The Coolest Recumbent Trike I've Ever Seen

[00:00:00]Laidback Mickey here, and I'm sitting in the coolest trike I've ever seen, and it's mine. I'm going to tell you how I got it and why I chose this one. So, let's go back a couple years ago.

[00:00:13]I was at Recumbent Cycle Convention over in Ohio, and AZUB said, "Hey, we have something brand new that I think you want to see." Now, I hadn't had AZUB in my shop before. I knew about them. I knew that they were awesome trikes, but I'm all like, "Do I have room for another trike manufacturer?" Honza said, "Hey, after seeing this, if you don't think this is the coolest trike, then you're either out of your mind or I think we missed the mark." So, I said, "Okay." So, he took me outside. They had it in a van hidden under under a blanket. Pulled it up, and next thing you know, there was a Ti-Fly 26 with two batteries. But, you go like, "Hey, yeah, you could easily buy a second battery and just put it on the back." Well, yeah, that's what most manufacturers do is they just have a battery you got to switch out when one's dead, you got to put another one on.

[00:01:12]Well, this one runs in parallel, so they run at the same time, so you never have to switch them out. And they're double-size batteries. So, rather than getting like 60 mi and then having to switch out your battery, this one you can get almost 200 mi before you have to switch it out. Okay, there's nothing like that on the market. And then I already liked the cool things that you have on your trike, the titanium, all the high-tech componentry that you can get for it. But, that dual battery system, I just saw myself riding forever or not running out of juice. I said, "Okay, you got my attention. I want this trike." The trike they had in their van.

[00:01:51]They said, "You can buy this one after the show." And so, after the show, they brought it to my shop, and that that was my trike. That might was my trike for a while, and I was loving it. It It was fast, it was fun, super comfortable. And then, I ended up going flying from Sacramento, California, all the way overseas to Germany, and I saw all their trikes in one spot. And I'm all, "You know what? My friend Matt rides the Ti-Fly X." The X is the higher seated one with the bigger tires. And I'm all, "You know, I'd love to ride that." And so we went on a ride, not just like a 5-mi ride or 20-mi ride. We went over 60-70 mi.

[00:02:34]And I got to ride multiple trikes. And I rode the X, and I'm all, "Man, this is super comfortable, and this would be a trike that I'd love to try not just on the road." I said, "I want to ride this off-road because I used to be a mountain biker. I used to have mountain bike shops to where, you know, we're in the foothills, I'd ride in the mountains, I'd ride up in Tahoe." And I said, "I want something that just like really just is more than just on-road. I want to go off the road."

[00:03:04]That was my journey to getting this trike. I talked to them, and I said, "Will you build me the coolest trike that you've ever seen?" I used to just love going into the mountains and going in single track and going under and off dirt, gravel, you know, bombing down hills.

[00:03:27]I did all that stuff in my 20s and in my 30s, but I hurt my back in my later 30s, and I I had to stop doing that. I had to stop being aggressive, and I had to chill out a little bit. In fact, I didn't ride a trike for 10 years. I didn't ride a bike. Walking was even difficult because my back hurt. Yeah, that's how I got into the trike world.

[00:03:47]Now, I've been riding different trikes, and I said, "Finally, I want one that I could reverse my age and go back and do some of the things that I wanted to do before, that I used to do. I used to bomb down fire trails and have fun, and I used to go on on rocks and dirt and stuff like that. And I got this trike because of that. Some of the things I wanted, which I'll tell you that you have to have now if you're going to be going off-road, is I want a clearance.

[00:04:12]And so this trike has clearance. That's why I'm using the 26-in tires versus the first Azub that I got had 20-in on the front and a 26 on the rear. I wanted bigger tires so that I could do more off-road. Some people like it just because it's easy to get into, but I like it because I can go on or off-road.

[00:04:34]And you notice the tires here, these are the the Schwalbe tires, the Smart Sams, and they have more meat on them. They have a tread where you can run them at high pressure on the on the road, but I got it with some gnarly tread that I could go off-road. In fact, I took it off-road this last week, and I was going through weeds. And that's the thing, you want to be able to clear those weeds. If you're too low, it gets caught up in your chain and and and all your gearing and stuff like that. I didn't want that.

[00:05:03]I got a roll-off in back. It's an internal hub. When I'm going through all those weeds, I didn't want the weeds to get caught up in my gears, so I got an internal hub so it's not going to easily get wound up around my cassette. And so it's a 14-speed internal hub with a wide range of gears, which helps me when I'm going up rocks or any type of thing that's uneven. That extra gearing, I could either go go really low, so I could actually climb up it. And when you're climbing up a rocky or gravelly hill, it helps when you have that consistent power going. So I got a motor, and the motor is the Bosch CX motor. And oh my goodness, that is powerful, 95 Newton meters. So one of the highest Bosch motors there is. So that's great torque and that helps you like just climb and it has a lot of power behind it. With the batteries having tons of juice and tons of torque, I'm able to climb up any hill usually on a road as long as you just got good gears, it will get you up the road. But if it's uneven, you're going to need good gears and good torque. I went up the steep hill and I was able to climb up it with the power and with the gearing and that's why you want some of this higher end componentry. It's if you're doing something other than just riding on a flat road. If you're riding on a flat road, maybe you don't need all the torque. Maybe don't need the wide gear range. I wanted it. I want to do things that I haven't done in 35 years and I just started to do it this week and I'm having a blast. I got these fenders also just so I won't be throwing gravel in my face and like when you turn, you don't want, you know, to throw mud and stuff in your eyeballs.

[00:06:51]And so that's why a lot of people will get fenders. And then I got this phone holder so I can actually charge my phone and I can keep all my apps and music and also I can connect to my motor system to see my stats. All I do is turn it on and start pedaling and this is using the E14 electric shifting. So it's going to help me shift downshift for me and then I have this this electric button that I could push up and down and make it easy.

[00:07:22]And so one of the cool things is whether you're looking for comfort or whether you're looking to go off-road, the titanium front suspension on a Zoom is beautiful. It actually has some of the most suspension that I've actually ridden before and you get to choose what rear suspension that you want. So, you can go either spring or air shock or the top line like this is the top line Fox Float shock. And then, if you want your own trike, a trike to be yours, like that somebody else doesn't have, this one here, I had my own color scheme done. So, I had their new gray and then I did the green and then I did accent green colors in different spots, so that way it would be mine. And you can choose where you want your colors, right? You could change your handlebars, you could change your boom, and I made it mine. So, this laid-back green, laid-back gray, and AZUB is about customization. So, I went two batteries, maybe you only want one.

[00:08:29]I went a internal hub, maybe you want external hub. I want electric, maybe you want manual. The neat thing with AZUB is it's customizable to what you want, not to what I want. I wanted something that would work great for my new adventure.

[00:08:45]You know what the funnest thing is about this trike? I can go anywhere and do the things that I used to do. And that's what I want to do. I want to be able to have the adventures again. I don't want limitations, and I want the comfort. And that's where like the suspension is very helpful is that way it doesn't hurt my back. This has everything that I that I've ever wanted in a mountain bike when I used to do two wheel, and now it's everything I want in my trike. And if you're looking for a trike and you want something custom for you, I can actually help you build whatever you want. In fact, if you go in the link below and click on the link, we'll have a one-on-one and we'll actually build your dream trike. And if you want to learn more about how this trike came to be, go ahead and watch this next video.