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!

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Many people use bike trailers to bring the beat at large group rides like Critical Mass. Trailers make it easy to get started, since you can use a simple box rather than having to engineer a cabinet that surrounds your rear wheel.

But trailer-based systems put the beat much further from your ears, meaning that you have to turn up the volume much louder to feel like you are ‘in the music’. This means you’ll end up using much more powerful amps and speakers, and larger, heavier batteries. All this means that you are much less likely to use a trailer-based party bike for impromptu cruises (with 5-10 friends) and more likely to save it for larger, planned rides.

I love the bike culture touches this fabricator put on his system – the bike wheel and sprockets used as speaker grills. But there’s no escaping the fact that this system, and all trailer systems, look like a bike towing a box.

In my opinion an integrated long-wheelbase party bike, a Soul Cycle, is a much much easier way to create a cosmic ‘craft’.

This was the sound system at the mc3 performance ride

It’s hard to capture on video the feeling of a good cruiser ride, but these two come pretty close. The first video, made by ultradistance rider Paul McKensie, was used on the tourbus of Clif Bar’s excellent 2-Mile Challenge. It was shot with a handful of friends and Clif folks at my place in the Mission. It’s got a beautiful shot of Mafiosa and I cruising in front of Mona Caron’s Bikeway Mural.

The second was shot by Wild Johnny, who leads the South Bay Cruiser Ride down in Redondo Beach. This one was shot at Santa Monica Critical Mass from his Xtracycle with a backwards facing web cam. Despite the grainy video, it’s got some good, spirited footage. Check out wild dance sequences, especially the first few seconds of the video.

Although the video itself is set to some groovy rock music, all the people dancing in the video were getting their beat from John’s Soul Cycle Head Unit. There are a handful of cool testimonials about the product, including one from John.

While we’re on the subject of backwards-facing video shoots, last night I helped out a local electro pop band called The Rubies make a music video “I feel electric.” The Swedish director Mattias wanted to capture some of San Francisco’s bike culture and wanted to use bikes with the Down Low Glow.

Amanda pedals the Choprical Fish at one of the stops on last night’s sweet moonlight cruise, which began at 2AM on a local pedestrian bridge. This annual ride was up there with the best social rides I’ve experienced. More pictures to come. Thanks Austin!

Noticed a couple videos on www.midnightridazz.com of what appears to be a recumbent rider with an Ice Down Low Glow at a recent ride. It’s about 1 minute in. Check ‘ out!

This bike ride was a transforming experience that forever changed my life and you should go to every one from now on. Diverse throngs of people cheered us on as we paraded through the city streets with Fossil Fool the Bike Rapper leading the way, and Gabe and JoJo providing the amplification of the jams. we danced with families to uplifting house-funk from an outlook in the golden gate park whilst delivering a message of true freedom and independence through bikes and music. we watched the Golden Gate Bridge fireworks from the beach at crissy field with barry white and opera from pucchini as the soundtrack. Pucchini received applause from the crowd when complemented by a fireworks spectacular. We had a freestyle session near the fisherman’s wharf with some radtastic 15 year old kids. These culture creating/transcending rides are not to be missed! love to you all, see you on the next social adventure-

Sarah

Take to the woods with your favorite mountain bike, a high intensity headlight, and the Down Low Glow.

The Down Low Glow adds an otherworldly ambience to night-time trail rides.
Your friends will appreciate the additional light when they’re chasing you down a gully.

Ride like your normally ride. The Down Low Glow’s special shockproofing means you don’t have to slow down on your favorite trails.

Pictured is a Light & Motion ARC headlight. This lighting system costs nearly $400, but in our opinion, it’s worth the money. The main benefit is the crisp, clear, white light, and long battery life. The bike shown here is an Xtracycle Sport Utility Bicycle (Their FreeRadical kit extends your favorite mountain bike, adding cargo capacity and improving the stability through mud, gravel, and dry leaves.)

Challenge yourself, but don’t forget to use the buddy system when riding off-road at night. Injuries or mechanical problems can quickly become serious when your lights wear out and the cold sets in. So ride safe, and enjoy!

d by fossilfool