Pedal power

Israeli-American bikes on water

Judah Schiller is making his own bike lane — on the surface of San Francisco Bay

By Renee Ghert-Zand

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1 October 2013, 2:48 pm

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Renee Ghert-Zand is the health reporter and a feature writer for The Times of Israel.

On September 27, Judah Schiller was the first person to cross San Francisco Bay on a water bike. (photo credit: Courtesy of Judah Schiller)

Last Friday, an elated Judah Schiller was walking on air after riding on water. On September 27, Schiller became the first person to ride a bike across the surface of San Francisco Bay. This Thursday, he also plans on being the first to cross New York’s Hudson River in similar fashion.

It was only four months ago that the idea occurred to Schiller that a bike ride or commute need not end at the water’s edge. Conventional wisdom said that with no bike lane on the Bay Bridge, Bay Area cyclists like Schiller could not rely on pedal power to get them from East Bay cities like Oakland and Berkeley to San Francisco, and back.

But Schiller, founder and CEO of a design innovation firm, realized that if one could convert pedal power to propeller power, it would be possible to make the trip across the bay — not on the bridge, but on the water below it.

Online research led him to a Milan, Italy-based company called SBK, which makes an apparatus that turns any road or mountain bike in to a water bike. “It basically makes your bike amphibious,” Schiller told The Times of Israel.

Water cyclist Judah Schiller (photo credit: YouTube screenshot)

The frame and inflatable pontoon attachments fit into a backpack and weigh less than 20 pounds, making them easily portable. The only drawback is that, with a price of $1,000 per kit, water biking is not accessible to the masses.

Schiller is optimistic this will change. “I’m working with SBK to evolve the design and the price,” he said.

Schiller, 41, is no stranger to challenges. After growing up in Los Angeles, he made aliyah to Israel in his early twenties and joined the Israel Defense Forces. More recently, he has been raising his children on his own following the death of his Israeli-born wife just three days after the birth of their third child in 2007.

It took 45 minutes for Schiller to cross the three-and-a-half miles between Oakland’s Middle Harbor Shoreline Park and Pier 1 ½ in San Francisco’s financial district on his Bianchi road bike. He wore a fanny pack-like flotation device, but no helmet.

Riding the waves “feels like mountain biking, but easier on the knees,” according to Schiller.

It took him some serious practice getting used to water biking.

“I flipped over my handlebars a couple of times, which was kind of embarrassing,” Schiller recalled. But before long, he got the hang of it, and even taught his older children to use the apparatus with their bikes.

This is not just a stunt. Schiller views his bay crossing (and soon his river crossing, as well) as a major achievement and is serious about opening up what he terms “a new aquatic frontier in biking” by encouraging the hundreds of thousands of daily bike commuters in the Bay Area and New York to follow his example. He’s hoping his new BayCycle Project is only the beginning of something really big.

“Water covers two-thirds of the surface of the planet,” he noted. “So, there’s a lot of room for expansion.”

http://youtu.be/UtMDkRRWr6o