I received my 59cm Clem L last week and thought I'd post my initial experience and thoughts.
To put my comments in perspective: I'm 62 years old, 5'9", and have loved riding a bike since my first Schwin Collegiate 5 speed as a kid. Over the years, I've owned Raliegh, Trek, and Cannondale touring bikes. My current bike is an Easy Racer Tour Easy, a long wheelbase recumbent (and a hell of a lot of fun to ride). My riding is mostly on rail-trail (the KATY trail connecting St. Louis and Kansas City), paved bike trails, or groomed desert trails in Arizona. I don't ride in city traffic much anymore due to all the knuckleheads out there. I'd been lurking on the RBW website for a couple of years as well as Sheldon Brown's old site and Peter White's site, trying to figure out what I wanted in my next bike. I seriously considered a Tout Terrain, drooled over the Atlantis, and looked at a number of Gates drive bikes. I kept returning to RBW, mostly over the build philosophy but also because riding the recumbent has convinced me that long chainstays/wheelbases are the way to go. When I saw the Clem L, I was pretty sure I had found the bike. My work life had taken me to Amsterdam a few times where I saw men and women riding step throughs, so I was over the girl/boy bike thing. The step through just makes a lot of sense to me, especially as I get older and less flexible. I also prefer steel frames; my Cannondale was aluminum, and I felt every grain of sand in the road on that thing. It's a leap of faith to buy online without a test ride, but I'm really happy with the bike. The step through design of the Clem L allowed me to go with the larger 59cm frame, which also got me into 29" wheels and even longer chainstays. The stock Kenda's are my first experience with 2" tires, and man do I like how they feel & roll. I'm still tweaking my saddle position (Brooks B67) and handlebar position (Boscos) but I'm really close now. Riding an upright is a different mindset for me. Clearly, I'm not going as fast as other bikes I owned, but that's kinda the point. On the Clem, I'm changing gears to maintain a comfortable cadence and worrying less (actually, not at all) about speed. It's an "I'll get there eventually" style of riding, and I love it. The thumb shifters are funky, fun, and functional. They fall perfectly to hand and are easy to get the hang of. The Boscos are a trip; the wide hand position was unfamiliar at first but I like it already. It's very easy to control the bike. I went with cork grips and love 'em. They're very comfortable, and I haven't felt the need for my padded gloves once. The stock brakes are very good. I feel they will be effective in any condition. The Silver crank is very impressive for this style of bike; it's beefy, stiff, and transmits every ounce of pedal power to motion instantly. The Deore component set is just about perfect for this bike ... nice enough without going over the top. The combination of frame material, geometry and components seems spot-on. The Clem L is a really good bike, and just effortless to ride. I'll be using my Clem in a lot of different ways; riding just for fun, grocery getting/local errands, light trail use, grandkids in a baby seat, and getting to fishing spots from parking areas. I've added the Pletscher Clem rack, mostly because of their EasyFix accessories which snap into it. I bought Pletscher's EasyFix basket and have my eye on their baby seat. I'm adding a Sackville Bar Tube, a frame lock, and replacing the stock kickstand with a longer Pletscher. The stock kickstand feels short to me on the 59 ... the bike leans over more than I would like. Toss in some clip-on lights and that's as far as I'm taking this one. I can't say enough about the RBW purchase experience. My first bike arrived damaged in transit. RBW provided free return shipping, and since they had sold out of pre-built Clems between my order and delivery, they built my replacement bike up from a stock frame and shipped this one in their own packing (vs the stock packing for the Clem kit bikes). It arrived in perfect condition and took all of about 10 minutes to unpack and assemble. Thanks again to Will and Harry for helping me sort out this out quickly and painlessly. I used the time between bikes to condition my rock hard Brooks saddle a couple of times with Proofide. It's still hard as a rock, but I feel better about it. :-) Safe to say I'm a happy customer and looking forward to many years with "Clem!" -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
