If you have ever spotted a long, low carbon machine gliding through Ontario singletrack like a land luge with knobby tires, there is a good chance it belonged to Richard Ehrlich.
Ehrlich, 64, lives near the Kolapore trails and has spent decades refining a very specific solution to a very specific problem: he loves mountain biking but his neck does not love traditional bikes.
“Well, I’m a dentist and I kind of messed up my neck. They told me I shouldn’t ride a bike,” he said. “Dentistry, looking upside down in crazy places you shouldn’t be looking, bending your neck… I sacrificed my body in the line of duty, basically.”
Built because the alternative was not riding
Ehrlich started building recumbents in the early 1990s, long before modern mountain bikes looked anything like what we ride today.
“The first one was a steel DIY,” he said. “I used mountain bike parts instead of road parts and I built it, but I kept breaking the frame. It wasn’t suspended. I beat the heck out of it.”
His current bike is a later evolution, a full-suspension carbon off-road recumbent built by John Morciglio, a carbon builder Ehrlich describes as “a mechanical genius and an artist.”
“Mine was number 001,” Ehrlich said. “He’s made, I don’t know, 20 or so now.”
A full-suspension carbon oddball
The bike is not just a novelty. It has real suspension travel and it has been ridden on real terrain.
“The whole rear was swing arm,” Ehrlich said. “There’s a shock and then the swing arm moves. I got, you know, 4 or 5 inches of travel.”
It also runs an unusual wheel setup.
“It’s a 69,” he said, referring to the 26-inch front wheel and 29-inch rear.
It is a long bike and that length changes how it handles, especially in tight corners. But it has its own advantages.
“Honestly going downhill is great because I can’t endo,” he said.
Not a shortcut to speed
Ehrlich is not claiming the recumbent is faster than a modern mountain bike. He is claiming it lets him keep riding.
On long races, he said the comfort difference is obvious.
“I did the Mohican 100 and my butt wasn’t even sore,” he said. “My neck wasn’t sore, my butt wasn’t sore.”
He is realistic about the trade-offs too.
“It is a little slower because it’s like trying…
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