environment

Happy Earth Day!
Originally uploaded by Rock The Bike

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 exisence.
Originally uploaded by Rock The Bike

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.

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.

About a week ago, when San Francisco Bay suffered its worst oil spill in 20 years, Jon and Adam took their boat out, saw that no one was doing any cleaning, and started wondering what ordinary people can do to fix a problem as massive as a 50000-gallon oil spill.Earlier this year, they bought a 50-foot steel-hulled sailboat to turn into a research and design vessel, the Magnet.

They went out on the Bay to look at the damage to the bridge piling.

Adam observed that the shape of the concrete 'bumper' on the Bay Bridge supports "looks awfully similar to the blade on a can opener." Expecting to see glassy reflective pools of oil covering the water, they instead observed huge clumps of spongy oil. They were able to pull some of these into their craft using a fishing net with holes the size of limes.

Rock the Bike collaborator The Juice Peddler's uncanny earth (and media) friendly inventions have surfaced yet again at the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore this past weekend, where Sir Richard Branson pedaled himself a smoothie on the Fender Blender.

Fossil Fool helped create a party vibe at the Crissy Field alternative car expo, part of Step It Up 2007 in San Francisco.

photo: Geoffrey Strawbridge

I was asked by a film crew to explain the stretch chopper with the big speakers, and I said something like:

"I just feel that we have to turn up the volume on this whole bicycle thing.

Why, when suggesting that riding a bicycle is an important part of building a 'greener' city, does PG&E pick a recumbent bike with a big flag sticking out the back? Why not an everyman's bike that readers will see and say to themselves, "Oh yeah, I could do that."