Take a look at the picture below. That’s a sexy machine, isn’t it? May I present to you the Stepcycle; a completely unnecessary yet utterly fantastic bike-like contraption that stands as the perfect marriage of ingenuity and way too much free time.
It’s not a bike exactly. It’s more like a cross between an elliptical and a bicycle. And I absolutely love it. Here’s why: Some dude went to a bank to get a small business loan in order to produce these things! Someone–and I can only imagine it’s some lycra wearing dude with more bikes than common sense–put on a suit and tie and convinced a banker to give him several thousand dollars to reinvent the bicycle! How awesome is that?
Does the bicycle need to be reinvented? Absolutely not. Does the American public want to get their elliptical workout while running errands around town? Sadly, no (Stepcycle seems to be out of business). Still, I salute the fact that there are tinkerers out there who continue to try to perfect what is arguably a perfect machine.
I know guys who are trying to build a 32-inch wheel-base mountain bike. Trek came out with the “automatic transmission” Lime a couple years ago. Jeep produced that dual drive bike a while back. None of these concepts have taken off, but so what. Maybe the next one will. At the very least, we’ll have more toys like the Stepcycle to marvel over.
