I've finally figured out how to bottle kids energy!!

This story begins as the days became colder and the threat of rainy weather occasionally became a reality.  I felt myself losing my desire to get out my bike, push it up our very steep road and go for ride.  After seeing the Rock the Bike folks at the 350.org Climate Action day in San Francisco, I decided to look into generating electricity while training on an indoor bicycle stand.  After many false starts, I finally got the rig up and working.  (I'll detail the story about building the trainer in the next entry.)  Well, lo and behold, the kids just love the bike.  Being a recumbent, it's easy to climb on, comfortable to sit on and completely stable the way I have it setup in a stationary stand.

So, here it is.  A way to finally bottle some of that extra energy!  My oldest daughter, Liza, is actually able to pedal with her feet and today she charged up the battery enough to add some charge to my laptop.  The other cool thing is that when we have a power outage, we now have a way to keep our computers, cell phones, and other small load things like lights up and running.  Very cool!!