BU Bikes

In just two semesters, BU Bikes has come a long way from being just an idea to a tangible organization of some very dedicated members, and looking back, we’ve accomplished quite a bit-It was especially great for us to hear that BUPD was befuddled by the sudden sharp increase in bike registration last fall until we let them know of our efforts to encourage more students to register their bikes.

Before I continue, I’d just like to thank Galen, Jack, and Sonya, three of our officers retiring from the club this year, for the tremendous effort each of them put into getting the club to where it is now. Without them bike-powered smoothies would just be smoothies and BU Bikes would just be a bunch of bikes at BU.

With that said, Galen covered most of our first semester accomplishments here at the beginning of the year, so I thought it would be appropriate to mention two significant goals we accomplished during spring semester.

-Bike-Powered Smoothies! (yummmy)

You may have seen us at the GSU or on marsh plaza handing out delicious, free(free as in carbon-free emitting self-sustainable energy) bike-powered smoothies. We have to thank Professor Phillips for his home-built contraption that converts energy from a spinning bike wheel into electricity (covered previously here). Using his borrowed bike and generator to power our blender, we were able to yield endlessly delicious bike-powered smoothies. Our smoothies were so delicious that we won the award for best self-sustainability demonstration during National Green Week. If you missed our smoothies this semester, don’t worry, you’ll get a chance to pedal power you own smoothie next year.

As an economics-related aside (sorry, as an econ major, I cannot resist), we did not charge a monetary price for the smoothies. Instead, we told people that they must pedal as long as they wanted to contribute to the electricity which powered the blender to make the smoothie. It was interesting to see what lengths of time people chose to pedal. Some people on their way to class biked for less than a minute. One man, who realized he was enjoying the exercise, said he could pedal all day. The man in the photo above seemed to have stumbled upon our table during his leisurely walk. He pedaled the longest and almost refused to get off, after he realized that he not only enjoyed the exercise but enjoyed our company. One problem we did run into was that powering the blender required quite a bit of electricity, and the minute or two that most people rode just didn’t provide enough electricity to power the blender for the minute it took to blend about six cups of smoothie (Our club officers picked up a lot of slack to generate electricity needed for the blender to run). We didn’t really have any way to gauge the required electrical output of the bicycle wheel to generator, or the required input of electricity from the blender, but if we did (I’m sure it isn’t a very difficult physics problem), it would have been interesting to see how long people would pedal knowing the exact cost(in pedaling time) per cup/ounce of smoothie. Perhaps we could explore this the next time we make smoothies.

-We’ve got tools! (Look how blue they are!)

And thanks to the generous folks at the BU Womens Center we also have a dedicated space to use them. If you brought your bike to the Womens Center during their skill share to have Arnie of Bicycle Bills check out your bike, you’ve had a taste of what’s more to come. We’re still in the process of working out the details, but we hope to make the space and the tools available for the BU community to use, so if you’ve always wanted to work on your bike but didn’t have access to a some space and complete set of bike tools, you should look forward to the coming year.