that should think about selling his car.

At night time, the white half of the bike will reflect incoming headlights very well(and there are also reflectors attached) and there are head-, rear- and braking lights installed.