Personal Jet Bike - Tomorrow's Technology Today

The Personal Turbine

Inline-fours are fun and V-twins are swell, but what man-jack among us hasn't wished for our very own Jet Bike?

Sure, shooting lasers from our fingertips would be pretty cool and would make flipping-off left-lane squatters on the freeway more amusing, but the Jet Bike is a fantasy every bit as persistent as that rash you picked up in the merchant marine.

Oh sure, Jay Leno has a Jet Bike with a turbine that could hoist a flaming swift-boat and a dozen shot-up GIs out of a putrid rice paddy without even exceeding break-in limits. But Leno also has an unlicensed nuclear reactor in a warehouse in Burbank, and was recently seen driving one of those English Channel tunnel-boring machines to lunch on the 118 freeway. The man is not normal.

What about the rest of us? Perhaps we should look to France, leaders in the important fields of toast, fries, kissing, surrender and budget Jet Bikes. For your amusement, we submit photographic evidence of a Jet Bike on a scale accessible to the homeless and even those on fixed incomes.

With nothing more than a bargain-bin turbine, a robust Chinese bicycle and unsupervised access to Le Radio Shack dumpster, you can live out the dream of the personal Jet Bike. Feel free to use the photos here as a schematic upon which to stake your life. Just don't forget to have your next of kin let us know how it turns out.