Trikke Fans Push the Idea That Three Wheels Are Better Than Two

"We all have Trikke tattoos," Brown says.

When I call Strauchler the next day, he is sore but undaunted.

"I'm going to keep doing this. I'm not going to give up," says Strauchler, 52, a deckhand on an Army Corps of Engineers vessel that cleans debris from the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. "I think everyone falls off of something. When I was a kid, I rode a bike and I fell off many times."

I climb on Roberts's Trikke with a bit of trepidation and try to wriggle and lean it into motion. I go nowhere, becalmed on a sea of asphalt, until she tells me to think of the alternate-foot motion of inline skating. I give it a running start the second time and soon I am able to putter along for a few yards. The motion of the handlebars helps sustain my momentum, and as I grow more comfortable, the left-right lean isn't nearly as troubling. Others say the motion is closest to skiing.

Then Lawrence Mayes shows up. Mayes, 29, is a man among boys in the local Trikke club. He has done a 100-mile ride on a Trikke in less than nine hours and regularly zips along at an average speed of 12 mph. (He has a wrist GPS to prove it.) He is trying to hit a sustained speed of 15 mph. You can see him in this YouTube video , but be forewarned: He crashes rather spectacularly and shows off some nasty road rash.

Mayes, a Bank of America administrator from Chesapeake, Va., says he lost 36 pounds in three months after acquiring his Trikke with points he earned at work, and has kept the weight off for a year. He rides his scooter to work a couple of days a week and sees no need for any other form of exercise.

"On a bike, if I did 30 miles, I would work the crap out of my legs," he says. "On the Trikke, if you do 30 miles, you feel it in your arms, your shoulders, your calves, your abs, your obliques."

Dutch researchers asked by Trikke Europe to study the scooter concluded that an average-size man who takes an hour-long ride at 9.3 mph would burn about 500 calories. Their study also explained how the carving motion propels the Trikke forward, but even after reading a translation of their analysis I'm still not sure I understand.

Simpson says the Trikke's future may be as a short-commute vehicle for people seeking a greener way to get to work. To help people when they need more than human energy to move their Trikke, the company markets versions powered by small electric motors. And the Trikke folds up and can be stashed in a closet.

"If you have a short commute and it's not raining or snowing and you want to get a workout and be gentle on the planet," he says, "this is the way to go."

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