Thanks Earth Hour Pedalers and Bands, for rocking it at the 2009 Debut of the Pedal Powered Stage!
Pedal Powered Stage 2009 Debut at Earth Hour SF. Photo: Steve Rhodes
Thanks to everyone who came down to the Earth Hour celebration at Market Bar in downtown San Francisco, where Rock The Bike had the 2009 debut of our Pedal Powered Stage. We biked in all the gear and pedal powered all the lighting and sound equipment and smoothies, making Saturday’s event Carbon Negative. A Carbon Negative event is one that has such an inspiring effect on participants that it causes individuals to reduce their carbon impact in the coming months and years.
Big thanks to Guella and Justin Ancheta, and Fossil Fool for their performances, to Raul and the Market Bar crew for their hospitality, and to Mayor Newsom and the Neighborhood Empowerment Network for sponsoring the event. Check the Video from CBS news.
We debuted two new Mundo-based Pedal Power bikes: the Electric Mundo and the Lunar Lander. More photos and info to come on both those projects.
The Rock The Bike community came out strong for the event. Here’s a shot of art bike creator Jay Broemmel cruising on his Schwinn Broom:
Sailing to Hawaii on a raft made of 15000 plastic bottles. Environmentalists with guts.
Not content to sit back and talk about the issue of plastics polution in the Ocean, Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal are sailing from Long Beach to Hawaii on the “JUNK” a raft that floats on pontoons made of plastic bottles.
Apparently 10000 pounds of plastic are added to the ocean from the city of Los Angeles each day. The 15000 bottles in the JUNK weigh only 350 pounds.
Read MoreHappy Earth Day!
Just in time for the busy Earth Day and bike-to-work advocacy season, we set up our Fender Blender to be easily towed to events behind another bike. Now clients won’t have to throw it in an SUV if they’d rather bike it to their event.
That’s like 8 bags I didn’t bring into existence.
Lately I’ve been carrying sturdy plastic bags with me to waterproof my Xtracycle.
So when I headed to the market to buy supplies for Bike Blended Smoothies on a rainy night in SF this past weekend, I just grabbed the bag I had with me.
As I went through the produce section, I started putting all the separate fruits in their own bags, which I then would put in my basket. Then I started thinking, “so many bags”. So I just put everything in my sturdy plastic bag, as an experiment. It all made it back fine to my place, though checking out took a little longer than usual.
Planned Obselescence
After seeing The Story of Stuff on a couple of my friends’ gmail status messages, I saw the 20-minute online movie and got motivated to take myself out of the loop of planned obselescence.
Then a week later I made the mistake of putting my iPod in my pocket next to a magnetic toy. The iPod hard drive was dead instantly. The toy was fine.
I thought about replacing the iPod with one of the newer ones. But I’ve had it for almost three years, and it’s never had a problem before that couldn’t be fixed by resetting it. So I decided instead of spending $300 on a new one I’d buy a replacement hard drive for $70 on eBay, and a screen protector.
I followed the excellent video instructions on ifixipodsfast.com and fixed the iPod in about 15 minutes. I didn’t have a non-marring pry tool handy so I used a small electronics screwdriver. It left a very small mark on the one side from prying. Then I applied the screen protector, basically a clear sticker, to the ipod screen. I bought it thinking that it would prevent further scratches to the iPod screen — that my screen wouldn’t get any worse than it was. But when I applied the screen protector, the screen instantly took on it’s original glossy look.
None of the scratches accumulated during 3 years of ownership were visible any longer. I have a suspicion that a lot of people throw away electronics simply because they look old. If more people knew about screen protectors, maybe they could save their money for other things, or spend less time working and more time having fun riding bikes.
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