Has anyone seen one of these yet? Does anyone have one? If so, are they well-built? Worth $200? (actually $400, since I’d have to by one for Smith Wife, too)
They look like a lot of fun. I saw part of an infomercial selling them yesterday, and I’m intrigued.
It’s wierd I just heard about these on another site and now have seen three or four other references to them in the last few days. Here is a link to a guy that has one and did a little bit of a review on it. The link is from a watch site so he talks abot his watch a little too.
try this site
I just noticed he put a link to the company website as well.
In another thread, I asked about this thing. Well, on Wednesday I picked up a similar item at a shop in Sacramento.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
[ul][li]It’s completely counterintuitive. When I tried it on an eight-mile roundtrip Thursday, I was afraid of falling off the thing so I was leaning my body opposite the direction I was turning the front wheel. 'Tain’t the right way to do it as the way I was doing it brought me to a halt.[/li][li]The “junior” version, which is the one I got as it was the only one being sold, is fun but requires me to squat down a bit more than I probably should have to. OTOH, it does get going pretty quickly. The thing’s rated top speed is 14 mph but I believe I got going faster than that on the flat.[/li][li]Friday, I watched the videos on the website I linked above & on the website I linked in the other thread. To be more precise, I observed the riders in those videos. I did not listen to the spiel (mainly because I forgot to take my headphones with me to school and thus couldn’t listen to the sound). I observed exactly what those riders were doing with their torsos and their legs. Turns out that to ride the thing properly, one must (a) lean into the direction of the turn, (b) push the opposite foot against its platform, and © just slalom along after that.[/li][li]Finally, always carry the toolkit that comes with it when you use the thing. The action of rocking back and forth (what the trikke site calls “rock and roll”) does make the screws unscrew.[/ul][/li]
It’s really a lot of fun now that I know how to do it. I’m not going to say what I’ve described above is authoritative, just that’s what I’ve discovered in my grand total of two days and one night doing it with some speed and one day (Thursday) with a heck of a lot of energy spent to no avail. As soon as I can afford it, I’m going to get the adult version!
What I want to know now, though, is: how the heck does it work?
I forgot to mention that the website in the link for “similar item” is in Korean.
Update: Also ensure you use that “locktight” (or whatever the local equivalent of bolt glue is called). Yesterday, I lost a bolt. The bike shop in town (since the one on campus is rapidly approaching being naught but a space occupier as opposed to be ing a bike shop) fixed it–for free!–in less than five minutes. So now I tighten the bolts before and after each ride; which, btw, is what the user guide recommends. “When all else fails…”
I dunno, Monty, got a cite for this?
Already provided the cite, stalker; the trikke site carries the recommendation. The last part is an old folk saying, “When all else fails, read the instructions.”
BTW, stalker, it recommends tightening the bolts before the ride, IIRC. I figured out all by myself that tightening the bolts before the ride is tightening the bolts before that ride and tightening the bolts after the ride is obviously tightening the bolts before the next ride. But if you want, go ahead and get one and ignore the advice from the manufacturer and/or seller.
Hey, Monty, thanks for the feedback. I tried that site you provided, but I haven’t installed the Korean Language option on my laptop, so in addition to being a language I can’t speak or read, I think the actual characters were garbled. 
I’ve asked SmithWife to buy me a Trikke for XMas, so I guess I won’t really get to try it out till next spring. 
Winston
Does the manual carry any warnings about operating this vehicle while being an armed, out-of-control idiot? 