Easy Rider : Recumbent bicycles help users avoid straining themselves. A fairly new entry, the ReBike, is a less expensive model.

Kathy Skewis wasn’t comfortable cycling anymore. She didn’t like leaning down toward her touring bicycle handle bars, and she didn’t like the shoulder and back pain she felt the morning after. So the 43-year-old Boca Raton, Fla., travel agent designed a new type of bike for herself.

Sitting at a coffee shop with her father, Skewis went through several napkins, drawing new versions of a sure-to-be-more-comfortable cycle. She took her ideas to a welder, who forged a frame, and she attached the necessary gears and gadgets to form a working bike. Skewis just wanted to make a bike she could enjoy riding.

Now, two years later, the accidental entrepreneur is owner of a 20-employee company called ReBike in Boca Raton, which manufactures this newest addition to the recumbent bicycle market.

Recumbents look like office chairs on wheels. They are low-slung six-speeders on which riders sit with back support on wide, comfortable seats, with their legs out in front of them, slightly bent. The front wheel is smaller than the back wheel: 16 inches compared to the rear’s 20 inches.

These bikes have been around for a while--they were actually banned from bike racing in 1933 for being too fast--but they have typically cost more than $1,000, and that has kept them largely off the streets. Skewis’ version is less expensive and has a more conventional look.

Skewis’ ReBike retails for $409, said Dennis Boyle, manager of Sherman Oaks Cyclery, which is getting about 15 phone calls a day from people looking for the new bike. He said he has sold ReBikes to people from as far away as Long Beach and Santa Barbara--and once people try the bike, they usually like it.

“It’s the most comfortable thing you’ll ever ride in your life,” he said, “and it looks like the Harley-Davidson of bicycles.”

According to Robert Bryant, editor of the Recumbent Cyclist, published by the Recumbent Bicycle Club of America, there are 25,000 or more recumbent bikes in the United States and Europe. “The ReBike is good for people who have given up on cycling because of discomfort,” Bryant said. The mass market, he predicts, will demand the comfort of recumbents because the population is aging. There are about 20 different manufacturers of recumbent bikes, and sales in 1992 will be about three times the 1,100 bikes sold last year in the United States, he said.

The bikes are especially good for people with disk problems or back pain, said Dr. Todd J. Molnar, a sports medicine specialist at the Southern California Orthopedic Institute in Van Nuys. The physical therapy department at the institute has a stationary recumbent bike that many sports pain sufferers like, he said.

The recumbent position puts more pressure on the hamstring muscles--located at the back of the thigh that bend the knee and swing the leg backward--than do traditional bikes, Molnar said. He suggests riders start slowly with lower gear tension until their muscles adjust. “People should try out a recumbent before buying one to see if it’s more comfortable for them first,” he added. “It’s the same aerobic benefit as a traditional bike, so it’s a matter of choice.”

Skewis designed the ReBike mostly with women in mind, but sales to men outnumber those to women two to one, she says. The bikes sold at Sherman Oaks Cyclery have all gone to men, said Boyle. But Bryant’s wife--an avid cycler--found her recumbent to be the only bike she could ride through her recent pregnancy, he said.

Not all stores carry the ReBike, but some bike shops will special-order them for customers. Those that don’t carry the bikes say the demand just isn’t high enough yet to make them worthwhile. Said Willie Gonzales of Spoke ‘n Wheel in Canoga Park, “They’re fun, very speedy, very comfortable, but they are very low to the ground and it’s hard to be seen on a recumbent. And they are expensive. It just depends on what you like.”

WHERE TO GO

Information: For a 1992 buyer’s guide and information on recumbent bicycles, and a copy of The Recumbent Cyclist magazine, send $3 to 17650-B6 140th Ave. S.E. Suite 341, Renton, Wash., 98058.