We've been here in Texas for almost three weeks now and I've been riding the Cruzbike exclusively since our arrival. Although I've not minded it, it wasn't by choice. We try to limit the amount of stuff we bring down here, although truth be told it looks like we're moving, so I only brought one road bike plus the recumbent. The bike I brought was the Hampsten, or at least half of it.
I've been wanting to have a third bottle cage installed on the Hampsten for quite a while. There have been several rides I've done where there were long stretches without water and in the past I've either used a CamelBak or bought a bottle of water that I stuck in my saddlebag. Neither was a very good solution - the CamelBak makes my shoulders/neck hurt and buying single use plastic bottles is wasteful. So at any rate, I decided to get the additional cage installed on the downtube so I sent it off a week before Christmas. Since it's a S&S coupled bike, I only needed to send the front part of the bike and I brought the remainder with us.
So the only bike I've had here is the recumbent and that's what I've been riding. I've got about 600 miles on it now and am pretty comfortable riding it. I've been tweaking the fit and setup and still don't quite have it right. I rode it today and felt like I was reaching for the bars a bit too much causing tension in my shoulders so I moved them back a bit. Also, the headrest just isn't comfortable. I've tried a number of different pads inside it and have moved it up/down trying to find the right spot. I'm doing my Fredericksburg 100K loop route tomorrow and we'll see how it goes.
Other than that, I'm enjoying riding it. I've changed a bunch of stuff on it since I bought it including changing from the 1X drivetrain to a compact double which necessitated changing the handlebars and brake levers. The longest ride I've done to this point is 51 miles and the steepest climb I've done is 14% so I feel as though I can ride it just about everywhere here. Having said that, I'm not fully acclimated to it. My "bent legs" are getting stronger but it's still the case that after 30 miles or so they're feeling pretty tired which obviously isn't the case with the DF.
I'm doing a 1200K in March so I'll start riding the Hampsten mostly when it comes back, which should happen in a couple of days. I'm curious to see how my legs feel riding a DF after riding the recumbent exclusively for almost a month.
We'll see.
