B-Rant

- submitted by . on 03/06/2009

  

The Stupidest Bicycle You'll Ever See?

Recently we featured a "revolutionary" piece of exercise equipment that raised the question, why do so many nitwit entrepreneur-inventors have so much time on their hands when the rest of us have to work for a living? The invention -- the Mobile Treadmill -- was staggeringly idiotic but, on the plus side, equally highly entertaining.

Today we're pleased to feature the master-work of another entrepreneur-inventor. He's also looking for investors -- and, after carefully scanning the exercise-recreation landscape, has apparently finally solved (for him) the ultimate question: How can we design a bicycle that does everything a bicycle does, only without a seat? Or, expressing it a little differently: Damn, we love bicycling...but can't we just find some way to lose the seat, so we can ride for miles while standing up?

Seriously. The Seat-Less Bicycle. Or, as we affectionately call it: The Totally Unnecessary Borderline-Idiotic Mobile Stairmaster.

OK, disclosure. We're not exercise physiologists, so we can't fully evaluate whether there are any benefits to this form of bicycling. (We do know bicycling while seated is far better on knees & joints than climbing stairs which is what our inventor compares his breakthrough to.)

Also, since we can't entirely rule out any small physiological benefit, we're not prepared to label this invention definitively idiotic; it might well be, but we're more comfortable with, "borderline idiotic."

We are prepared to say it sounds, seems -- and definitely looks -- idiotic. Also, we never felt any compelling void or lack about not being able to bicycle without a seat. (Of course, that's just us.) We like to sit. It's comfortable. It's never been a problem. We don't want to stand -- we certainly don't want to have to stand. And the touted benefit of "better vision" from standing -- we're not astronomers/star-gazers here; we're riding a bike, we want to know if some wayward dog's crossing the street; we don't need to look at cars from above, we just need to know if there are cars. Same with the added "take-off torque" -- you know those few milliseconds we're supposedly losing from starting in our comfortable sitting positions? We'll find a way to live without them....read more rants