Back at Aerovelo. Reichert and Robertson are still thinking big. Bigger even than just being the fastest thing on two wheels.

Robertson: The bike is about the technological possibilities of uncompromised design. So for example, the bicycle that we've built, we did the math recently and it is the most efficient form of transportation ever designed. You know: kilograms of payload per unit of energy? It's more efficient than any other bicycle, more efficient than any airplane. More efficient than supertankers, which unexpectedly, transporting hundreds of thousands of tonnes at 40 kilometres an hour, is actually a pretty good way to move things. Yet our bike is far better than anything that exists.

CBC Sports: What a fantastic achievement. So is the hope that your work rubs off in all sorts of vehicle designs?

Reichert: Realistically, car manufacturers, or anyone working in any of these fields, stuff that actually hits the road will be some small percentage of the way to what people perceive as the limit. And if you can push what people perceive as the limit, you know, they're not going to go and make a car that gets 10,000 miles per gallon. But knowing that 10,000 miles per gallon is possible, when you look at like 60 miles per gallon? You're like, come on guys, what are we doing?”

Robertson: We don't expect everybody to be taking human-powered helicopters to work. We're probably among many people like Elon Musk or others working towards a more efficient and sustainable future.”

CBC Sports: Having proved that a tiny (human) engine can do the incredible, what’s around the corner?

Reichert: Once you've replaced the human power with a tiny electric motor, you can turn this into a little monorail system and you're literally doing 200 miles an hour for a small fraction of the energy of a car.

Robertson: We know we can be lightweight because our bike doesn't handle crash loads like a car does, but one could imagine a future in which all the cars were self-driving, so crashes are less of an issue and maybe weighing only 50 or 100 pounds. You could kind of imagine what a sustainable future might look like.

No one’s arguing, but we don’t even need to look at the future. The present is amazing enough.