Rhat Pack

Outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Patrick Walker watched explosive sniffing dogs jump to the ground from trucks to check vehicles entering the site.

After two military tours in Afghanistan with U.S. Air Force Special Operations in 2002 and 2003, Walker was a contractor there for the U.S. government. He says the frequent jumping caused hip dysplasia in the highly trained dogs. Another vehicle — one lower to the ground — would be better, he thought.

When he was in Afghanistan, Walker also watched Green Berets purchase poorly made commercial bikes that weren't tailored to their missions. “I realized the bikes the military was using weren't truly serving their needs,” Walker tells Coffee Talk.

Walker, who now works night security in St. Petersburg, decided to take all the important factors and put them into a single bike.

The outcome? The Rhat Bike, a lightweight motorcycle bike that folds and fits into a backpack. And in typical military fashion, the name is an acronym, which stands for Reconfigurable for Habitat and Terrain.

Walker holds a patent on the Rhat Bike, and he's built a full-scale proof-of-concept model of it. He's also developed four-wheel and six-wheel variations.

“I thought, 'How could I make one bike frame that could become every other kind of bike?'” Walker says. “I worked on a modular bike frame that could become other bikes like a Mr. Potato Head.”

He made his universal frame by cutting up his kitchen chairs and other found pieces of metal. Then he added Bradenton resident Larry Sadler's High Output Propulsion Electric motor. The engine becomes a field generator when parked, a big benefit for people operating remotely, Walker says.

There are lots of potential uses for the Rhat Bike, he says, beyond military applications. Police in urban areas, park rangers, border patrol agents and fire rescue workers could use the Rhat Bike to access areas more efficiently, he says.

Walker has a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo to raise money for the next step — manufacturing. “The biggest hurdle is to get it into production,” he says.

He hopes to find both a manufacturer and an angel investor soon. If he doesn't, he says, “This will be the greatest bike that never was.”