At RideOut Tech we receive emails and postcards from people all over the world who have purchased one of our seats. The joy we feel when reading these is exactly why we started building the seats. We love to hear from bike riders who had pain with their previous bike seats and are now cured with the RideOut seats.
Here is one of those emails from David in Vermont.
“My wife and I used to ride bikes. Now we’re in our 6th and 7th decades. She stopped 30 years ago and I stopped 10 years ago, even though we live literally next to a beautiful 15 mile non-street bike path. Then we discovered electic assist pedelec bikes (aka “e-bikes”) and were looking forward to cruising the countryside on the bike paths of northern New England. One major problem to doing so, however, proved to be the bike seats we had been using. In addition to problems of discomfort, we found they were aggravating my hemorrhoids, and in my case, not helping issues I had with my prostate. It was looking as though we might have to curtail our bike riding activities once again, but before doing so I starting looking into websites promoting “comfort” seats. When I saw that RideOut Tech claimed that not only did they have a “unisex” comfort seat, but one that was prostate friendly, on an act of faith I bought two Carbon Comfort seats, after Jeri determined that my wife and I both were under the recommended 175 pound threshold. With a 30 day guarantee what did I have to lose anyway?
When the new seats arrived I swapped out the old seats, but frankly at first I wasn’t impressed with what I had bought. For one thing, they seemed very, very small. While they were padded, my OEM Velo Plush seat had far more stuffing. My wife’s reaction was wondering how that itty bitty seat could possibly support her butt, leaving so much of it hanging over both sides.
After making some adjustments on my first ride, I got the impression that I was perched on the seat, not sunk down into it as with a “normal” seat. But miracle of miracles, I very soon was forgetting about the seat underneath me. Most importantly, after my rides there was no longer any soreness. While in a way I had no choice but to “learn to love” these odd-looking little seats, considering my prostate challenges, I was afraid my wife would take an irreversible dislike to hers and insist that I replace it with the original Velo Plush seat (which I brought on a week long biking trip to Maine, just in case). But almost to my surprise, my wife’s experience was pretty much parallel to mine– forgetting about the seat and no pain.
Bottom line, if you want a pretty retro leather seat, I’d suggest that you spend $300 on a Brooks saddle. Or if you want a racing look I’m sure you can find something prettier than the Carbon Comfort. But for me the smart money idea would be to save $220 less than the Brooks, give your netherparts a break and go with RideOut’s brainstorm. I assure you I don’t get paid anything to endorse her, but, believe me, based on my experience, she deserves your support for this wonderful bit of technology. It may never win a Nobel Prize, but its improvement in my life has proven to be up close and personal.”
Thanks David for the letter and the kind words. A Nobel Prize would be nice, but I’ll settle for more letters like yours. 🙂