the loaves and fishes were made plentiful

After a week of putting all of our effort into becoming experts on producing power with a
bike, it all finally came to fruition. By thursday afternoon we had a working DC electricity producing, bicycle powered generator...which was none too soon because we had a workshop to give on the topic less than 48 hours after that. Thanks to the ingenuity provided by myself, antonio and sally (our eletrician guru friend), we came up with a an awesome setup which will hopefully soon be decribed with images. Unfortunately, some time between when the generator was working and the morning of the workshop, our power generating source (a car alternator) died on us, leaving only an AC generating model which sally had thrown together at the last minute. AC is the type of current we use mostly in our daily lives, but the disadvantage is that it cannot be stored directly in a battery, unless converted to DC for storage and then back into AC for usage when coming from the battery (conversion results in power loss and is very inefficient, and also involves added cost for inverters), so it must be used right away when it is produced. So while this AC model did manage to produce enough to power a light bulb (in a rather strobe-like fashion) it is not really the feasible solution we are looking to implement in a sustainable lifestyle. Me and Antonio are going to try and perfect our model upon our return to Toronto in just a few weeks.
The workshop went quite well despite this minor glitch, with about 20 people coming out to Gabriola Island on a beautifully sunny day. The next day we set up shop at the Mount Benson festival and allowed people to ride the bike to produce their own power to turn on the light bulb, and we talked about Earthmasters and other power producing stuff. This generator model had its own share of problems too, but hey, not bad for a first try.
Now we are pretty much permanently moved out to the building site in Cedar (with all our
gear and uber party tent) where we will be for the duration of our time in BC. Its a nice change of pace from the somewhat sketchy confines of south nanaimo. just trees and quiet out here. me and antonio even went for a ride into ladysmith today, as it is now our closest city centre, to check out the scene, and got there just in time to catch the 6pm showing of Transformers for $5 each in a cozy theatre about the size of a large living room. Now we're stuffed with more yummy food provided by our host to top off yet another yummy day. no thorns.