Monday, August 27, 2012

More on the Hase Pino!

Yesterday, my husband and I woke up bright and early to drive five and a half hours to Pella, IA in the rain.  We were going  to test drive a Hase Pino. It was the closest one that we could find to us to try out.

 It's a fun tandem that's a combination recumbent and hybrid bike.  The stoker sits in the front (the princess seat) and the captain sits in the back in an upright position.  We both really enjoyed riding the bike and decided to take the plunge and buy it for a self-supported tour we plan to do next spring as soon as he retires.

It takes a little learning to be able to ride this bike.  First, an experienced captain takes the new captain out for a ride in the stoker's position to see how it feels.

My husband, Jim,  in the "Princess Seat" on his virgin ride on the  Pino.  It's a little scary that first time.  The man in the back is Marty, the owner of the LBS (local bike shop), in Pella, IA.


Next, the new captain rides the bike solo in the captain's seat to get used to the bike.  After that, the new captain takes the experienced captain for a ride....

Finally, the new captain, "Capt'n Jim" takes the new stoker "Princess Kay" for a ride.  Wheee, what fun!!!  I have no pictures of both of us yet on the bike.

We felt like the bike would be awesome for enjoying our long tour together next summer.  We can easily talk to each other as we ride, and perhaps take turns in the each position to give each other a break from being in the same position for hours on long rides.  The bike is great because it can be easily broken down into two pieces to fit inside our Prius, or to go into bike boxes to get the bike on Amtrak etc.

All good bikes have to have a name...so on the five and a half hour drive home, we thought of names...Silver, Germinator (the bike is from Germany and we wanted a strong name kind of like The Terminator), Ra (number one Egyptian sun god...also short for "the Relationship Accelerator"  which TreeHugger.com coined the Pino), but we think we might call it JaK....a combination of Jim, the captain,  and Kay, the princess.  We'll see how that name works.

After plunking down a lot of money for the bike and spending over eleven hours to and from the not so local LBS....JaK is sitting in the back of our Prius this morning waiting patiently to be unloaded and strut his stuff....

More to come on JaK and the adventures of Capt'n Jim (CJ) and Princess Kay (PK)!

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