Car Free Day in Dubai pulls in new levels of participation with Bike Blending
The Dubai Municipality’s Environmental Awareness Team took it to the people on Kite Beach as part of Car Free Day, an effort to pull over 30,000 private and government cars off the roads on February 21. Their custom branded Fender Blender Pros were the focus of their well-organized activation, drawing in people to experience the joy of pedaling, and then drink the tasty results of their efforts. The man on the left raising his hand is a ‘coach‘ — a crew member responsible for helping people on and off the bikes, pulling them in to the activity, raising or lowering the seat so they get maximum efficiency from their muscles, and cheering for them when they put their all into the pedals.
Read MoreYork Catholic School Board remixes Toaster Challenge at energy awareness assembly
Sitting on the stool on the right side of this photo is an unassuming white form, but push the lever on it and you have a beast of a challenge — match the energy needs of an electric toaster by pedaling your hardest on an efficient bicycle generator.
Read MoreThis holiday season, we’re thankful to be participating locally in the Climate Justice movement
Photos by Marlon Aldana
As the weather turns nippy in Oakland and the Rock The Bike takes a breather from work to get in the holiday spirit, we wanted to take a moment to share this note of gratitude.
We are thankful to all our customers who have helped us grow our business and find a stable location in Oakland. You have given us the foundation and stability to make a difference in our local community, to say yes when a local Climate Rally needs a sound system and doesn’t want to rent it from ye’ olde diesel powered sound co.
Read MoreIt’s official, the Dual sLEDgehammer is a thing.
Now you can host a competitive pedaling challenge at your event with this side-by-side competitive sLEDgehammer. It converts 100% of the riders’ muscle power to light and feels harder as more light stages turn on. The rider who sustains the highest Wattage level for 3 seconds and reaches the victory sequence first is the winner. We took it out to a party for the semiconductor industry last week and got dozens of people pedaling and competing, breathing and gritting their teeth in an evening-long series of heats to determine the strongest rider in the company.
Here’s a good view of the gear. The only thing out of view is the power-analyzing circuit that typically sits on a nearby table. The key elements shown are: 2 Generator Pros (bikes), 2 11′-tall sLEDgehammer light towers, cabling.
New video shows why we switched to BlendTec pitchers: better ease of use, better pricing.
The BlendTec Wildside + XR pitcher now comes standard with our High Performance Upgrade for Fender Blenders. You can still buy Vitamix brand equivalent pitchers at the time of purchase or after, but they’re more expensive. Plus, we like the BlendTec pitcher better. Great news all around. Thanks BlendTec!
Read MoreKids provided 75% of the energy for our 3-day festival stage at Maker Faire. How? Lots of bikes.
Maker Faire is very family oriented. The largest audience of the weekend was for Magician Bryan Patrick, whose sound needs were ironically minimal.
Since our earliest moments of Pedal Powered experimentation, I’ve been fascinated by how much sound comes from one pedaler’s efforts. I remember a 12-year-old powering my street performance at a charity bike event for an audience of 30-50 people in the early goings. He was into it! Not too hard, not too easy. Great sound out to about 20 feet from the speaker. The ratio of 1 pedaler for every 50-100 people at our events has roughly held as we’ve scaled up Rock The Bike’s full system to do larger events. At the Maker Faire in San Mateo this year, we brought an 18-bike system capable of entertaining over 1000 people, and at most times it was primarily powered by kids.
