YESTERDAY marked exactly 30 years to the exact date that I had my first official CycleClimber drawing signed and witnessed, by my old neighbor, the late Don Mills, Jr., (son of Mills Bros. fame) and I have been working tirelessly on the perfect pitch that sums up my 30-year-journey as I discovered firsthand, who’s nice and who is a right-wing blowhard in the fitness industry.
Okay, before I say another word, let me throw this out:
“I would give it all up, for one chance to go 10 rounds with Kanye West! We’re roughly the same weight. I am 64 years old, been smoking cannabis since 1971. I would not require any weights, sparring, running, jumping rope. Just a good heavy bag, and my CycleClimber machine. I am six-feet tall. I have exactly an 80-inch-reach.”
Kanye hates Jewish people, but likes Trump. But want to know a weird fact? Really?
In Donald Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” Trump says that his personal stockbroker (in 1987) was Alan C. Greenberg, CEO of Bear Stearns, “Ace” Greenberg was once rumored to have dated Barbara Walters too. Anyway, Ace actually told me on the phone when I worked at Bear Stearns that, “he read my BOOK.”
It was a 14-page letter to him. So Trump’s personal stockbroker CEO (a pillar in the Jewish community) actually read a 14-page letter from a pot-smoking, bar-hopping, Venice Beach bohemian (my life by night – back then) from me.
Okay, moot banality.
Just before I took a 90-day leave-of-absence in 1990 to go to my parent’s cabin in Lakeside Arizona to do some serious writing, Ace Greenberg put out a memo avowing that there would be, “No more leave-of-absences that exceed 30-days.”
But I quickly got a petition started on my own behalf, and all 19 Senior Managing, and Associate Managing Directors at the LA Bear Stearns, signed my petition, so Ace Greenberg would give me, “Mawk the Gawd” as they called me, because I treated all of their wealthy clients with humor, class and total respect, and I knew every employee’s phone extension and their broker specialty too.
These were some rich, powerful, wealthy men and women at Bear Stearns, incl., a guy (Michael K) whose father, used to own an NFL football team and a winning racehorse too. All of these power brokers and investment bankers were Jewish.
I never asked any of them for any financial help in my 30-year entrepreneurial to bring my dual-flywheel climbing bike to the fitness marketplace. I am not adept at crowdfunding or social media either. But seeing Kanye West or Ye, as he prefers, going on an irrational, hate-driven anti-semite tirade made me think of good ol’ Ace Greenberg, and what he would have thought.
What if NOW, I tap on all those former Bear Stearns connections and I made a compelling case (I’d give my right nut! LOL) to knock all the invidious innards out of Kanye West in a televised charity pay-per-view, boxing match, would they make a small pledge for charity to help me make it happen?
Maybe I can find a powerful Jewish-owned PR firm to help me get this fight staged, pro-bono? I promise to give my all and put everything I have into every jab and punch.
My 65th birthday in 2023, lands smack-dab between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The day after my 65th birthday, marks the 50-year anniversary of Riggs vs King in the “Battle of the Sexes.”
If he chooses, Ye can have all of Elon Musk’s money to buy the top boxing trainers, gyms, steroids, anything he wants or feels he needs to compete with a long-armed ADHD manic-Hispanic vegan pothead. He can pick the gloves, agreed wight, if headgear is optional, etc…
I believe I can KO Kanye, inside of ten rounds. No kidding.
My 36-character one-man play at the 2002 Adelaide Fringe Festival was called:
“AMERICAN DREAMCHASING: With Spirit-Drive! NOT Ego-Jive…”
Kanye is Ego-Jive, I am Spirit-Drive because it is NOT ABOUT ME.
All of this is about the CycleClimber machine. It deserves to be out there. It has saved my life, more than once, in a very fast time. This is my ace-in-the-hole. Fast results. Like no other cardio machine.
Instead, what is coming out to a 10,000 word narrative (condensed from my 40,000 + word memoir-in-progress) with countless pictures, and all kinds of inside stuff about how Bowflex really did pull the grand illusion (I have heaps of compelling proof that can help warn other inventors from being burned in a humorous way) and after 30 years of me being the lone dual-flywheel guy at four different international trade shows, despite no engineering background, or formal knowledge of kinesiology, I swear, they still never understood the workout, and choose to marginalize my informal, hands-on background in this field.
I need to share this story.
In short, where Bowflex and others totally missed the boat and were wholly unable to see, was this:
They saw CycleClimber like a standing bike, and the upper flywheel as a means to enable the arms to go along for the ride. No, it is the opposite. Kind of like when you dive in the deep-end of a swimming pool, and you touch the drain, then come back up the to surface for air. The arms are doing more of the work. The legs go along for the ride.
Bowflex could not have performed extensive testing or they would have seen why a small flywheel on the top, would compromise the true integrity of the CycleClimber workout.
See this clip.
My life mission (even more than the reality TV cartoon “Green Satori Inn a red county” that I pitched with great praise from a real reality TV exec one year ago) is to tell my story and share with the world because I keep thinking of how many other creative types like inventors, writers, film creators, etc., may also been victimized by the NIH syndrome, corporate xenophobia or shelving, by right-wing corporate behemoths that tried to marginalize one of their labor-of-love creative projects.
Even in early 2002, Bowflex CEO Brian Cook told me they were definitely coming out with my machine on an infomercial, anytime soon. They claimed they had a 100K prototype and had focus groups and… enough. It was all bullshit.
This was the second red flag that tipped me off. The first one was when Bowflex spokesmodel and their VP of Marketing Randy Potter, was unfriendly to me upon seeing the machine, then he was out of breath in less than a minute. Not a cardio guy, I reckon.
The second red flag:
When I had to evacuate Lakeside in June 2002 because of the Rodeo-Chedeski fire, I went to Portland for some the Waterfront Blues Festival music and the Oregon Country Fair. On the last night of the blues festival, the three gals at the smoky post-blues-fest- party bar in Portland, all WORKED FOR BOWFLEX EXECS. They even knew MY NAME!
Three months later, CEO Brian Cook sent me the cancel letter. I landed smack dab, back on square one.
My anniversaries and milestones for 2022 are numerous:
30 years to the date, CycleClimber journey begins.
25-year anniversary of the A frame redesign
20 years ago, this year, I performed my 36-character play at the Adelaide Fringe Festival
20 years ago in October, Bowflex CEO sends me the dreaded letter they were canceling our licensing agreement, after four years They would come with TreadClimber, in 2003.
5 Years ago, my wife and I bought the Redwood Inn in upstate NY.
Two years ago, the 3rd and final Eureka moment” the gamechanger: SPRINGS and patent pending process begins.
How would you feel? Three-decades of being the only dual-flywheel guy out there and no one has been on the machine in my motel living room, since I added the game-changing rocking oscillation that enables the body to quickly find the perfect synergistic rhythm?
Being dubbed “the Rodney Dangerfield of Fitness” by big corporation loving critics, is fine by me, but if you add “who cried wolf,” it would be totally unjustified. Unlike the concept car in HBO’s “Lady and the Dale,” I aced all three of proof-of-concepts on all three of my design changes.
But what made that four-part HBO docu-series, “the Lady and the Dale,” compelling was that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s father, Dick, who worked at KTLA, was hellbent on outing the main transgender character.
Evidently, it is true, the apple does not fall far from the tree. The Carlson’s father and son’s irrational preoccupation with LGBTQ crowd is over the top. It makes me think of an iconic quote.
Hermann Hesse once said;
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves, doesn’t disturb us.”
Also, remember the crazy guy that was enraged because a dictionary company that he felt wronged society by updating the definition of the word, “girl?” He goes on a tirade to get even with the company.
Newspapers write about that crazy man’s method to fight back against a company, that he believed wronged him. The kind of news they like to report to get hits and engagements from.
As an inventor, I simply went back to the drawing board (poor man’s R & D) to create a better version and still, zero press. This is not about money. Inventor underdog stories do not sell like a crazed loon threatening a dictionary company because they merely updated one of their definitions.
Like the Gilbert Arenas ADIDAS commercial (still my all-time number one favorite commercial ever!) “it is not about basketball anymore, it is about proving them wrong.” Arenas was the only celeb in over 30 years, I was unable to find any means to contact. In fact, have you heard of Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg (DC Sports Blog writer) when I called him in 2008 to ask for a way to get in touch with Gilbert, guess what he did?
Minutes later, on his blog, he wrote a quip (tweet?) not sure, but it said:
“A few minutes ago, the CycleClimber inventor asked me to get him touch with Gilbert Arenas.”
Oh my God! Is there no phone call that is private these days?
The head honchos at Ithaca College did not even reply to my 2022 email asking what is entailed to perform exercise science studies on the machine? I had heard that colleges that have an exercise science program often do testing of fitness machines. Same with a sports medicine lab in Staten Island.
Alas, Peloton never replied to any of my offers to check out my invention either. I thought because their stock was going down so fast, a new total-body product could help them think outside the one-flywheel box. I offered to go head-to-head with their best trainer so they could test out my claim as to who is generating more power. No response.
If people saw even one-minute out my half-hour worked (video linked via cycleclimber.com) they could see firsthand that I have been right, all along. Two-flywheels are far more efficient than one, and I really am generating more power than a Peloton instructor. Not because I am a bad-ass. It is the machine. I have an unfair proprietary advantage.
A fitness smart-watch specialist in Florida even told me, “Hell yeah, it is obvious.”
But here’s the thing. I have so much proof that shows the fitness industry is NOT like the motel industry. No. It is an exclusive group of “good ol’ boys” that control what machines fitness folks should use.
Dana White of UFC fame, and Stephen Ross, founder of SoulCycle are both hard-core Trumpers, they don’t want a cocky vegan crashing their good ol’ boys club in the macho fitness industry, aka Club Trump.
George Carlin was right: “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it!”
I can show folks exactly how my wild workout can be adapted for swimmers, runners, cyclists, boxers, rowing fans.
But gyms want separate stations. It is like how newspapers want more individual engagements and interactions. I look at the one-flywheel cult, like flat-earthers. Really.
WHY NOT 1,800 lat pulldowns on a 30-minute bike ride?
I call it multi-tasking. Killing two birds with one stone.
I see the one-flywheel cult (cult-of-personality-driven) who pay big money to get yelled at online during their Peloton class in much the same way that I see flat-earthers. Closed-minded.
Last, I promise nothing short of Hagler-Hearns, but this time, the long-armed guy will come out on top.
Should I add a caveat to my plea? If I should lose, Kanye and Elon can own my thirty-years of research, inventory, forthcoming patent to burn to the ground and I will never be heard from again? But if I win, maybe Phil Knight, in conjunction with Apple, can do extensive testing at the Nike Sports lab. Or how about if I win by KO, Adidas agrees to consider my CycleClimber machine to be their first Adidas Boxing infomercial product?
In my heart of hearts, I feel obligated to step up and step into the ring to fight anti-semitism. All of those Bear Stearns folks were good to me, and besides… I feel kind of bad.
Last April, my April Fool’s joke:
I really did not think that any of my old Bear Stearns colleagues would believe my mock press release that Adam Sandler was coming out with a new movie involving my machine, on a Netflix premiere, with 1-800 phone lines ready to sell machines, with the premiere.
Oops. My bad. I hope they let me atone for my April Fool’s joke. I promise not to let them down.
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Peace and Happy Holidays.
