We have about a month to help you put together a fun gathering for Earth Day. Let’s go! Make your reservation for Earth Day now and save $50 off rentals or $200 off a full-service event, simply reply to this email referring to this offer to claim the discount. We also have a free shipping offer if you’d like to purchase a Fender Blender Pro or Fender Blender Universale. The offer is valid until April 1. For our East Coast customers, please note the last day to book rentals and do ground shipping for this year’s Earth Day is April 8.
Act now to get your rental started. We often get fully booked on Earth Day, so please contact us now.
Set up a pedal power station at your Earth Day event and you’ll see your group smiling and laughing as they give energy back, the perfect state from which to celebrate our beautiful living planet and renew our commitments to living in balance.
It’s about time we shared one of our best-kept secrets with you! We are lucky to be connected in family ties to a very sweet catering business in Brooklyn, NY called Sweetcycle, which uses our bikes for their events and has shared with us their favorite egg-free recipes for bike-churned ice cream. Egg-based custards can be challenging to make because they involve making the right call when it is cooked enough. With these egg-free thickeners, which are all-natural, the recipe is easier to prep — no eggs to crack — and easier on the chickens! There is much less of a danger of overcooking it. Therefore following these recipes will leave you more time for other important event details. They set up perfectly in our Icycleta or Ice Cream Bike Pro. The best part about them is that they are so delicious!!
To measure out the thickeners we suggest having a gram scale.
Classic Vanilla
5 cups heavy cream
8 cups milk
2 1/3 cups cane sugar
1 tsp. sea salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 whole vanilla bean processed in a mortar and pestle
2 tablespoons rice flour mixed
.5 g. xanthan gum (scant ¼ tsp.)
2.5 g. locust bean or guar gum (3/4 tsp.)
1. Heat cream and milk up in a large pot. Add the sugar but hold one tablespoon aside. Add the salt and vanilla. Let this mixture come to a simmer. 2. Meanwhile, weigh out the xanthan gum and locust bean or guar gum and mix the gums into the extra 1 tablespoon of sugar in a small bowl. Add the rice flour. 3. When the milk/cream mixture is close to simmering, with a whisk, add the rice flour/sugar/gum mixture. Whisk vigorously. Allow the mixture to simmer for a minute and then remove it from the stove. 4. Strain out the vanilla bits if you used whole vanilla.
Chill the base over ice. Churn once the base is well chilled.
Serving Size: about 36 – 4oz servings (once ice cream is aerated it can increase to 1.5 or 2 times the ingredient quantities)
Cardamom Oatmeal Cookie Ice Cream
Ingredients (egg free):
5 cups heavy cream
7 ½ cups milk
1 ¾ cups cane sugar + 1 tablespoon
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cardamom pods
3 tablespoons rice flour mixed
.75 g. xanthan gum (just less than ¼ tsp.)
2.5 g. locust bean gum (3/4 tsp.)
2 ½ cups oatmeal cookie crumbs
Method:
1. Heat cream and milk up in a large pot. Add the sugar (except the extra tablespoon), salt, vanilla. With a mortar and pestle, grind up the cardamom pods and add them to the milk/cream mixture. Let this mixture come to a simmer. 2. Meanwhile, weigh out the xanthan gum and locust bean gum and mix the gums into the extra 1 tablespoon of sugar in a small bowl. Set it aside. Measure out the rice flour and add it to the small bowl with the xanthan gum and locust bean gum. 3. Once the milk/cream mixture is close to simmering, with a whisk, add the rice flour/sugar/gum mixture. Whisk vigorously. Allow the mixture to simmer for a minute and then remove it from the stove. 4. Strain out the cardamom. Mix the oatmeal cookie crumbs into the hot ice cream base. Chill the base over ice. Churn in the Immergood Ice Cream churn with the bike once the base is well chilled.
Serving Size: about 36 – 4oz servings (once ice cream is aerated it can increase to 1.5 or 2 times the ingredient quantities)
Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream
This Pumpkin Ice Cream recipe was tailored for us by Kate Zuckerman of Sweet Cycle, a.k.a. Cousin Kate, our inside hookup to the world of kitchen science and pastry chefs. It’s a variation of her Cardomom Oatmeal Cookie recipe, using slightly smaller amounts of the magic thickeners (rice flour, xantham gum, and Locust Bean Gum) to account for the thickness of the pumpkin puree. For the pumpkin puree, you can make it yourself or get Libby’s Pumpkin Puree in cans. If you choose to process your own pumpkin puree you can substitute Delicata Squash or Butternut Squash, as these are a bit sweeter and have lower water content.
This recipe makes about 1 gallon of custard and is ready to freeze in the Icycleta.
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5 cups heavy cream
7 ½ cups milk
2 cups pumpkin puree
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons rice flour mixed
.5 g. xanthan gum (or 1/8 tsp.)
1.75 g. locust bean gum (1/2 tsp.) OK to substitute Guar Gum
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground clove
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 pinch nutmeg
Method:
1. Heat cream and milk up in a large pot. Add the sugar (all but one tablespoon), salt, vanilla. Let this mixture come to a simmer.
2. Meanwhile, weigh out the xanthan gum, locust bean gum, and rice flour and mix with the extra 1 tablespoon of sugar in a small bowl along with all the spices.
3. Once the milk/cream mixture is close to simmering, with a whisk, add the rice flour/sugar/gum/spice mixture. Whisk vigorously. Allow the mixture to simmer for a minute and then remove it from the stove.
4. Add the pumpkin puree whisk and stir.
5. Chill the base over ice. Churn in Icycleta or Ice Cream Bike Pro once the base is well chilled.
Serving Size: about 36 – 4oz servings (once ice cream is aerated it can increase to 1.5 or 2 times the ingredient quantities)
Industry Innovators 2022: Paul Freedman
The owner and founder of Rock The Bike offers unique bike-based entertainment options, including pedal-powered DJ booths, lighting installations, and charging stations.
Paul Freedman is the owner and founder of Rock The Bike, a San Francisco-based rental company that offers bike-based entertainment options, including pedal-powered DJ booths, lighting installations, and charging stations.
How he got his start: Freedman traces his interest in bikes back to high school, when he sold them as a summer job—and then later with Xtracycle and Yuba Bicycles, two leaders in the cargo bike movement. “I combined my love of practical biking with a desire to perform, doing bicycle-based street rapping with a pedal-powered party bike I called the ‘Choprical Fish,'” he remembers. “Crowds pedaled to power the show. My friend Nate Byerley was in the same movement with his bike blenders. In 2008, I purchased his company and integrated bike blenders into Rock The Bike.”
What sets his company apart: Rock The Bike “eats our own dog food,” Freedman says. “We use our own gear to entertain locally, then use our learnings to improve our product line.”
What innovation means to him: Innovation is about accessibility, he explains. “We aim to make our own school of interactive pedal-powered events as friendly as possible to mainstream audiences. Lately, this has manifested in an improved seatpost that raises and lowers more like a piece of gym equipment—faster, more intuitive, and more secure. Then people will use that feature more, instead of just leaving the seat at the bottom.” The company has also revamped its frames.
To Freedman, it’s all about giving people a “powerful” feeling when they pedal during Rock The Bike’s activations. “This is better for our mission of inspiring people to make change in the world,” he says. “And it’s better for our customers, who are trying to put people in an open, receptive state, so they can connect with people about their message.” Event options also include a pedal-powered smoothie bike (pictured), along with options to create spin art, charge phones, and even power a DJ booth or entire concert.
Career highlights: Highlights of Rock The Bike’s event-related work include co-producing the Bicycle Music Festival in the Bay Area for seven years. “Producing our own events has always been a source of bonding for our fans and crew,” he says.
More recently, Freedman has enjoyed working with clients like Google, Tennessee Valley Authority, Patrón, and UCLA. “Our work with Patrón and other alcohol brands is a new career highlight for me, because they represent the way our pedaling passion is making its way into mainstream settings,” he says. “Patrón is trying to sell their tequila, and they use our bikes to sample margaritas. They only want to buy our product if it helps them connect with new customers. It’s a symbiotic relationship with our clients.”
Working with these high-profile clients allows Rock The Bike to reach more people—and inspire more people to ride bikes, which is one of Freedman’s passions. “Replacing car trips with bike trips is one of the best ways an individual can reduce their carbon footprint while improving their health and experiencing fun and community,” he says.
His favorite thing about working in events:…. To read more find the full article at BizBash.com
We had a great time with Quail Run Elementary School at their recent school dance. We brought DJ Thiago, a bumpin’ sound system, laser light show, bubble blasters, our custom Peace & Love LED banner, and 4 of our Pro generators, sized for kids.
We ran things a different from normal and it seemed to make for a better dance. The normal way is to have all bikes connected electrically on a single team. Then we coach the riders to look at the Pedalometer and ‘keep it in the green’. When the Pedalometer is in the green, the system voltage is ideal and all devices run.
This time we didn’t do a team approach. The 4 bikes were lined up next to each other, so it felt like a team, but each was powering its own device: loudspeaker, Peace & Love banner, Lasers / black light, and bubbles / lasers. This seemed to increase engagement as the students wanted to try pedaling all of the bikes.
The rationale for a team approach has been that it makes for a more stable performance. In the context of an elementary school dance, the opposite may be more valuable. Sure, the lights and speakers do turn on and off a lot more, and this could be seen as more chaotic, but kids want to know what they’re powering. So when you tell them you’re powering that light, they get into it.
The sound at a dance is in a different category from lights. It affects everyone if the sound turns on and off a lot. To address this we showed up with a massive battery bank capable of running the DJ gear and sound system all night. We used the always-on power for one of the two Mackie DRM215 loudspeakers. This way the sound never turned off, but it got better when kids pedaled the other speaker. We also had a coach focused on that bike, an Off The Wall Pro generator, and we tried to encourage only bigger kids to pedal it, and challenged them to pedal a whole song, or pedal till then end of the song.
The laser show is surprisingly impressive for the wattage it consumes. One kid can do it! Also the bubble blaster generates a lot of bubbles for how much power it consumes. In general we aim to provide kids with inspiring examples of Pedal Power, like these, so that the message comes through that they are powerful, that their bodies are powerful.
Setting the seat height correctly for each and every pedaler is essential to giving the pedaler the chance at getting the most from their muscle and skeletal strength, i.e. to feel powerful!
We’ve made changing seat height a joy with our new gym style seatpost. It’s heavier duty and much quicker to use than the bike style quick release we’ve been using. Being a square post, it’s inherently twist free; you’ll never have to worry about lining it up. Just pull the knob, raise or lower, and let go of the knob. It’ll find the nearest hole with a satisfying spring loaded pop.
Rock the Bike’s newest upgrade!
We’re bike people, but sometimes bike parts can be finicky, designed to save weight. Since our Pro frames are designed to be stationary and not climb hills, we’ve taken this opportunity to choose the best part for the job, if not the bikeiest.
Especially at a busy event, when you’ll need to raise and lower the seat for many pedalers, you’ll love this major upgrade. It’s easier on your hands, and very fast. The new frames are arriving in May, but our pre-sale is happening now through the end of this month. Email us at customerservice@rockthebike.com and catch that savings while it lasts!
In Rock The Bike’s first fully produced commercial with a fictional plot line, we rented a house in the Berkeley Hills with an epic sunset view to capture the feeling of an event powered by ice, lime, and pure human potential! Equipped with Off The Wall Pro powering the DJ booth and the Electric Fender Blender Pro blending margaritas, we wanted to meet new potential fans who are ready to take their outdoor parties to the next level!
The menu featured pomegranate margaritas and the tunes were bumping with DJ Thiago on the 1’s and 0’s. We had a fabulous crew working behind the scenes to bring this shoot to life. Take a look and please share the video!
To find out more about the products used in this video, follow the links below! For blending the margaritas of the night, we had our newest model of the Electric Fender Blender Pro (with the Off the Wall Generator wheel). Not to mention our brand new light, “Here We Glow”, which magnetically snaps to your Electric Fender Blender Pro or Off The Wall Pro. Check out our special promotion below and learn about how to get free shipping on your upcoming orders!
In our shoot Off The Wall Pro was powering only the right speaker. We ran the left speaker (out of view in the photo) on wall power. We did this so that music would stay on at our shoot even when pedaling stopped. The turntables and DJ gear on the table with all of its devices also ran on wall power. We ran the right speaker louder than the left so when it came on it was clearly pedal powered sound. This was the right solution for a video shoot, and it could also come in handy at a school event with smaller kids trying to pedal. They can do it, but they require more coaching and therefore you’d expect to hear more outages. If some music is always on, it can keep the dance grooving and take the pressure off little pedalers.
Now for the Special Offer on our Newest Product: “Here We Glow”
For a limited time, the “Here We Glow” light is a FREE GIFT to anyone who either purchases the Off The Wall Pro or upgrades their existing Fender Blender Pro to an ELECTRIC Fender Blender Pro! Purchase any Off The Wall Pro level product and get a free light to brighten up your party! If you are wondering how to upgrade your existing FBP, purchase Off The Wall Generator Wheel and the Here We Glow will be automatically added to your order for free.
We love hearing from you. Let us know what you like! Share this video or leave a comment on youtube to get free shipping on your next Rock the Bike purchase. Be sure to let us know when you make your purchase where you commented or shared so we can fulfill our free shipping offer!
Tis the season to pedal power some holiday cheer. With Off The Wall, it’s gotten super easy: kids can do it, you won’t blow up lights, and you can use the gear in your preparedness kit and for parties throughout the year.
While there are many different styles of lights that will work, we’ve tested and recommend this fairy light. It has a remote control with various modes and will remember your preferred mode even when you stop pedaling. To get a good pedaling feel you’ll want to aim for 25-30 Watts total, which you’ll see on the handlebars if you choose the Comparator Safety Circuit and Display option with your Off The Wall purchase. Aim for 5-8 strands of light and select our USB Brick option for the simplest wiring.
From now through Dec 15, enjoy 15% off our Off The Wall Generator Stand with the code “pedalpowerholiday.” Limited stock, please act fast!
A Look Inside Arizona’s 1st Bike Powered Concert organized by the students of NAU
After NAU student Joanna Wheaton saw Rock the Bike’s bike-powered music and light show at UCLA’s Ecochella in 2014, she felt inspired by the potential of people-powered concerts. Joanna is a part of her campus’ student environmental caucus — the Green Jacks — who’s goals include creating a culture of sustainability on campus, encouraging student involvement, and reducing NAU’s environmental impact through student-organized events such as Better World Film Series, Earth Week and the event that our blog post is highlighting, Earth Jam 2019 on April 19. They are purchasing a 10-bike system from us that we are affectionately calling “party in a box” because it stores so compactly when not in use but creates a big sound for concerts. Students are able to demonstrate their resourcefulness by gathering bikes from their community, they just don’t have to take on the full responsibility of building their own system from scratch, something that is not easy to get right on your first try.
We wanted to find out more about what inspires and motivates students like Joanna so we asked if we could interview her! Rock the Bike founder Paul Freedman below interviews Joanna Wheaton about what lead her to be involved with environmentally minded event planning.
Paul: What year are you in school, please? If you were involved in the first UCLA Ecochella, then maybe you are a grad student?
Joanna: I am actually pursuing a post-bac right now! So I guess that makes me a 6th-year undergrad, though I’m still taking graduate level courses as well. At UCLA I majored in Political Science with minors in Environmental Systems & Society and Urban & Regional Planning; now I’m getting a BS in Mathematics with minors in Computer Science, Economics, and GIS.
Paul: How did you get involved with Green Jacks? Would you say you were environmentally minded before joining Green Jacks? What are some of the other outlets for your environmentalism?
Joanna: This is the first semester being involved with the Green Jacks. It might make more sense for me to answer this question in the context of E3 at UCLA since my involvement with E3 was much more robust (I was the co-chair my junior and senior year) and E3 was significantly more active at UCLA than the Green Jacks are at NAU.
The things that I learned in my UCLA freshman “clusters” about the global environment and the environmentally-engaged people that I met through it quickly motivated me to make environmental issues a key part of my academic and personal life.
I participated in Education for Sustainable Living Program (ESLP) throughout my undergraduate experience and, during my senior year, I led the lecture series as well as an action research team. Between ESLP, E3 and other sustainability initiatives on campus, there are seemingly endless opportunities to learn more about the urgency of climate change and to get involved with the sustainability community at UCLA and in greater Los Angeles. It was really rewarding to be welcomed into the sustainability family at UCLA, which I would characterize as being extremely collaborative and supportive. It was also very empowering to see our efforts result in tangible changes to campus policies and programming.
As I learned more about climate change, I became more motivated to play a role in sustainability efforts, and there was certainly no shortage of opportunities for involvement at UCLA and in Los Angeles! In retrospect, we were also very fortunate to have top-down support for sustainability initiatives at pretty much every level. Although students at NAU as well as the City of Flagstaff and the greater Flagstaff community tend to really value sustainability, students do not have as many opportunities to shape campus policy.Whereas at UCLA student groups and university stakeholders worked together to draft and implement sustainability action plans, NAU administrators seem unmotivated to implement NAU’s Climate Action Plan and have cut back funding and resources for the Office of Sustainability to the extent that the Office’s manager recently resigned in frustration.
Paul: What do you consider the biggest opportunities for a group like Green Jacks to create a culture of sustainability within NAU? Where are the biggest chances of improvement that you see on campus?
Joanna: I would say that there is a pretty vibrant culture of sustainability at NAU. It is most apparent in the University’s academic offerings (there is even a PhD in Sustainability), the research emphases of faculty, and the interests of students. However, as I mentioned earlier, this enthusiasm is not reflected by the priorities of the administration, which has placed a greater emphasis on other goals like expanding NAU Athletics. As a result, there are fewer opportunities to effectively shape campus policy and there is lower turnout at student-run sustainability events than one might expect. I view those two outcomes as being related in that it feels more rewarding and worth-while to be involved in sustainability programming when students feel like their efforts have the potential to result in tangible changes to campus policy. Despite these institutional limitations, I would identify student-run events as the area in which there is the greatest potential for further fostering a culture of sustainability at NAU.
Like all campuses, sustainability events at NAU can be kind of insular in that they are primarily attended by a group of students who are already committed to sustainability. Ideally, on-campus programming would have enough variety and be sufficiently entertaining to attract a wider range of students, some of whom have not already dedicated their lives to environmental efforts. For example, hosting an event to pick up litter is going to appeal to a relatively narrow group of students who don’t need to be convinced about the merits of sustainability. By contrast, a more diverse group of students would be interested in enjoying free food at a Green Chef cooking competition where a panel of sustainability-oriented chefs judge meals that are prepared on-the-spot with random farmers market produce by teams of students competing for a gift card to bougie local restaurants.
Paul: Having been to Ecochella, can you speak to the impacts that it has had at UCLA or on you?
Joanna: Of all the events that I’ve hosted or in which I’ve participated, bike-powered music festivals are by far the most effective at bringing new faces to sustainability events. This is partially a function of the fact that they are inherently fun but is also because it is advantageous to organize groups of cyclists in advance in order to ensure a steady supply of power. This provides a great opportunity to reach out to groups that may not otherwise be aware of or interested in sustainability events, such as athletic organizations, career-related organizations, sororities and fraternities, student clubs, etc. Using bike-power also makes energy use and generation more tangible, which may encourage students to consider their energy use from a different perspective.
Before organizing Ecochella, creating an event that harnessed bike power had never occurred to me. But the event generated such excitement from the moment it was introduced (in terms of students wanting to help with the organization as well as wanting to participate by pedaling or performing) that its potential to appeal to a diverse range of students was immediately apparent. Ecochella was easily a major highlight of my undergrad experience at UCLA, and I know the same was true for many of my peers, regardless of whether they were part of UCLA’s “sustainability bubble.”
Joanna, in addition to her full class load, has organized a way for NAU to become the first to produce Pedal Powered shows in AZ and wrote an inspiring and astute grant proposal for her school to own its very own bike power sound system.
We are continuing to make and sell bike blenders and are getting some inquiries for events, though most of our partners and clients are understandably hesitant to plan gatherings. We’re encouraging partners to produce outdoor events, the safest way to go. Your group will be glad to hear from you, and we’ll be there to support you with our super clean and pro event kitchen. We’ve decided to bring our health-code compliant food booth (required for public events) to all of our events. Check this video for a tour. Our crew will respect all the physical distancing guidelines and sanitize touch points on our bikes between uses, while keeping the fun and inspiration high.
booths, lighting installations, and charging stations. 
