When I was a young man, late teens, early 20’s, life was good. I had a couple of friends and whatever one of us did, we all three did. You know, Danny got a motorcycle, George and Wayne got one. Wayne got a horse, George and Danny got a horse. WHAT? A HORSE? My first horse, I was told, was green broke. I think that meant she had never been successfully ridden. She was carrying a fold when I bought her, so I could not ride her for a while. After she dropped this beautiful app colt, it was time to ride. I found out right away that she didn’t really want a saddle on her and I’m not boring you with any Blazing Saddle stories. Eventually we were off for our first ride. With my friends riding on each side of me, I kept a pretty tight reign on her for the first couple of miles. We were both stressed out pretty well by now so we headed back to the house. As soon as she got within ear range of hearing her colt, I found out that a big wide ass quarter horse mare could jump 10 feet sideways without ever flexing a muscle. There I was, on all fours, still several feet in the air looking at the ground coming up fast yelling WHOA! WHOA! as she sprinted back to her colt with an empty saddle and the stirrups flapping at her sides.
After several years and many miles on this mare, as good as she had become, when she wanted she could still jump 10 feet sideways leaving me in mid-air yelling WHOA. I think ill mannered Python’s may be from the same stables. I’ve spend a couple of ambulatory days after cataract surgery pouring over site after site on the internet and watching many clips on Youtube.
The python is a center-steered low racer. That’s about the only description I find. Being such a broad description, I find many builders are calling their bikes python’s that really do not fit this specialized bike. Credit for the invention of the Python is given to Jürgen Mages. He has a great website and chronicles his python builds very well and gives credit to others that followed with computer programs and other input to take some of the trial and error out of building this bike without handlebars. His site is in French but you can right click on the pages to translate to English.
Following are some of the better links that I found. You can follow them for your own knowledge or amusement. Do I want a python? No, but I think they are way cool. They don’t hold any world records that I am aware of, their not stable at high speeds, they don’t maneuver very well and look about as comfortable as any other recumbent low racer. There are, however, others now riding them for their daily commute.
There is now enough history of python builds that take much of the guess work out of future builds. Pivot angles, seat height, wheel size and negative trail information are now available on several sites. Good luck if you decide to build one and WHOA is yelled out in a very high pitched, screed, tone of panic and apprehension of possible pain that may follow.
Jürgen Mages the man
And his page of links.
Dirk Bonne Excellent site and info
Wiki that will give all the info needed or links to any info needed. Nuf said.
Some of my favorite Youtube clips.
Easy, easy does it.
But he’s steering with handle bars!
I can do it.
Looks like a really good bike he is learning on
This is how it’s done.
Dirk going to town
Dirk really seems to have it together
I know I found some good rides list night but can’t find them this am. I’ll try to add them later.
With all this said, this is not what I started out to study.
An indepth look at the principles of how a bike works and how you ride one. A must read for any serious bike builder or once a year take the trail through the park rider. http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~fajans/Teaching/MoreBikeFiles/JonesBikeBW.pdf
My Recumbent Resources 