Advice needed on an adult trike for my 72 year old mom

April 21, 2007 10:09 AM

Any suggestions for a good adult trike? My concerns are: Stability, portability, and features.

My mom is in her early 70's and has never known how to ride a two-wheeler but she wants to go riding with my dad (who rides 15 miles a day) on his bike rides.

So my siblings and I think an Adult trike would be a good option but we have concerns about them tipping while turning and things of that nature. Another concern too is how transportable they are because I want it to be easy for my dad to get on and off of his hitch-mounted bike carrier.

posted by jtoth to sports, hobbies, & recreation (8 comments total)

Could you get your mom a set of training wheels? That would be a lot cheaper for her to try biking before investing in one of these three wheeled recumbents.

I think of adult tricycles as something like this, that you wouldn't want to ride 15 miles on.

If she really wants to shell out some dough, how about a velocipede?
posted by Frank Grimes at 10:52 AM on April 21, 2007

I've ridden a reverse trike--two wheels in front, which made it more stable. It was really low to the ground, which might make it awkward for your mom to get on and off. Portability wasn't easy. The owner was a collector of odd bikes and had a trailer to carry them around.

Has your mom said she doesn't want to learn to ride a two-wheeler? She may surprise you. How about a regular recumbant? They're very comfortable and she can keep both feet on the ground. Or a tandem recumbent?
posted by hydrophonic at 11:19 AM on April 21, 2007

Bully for your mom. But your worries about a trike tipping are well-founded. Unless you're going very slow, a trike arguably requires more technique to ride than a bike.

If she's going to get comfortable enough riding to travel 15 miles a day, she'll get good enough to ride a bike. But I can see how getting over the hump of learning to ride at 70 would be daunting.

A recumbent trike would be another option. These are not immune from tipping either, but generally have a very low center of gravity. The TerraTrike on the page that FG linked to is pretty spendy, but as tadpole trikes go, it's actually pretty cheap, and would be a good option as these things go.

Any trike is going to be relatively heavy and awkward to get on/off a car carrier. Even the smallest, tightest racing trikes. There are a few take-apart recumbents that use C&C connectors, but these are more expensive yet.

There have been a few threads on AskMe about learning to ride as an adult. You might dig those up. Perhaps a conventional "comfort bike" with a fairly low-slung seat would do for learning on, since she'd be able to plant her feet easily.
posted by adamrice at 11:26 AM on April 21, 2007

I covered the trike question in an earlier AskMe, and I'll stand by the recommendation of an EZ-3. As I said there, my then-80-year-old mother-in-law rode the EZ-3 for a couple of years before her death and loved it. It's one of the cheapest decent quality recumbent trikes out there and won a lot of acclaim from riders and reviewers. It used to be the best selling trike, though that was a couple of years ago and don't know what's going on with it now. eBay still regularly has them for sale.

Most "adult" trikes that aren't recumbents are pretty crappy to ride and the build quality is suspect, even for spending up in a typical $400 range -- while $400 can get you a decent quality bicycle.

I also continue to ride a recumbent trike, switching off with my regular recumbent, but my trike is a Lepus, a German import which costs a serious amount of money for "normal" people and probably not what you're looking for. However, if you have any general questions about triking that aren't covered in the resources linked to in the original AskMe, or by others' posts, I'll take a stab at answering them from a personal viewpoint. Not that I'm 72 years old, but damn, it is a milestone approaching much faster than I would prefer.
posted by mdevore at 11:55 AM on April 21, 2007

Also, if you need help convincing your mother that she can handle a recumbent trike, a picture can be worth a thousand words. So here is a picture of the late Lois at 81 years of age on her EZ-3. Her rheumatoid arthritis didn't keep her from riding it, either.
posted by mdevore at 12:06 PM on April 21, 2007

Thanks everyone for the info. I don't know that she will ride 15 miles per day, but my dad does. I wouldn't try to teach her to ride a two-wheeler at her age, she's had some health setbacks and it's just too risky.

The good thing is that in RI we have a statewide bike path (former railroad routes) which is very nicely kept and is traffic lighted at every cross street. It's a safer place to ride rather than on the open streets.

the EZ-3 is something I hadn't yet seen and I think it's probably just right for her needs. Thanks again for all of this great info!
posted by jtoth at 12:37 PM on April 21, 2007

A few further remarks from someone who went shopping with a little old lady to buy a trike. Feel free to ignore them as irrelevant or presumptous.

Your mother needs to buy into the whole trike idea rather, than have it presented as a done deal as that could lead her to reject or resent rather than embrace the trike as a great tool. Whatever type of trike she buys, it won't be cheap compared to a Wal-mart special, so she needs to try out the trike on a test ride or two if possible, get a mental picture of herself cruising along with the wind blowing her hair, yadda, yadda. This is particularly true of recumbents which, because of economies of scale, cost more than regular bikes and trikes (e.g. Huffy probably pumps out 1000 bikes for every recumbent made). Also, prices on the EZ-3 and others have likely gone up a $hundred or two from my original post because of the American dollar plunge as a global currency, as the raw material and parts needed to build the vehicles are often imported. Further, many recumbents are priced on USA labor and costs (though this might be a selling point for your mother if she's of that frame of mind).

If possible, try out a few different trike models. My mother-in-law also liked the Triumf but it was more money. It might be cheaper now that it's recently discontinued. Do make sure she understands that any well-built trike can be adjusted to better fit her hand and leg placement preferences, as well.

As far as portability, the EZ-3's handlebars swing down on loosening a bolt and we transported it in a Prius hatchback. An SUV or other roomy hatchback should do OK. Weightwise is kind of hefty, but not terribly so if your mother isn't the one trying to put it in the car.

Oh, and put an easily detached for transport safety flag on the trike. If your mother is like my mother-in-law, her perception on the rules of the road for human-powered vehicles is a bit more, uhh, lax than I find comfortable.
posted by mdevore at 2:40 PM on April 21, 2007

I have one of these folding trikes made by Greenspeed, a small Australian company. (I have no experience with the distributor I linked to, however.) I ride it every day from the train station to work, and it's great. It folds up to fit in a bike locker (with a bit of fussing but no tools required) and it fits in the back seat of our Prius. It won't fit in our trunk, but I think it might squeeze into the trunk of a bigger car.

Here is the manual from Greenspeed in PDF format.

By the way, so called "tadpole" trikes, with 2 wheels in the front, are far more stable than the "delta" format (2 wheels in back). There is no finesse required to ride a tadpole, just sit down and start pedaling.
posted by Quietgal at 2:48 PM on April 21, 2007