Trikes, post-childhood

Rico says he won't be getting his Ural, alas (even though it's half the cost of a new Harley, and even less if he got a used one), but Jesse McKinley has an article in The New York Times about other aging baby-boomers who own trikes:

In his nearly fifty years as an avid motorcyclist, Grady Howard (photo) has roared down the tobacco roads of North Carolina and through the mountains of old Kentucky, all with his wife, Barbara, tucked behind him. But with a balky left leg and myriad other maladies, he knew the only way to stay wild was to add a wheel.
“I told my wife it was either trike it or park it,” said Howard, 74, wearing a cowboy hat and a bright yellow safety shirt. “And she said, ‘Trike it.’ ”
Howard is one of a legion of aging bikers— suffering from aching joints and slowing reflexes— who have abandoned their traditional two-wheel motorcycles in favor of three-wheelers, the super-steady and seemingly safer machines commonly known as trikes. Equal parts Easy Rider and easy chair, the trikes have grown in popularity in recent years, expanding from a do-it-yourself niche to a potentially lucrative market for major manufacturers.
Industry experts say the sale of tens of thousands of trikes, whose sticker prices can rival an upscale sedan’s— a new three-wheeled Harley starts at thirty-one thousand dollars— has helped buoy a slumping industry and kept a generation of born-to-run riders on the roads.
“The baby boomers are getting older, man,” said Steve Stirewalt, a lifelong rider and motorcycle dealer known as Fat Daddy by his friends. “People riding all their lives don’t want to stop just because of bad knees, or bad eyes, or diabetes or something. They want to keep rocking.”
Stirewalt, who is 63 and helped along by a hearing aid, was polishing his three-wheeler— a chrome-on-chrome chopper with a fake alligator-skin seat— at the National East Coast Trike-In, which drew hundreds of trike owners and enthusiasts to Mount Airy, North Carolina over Labor Day weekend.
Alex Ross, aka Iceman, chief executive of the nonprofit trike group Brothers of the Third Wheel, said three-wheelers offered all sorts of advantages, including the comfort and padding to allow drivers to go longer distances without stiffening up. “My wife goes to sleep as soon as we start traveling,” he said. With two bad knees, Ross, 71, switched to trikes about a decade ago but says he has seen the Brothers grow quickly in recent years, with about 250 new members, worldwide, every month. The group now counts chapters in 45 states, and not a feud among them. “We have a pact with all the gangs,” he said. “We don’t interfere with them, and they don’t interfere with us.”
That said, trikes have started to invade more traditional two-wheeled events, purring down highways from Laconia, New Hampshire— home to the longest-running bike rally in the country— to Ruidoso, New Mexico, site of this week’s Golden Aspen Motorcycle Rally, where organizers expect about a third of the bikes to be three-wheelers. “Our predominant crowd is sixty and over, and without a doubt, the trikes are taking over,” said Patric Pearson, owner of the Golden Aspen rally.
Three-wheelers are even a common sight at Harley-happy events like the giant motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota that draws hundreds of thousands of people to the Black Hills every August, including Monte Hochhalter, a 68-year-old truck driver from Longmont, Colorado, who decided to switch to three wheels after some pressure at home.
“My equilibrium isn’t so good anymore,” Hochhalter said. “My wife wouldn’t ride with me.”
Hochhalter was riding a converted 2006 Harley, which cost him $18,000. But the company’s 2013 trike can go for almost twice that, complete with cruise control and a good set of high beams (perfect for older eyes, of course). It also comes with an ample trunk, something Tim Buche, the president of the Motorcycle Industry Council, a trade group, said was important to baby boomers— who make up a third of motorcycle owners.
“Boomers travel,” he said. “And they like to take all their stuff.”
A collection of independent companies has long offered kits to convert two-wheel bikes made by major manufacturers. But in 2008, Harley-Davidson— the industry leader in large touring bikes— announced that it would enter the market with the Tri Glide, working with a smaller company called Lehman Trikes. (In 2010, Harley moved production in-house.) The Tri Glide is now a consistent top-ten seller in several demographic groups, said Scott Habegger, the company’s director of product planning, including the company’s core customers: white men over 35.
But the three-wheelers are tapping into another market: women, including those who may not have been comfortable handling a touring bike, which can weigh nearly a thousand pounds, or were just tired of being relegated to the role of passenger. “I don’t like riding behind him when I drive just as well,” said Melinda Metheney, 52, gesturing to her husband, Paul. She bought her new three-wheeler— a Canadian-built Can-Am Spyder, with two wheels in the front and one in the rear— in February. “I’ve never not beat a car or a motorcycle at a light,” she said.
Chaz Rice, a spokesman for Bombardier Recreational Products, which makes the Can-Am brands, said it posted a 45 percent increase in North American sales in 2011, in part because Spyders were attracting first-time bikers who had never owned a motorcycle but always thought they would look good on one. “They are people who say, ‘I’ve always wanted to experience that motorcycle lifestyle but I never wanted to own a motorcycle,’ ” Rice said.
Buche concurred, saying the trikes had made motorcycling more accessible, something the industry badly needed as sales fell more than forty percent in 2009 as the recession took hold, and an additional fourteen percent a year later. “It’s a product that has broader appeal,” he said. “And that’s the very thing that can help us.”
Part of that appeal has to do with the stability of three-wheelers, which don’t require riders to lean into curves or hold them steady at stoplights, both of which can challenge weak knees and muscles. That said, having three wheels can bring certain social challenges. Advertisements for the Spyder, for example, feature the same kind of handsome graying men common to Viagra ads, and show a grizzled rider of a traditional two-wheeler nodding in approval of the three-wheeler. The reality at rallies, however, can be a little different. “I get ribbed once in a while, people saying I’m an old man,” said David Jenkins, 56, of Dobson, North Carolina, who bought his first trike— a sleek silver Suzuki— two months ago. “I always tell them, when they grow up they should get a real motorcycle, a three-wheeler.”
For his part, Howard said he loved his ride— a 2010 Honda Goldwing converted by a company called Motor Trike. Barbara, his wife of 50 years, says she likes it, too, though she sounds a touch wistful about the couple’s old two-wheel days. “You feel safer,” said Ms. Howard, 73, a retired schoolteacher. “But I liked the lean on the two-wheeler.”
A retired veterans service officer, Howard— who wore loafers with Velcro fasteners— said he had already put 35,000 miles on his trike. And he plans to put on many, many more. “As long as I can throw a leg over it,” Howard said, “I’m going to keep going.”