Featured News | Rock The Bike

Basic questions to consider when crafting your Pedal Powered Stage

Oct 16, 2012Posted by fossilfool in Electric Fender Blender Pro Related Posts, Featured News, LED Panels, Modified JBL Loudspeakers, Mundo 500, Pedal Power Utility Box, Pedal Powered Stage Gear, Pedalometer | 0 comments

The technical needs of a Pedal Powered event vary greatly depending on things like audience size, venue, and power needs of musician’s devices. Over the past 6 years Rock The Bike has Pedal Powered events large and small. In this post we’ll try to help you arrive at what type of Pedal Power system would make the biggest impact for you.

Above: Shake Your Peace! performs during the Bay Rising Tour on their Pedal Powered Stage crafted by Rock the Bike.

Please consider and answer these questions:

- Outdoor v. Indoor. Doing anything in an outdoor space requires more power, as there are no resounding walls. What are the spaces you wish to use as venues? Do you have a photo of one of the events you host?

- Will you be doing nighttime events? Is there always light available? Do you have a need for Pedal Powered Lighting?

- What is your main motivation for doing Pedal Power?

- Audience size. How many people are in the crowd at the events you envision Pedal Powering?

- Do you need to provide AC power? Examples of why you’d need this include: charging cell phones, charging laptops, powering a mixing board, powering a power tool as an example of Pedal Power.

Watch Fossil Fool’s TED Audition.

Aug 13, 2012Posted by fossilfool in Blog, Featured News | Comments Off

VOTING IS CLOSED! Thanks for reading and watching the video!

Friends, customers, and fans: Please support my campaign to speak at the global TED 2013 conference. There is an open voting and comment period happening NOW until the end of August, in which you can watch and review all the amazing auditions that took place in the past 6 months. I auditioned in Vancouver in May. While the TED team make the final decisions, your feedback and ratings are going to help this talk get noticed. Please see bold instructions below for info about how to take action!

Many thanks San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival: World’s largest Human Powered Music Fest.

Jul 6, 2012Posted by fossilfool in Blog, Featured News, Ice Cream Bike, LED Panels, Modified JBL Loudspeakers, Pedal Power Utility Box, Pedal Powered Stage Gear, Pedalometer | Comments Off

The 6th Annual San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival was our biggest ever and a milestone for our grassroots Human Powered Music Fest. Many thanks to the bands, fans, and our huge volunteer crew. Any one of the 3 phases of the day would have been epic enough. But we had a beautiful, idyllic daytime music festival in the park, an outrageous mobile party, and a post-modern urban block party all in one day. Daytime: 500+ people in a meadow, enjoying live music in the beautiful sunshine… Followed by a fire-truck dodging, freeway underpass screaming, Fossil Fooling LiveOnBike session, with captain Ariel using no electric assist to pull 3 performers and audio gear weighing 250 pounds on our Mobile Stage… Followed by a street party with an elevated stage, a glowing Bike Tree, and a 3-person pedal powered stage lighting system.

Rupa & The April Fishes perform at Golden Gate Park’s Log Cabin Meadow. Photo: Volker Neumann.

We had 19 pedalers at the peak in Golden Gate Park! Plenty of power for our 10000-Watt sound system to run. In the distance you can see our Pedal Powered Line Array hanging from its bamboo tripod.

We mobilized the entire festival on an outrageous LiveOnBike ride with yours truly, Fossil Fool, the Bike Rapper, performing with two bandmates on an elevated Mobile Stage towed by a Mundo. Above: the view from the Mobile Stage.

What are the elements of a Pedal Powered Stage?

Nov 8, 2011Posted by fossilfool in Electric Fender Blender Pro Related Posts, Featured News, LED Panels, Modified JBL Loudspeakers, Mundo 500, Pedal Power Utility Box, Pedal Powered Stage Gear, Pedalometer | Comments Off

What follows is an explanation of the key elements of a Pedal Powered Stage. If you are ready to buy individual components, please see the Pedal Powered Stage products section of our online store. If you’d like a custom quote for a Pedal Powered Stage, please start by emailing us with the answers to our Pedal Powered Stage questionnaire.

Pedal Power Generators:

How many?
You will need enough bicycle generators that the pedaling effort per person is approx. 50-75 Watts. Based on my experience at events, 50-75 Watts is the amount that an average audience member can continuously provide. You should also have ‘ringer pedalers’ in your crew. Ringer pedalers are strong racer or everyday commuting cyclists who can contribute up to 4 times more than an average pedaler. Whether you’re relying on ringers or the GP (General Public), you’ll need enough bikes that the effort can be shared. Tip: Use a Kill-A-Watt to measure the consumption of the gear you want to use. Then divide by 60 watts!

El Arbol: The Bike Tree

Jul 25, 2011Posted by fossilfool in Featured News | Comments Off

Tara performs on El Arbol at the start of the SF Marathon

: El Arbol without its Canopy of Leaves

El Arbol is a 15′ tall Bike Tree, a functional tall top-bottom tandem bicycle with a built-in 1500-Watt Pedal Powered stack of loudspeakers. Perfect for Pedal Powered Stage events, it’s fun, loud, clear, and expands the notion of ‘Stage’ to include the pedalers.

Justin Ancheta band performs through El Arbol at Maker Fair. Photo: Krista Jones

The height of the upper loudspeaker helps the sound spread out easily above a crowd, without requiring deafening levels of volume.

No guarantees it’ll work for you but here’s how I fought the tall bike law in court and won.

Jan 29, 2011Posted by fossilfool in Blog, Featured News | Comments Off

California’s Vehicle Code prohibits tall bikes, stating you have to be able to put your foot down and stop safely. I agree with the ‘stop safely’ spirit of this law. We don’t want to be seeing people keeling over. But tall bikes are fun, can be designed to be safe, and are great for Bike Culture events and rides. Here’s how I designed a tall bike that keeps to the spirit of the law, and then successfully defended myself in court!

When I started making my tall bike, El Arbol, three years ago, I knew it was going to be bigger and heavier than the other ones I’d seen. So I began looking for ways to stabilize it at low speeds so I could stop without needing to put my hand on a nearby truck.

Kipchoge riding his Long Tall Sally in San Francisco traffic.

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