My back hurts; should I take to a trike?

Here's a look at Harley-Davidson's $31,000 trike.

Both my wife Bonnie and daughter Anna sent me the recent New York Times article about aging baby boomers giving up their two-wheelers to ride trikes.

Baby boomers suffering from bad knees, bad backs and big butts "have abandoned their traditional two-wheel motorcycles in favor of three-wheelers, the super-steady and seemingly safer machines commonly known as trikes," Jesse McKinley wrote in The Times.

My first reaction: What are my wife and daughter trying to tell me?

My second reaction: Gee, those things are ugly.

1959 Royal Enfield based Indian Patrol Car looked tidy.

Naturally, I exempt all things Royal Enfield from this description. I happen to think that the Royal Enfield based Pashley tricycle is a handsome machine, looking like a Bullet up front and an Indian Patrol Car in the back. It somehow extracts a reverse gear from the traditional Albion transmission!

But those vintage tricycles are rare (from the 1950s), slow (the 350cc single) and, I suspect, poorly sprung.

Not the things to cushion a bad back. Which — suddenly — I have.

I was in the garage Sept. 15 adding air to tires with a bicycle pump when the first stroke produced a stabbing pain in my back. I could barely stand. I could hardly walk into the house. The tire pump is still on the floor of the garage where I dropped it.

I'd been planning to take a ride on my Bullet past the community free mulch pile to check if there are any nice looking wood chips I could load into my car for the garden.

I now can not imagine riding the Bullet or even jack knifing my body into the car for a ride to the Emergency Room.

If this pain doesn't depart, I realize, I am facing a life in which I may never load mulch again.

It may be an over reaction but, suddenly, those trikes don't seem so awful looking anymore. Nor am I going to ever again ridicule the possible comforts of the back rest I spotted fitted to a Bullet.

Back rest might be comfy but could I swing my leg over it?

This is a Royal pain.