Spinnin' on the Ellen Show

Everyone's doing the green thing these days, even the
The Ellen Show. For her great green episode, I got to join 15 other spinners from Revolution pedaling stationary bikes rigged to power generators, as a background scene. Fun, and a crazy coincidence, as I've been chatting with Revolution about doing something similar.....





Original idea was to have us power the TV, but didn't quite turn out that way - either technical problems or lack of planning.....too bad, but it was still fun, a trip for this non-TV watcher to see the behind the scenes.


The show featured Cameron Diaz, who reminded us to turn off the water when brushing our teeth (cutting edge, ahem) and Simran Sethi from Treehugger TV and The Green. Who was wonderful as always.




Heres the whole lot of us, sharing our brief Hollywood moment.


And now....lets rig those bikes up and put those wasted spinning calories to good use!

BikeRoWave

Bikes, like all vehicles, take some maintainance, and occasionally break down. With skills and tools, you can fix most things yourself, but some of us lack the former....(or later, or both) and hate the idea of forking out a bunch of $ for glitches we KNOW would be a snap to fix.

Enter BIKEROWAVE. The answer to my prayers!

Bikerowave is a community-run project, a bicycle kitchen/cool DIY hangout space on the west side - a place to fix/wrench/clean your bike with guidance from a group of friendly volunteer mechanics.

They won't just fix your bike FOR you while you stand by watching dumbly, rather they will SHOW YOU HOW TO FIX YOUR OWN BIKE!

I finally made it there the other weekend, to fix a glitch on my Xtracycle.

What you can't see in this photo, somehow the only one to turn out from multiple pix snapped, is the formerly greasy chain I'm holding, my first time learning to break and degrease a chain, granted with much hand holding......














Not only was I thrilled to have my bike functioning again, having a hand in the process made it all the more gratifying.













So next time you tweak something on your bike, try a more personal approach and learn something while you're at it.

Open hours are Monday and Wednesday from 6:30 - 10:00, or Saturday from 1:00-5:00. Bring your bike, a 6 pack, and a desire to get down and dirty with your ride....