If you're a bicyclist how does your seat feel at the end of a long ride?
Well, my experience is that no matter how good my legs feel or how in shape I am, my back end is always unhappy at the end of 50 or more miles.
An inventor I met in Ontario a couple of weeks ago may have a good part of the answer.
Lou Tortola has completely rethought the back end of the bike with the RoundTail. His revelation was the simple idea that the classic triangular shaped rear of a bicycle delivered all the shock of the road directly to the seat. He knew that a circle would distribute those shocks more evenly, so he went to work replacing the standard bike frame with two circular frame elements over the rear wheel.
You can see it and learn more about it here, and you can read a review in Popular Science here.
I got a chance to ride the bike -- one of only a handful that have been produced so far -- and I have to agree with Lou's claim that his design takes 60% of the vibration out of biking.
It was a very comfortable, fast and responsive ride.
Lou, who also makes videos, even shot some footage of my ride on the rural roads of Essex County, Ontario.
You can also see some photos on Facebook.
Lou Tortola himself is an interesting guy, something of a Renaissance Man. He doesn't just design bikes and make sharp videos. He's also an author with a successful novel under his belt. Titled The Bridge of Time, it's available on Amazon.com.
But Lou's novel idea for the bike might be his biggest contribution to the world. I've got a feeling that the RoundTail might be the bike of the future.
