Kickbikes Roll Through Finland Streets, Gaining Popularity, Notoriety On The Way

HELSINKI, Finland - If running makes your knees hurt, biking makes your seat sore and you can't face strapping on skates, a Finnish inventor suggests the latest in locomotion: a kickbike.

Looking like a cross between a child's scooter and a Gay '90s high-wheel bicycle, kickbikes have become a common sight on Helsinki's streets.

It's a design that could hardly be simpler: A tubular metal frame connects the 28-inch front wheel with the 17-inch back wheel. A narrow footboard is attached to the bottom of the frame and to the rear wheel's fork. The rider stands on the footboard and propels the bike by kicking the ground.

Riders don't have the help of a conventional bicycle's gears but do benefit from the stripped-down cycle's light weight - 16 1/2 pounds, about half the weight of a regular bicycle - and can average about 20 mph.

"It's so light and fast," said Markku Naisko, 65, who couldn't resist a test ride when he passed inventor Hannu Vierikko's yard, where several kickbikes were on display.

A couple of keen kickbikers, who traveled 1,490 miles from Helsinki to Venice, Italy, last month, hit speeds exceeding 50 mph on downhills in the Alps. A front-wheel brake is standard equipment.

Vierikko hit on the idea after years of riding a kicksled, which looks like a chair on two long runners. The user stands on the runners holding the back of the chair and pushes it along by kicking the ice or snow. Kicksleds are used in Nordic country towns and villages where roads are not sanded.

"I wanted to copy the movement used in kicksledding," said Vierikko, a 32-year-old medical student whose invention has interrupted his studies. "I suffered problems with my knees while biking, but with a kickbike they disappeared because there's much less pressure on your legs."

Vierikko approached Finnish bike makers in the late 1980s with several frame designs and finally got a prototype produced in 1992. But Finnish retailers "rolled their eyes and thought we were crazy," he said.

Undaunted, he contracted with a Taiwanese company to make kickbikes. Commercial production began this year, with about 1,200 kickbikes shipped to Finland and 800 to dealers in 16 other countries, including the United States. They retail for about 1,500 markka, or $330.

"It's the early days yet," Vierikko said. "But wherever we display it and give people a go, they go crazy and want to buy it."

The novelty seems part of the kickbike's appeal.

"Its image value is much greater than if I rode a mountain bike worth 10 times as much," said Akim Frommer, who bought a kickbike for his 31st birthday last month.