Ben's Risky Business: A Bike Like No Other

One of our preliminary patent drawings

I was always very active. I always ate like a horse. I always tipped the scales at around 165. Until I hit 35.

Then I became pleasingly plump.

Now I tip the scales over unless I'm very careful and lean on the bathroom sink as I mount up.

And now I periodically exercise, at least once a month whether I need it or not.

For the last 20 years I've weighed 50 or 60 lbs more than the doctor recommends. I fight high blood pressure. I've got all the problems of middle age that I used to read about in the Reader's Digest.
These problems afflicted old codgers who were knocking on heaven's door. Never thought I'd end up like them. Now they are me. Just a couple of Big Macs away from a heart attack.

So several years ago I started sporadically riding the AirDynne, a stationary exercise bike . It's handlebars are connected to the foot pedals, thereby working all four limbs. The only problem is you don't go anywhere on it. I worked my hinny off but the bike never moved an inch. It is boring.

The wind refuses to blow past the top of my head where my hair used to congregate and I've never once had a close brush with an 18-wheeler. With a bike, I was always going somewhere, feeling the wind, smelling the flowers, running semi-trucks off the road...I was never bored.

So I bought a bike and started riding it 18 miles to work and back home. But then I missed the arm action of the AirDynne. My upper body and arms were itching to pitch in and help increase the horsepower but they remained powerless.

So I decided to invent a bike that utilized the arm and leg synchronized motions. Me and my buddy Don worked on several models for a long time before finally arriving at our destination of a workable prototype. Don and I ate numerous mouthfuls of dirt and destroyed large swaths of asphalt with our knees before we finally arrived at a workable protobike.

But we eventually got it. Now I need to find the right partner to hook up with to put this thing into production. I filed a patent on it and from all the info I've found, this is the first functional 2-wheeled bike that is powered by both arms and legs working in coordinated and natural back and forth motions for power while allowing the rider to still steer and maintain control.

I have seen bikes that use more wheels, one that uses a herky-jerky motion with both arms going the same way and other variations. But nothing that sticks to the original bicycle design and yet incorporates natural motions of arm assistance. I've not been able to find anything like this bike. Here's a rough video we took a couple of years ago while we were still making improvements...

Bike Video