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Giving our Mundo a real workout

Hi! from down under in New Zealand. We are giving our Yuba Mundo a real
workout. Yesterday my 76 year old father and I took it for a spin and
came back commenting how light it was to ride.

-Stuart, New Zealand
March 31, 2008

Great and brilliant bike

I wanted to thank you for this great and brilliant bike! The length of the seat post is good for my size, 192cm (6′ 3″) the seating position is ergonomic with no contact between the knees and the handlebar. The wheels are strong and the long wheelbase is exceptional for carrying all types of loads”

 

-Martin, Northern Germany
March 31, 2008

Spring Update

What’s up bike people? I just wanted to give you a little update on Rock The Bike as we head in to the Spring.

Rock The Bike is growing! Last year this time there was only one employee, me. Now there’s five of us! I’ll get you a picture soon. There’s Emmeline, who balances the books and crunches the numbers, Paul, our in-house pro videographer photographer extreme athlete, Leif, our product designer, and Melanie, our customer service rep and outreach specialist. And I am now working 100÷ on RTB, having stepped down from running Worldbike, as I had since 2003. (A huge salute to Worldbike’s new director, Kristna Evans, who is on a mission to take Worldbike from a rough-and-ready grassroots bike-focused nonprofit, to a international poverty-focused NGO using bicycles as a tool for economic empowerment.) With each of RTB’s key new hires, we shift from amateur to professional in their area of focus.

And as I hail this moment of losing our amateur status, I must acknowledge that we’ve been less than perfect in some areas this past year, including our customer service. So if there’s anything that’s bugging you about about a Rock The Bike purchase or product, please let us know. In particular, if you had to deal with a delay of more than 2 weeks on a Down Low Glow purchase without proper communication from us, and would like a shipping refund, please let us know. Please use the contact page on the left and select “customer service” as the topic.

Phew, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me tell you some of the cool things we’re working on this Spring.

I guess I’m ready to announce that we’re hard at work on a new version of our flagship product, the Down Low Glow. I’ve used the DLG almost every night for the past 5 years. I’ve used all the colors except Royale Purple. I love the DLG and know that there are aspects of the current version that I’m really going to miss. But the new version will without a doubt solve the waterproofing problem we’ve battled from day 1, and be much simpler, with fewer things to attach to your bicycle in order to use it. The new DLG will be a much more ‘manufactured product’, whereas the current one was I think correctly described as ‘cottage industry’ by Velovision’s Peter Eland. We currently make every DLG system by hand in our West Berkeley workshop. There are so many parts and so many steps involved in making it, many of which are rising in price, that we are now forced to raise the price of our trickle-charged DLG systems by about 10÷. The price change will go into effect April 8, so please take that into account if you are planning to buy one. Customers who purchase a DLG system between now and our early summer release of the new DLG will get access to industry pro-deal pricing on the new one. So if you’re psyched to buy the DLG now, go for it. I promise you won’t regret getting started sooner than later with this amazing product!

Let’s see, what else? We’re now the exlusive North American distibutor for the Yuba Mundo, a heavy duty cargo bike that will make a great platform for custimizing to your unique cargo. We’re becoming, in a sense, long-wheelbase bicycle specialists, because we also carry and install the Xtracycle FreeRadical. So if you want unbiased advice on which cargo utility bike platform is right for you, please contact us.

We entered the Bicycle Film Festival with an extended version of our Innovate-Or-Die piece on the Choprical Fish. We’ll be doing lots more on-the-ground documentation of San Francisco’s bike culture in the coming year, now that Paul McKenzie is on board.

We’ve also doubled our square footage in our workship.

Well, I think that about covers it. If you’ve read this far you must be interested in our little company and our crazy mission to “bring the light, bring the beat”, and help each of you truly rock ou on you’re two-wheeled thing. I thank you for your support and interest, whether you’re a customer, a fan, or just a web surfer.

Yours,
Paul a.k.a. Fossil Fool

Stopped on my commute…

My commute to the Rock the Bike workshop takes me past the Embarcadero, where, if I’m lucky, I’ll see flatlander Pete Brandt practicing his latest ‘links’, or sequences of moves.

Why don’t ‘they’ make more stylish clothing for commuters? ‘They’ do.

Do you wonder why they don’t make clothes for bike commuters with more subtle style, less spandex, and fewer bright logos?

They do. Sometimes you just have to wait until ‘they’ come by your workshop community looking for welding help on a clothing rack.

Joyrider Clothing rain coat

Nan Eastep heads up Joyrider Clothing — a custom line of clothing and bags for city riders. This is the front of her new bike bag, which features a really spacious roll-down bag, some nice front pockets for phone and wallet, and a structure that hugs your sides to support the weight as you rock back and forth on climbs.

http://joyriderclothing.blogspot.com/

Bike Culture and traditional advocacy — a powerful combo for growing and sustaining a movement to two wheels

Heading home last night I spotted a new blue print of a bicycle on the wall of one of the BART cars. I wheeled my Xtracycle into that car and parked it in the new stretched out ‘Bike Space’. It was as if it were made for my Xtracycle. On other BART cars, my rig sticks halfway into the doorway, which can slow other passengers down at stops. Usually I try to avoid commute hours and tuck the bike in as much as possible, but with the new layout, I won’t have to.

The new design removes one seat from the train, allowing full leg room for the passenger sitting by my front wheel and full access to passengers at the door. Commuting by BART had never been stressful with my Xtracycle — the other passengers were always cool — but the new design makes it easier for every one. I also have to give it up for the non-carpeted floors. They feel much more ‘subway’ and less ‘commuter rail’.

This cool improvement to BART’s design is probably the result of some hard-working bicycle advocate working within or with BART. And these types of practical improvements — bike lanes, parking, public transit access — are exactly what traditional bike advocates do best. But focusing on practical improvements is only half of what it takes to grow our bicycle movement. We also need passionate bike culture heads to do the work they do so well — outreach.

Working together, Bike Culture’s outreach and traditional bicycle advocacy’s hard-fought improvements are a powerful combination that can grow and sustain the bicycle movement.

Water bottle-based music systems help you hear (but maybe not feel) your music

A couple new products are helping bike people cruise with music this spring.

The Gadget Bottle is a functional water bottle that has no batteries or speakers, but its unique shape allows you to strap a cell phone with an internal speaker and listen to your MP3s as you ride. It fits inside a standard water bottle cage. At 2:35, inventor Steve Lach takes a phone call from his wife, holding the entire Gadget Bottle to his ear, with his flip phone securely rubber banded in place! No problem with one-handed use while cruising or training.

 

To up the volume a bit, the iHome2Go Cycler is a rechargeable black water-bottle shaped single-speaker music system that conceals an iPod and includes a handlebar mounted control.

Eugene, Oregon-based bicycle advocate and customer Shane Rhodes, a.k.a. The Bike Phantom, recommends it and says the volume is big enough for a small cluster of riders to hear the music. With a 3″ speaker, the Cycler isn’t going to deliver satisfying bass hits. It’s a basic law of speaker design that the smaller the speaker and its enclosure, the harder it is to get good bass response.

But how important is bass response on a bicycle? I think it’s essential, and Rock the Bike is obviously committed to the path of building bicycle music systems with cabinets large enough to deliver satisfying bass. With good bass, you and the people around you feel ‘in the music’. Without good bass, you can sing along with your friends to your favorite songs, which is a wonderful experience. But it’s a different experience than cruising in the music, which feels a bit like being in your own music video. Plenty of people disagree with me on the importance of bass response.

Others are more hardcore than I am:

Musician Peter Mulvey stays local, in “Look Ma, No Gasoline” tour.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=662120

For a healthy Friday afternoon dose of bike culture inspiration, follow the link above and check out Peter Mulvey‘s video.

After making a career as a singer/songwriter he admits “I’ve had a great old time” touring Europe and North America by plane and car, “and I’ve burned a lot of gasoline doing so.”

For a week and a half last fall, Peter stayed closer to home, hitting shows in Fort Atkinson, Madison, Green Lake, Osh Kosh, and Sheboigan Wisconsin.

First Annual Southbay Bicycle Music Festival

Posted by Wild Johnny
Time:
07/19/2008 – 20:21

Impressed with the success of the first Bicycle Music Festival put on by Fossil Fool and the San Francisco Cruisers last year, the Southbay Cruisers of Hermosa Beach, CA will be hosting the First Southbay Bicycle Music Festival in Hermosa Beach,CA on July 19th, 2008.

What will happen at the Southbay Bicycle Music Festival? We will ride through the Southbay and end up at Valley Park in Hermosa Beach where we will light a bonfire, barbecue, and have various bands and solo performers perform for us. This event will also feature our own Southbay Cruisers stepping up the mic to perform Karaoke and dance.

This will be a unique opportunity for up and coming bands from Southbay Los Angeles to be given a chance to get in front of live audiences around an intimate campfire setting. It will be a blast! We will adapt the music to the surroundings playing mostly acoustic songs with battery powered amps that we will haul on our xtracycles and trailers.

Acts so far confirmed include:

Delfina – (http://www.myspace.com/delfinamusic) awesome emerging singer/songwriter. Likes to ride her bike too with her Dad.
Makena – ( www.makenamusic.com) Award winning hawaiian duo. They’ve performed all over the world and on MTV.
The 3 Heads (www.the3heads.com) an up and coming acoustic rock band. The bass player, Jared, often rides with the Midnight Ridazz in downtown LA.

Here is a video promoting the event featuring the song “World Was Ours” by one of our featured bands ‘The 3 Heads’…


Details on www.southbaycruisers.com

 

Specialized President Mike Sinyard pedals water-purifying Aquaduct trike in Tour of California prologue.

From our Flickr friend MacPaulster’s account:

“Hats off to Mike Sinyard, CEO at Specialized Bicycles, for riding the winning “Innovate or Die” contest entry, Aqueduct, in the charity Prologue of the Tour of California 2008. The pedaling of this rig powers both the drivetrain of the tricycle and the pumps that purify water.

The machine is intended for Third World countries where clean drinking water is challenging to find. The bike can be ridden to the questionable water source, where the tank in the rear is filled. Then, while the bike is ridden back, water is filtered into the reservoir on the front. Additional water can be filtered while the bike is stationary by disconnecting the drive train. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-mvfjyiao

Jacquie Phelan gives the low down on women and bicycling at Velosport in Berkeley

Geoffrey and I headed to Velosport after work to hear Jacquie Phelan, the former women’s mountain bike champion, discussing her experiences as a woman in the world of mountain bike racing. Here are a few highlights:

At 15:35: “I am a racer… I’m intensely competitive. I’m more motivated when I can tell the person next to me has an issue with me passing them. It’s like getting a caffeine suppository… Maybe it’s the testosterone… There’s got to be a safe place for that to come out… So you don’t actually beat people up…”

At 22:00: A woman in the audience who has worked with Jacquie in the past relates a story of Jacquie pulling her Eldridge Grade (Mount Tam) with a bungie cord.

At 28:00: Jacquie tells a story about Honda sponsoring the Safe Routes to School program in Marin Country. The son of Joe Breeze notices that, in the instructional DVD she was required to play, all the cars are Hondas except for the one that mows down a little kid on a bike.