For those of you new to recumbent cycling, while Robert Q Riley can be thought of as the father of the modern day recumbent because of the LWB he built in 1962 that he could ride with no hands, Dick Ryan is thought of as the recumbent’s godfather. While per this podcast, Riley couldn’t fulfill all the orders he got from Ben Lawee’s West Coast  trade show in the mid 60’s (and had to resort to selling almost 15,000 plans through “Popular Mechanics” beginning in 1969), a little over a  decade later Ryan had teamed up with Dick Forrestal, Harold Maciejewski and David Gordon Wilson in 1979 to make Wilson’s Avatar LWB an exciting much publicized reality. Even though the Avatar could not make it past all the resistance it was met with by the bike shop industry, Ryan soldiered on with a less expensive version of the Avatar, called Ryan Recumbents.

To give authority to his new way of cycling, he knew he needed the industry of fellow recumbent builders that had begun to spring up to organize as an industry. Toward that end he created the RBCA (Recumbent Bike Club America). He then managed to convince Bob Bryant to create a newsletter for it. Soon it was this newsletter that evolved into Bob’s mountain moving publication, Recumbent Cyclist News

Dick did a respectable business with his high quality LWB’s and used his reputation to then build the first production recumbent tandem, the Ryan Duplex and the first production delta trike, the Tritan. Dick broke a lot of ground for all the recumbent makers who would follow as he was relentless in his push to get his recumbents in to the shops. Though his results were mediocre, he still had planted the recumbent seed for bike sellers across the nation to consider.

He tried every approach. He advertised everywhere he could afford. For example, Dick supported our National Bicycle Greenway vision with regular display advertising. As he and I transacted that business, we spent many hours on the phone trying to figure out ways recumbent’s could be made mainstream.

A true warrior for the cause Dick gave a lot of his life force to the recumbent way. A passion the recumbent riders of today can be thankful to Dick Ryan for. In keeping the Ryan Recumbent memory alive, there is a ton of history, pictures and other nostalgia at the Ryan Owners Club,