Every hydrobike that glides across Alamitos Bay began as an idea in one person’s head. That person was Ray Buresch, an aeronautical engineer from Minnesota who spent decades building a better way to pedal on the water.
An engineer with many interests
Raymond J. Buresch was born on May 29, 1936. He earned a degree in aeronautical engineering, and his family remembers a man whose interests were many and varied, and who was, in their words, an eternal optimist. That blend of technical training, curiosity and optimism is easy to see in the machine he went on to build.
Inventing the Hydrobike
Around 1990, Ray invented the Hydrobike Explorer, a pedal-powered craft you ride sitting up, like a bicycle, balanced on two catamaran-style pontoons. The engineering ran deeper than it looked. The propeller was CAD/CAM generated and based on MIT “propeller theory,” the same theory that was essential to the Gossamer Albatross, the human-powered aircraft that flew across the English Channel in 1979. The pontoons were designed by a canoe designer for buoyancy, speed and maneuverability. For an aeronautical engineer, it was a fitting way to get people out on the water under their own power.
Ray also stayed close to the people who rode his invention. The early Hydrobikes newsletters carried a regular feature called “Ray’s Maintenance Tip,” where he walked owners through checking the drive train oil, clearing fishing line from the propeller shaft and keeping their bikes running smoothly for years.
Built in the Midwest, ridden around the world
Hydrobikes grew from small-town Minnesota with no big advertising budget, just word of mouth and, later, the internet. After many years of partnering with Shoremaster Inc on production, the company took full control of building the Hydrobike Explorer, and by the summer of 2014 its new factory in Humboldt, Iowa was running up to speed. That year Hydrobikes set out to place dealers across the US and distributors around the globe, and it welcomed 18 new dealers in 2014 alone. Ray, by then CEO of Hydrobikes LLC, even traveled to the Tampa area to welcome one of them in person. By December 2014, thousands of Hydrobikes had been sold in 70 countries, and Ray was ready for the world to know about them.
“Hydrobike is clearly one of the best kept 25 year old secrets on the planet; it’s time to expose our premier product.”
Ray Buresch, 2014
The secret kept getting out. Hydrobikes reached 73 countries by 2016 and 74 today, and owners found their own ways to use them. In 2008, a 64-year-old rider named Bob Barrett said he had been pedaling his Hydrobike across Puget Sound on his way to work for seven years, logging more than 6,000 miles.
Up the Mississippi
Ray loved a good adventure, and one of the best Hydrobike stories started almost by accident. In the spring of 1993, a Minneapolis fastener salesman named Steve Anderson saw a Hydrobike demonstrated on a lake near his home and went to the Hydrobikes office hoping to sell them stainless steel screws. Ray wasn’t sold on the screws, but he was interested in Steve. Years earlier he had listened to Steve and his friend Ken Rogers calling in to a local radio station about their 10,000-mile bicycle trip, and his team had just been discussing a publicity trip to set a record going down the Mississippi River. Steve asked whether a Hydrobike could make it up the river instead, and Ray was excited.
On July 4, 1994, Steve Anderson and Ken Rogers set out from the Gulf of Mexico and pedaled against the current for 68 days and 1,180 miles, all the way to St. Cloud, Minnesota. They went through, not around, every lock and dam on the way. Hydrobikes tells the full story here.
His legacy on Alamitos Bay
Ray passed away on August 15, 2019, at age 83. Today Hydrobikes are ridden at state parks, resorts, YMCAs and rental docks around the world, and Long Beach Waterbikes is proud to be one small part of that story. The Hydrobikes photo gallery even includes a picture of Melissa on our dock, “minding her fleet.” For the story of how pedaling on water began, long before Ray’s design, read our history of hydrobikes.
Every day, people pedal his invention across Alamitos Bay, side by side, under their own power. Ray once called the Hydrobike one of the best kept secrets on the planet. Each time a rider pushes off from our dock, it is a little less of a secret, and a little more of the future he believed in. We are grateful to Ray for the invention that brings so many people out onto the bay.
You can read more about Ray in his obituary and in the 2014 Newswire story about Hydrobikes going global.
Sources
- Newswire: Hydrobikes LLC takes the Hydrobike global (Dec 9, 2014)
- Hydrobikes news and newsletters (Summer 2014)
- Hydrobikes Summer 2014 newsletter (Humboldt, Iowa factory; 70 countries since 1990)
- Hydrobikes Winter 2015 newsletter (18 dealers in 2014; Ray in Tampa)
- Hydrobikes Spring 2016 newsletter (73 countries)
- Hydrobikes 2010 newsletter with Ray’s Maintenance Tip
- Hydrobikes: Hydrobike trip up the Mississippi River
- Hydrobikes homepage
- Hydrobikes photo gallery
- Raymond Buresch obituary, David Lee Funeral Home
Feature image: the Hydrobike Explorer I parts schematic and specifications from the Hydrobikes Explorer owner’s manual, in honor of Ray’s engineering.
