I'm going to buy a recumbent bicycle some time in the next few days.
Not much to say about that; upright bicycles give me enough back pain after a while that if I want to use it as my primary transportation, I need a recumbent model. My father and I went to a few bike shops today; I found a long-wheel-base-style bike that seems to work very well for me. My only concern is that it might not fit on bus bike racks. The short wheel base (with high front pedals) seemed unworkable to me, though- in both of the short recumbent bikes I tried, my knees kept hitting the handlebars, and I needed help just to balance long enough to get my legs up to the pedals. So I think a long wheelbase it is...
Anybody with more recumbent bike experience have advice that I should be aware of?
Any information about the interaction between recumbent bikes and the city bus is welcome. I'm going to the bike shop tomorrow. I'll try out one of their high-pedal recumbents (with a standard wheel base) again and see if it works any better for me the second time; I'll prefer it if it does, because that definitely won't have trouble on a bus, it's more visible to cars, and it looks weirder (which is a plus). But if long wheelbase recumbents do work on bus racks, so I can use "both" rather than "either/or", that would change how hard I try to make a high-pedal recumbent work for me.
I don't own one myself, but I've seen a few around town, and always thought they were neat. Never seen one on the bus either, though. They're actually, if I recall, a lot more efficient or 'faster' than uprights.