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Mike Burrows
Foreword by Richard Ballantine My most vivid early memory
of Mike Burrows is from the Isle of Wight Cycling Festival, Easter 1983, and an embryonic event for human powered vehicles (HPVs).The scene was dominated by the constant quicksilver movements of a half-dozen low-slung recumbent tricycles, all the more visible because their pilots wore brightly coloured skin-suits and helmets decorated with a furry material in fluorescent hues. The trikes were always on the move, darting and agile, and often, as one would start up, the others would also wheel and arc into motion like a flock of birds. Indeed, the obvious leader of the group, Mike Burrows, with a sharplydefined, aquiline face and bushy crop of jet-black hair framed in electric day-glo plumage, looked much like one of the birds of prey he stalks as a bird-watcher – intent, quick, and alert. The charismatic trikes were the first few of a new machine, the Windcheetah SL ‘Speedy’, and were clearly a design breakthrough. The