"January Joiners" Infest Gyms Worldwide!

I suspect that the most common New Year's resolution made is to "Join the local gym". My suspicion is borne out by the swelling number of unfamiliar and often confused faces I see meandering around my local Y trying to figure out how certain machines work. These "January-joiners" swell the membership numbers of gyms, and cause congestion for the first few weeks of the New Year. Experience has taught me that by mid-February, attrition will claim the majority of these well intentioned, and the congestion and waiting for an open elliptical machine with a TV Monitor will become a fading memory...










What is wrong with this picture?

If you are like me, you can recall the Professor on Gilligan's Island pedalling his bamboo and coconut bicycle to generate the energy needed to operate his Rube Goldberg-esque laboratory. Perhaps inspired by the Professor's ingenuity, Windstream llc is currently marketing a Bicycle Generator Kit that can easily adapt to fit any standard bicycle and generate and store electricity.

How cool is this? When used with the portable power pack, a determined cyclist is able to generate sufficient energy to power a laptop or television. An entire bank of such bikes could reduce the energy costs of any gym. It has always seemed a "waste of energy" to me that the elliptical machines at my gym actually need to be plugged in in order to power the LED screen.
How it works:
The Bike Power Generator consists of a powder coated steel trainer frame holding a permanent magnet DC generator. Your bicycle (typical adult 27 inch wheel diameter) is mounted securely to this frame and the rear tire is positioned to turn the friction drum that has been custom fit over the generator shaft. The amount of electrical power that can be generated by the Bike Power Generator is determined by the energy available from pedaling the bicycle. (more info)

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Categories: Causality