John, Ben and I are back from NextFest and it was a blast! WAY more work than any of us expected though, but well worth it.

The highlight for me was being interviewed by Dave Navarro (Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers and TV hit series Rockstar: Supernova) for Indie103.1 fm, a popular Los Angeles radio station. Those who know me, know how much I love my music, so to get a chance to sit and chat live on the air with a rock and roll super star was pretty freaking cool! Dave is really into human power and is an avid runner.

I was amazed at the general public’s reaction to Critical Power and the 24 hour distance record – even in the shadow of some pretty impressive displays like solar cars, jet packs and robots. We had a sign on CP that read “World Record 650 miles – 24 hours by human power” which always stopped people in their tracks and generated tons of questions. They just could not fathom 650 miles on a bicycle – many had never even driven their cars 650 miles in a day. I didn’t stop talking for 4 days! I think this kind of publicity is very good for human power in general. Perhaps it will get more people thinking about riding their bikes again. Or maybe they’ll just all want an electric drag bike like the Killacycle.

Our neighbor at the show was Bill Dube with the world record A123 Killacycle electric drag bike. We had dinner with him and his crew on Friday night where he talked about what could go wrong during a press burn-out demo he planned the following day. The next day Bill’s scary prediction came true and during the burn out, the Killacycle took-off and smashed into a parked car sending Bill to the hospital. Here is the video. Bill ended up with some minor injuries including some stitches on his head.

For the first few hours on Thursday and Friday, thousands of kids on school tours swarmed through NextFest. The simulator was wildly popular with line-ups that stretched across the Transportation Pavilion. The simulator held-up very well and worked flawlessly thanks to Ben’s awesome workmanship and design.

At NextFest, Google made a big announcement that they were sponsoring the new Lunar X prize where a team must successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters. The prize is $30 million clams.

Not to be outdone by Google, we made an announcement of our own called the Lunar AOG prize. FIVE BILLION dollars (yep – that’s BILLION) for the first human powered trip to the moon. John figured that if we deposited 7 dollars into an account, by the time someone succeeds at a human powered trip to the moon, that 7 bucks should be close to 5 billion.