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Rock The Bike

Soul Cycle “In the Pocket”

Key Features:

  • Fastest on-off time of any Soul Cycle. This is the simplest way to go cruising with music on a bicycle.
  • 30-watt integrated digital amplifier great for personal listening or small party rides.
  • Satisfying bass response — big enough to be felt, not just heard.
  • Compatible with household bookshelf speakers or car audio speakers. You can start with bookshelf speakers and later build a custom wooden cabinet to fit your bike.
  • Contains rechargeable battery good for 5-8 hours of music.
  • Attractive wooden head unit is light weight (2 pounds) and compact (about the size of 4 CD cases stacked on top of one another).
  • Works with your iPod or MP3 player.
  • Uses Klickfix handlebar mount system – compatible with many front packs. You can use a front pack on the days you’re not Soul Cycling.
  • Short lead time — this item is either in stock in the fossilfool store, or we can make to order in about 1-2 weeks. Call us at 888-354-2453 to check.

 

Customer testimonials: “I took it out for a good 4 hour ride yesterday and it rocked! Many smiles and comments from the people. Much of where I biked was an amazing commuter greenway that has been in the works for the last few years – it travels along old railroad tracks which are banked on each side with either grass/landscaping/gardens or buildings. The sound was HUGE there especially. I’m excited to take it to a festival this Saturday.”
“On Saturday I rode 44 miles with the Soul Cycle, to and from the Summit Brewing 20th Anniversary concerts/festival. Fantastic! Biked along the Mississippi river through heavy woods for many miles and on the Greenway as well… Lots of smiles and comments once again. The sound was incredible.”

Status:

in stock

Rentable:

no

In The Box:
  • One Soul Cycle “In the Pocket” Head Unit
  • Wiring harness
  • Klickfix handlebar attachment
  • Smart charger
Price: $475.00

Thanks Fair Oaks St. and the Yes Men! for too much fun in San Francisco Halloween weekend.


Late night Haunted Hay Ride on the Biker Bar, cruising down 18th from the Castro to the District, with five European tourists along for the ride.


Rockin’ Halloween colors on our way to Fair Oaks St. with a Masked Masha rolling a Mundo with the Down Low Glow. At sunset, yeow!

Whoah. Amazing weekend. So much gratitude to the crew, the people of Fair Oaks St., and the Yes Men!


Kai and Pastana showed up Saturday afternoon to help mod the Biker Bar into a Haunted Hay Ride.


Tara had texted me earlier to “try 6th and Bryant as a source for $15 hay bales.” Then on the way there I realized she was sending me to the wholesale flower market. Thanks for the tip, T! I pulled in and immediately saw a bale in a stall. One cam strap on the Mundo. Back to the house.


We reduced the hay to useful cushion sizes and cam strapped Kai’s birdcage to the Biker Bar.


Kai bringing Pooh into the mix.

Do you wanna go on a Haunted Hay Ride? Yes I wanna go on a Haunted Hay Ride? Do you wanna go on a Haunted Hay Ride? Yes I wanna go on a Haunted Hay Ride?  When you wanna to go on a Haunted Hay Ride? Hmm, I dunno, how about now?


We kept the dancing going for the big kids for another couple hours.

Sunday Afternoon. Do it again.


Heading to the San Francisco debut of the Yes Men’s touching and hilarious “The Yes Men Fix The World”


Adam practicing one of the building block skills for no-hands surfing.


The lucky recipients of three $4 million Survivaballs.


Escorting the Survivaballs from the Roxie to the closest Chevron.


The Yes Men used the march as an opportunity to tout the
benefits of the Survivaball. Rock The Bike supplied the mobile P/A and
later the Pedal Powered Stage for the rally.


We turned up the dance music, including an exhuberant “I Will Survive.”


After the Chevron protest, we kept the afterparty going.
The Mundo 1000 has been holding it down as our most efficient pedal power bike.

If you’ve read this far and you’re local, you’ll probably want to join our SF Cruisers email list, and come out Monday night to Dia De Los Muertos with the Rock The Bike crew.

Crew of Junk Raft to rock a Soul Cycle on their ‘Junk Ride’ West Coast ocean advocacy tour.

Junk Raft.

The name alone arouses curiosity. A Junk is a type of Chinese sailing vessel that dates back to the Han Dynasty. And they were used for extensive ocean voyages.

But what is a Junk Raft? In the case of eco-mariners Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal, The Junk Raft is an ocean vessel crafted from junk plastic bottles, a Cessna 310 airplane fueselage and various other ‘junk’ materials.

The Junk Raft recently sailed from California to Hawaii to protest the growing pile of trash in our oceans. These plastics end up in the bellies of Albatrosses – things that really shouldn’t be floating out there, like lighters and toys. They don’t break down, not in the albatrosses and not in the ocean itself.

And it’s that very durability of plastic that has made the Junk Raft’s courageous voyage possible. Marcus and Joel literally netted up 15000 bottles from the waste stream of Los Angeles, forming two pontoons that floated them all the way to Hawaii. And what a journey it was.

Now Marcus and Anna Cummins, another plastics crusader, are teaming up, in more ways than one, and hitting the road, biking from Vancouver to Baja on the Junk Ride. To help them tell their story, we created Bike Speak.

Marcus and Anna wanted a small, self-contained thing they could carry with them on their tour, that would allow them to host cruiser rides, and do pedal powered slideshows and presentations at schools and parks. At the same time it had to pack enough punch to address a reasonable size crowd both indoors and out. They already had a Fender Blender X, so they we made an Xtracycle-compatible cabinet and a generator attachment that can be used with the Fender Blender base, without requiring tools to switch back and forth to smoothie mode.

With the human power module, a volunteer can pedal the system to run the amplification while Marcus and Anna give their talk. And with the Fender Blender bike blender system, they can serve up fresh smoothies to the crowd after the talk while enjoying great sounding music pumped out by the system’s internal rechargeable NiMH battery, good for an estimated 14 hours of light and music.

With each custom Soul Cycle that comes out of Rock The Bike, we try to push the envelope a little further. A few of us had been sketching hinged cabinets with two modes: stereo for cruising, and unidirectional for public address. Hence the flip-up action. We followed the snapdeck aesthetic, following the curves at the head and tail. The curve at the tail is functional. It matches the Fender Blender base. We used an ultra efficient amplifier for amplification and four Pro Audio full-range speakers. These speakers are small and extremely lightweight with alloy housings and neodymium magnets, weighing only 1 lb each! A crossover protects the tweeters. The entire finished cabinet, with speakers, amplifier, battery, mixer, voltage regulation system, microphone, and integrated lighting weighs in at a only 12 lbs! By far our lightest Soul Cycle to date.

A two-channel mixer is built into the controls. This stereo mixer will enable Marcus and Anna to play background music from their laptop’s slideshow program, while speaking through a lightweight microphone we provided.

We came up with a custom voltage regulation circuit to protect the internal battery, mixer, and amp from the motor. The circuit also taps a little power to trickle charge the battery. We also added a separate noise suppression circuit to mute static from the generator.

When the cabinet is flipped up, the user has access to a small “cubby” door. Inside the door is a small storage compartment where the microphone, cords, and handlebar mount can be stored when not in use.

The handlebar mount will accommodate an iPod or other mp3 player and features a battery fuel/voltage gauge. This gauge will tell the user the current charge state of the battery while also giving the human power pedalers an indication of how their pedal power is affecting the system.

Be sure to check the Junk Ride schedule for news about Marcus and Anna’s latest educational adventure and the Bike Speak system. During the Spring and Summer of 2009 Marcus and Anna will be touring the West coast. SF-Cruisers can expect a Junk Ride social ride with Anna and Marcus when they come through San Francisco. Like the Junk Raft’s epic sail to Hawaii, the Junk Ride mission is not easy. At last check Marcus was mentioning that he intended to tow a raft so that the pair could ford rivers. Rock on! Send them fanmail on their blog, and please stay tuned for more on that social ride.

A bicycle may be the perfect place to listen to music. But you have to think big.

Soul Cycle Slim at Halloween Critical mass

Soul Cycle Slim in action at Halloween Critical mass in San Francisco

Many have tried putting speakers on bicycles. And there are even a couple handlebar-mounted products on the market that amplify an FM radio or an MP3 player. The difference between a Soul Cycle and those other products is sex appeal and sound quality. The sound quality of these handlebar mounted units is always compromised by forcing full range music out of tinny sounding speakers in tiny plastic enclosures with no capacity to reproduce bass frequencies. They sound no better than listening to your music on a laptop at full blast from across the room.

So music lovers turn to headphones, which, in theory provide perfect stereo separation and plenty of bass. But in practice, the wind seems to whip between the headphones and your ear. The wires are constantly getting caught on your brake levers and yank your earbuds down into your aural canal when you rise to climb a hill. And you take a real hit on safety by isolating yourself from the noise of approaching vehicles and pedestrians.

But none of these annoyances even approach biggest problem of headphones — that you can’t share your music. How awesome is it to drive a car to the beach with four friends, all singing along to Hotel California? Those social experiences are not only possible on a bike; indeed they’re even better than they are in a car. Because there is so much engine, wind, and road noise to overcome, most car stereo systems can’t match the clarity and presence of music on a Soul Cycle . In fact, one of the most common reactions bystanders have to a Soul Cycle is “That sounds better than my car!”

Soul Cycle Slim at a recent Mission District Party

Soul Cycle Slim at a recent Mission District Party

On a bicycle, the listening environment is much more favorable than in a car. The background noise is 100-1000 times lower than a car, creating a black velvet background for your favorite music. And because the background noise level is so low, you don’t have to turn your music up very loud to experience the immersive effect of hi-fi stereo. You’ll be listening to music in a volume range where your speakers can show the true clarity.

Soul Cycle Slim -- immersive mobile audio for bicycles.
Soul Cycle Slim is lightweight enough to carry up a flight of stairs to a train platform unassisted.

The volume will be just perfect for conversation, either with your passenger or with a friend alongside you. But when you want a little extra power to enter a barbeque (or just a bar) in style, it’s there.