Why I bought my bike

I just realized tonight that I never posted on here about how I came around to getting my Burley Sandpoint recumbent. It all happend about a year ago, I noticed at night that I would wake up and my arms were all numb and sore. In the spring, when I began riding again I noticed that on longer rides my hands would go numb and my wrist would hurt, at one point it got so bad that I was unable to ride at all. I thought this was unusually because the previous summer I'd competed at the 24 hours of Adrenaline in Canmore Alberta, I did it solo on my 29" hardtail mountain bike, besides being totally wiped out of energy my hands had never gone numb and my wrist had been fine the whole way through the race. I told someone at work about it and they suggested that maybe I had carpal tunnel syndrome. Shortly after that I went to the doctor, he sent me to a specialist for a nerve scan. If you've never had a nerve scan, they aren't that fun, basically they hook you up to electrodes and shock you while measuring how much your muscles contract from the shock. The specialist confirmed that I did have carpal tunnel quite bad in my left wrist and moderately in my right wrist. My doctor suggested that in terms of biking, maybe I should just go on short rides instead so that my wrist wouldn't be bothered. Needless to say I didn't like that idea that much. Surgery was an option, but I rejected it for several reasons, first of all, I would need to take considerable time off work, which wouldn't work, because I couldn't afford to do that. Surgery doesn't always cure the problem and if you hit the palm of your hand on something hard you can actually cause damage to the nerve in your wrist, so surgery didn't appeal to me and I decided to take the natural approach instead. So far I'm basically trying to eliminate everything that causes me problems, I switched jobs at work, to something that is easier on my wrist. As far as biking goes I sold my road racing bike soon after my diagnosis, I was unable to ride it farther then 5 miles without pain, I sold my 29" mountain bike to get some money. So then I was left with my 2005 Gary Fisher Ziggurat which I just purchased, having spent a considerable amount on it I was determined to ride it. This summer a few buddies and I went to Batoche Provincial Park, it was a 200km round trip which we did in a day, I think that is the defining moment when I decided to sell the Gary Fisher and sell all my other diamond frames as well. On the way back from Batoche my wrist were causing me considerable pain, to the point where I had to stop several times to relieve pressure on them, nothing seemed to help. Other shorter rides after that brought the same results for me, more pain and suffering. Finally a little over a month ago I ordered a Burley Sandpoint from www.triketrails.com. It came about a week later. Being one of the cheapest quality recumbents you can buy I expected cut-rate components, the cranks were replaced with my RaceFace Evolve X-type mountain bike ones before the bike was even fully assembled, the brakes were replaced with Avid SL Ti's shortly after that. I didn't realized until after, but when I recieved the bike the chain was on the idler pulleys wrong, so on the first ride the front derailer would hardly shift at all. On the second ride I tryed to drop it into the bottom chainring on the front and proceeded to bend up the front derailer pretty bad. I looked in the instruction book when I got home and realized that the chain was on wrong, I switched it over and got a new Shimano Deore front derailer, everthing is fine now. I find little wrong with the Sunrace gripshifts and rear derailer, the rear derailer sometimes wants to go into a different gear then I do, but most of the time it is spot on. www.Bentrideronline.com had tested the Jett Creek, which is basically the same bike, except with better components, they said that it handled very well and was a breeze for first timers. I was very dubious of this statement the first time I took it for a ride, after nearly crashing several times I finally got it and then I didn't want to get off :) Now I'm so used to the balance of it that I can carve up the tight switchbacks on the Meewasin pathway without having my feet down, or walking it around the corners :) After riding my Burley for some time now, I don't know why I'd ever go back to a regular bike, it is even more fun then mountain biking, and a total lack of any pain at all makes it even better. My ultimate dream bike now is a Greenspeed GT3 trike, folds for easy storage and it will pack a small load for the longer rides I like to take, as soon as I win the lottery I will buy one, until then it works well as a dream, thanks for listening, and always ride safe.................