Rock The Bike: BLOG
Thanks 350.org and Sup. Avalos’ office for the opportunity to Pedal Power Bill McKibben
When I heard Bill McKibben was going to be in San Francisco to announce a recent success in Supervisor Avalos’s initiative for San Francisco to divest from Oil giants, I jumped at the chance to Pedal Power the speech. Avalos’ office put me in touch with the organizers who were excited to make it happen.
On the day of the rally, Nio and I transported two of our Modified JBL Loudspeakers and towed one electric Fender Blender Pro to use as the generator. In our newest favorite configuration of our Pedal Powered Stage system, we used the One Bike / One Speaker system, in which the ultracapacitor (storage tank) and protection circuitry are inside one of the speakers. There’s no red box as there usually has been in Rock The Bike’s Pedal Power setups. This makes it fast to set up, and easier to transport.
The first thing Bill did when taking the stage was fist-bump the pedaler. His message on the mic is very inclusive and echoes previous giants of social movements: “We may not beat this challenge, but I so look forward to fighting alongside all of you. More…
read moreA bangin’ Bike To Work Day
This morning on Bike To Work Day I was racing to drop off a Bike Blender to UCSF for their Health Fair. In classic fashion I’d double-booked the drop off with a really important meeting, the ISCOTT commission meeting where Bicycle Music Festival was to present our Nighttime street closure plan. I didn’t check the bike routes and ended up climbing this WALL of a hill. Switchbacking too tight I flipped the blender and pushed it up the second half. Happy Bike To Work Day!
Drop complete, ready to sprint to ISCOTT. Only problem is I have no lock, and they’re NOT going to let me bring it in. More…
read moreJustin Ancheta LiveOnBike at Sunday Streets
Justin Ancheta Band to debut their new CD “Plant” at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco April 13. RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/events/325251237585774/?ref=ts&fref=ts
read moreBike Blending: How many crew? How much ingredients? How many bikes?
Here’s a copy of a recent receipt from Trader Joe’s for a Bike Blending event that served 100 people.
To serve the most people in the least time, here are the factors to consider:
- Ingredients. This is the easiest. Ingredients cost $0.60 per 8 oz smoothie. Scale this to meet your crowd needs.
- Crewmembers. This helps you prepare the pitchers of ingredients faster. 1 person per bike for a relaxed event. 3 crewmembers per bike if you think you’ll be slammed.
- Number of Fender Blender bikes. Increase the number of bikes to maximize your participation levels when maximum crowd flow is expected. Each bike can do 100- 250 8 oz smoothies per hour, depending on the number of crewmembers.
- Type of pitcher: See the Osterizer v. Vitamix comparison. It’s easier to serve large crowds with a vitamix.
- Number of pitchers. Two pitchers are incredibly useful. Make double the same amount of time by prepping a second batch while blending the first. If you foresee having vegan/dairy-free smoothies you might want a pitcher just for those.
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The sLEDgehammer has escaped the tube.
The sLEDgehammer is a Pedal Power game where you have to pedal really hard (but not for very long) to win. When you win, the power you’ve built up by pedaling gets unleashed in a dazzling light sequence. In the example above, a river appears to flow down the courtyard away from the pedaler, then the Peace & Love sign lights up. The 9-segment ‘reward’ sequence lasts only a couple seconds. When someone wins the game and sees the sequence, there’s a palpable release of energy. The celebrations are awesome to see. At the holiday party where we set this up, people were shouting “Peace & Love!” More…
Basic questions to consider when crafting your Pedal Powered Stage
The technical needs of a Pedal Powered event vary greatly depending on things like audience size, venue, and power needs of musician’s devices. Over the past 6 years Rock The Bike has Pedal Powered events large and small. In this post we’ll try to help you arrive at what type of Pedal Power system would make the biggest impact for you.
Above: Shake Your Peace! performs during the Bay Rising Tour on their Pedal Powered Stage crafted by Rock the Bike.
Please consider and answer these questions:
- Outdoor v. Indoor. Doing anything in an outdoor space requires more power, as there are no resounding walls. What are the spaces you wish to use as venues? Do you have a photo of one of the events you host?
- Will you be doing nighttime events? Is there always light available? Do you have a need for Pedal Powered Lighting?
- What is your main motivation for doing Pedal Power?
- Audience size. How many people are in the crowd at the events you envision Pedal Powering?
- Do you need to provide AC power? Examples of why you’d need this include: charging cell phones, charging laptops, powering a mixing board, powering a power tool as an example of Pedal Power.
read moreWatch Fossil Fool’s TED Audition.
VOTING IS CLOSED! Thanks for reading and watching the video!
Friends, customers, and fans: Please support my campaign to speak at the global TED 2013 conference. There is an open voting and comment period happening NOW until the end of August, in which you can watch and review all the amazing auditions that took place in the past 6 months. I auditioned in Vancouver in May. While the TED team make the final decisions, your feedback and ratings are going to help this talk get noticed. Please see bold instructions below for info about how to take action!
read moreRide to Gaia Fest with Rock the Bike
Beginning July 30 from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, we will pedal northward, covering 180-miles in 4-days, arriving in style at Gaia Fest, an awesome music and camping festival at the Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville.
For the past 4 years, we have mobilized hundreds to ride 20 miles south from San Francisco to Maker Faire.
At the Bicycle Music Festival, we move our entire festival, including our 10000-watt Pedal Powered Stage and hundreds of fans, from our day venue to our night venue 5 miles away.
We have studied from the masters of self-supported music and bike touring, the Pleasant Revolution. Cello Joe, in foreground, will be biking with us. Kipchoge, in background will also be biking to Gaia, but from the North.
And now, we are ready to bring YOU safely by bicycle to Gaia Fest!
We will be carrying all the supplies we need for our tour, then setting up a Pedal Powered Stage featuring some of the best bands at the Gaia Festival, right across from the Main Stage!
read moreMany thanks San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival: World’s largest Human Powered Music Fest.
The 6th Annual San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival was our biggest ever and a milestone for our grassroots Human Powered Music Fest. Many thanks to the bands, fans, and our huge volunteer crew. Any one of the 3 phases of the day would have been epic enough. But we had a beautiful, idyllic daytime music festival in the park, an outrageous mobile party, and a post-modern urban block party all in one day. Daytime: 500+ people in a meadow, enjoying live music in the beautiful sunshine… Followed by a fire-truck dodging, freeway underpass screaming, Fossil Fooling LiveOnBike session, with captain Ariel using no electric assist to pull 3 performers and audio gear weighing 250 pounds on our Mobile Stage… Followed by a street party with an elevated stage, a glowing Bike Tree, and a 3-person pedal powered stage lighting system.
Rupa & The April Fishes perform at Golden Gate Park’s Log Cabin Meadow. Photo: Volker Neumann.
We had 19 pedalers at the peak in Golden Gate Park! Plenty of power for our 10000-Watt sound system to run. In the distance you can see our Pedal Powered Line Array hanging from its bamboo tripod.
The suite next to the metalshop in our Berkeley workshop community is available!
The workshop community has the honor of being the only structure zoned for ‘Light Industrial’ in this otherwise residential neighborhood. This makes it ideal for inventors, frame builders, seamsters and seamstresses, or fabricators. We are close to good food and 3 BART stations.
