Greenspeed Recumbent Bikes, Trikes and HPV’s                    
Ferntree Gully                                                  
Phone 03 9758 5541                                                               
info@greenspeed.com.au
http://www.ihpva.org/com/Greenspeed/

  Attn: Ian Sims at Greenspeed
25th September 02

 

Dear Ian,

Well thanks for your wonderful freedom machine from Greenspeed.  As you know we picked up a custom built recumbent for my husband Nick about two weeks ago. We’ve been out riding almost every day, with me in tow on a conventional bike, gaining confidence and experience in stages.  Can you imagine Nick’s delight last Sunday at riding along bike paths from Warrigal Rd near Chadstone all the way into Southbank for a cup of coffee! (We did catch a train home.)

 

By way of background, my husband Nick had a major stroke two years ago, which has left him, for the moment, able to walk around the house very slowly with a stick.  He can walk around our local one kilometre park, but such an adventure, takes him an hour.

 

So, you can imagine, that our recent journey into the city felt such an amazing achievement and liberation for both of us.  We’re now in training to start exploring some of Victoria’s wonderful Rail Trails  www.railtrails.org.au which stretch in some cases for hundreds of kilometres along flattish disused railway lines.  Such exploration would have been an impossible dream just three months ago. 

 

Please feel free to share this with anyone you choose, as we can’t speak highly enough about the superb engineering and quality of your recumbents.  We loved the opportunity of trying one out when we came to consider the possibility of owning a recumbent  and working one-on-one with the designer of the machine for a couple of hours, so that it could be tailor made for Nick’s needs.  As he only has use of one arm, all of the controls, brakes, gears, bell are on the left hand side and Nick’s finding it quite easy to manage. 

 

We’d urge any disabled person considering ordering a motorized wheelchair, to investigate purchase of a recumbent bike from Greenspeed instead.  We can see that it will give my husband serious exercise, liberation, opportunities to explore, certainly provide great rehabilitation opportunities as well for his walking but most importantly, lost of fun and adventure.  I guess another part of all of this is “status”. Nick’s hated the stigma of disability right from the start, one of the reasons for his remarkable recovery so far.  We’re finding that our recumbent is viewed with curiosity and interest, by the general public and certainly not seen as a disability machine.

  Thanks so much for your world class invention.  We can’t thank you enough.

Heather & Nick Safstrom   03 9807 0662
safstromh@optusnet.com.au