BIKE: riders of upright bikes: I need your input

[Mike Librik or Amy Babich]

My concern involves the usefulness of the Gravity Dropper seat post as
an aid to easier urban bicycling. Gravity Dropper's poorly made website
can be viewed at http://www.gravitydropper.com . But in a nutshell, this
is a seatpost for an upright bike that drops 3 inches by actuating a
lever on the handlebar, and returns 3 inches upward when the lever is
pulled back.

The intended market for this product is those mountain bikers who find
lower seat heights better for steep decents. My thought upon seeing this
doo-hickey in a trade journal was about how much difficulty MTB and road
riders have in tricky stop situations, such as blind intersections or
complex 4-way stops where nobody knows what is going on. Normally, the
seat is raised to where the rider can get full leg extension while on
the pedals, but this precludes an instant reach to the ground. One can
shift out of the seat (or back up to it), but this introduces a delay in
which one cannot easily abort back to the position from which one
started. Possibly some upright bike riders know what I mean by all this.
Plenty of recumbents have this problem too, but some do not, and those
are the ones I particularly recommend for city traffic due to this ease
of stopping and starting.

So what I need is this: at some convenient time, please drop your
seatpost exactly 3 inches beneath where you like it, and see if this
position is far enough down to allow you to easily plant your foot while
still in the seat. Also, see if your time crossing intersections,
starting from a full "one foot flat on the ground" stop, improves
significantly with the seat three inches lower. Complete stops and fast
starts are what I am concerned with.

I would perform this experiment myself, but all I have in the upright
bike department is an electric bike whose seat tube is bent to fit
around the motor, so it lacks the range of adjustment I need.

Feel free to contact me with any questions about this.

I would particularly like to hear feedback from former Urban Cycling
students, since you are familiar with our yielding and stopping
techniques developed therein, and the communication theory underlying
them.

--
Mike Librik
Easy Street Recumbents
512-453-0438
45th and Red River St.
Central Austin
info
www.easystreetrecumbents.com
www.urbancycling.com