By Monte Wehrkamp with contributions by Christopher Cudworth

After reading this short article on new bike concepts, we invite you to take our 3-question poll on this subject and find out what others think about new cycling concepts at PollDaddy.com

My wife turned to me, a quizzical expression on her beautiful face. A question in her intelligent, observant, psychologist’s eyes.

“What the f*** is that?!”

And she pointed at the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen on a bike trail.

Huh? Wait. What the hell!?

I was at a loss for words. I stared and tried to figure out the abomination before us.

It was kind of a bike, in that, it had wheels. And it had a handlebar. But the rider was standing up, his feet on platforms instead of pedals. The frame was about ten inches off the ground, and the head tube was, um, a foot tall with a three foot stem. The operator of the contraption marched up and down on the platforms, pedaling the worst kind of squares. The steampunk jalopy swayed back and forth, taking up almost all the trail as it wobbled along.

“I have no idea. But I hate it,” I answered her.

We looked it up on a Smartphone.

It’s an ElliptiGo. It’s half bike. Half elliptical trainer.

Elliptigo Trainer combines running and riding

Somewhere, someone thought this was a great invention. Hey, let’s put a gym workout machine on wheels! It’ll be great. And later, someone in Geneva, IL thought this was a great enough idea to plop down anywhere from $1800 to $3600 for his very own ElliptiGo (depending on model).

If you’re like me, you’re already doing the math. For $3600, you could get a very nice aluminum road bike with Shimano 105 components as well as a gym-quality elliptical cardio machine for the house. And you wouldn’t look like, or ride like, a complete dork.

By far the worst idea in cycling I’d ever seen.

Till this.

It’s called a Fliz. You can read about it on Gizmag. 

Fliz is a running and “riding” throwback?

You suspend yourself from the frame by a seatbelt. And while you hang, strapped to the, um, bike, you Fred Flintstone your way down the road. Yabba dabba doooo!

It makes the ElliptiGo almost acceptable in comparison.

I wonder, in a race, which would win? The ElliptiGo or the Fliz. I wonder if anyone cares. The race could be called the ElliptiGoFlizathon. Add a g at the end and you have the ElliptigoFlizathong. Now that would be an interesting site. Combines all sorts of thought leadership into one happy, wholesome subculture, doesn’t it. 

But here, you see, we run and we ride.

We run. And. We ride. One or the other. Pick. Today I run. Tomorrow I ride.

But never, ever, do we runride. Simultaneously. Because that’s just stupid and wrong. Until proven otherwise. But that will be judged in the free market. The Segway was supposed to revolutionize the planet. That hasn’t quite happened yet. 

To prove my point, I give you this. The TreadBike.

You got it. A treadmill to go, so to speak.

I rest my case.