The Schlick Shark will be in Playboy Magazine!

A couple of Fridays ago John Schlick and I made a trip down to Chicago to Playboy’s corporate office to do a photo shoot with the Schlick Shark. It was great to see such a famous studio and meet the guys behind the lenses. These are the same guys who shoot all the lovely women for the mag. Turns out Playboy also does most of their product shoots for the articles in the magazine as well.

No girls this time. The bike will be in the Mantrack column in the May issue. Here’s looking forward to a bunch of interest in the Shark.

Check out the photo of the Shark under the lights! No less than 6 Speedotron heads to light up our beauty.

Working on the Schlick Cycles Project

March looks like it will be slower than I planned but that is a good thing. I need to work more on the cool and hip ride that is the Schlick Shark. The Shark is a revolutionary bicycle, designed by my friend John Schlick, that combines great looks with the ability to fit a wide range of riders. The crank-forward design allows riders to put their feet flat on the ground while still allowing full leg extension while riding. We are using an internally geared hub to give a wide gear ratio while maintaining good looks and ease of maintenance. Likewise the disk brakes are virtually maintenance free while providing excellent stopping power.
My immediate goal is to spruce up and repurpose a lot of the content at schlickcycles.com and to get us a bunch more traffic. I believe that if people see this bike and get a chance to ride it that the bike will sell itself!

Building a Pump Track

Well, to get back into biking, and because I think they look really fun, I am building a pump track in the backyard.

I had an R/C mini stadiumcross truck track that my daughter and I used that is going to form the basis. A side benefit is that we will still be able to use the track as an R/C playground, just with bigger and better jumps and terrain to play on.

Schlick Cycles New Idea for the Way We Ride Bicycles

I started working with John Schlick, a Milwaukee area computer programmer, who invented a new take on the bicycle. We are just getting started but I am really excited about the design. It rides great and addresses some biking issues that have kind of sidelined me as bike rider for the past few years.

The Schlick Shark is basically a cross between a City bike and a Recumbent, combining many of the pros of each without the cons, all with a very visually appealing design to boot.

Schlick’s twist on the venerable bicycle design includes a special frame on which the seat can slide backward or forward along a rail that arcs over the rear wheel. That lets both short and tall riders use the same bike, with anyone able to rest both feet on the ground without rising from the saddle.

“It’s (a) really comfortable riding position, kind of like a touring motorcycle,” Schlick said.

He calls his bike the Schlick Shark, after the fin-like profile the back end of the frame suggests.

InterBike 2006 in Las Vegas

I am waiting Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee for the three and a half hour flight to Las Vegas. I got here 75 minutes in advance of the flight but made it to the gate in about 15 minutes including checking a bag and so have an hour to kill before the flight leaves.The check-in procedure went fine. The security checkpoint was pretty quick too. Everyone seemed to breeze through pretty easily. I only noticed one guy who didn’t seem to know the latest contraband list and had a liquid filled widget on his keychain and a lighter in his pocket. No biggie though, he just had to leave them behind.

I am on the way to InterBike, the bike industries annual trade show, for the first time in about eight years and traveling with John Schlick, a local inventor who has a new take on the traditional bike frame design. I don’t know if we are sitting together yet but probably not. I did the online check-in and boarding pass thing on the nwa.com site. I also ponied up the 15 clams for a window seat after seeing that my seat assignment was center one. The Airbus 319 is NOT a wide body that’s for sure. I like looking out the window anyway.