How do you trike that? Rider Eva Stern is unapologetic about her three-wheeled vehicle. (Wireimage)
Eva Stern rolls with a certain crew. The native New Yorker holds a master’s degree, was feted last year for her humanitarian work and lives in her own apartment in Greenwich Village. But when it comes to biking, her life isn’t lived in the fast lane — and her crew is made up of the grammar-school kids who, like Stern, have a wheely embarrassing secret: She still rides a tricycle.
More than 20 years after a traumatic bike fall, the 30-year-old training director for a nonprofit still can’t look at a two-wheeler without wincing.
“I totally feel like I missed out on biking,” she says of her largely bike-free youth.
Not wanting to be left out altogether, her only option was the adult tricycle she discovered on a family trip to the Jersey Shore when she was a teen. A recreational rider who now jumps at every chance she gets, she’s been riding one ever since.
With city biking in sharper focus these days — Mayor Bloomberg is a vocal champion of biking over mass transit, and is rolling out plans for expanded bike lanes and programs for bike sharing — certain New Yorkers left behind by those two-wheel showoffs now have their chance to hit the pavement. They’re not setting out to win the Tour de France — or even a Tour de TriBeCa — but a growing number of bike-phobes still want to burn rubber like the rest of us . . . they just need a little extra support.
Wayne Sosin, president of Worksman Cycles, a bicycle-manufacturing mecca in Ozone Park, Queens, says he’s seen a major shift in the adult trike market over the years. “People who would ordinarily be too shy or embarrassed to admit they don’t know how to ride a bike are giving it a shot,” he says of the current trike wave.
“They want to ride like everyone else.”
Sosin’s most popular model — the sporty Port-O-Trike, which starts at $300 — is the go-to recreational vehicle. But for trike enthusiasts looking to burn some money along with their rubber, souped-up heavy-duty models called Personal Activity Vehicles (PAVs) can easily crack the $1,000 mark.
Childhood accidents aside, why have so many New Yorkers never learned to brave a traditional bike? According to Brent Tongco, communications director for Bike New York, participants at his adult bike clinics cited a number of reasons for never having learned to ride in their childhood — from overprotective moms to the difficulties of learning how to ride in a city environment.
While it’s a sore subject for some, the trike apologists somehow pull it off.
“I’d rather have someone think I look funny than have a broken paw,” says a defiant Heidi Aurora. It’s been 15 years since Aurora has ridden a traditional two-wheeler. After a bad bike accident left her with a broken arm and lingering psychological scars, she thought her days of cruising were behind her. Until two years ago, when she discovered the adult trike — and she’s been on a roll ever since.
The irony is as thick as her giant tires: Aurora’s the customer-service rep for the Queens-based bicycle-manufacturing behemoth, yet doesn’t feel comfortable on a two-wheeler. That hasn’t stopped the 41-year-old from tearing up the streets of Howard Beach on her trike — by all accounts, the Cadillac of trikes — which looks like a Harley-Davidson’s precocious baby cousin.
But Aurora takes the attention — and occasionally, the spontaneous bid to buy her wheels — in stride.
“I always get comments: ‘Where did you get that thing?’ When you ride around Queens on a tricycle, you can’t go unnoticed.” But she’s won street cred from the neighborhood kids with her curious bike. “It looks cool — I think — and if the kids think it’s cool, then my fears are appeased.”
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