Lobster Roll Crustacean-shaped taxi promotes use of pedal

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To cruise the streets of Bar Harbor in style, you don’t need a stretch limousine or a luxury sport utility vehicle. The ultimate ride is found perched atop a massive pedal-powered lobster.

“It’s like sitting on a cloud, you’re sort of just rolling through the world,” said Jeff Miller, whose Lobster Bike taxi service will celebrate its fifth anniversary this summer.

His huge red tricycle, bedecked with claws and a tail, rivals some small foreign cars in size, and attracts a crowd wherever it rolls. People laugh and stare and chant, “lobstah, lobstah, lobstah,” whenever they see the lobstermobile headed their way.

But the Lobster Bike also sends a bigger message about the power of pedaling, said Miller, who is the executive director for the Augusta-based Bicycle Coalition of Maine.

“We are in a car-oriented society. It’s silly how many one-mile trips we take in a two-ton vehicle. This is a great way to demonstrate to folks the power of our muscles,” he said.

A decade ago, Miller was traveling around the world on a fellowship to study nonmotorized transportation when he saw reverse bicycle taxis with seats mounted in the front in Qufo, China.

“I thought, this is really cool. You’re not looking at anyone’s butt, you get a great view, and the driver can talk to you without taking his eyes off the road,” he said.

When he returned home, Miller was skimming though a bicycle supply catalog and spotted the perfect adult-sized reverse tricycle. The industrial tricycle was designed with a single wheel behind the driver and dual wheels in the front to support the weight of freight traveling through a large factory – or tourists cruising the streets of Bar Harbor.

“The example model was bright red, so I looked at it and thought, this has the basic geometry of a lobster,” he said.

Miller sketched an exaggerated lobster, with a tail on the trike’s rear fender and claws on its front fenders, but couldn’t quite imagine driving the thing down Main Street and shelved his drawing.

In 1997, Miller had a change of heart and decided to bring the Lobster Bike to life.

He ordered the reverse tricycle, and enlisted a taxidermist friend to help design a realistic fiberglass tail and claws. A boat builder friend helped him design the free-form seating bench, made of a strong lightweight balsa wood and fiberglass laminate. The dimensions and angle of the bench were stolen from folding aluminum chairs.

All together, the bike cost about $3,000 and required most of the spring to build.

“It took several months to figure this and that out,” Miller said. “It was very much driftwood carpentry.”

The completed Lobster Bike prototype that hit the streets that June was 5 feet wide and fire-engine red – looming like the crustacean that ate Bar Harbor.

“When the Town Council first saw pictures, they all had a pretty good laugh,” Miller said.

In fact, one councilor voted against granting a taxi license for fear that the Lobster Bike would be “tacky.”

“I won’t argue against that,” Miller said. “It’s definitely goofy.”

But after a single summer, local residents grew accustomed to the oddity. Miller’s springtime run to inaugurate his second season drew waves and cheers.

“I had become part of the culture,” he said.

Whether Miller is pedaling through Bar Harbor, around the Common Ground Fair or transporting a bride and groom to their reception (yes, there has been a Lobster Bike wedding), he is the center of attention.

“When you’re out riding the thing, you get a lot of stares – it’s like being a one-float parade, like you’re the Queen of England,” Miller said.

In fact, when less-inhibited riders take the seat, Miller teaches them the lobster wave, a modified queen wave, with fingers spread to resemble a lobster’s claw.

Lobster Bike drivers can’t have a shred of self-consciousness. Longtime driver Miriama Broady is “like Teflon,” he said.

“When I first saw it, I had to do it. That thing is outrageous. It’s a rolling sculpture,” said Broady, who has been driving the Lobster Bike’s night shift in her free time for the past few summers.

As she cruises through town late at night, picking up drunken revelers from the local bars, Broady plays a tune on the bike’s eight assorted bells and whistles – including a large, low-pitched horn that some drivers have dubbed “the lobster fart.”

“It’s theater,” she said. “It’s all about art for me – everything I do, I want to make it a creative act,” said Broady, whose day jobs include singing with local bands The Beatroots and birdHouse.

“It’s a great thing to have rolling around town. Life is very plain at times, and the lobster bike is a reminder that we’re creative people and we can create our own realities,” she said.

Broady’s predominantly tipsy customers tend not to be self conscious about catching a ride on a big lobster, but during the day, people often turn down rides for fear of looking silly.

“They’ll take a picture, and they’ll wave, but when I offer them a ride, there’s this weird shyness,” Miller said. “You can tell that they’re drawn to the bike, but there’s this internal struggle between the part of them that wants to jump on, and the part that’s inhibited.”

And some feel guilty enjoying their ride as Miller or Broady huff and puff to make their way up a hill.

“I tell them, I’m getting paid to get in shape. I wouldn’t be out here giving rides if I didn’t want to,” Miller said.

Fully loaded with two adults, the bike weighs about 900 pounds – nearly a half-ton. But it’s geared extremely low, so pedaling the monster isn’t as daunting as it might seem, Broady said.

“Emphatically, I am no athlete,” said the petite driver.

Cruising around town, the Lobster BIKE travels about 10 mph, rolling down an incline, it can peak at 18 mph.

“It’s not fast – it isn’t meant to be,” Miller said.

The tricycle would never fit into Bar Harbor’s narrow bicycle lanes, so Miller and his drivers negotiate the worst of the summer traffic along with everyone else.

Years ago, Broady worked as a bicycle messenger in Washington, D.C., so she views maneuvering through Bar Harbor traffic on the lobster bike as almost relaxing by comparison.

“I considered it white-water biking,” she said.

Still, Mainers don’t have the best reputation for being courteous to bicyclists who want to share their roads. But the Lobster Bike’s drivers report surprisingly few problems.

To begin with, the giant flaming red tricycle will catch a motorist’s eye more quickly than a standard mountain bike, he said. And the vehicle’s inherent goofiness just makes the drivers laugh.

“This comical thing sort of breaks down the silly prejudices people hold,” he said. “It’s so sociable – it’s a traffic-calming, anti-road-rage vehicle.”