h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi, that was a pretty interesting article. I am assuming that you are talking from the perspective of living in england. I am from Australia, and I have never seen these bikes outside of long-distance cycle records. Is there a reason that they would not be very popular over here (how do they deal with gravel?).
You spoke of being able to tail slide them, is that on bitumen or some other surface?.

Cheers, drop me a message on my personal space if you like.

Mullett.

Very good article, Recumbentman... I cycle quite a lot in London and I've been interested in recumbents since I read about them in Richard's Bicycle Book when I was a teenager (which was a good few years ago now) yet I've never actually seen one. I'll have a look at bikefix when I have time.

I've got a few suggestions if you'd like to get it into the Edited Guide - I think it's certainly interesting and well-written enough to more than deserve a place there.

You'll have to remove all the 'I's as first-person references aren't allowed in the guide - have a look at the Writing Guidelines for further details, I'm not any sort of expert, I just had my first entry published and it's something they made me do... I really like your opening line and it would be a shame to change it heavily - you could get round the first person thing by starting it with "A man can often be seen around Dublin cycling a small red machine..."

If you can be bothered to get your head around GuideML, I reckon it'd be well worth making your headings at the start of the paragraphs into actual tabbed headings across the page, just to make the whole thing look a little better.

It might be worth losing the small digression on bike-blindness to keep the article focused on recumbents - as a London cyclist, I agree with you completely on this one and if there isn't one in the Guide already (I haven't looked yet!) bike-blindness could merit a whole article of its own.

I like the historical part about the Velocar near the end... is the site where you found it worth linking to?

Finally - have you considered changing the title to attract readers who don't know what a recumbent is? Maybe just to say 'Recumbent Bicycles Recommended', or 'A Guide to Recumbent Bicycles - the Transport of the Future' or something.

Anyway, stick with it and the best of luck to you.

Cheers,
Number Six

Thanks for the interest and the suggestions -- yeah I reckoned I'd have to third-personalise it to please the Guide . . . just sort of putting it off. I'm new to h2g2 but GuideML shouldn't be a problem, and I agree it would improve the readability. I have a longer piece that I wrote about my 1000-mile tour from the north to the south of France (12 pages); but that would need stiff editing too.

I can't remember exactly where I found the Velocar quote, but there is a long and very informative article about the whole history on the bikefix site: "Winning Forbidden: The History of the Recumbent Bicycle", complete with pictures.

I never realised there was a whole other thread actually in Peer Review I should have been posting on... shows just how much I know!

I thought it was a bit strange your article didn't seem to be getting the attention it deserved - I'll be over on Peer Review from now on.