Spinning Tunes    by  James Vlahos
   Kipchoge Spencer was somewhere in Mexico, and so
was I. We had that going for us. But other than know-
ing that Spencer, '96, and his rock band, the Ginger
Ninjas, were riding bicycles across the state of Jalisco,
I was clueless, and attempts to learn more—text mes-
sages sent, blogs scrutinized, a publicist interrogated
by cell phone—hadn't produced any concrete leads. I
hired a taxi in Guadalajara. The driver took me four
hours west to the town of Mascota. No Ninjas. I
reached for my phone once again and then had a bet-
ter idea: rolling down the taxi window, I waved to a
passerby. "¿Visto usted los gringos en bicicletas?" I asked.
"Si," he responded, pointing straight ahead. Two min-
utes later I was shaking hands with Spencer.
The Ginger Ninjas—Spencer, singer/guitarist Eco
Lopez and drummer Brock Wollard—and an entou-
rage of a dozen riders were lounging in Mascota's
central plaza. A small group of Mexicans strolled by,
some glancing discreetly, some gaping. The Ninjas
had forgone many of the usual trappings of a rock
band on tour, most notably the tour bus. The band
was traveling 5,000 miles, from Northern California
to southern Mexico, entirely by bike. Starting last
November, the group had cycled for three months
down the Sierra and across the Central Valley; atop
the bluffs of the Central Coast and through the
sprawl of Los Angeles; along the beaches of Baja, and
now to mountainous Jalisco, 600 miles south of the
U.S. border. The final destination was the jungle of
Chiapas, near Guatemala.
 With concerns about climate change escalating,
it was perhaps inevitable that musicians would get in
on the carbon-mitigation act. The Rolling Stones and
Coldplay purchase offsets; Korn and the Dave Mat-
thews Band tour in biodiesel-fueled buses. It is one
thing, however, to trim emissions and another to elim-
inate them almost entirely, as the Ninjas have done.
Theirs is possibly the world's first self-supported bicy-
cle tour by a rock band. The tour name is The Pleasant
Revolution, which Spencer calls the ultimate experiment
in "environmentally sustainable rock 'n' roll."
As I assembled my bike so that I could ride along
for a few days, the band was having a discussion.
"Who called this meeting, anyway?" Spencer asked.
"I did," said Wollard, who was wearing a bright
dashiki over Hawaiian shorts. (He had been hired,
via craigslist in San Diego, after a disagree-
ment with the group's previous percussion-
ists—"they insisting on LSD as their way to
learn the songs, us insisting on practice,"
Spencer explained in an e-mail to friends.)
"Okay, what would you like to talk about?"
"I would like to know, first of all, where
the hell are we going?"
The question was not uncommon. The
itinerary called for heading to Guadalajara,
but, as was often the case, an intriguing detour
had presented itself. In Talpa de Allende, an
isolated mountain pueblo, Catholic pilgrims
from hundreds of miles around were gather-
ing for a festival. It commemorated a 17th-
century, papally recognized miracle involving
a decaying statuette of the Virgin Mary that
had been struck by a bolt of lightning and
made new. Thousands of people would be in
Talpa to eat, drink, pray and celebrate. After
a short discussion, the band members decided that
they should go, too.
Pedestrians gawked as the two-wheeler caravan
left Mascota on a cobbled road. The bikes were bur-
dened with camping gear, clothing and musical equip-
ment. Wollard toted a full drum kit. Joey Chang, a
guest musician with the band, biked with a cello,
which, I found out later, he could play while simulta-
neously rapping and beat-boxing. (His weren't the
only curious talents—entourage member Toby Rob-
inson was a veteran of international footbag and rock-
paper-scissors competitions.) Bear Dyken, another
rider, pedaled up beside me and pointed down at his
ride. "We have the kitchen, the bedroom, the music
studio and the exercise gym all in one," he said.
We turned onto a rutted dirt track. As it snaked
upward into piney mountains, the convoy spread
apart, and I rode with Spencer. Since graduating
from Stanford with a degree from the interdisciplin-
ary earth systems program, he has been a man of
many vocations—musician, white-water rafting
guide, television star (he was on MTV's The Reality
Show, in which he demonstrated environmentally
sustainable living) and entrepreneur. In 1998, he and
another Stanford graduate, Ross Evans, '97, founded
Xtracycle, which makes kits that extend the rear
wheel of a bike to add cargo bags and a small wooden
platform. The carrying capacity is up to 150 pounds,
and most of the riders on the tour were equipped
with Xtracycles.
Spencer's home is an off-the-grid retreat in the
mountains north of Nevada City, Calif.; he humor-
ously refers to himself as a "self-absorbed headstrong
buylocalorganofascist." A cult-of-personality figure in
the bike-activist movement (for example, the Criti-
cal Mass events held each month when thousands of
cyclists take to the streets together in cities around
the world), he believes riding is the solution to many
social and environmental problems. But Spencer is a
lead-by-example rather than a lecturing type, and he
says that people should ride bikes not just because
it's more sustainable but also because it's more fun.
"The Pleasant Revolution is about realizing that by
giving up cars we gain a life that's way more rich,
humane and happy," Spencer said. "Anybody who
stops driving and starts biking feels that."
The tour was also about luck. When the band and
crew were hungry, strangers would materialize to
provide a hot meal. When they couldn't find a place
to camp, newfound friends would put them up. "In
60 days of Mexican travel, we've paid for lodging
three times," Spencer wrote in an e-mail dispatch.
"Most of the time we've found ourselves in secret vil-
las and mystic ranches and even a couple of seaside
mansions." A musical performance won the group ferry
passage from the Baja Peninsula to the Mexican main-
land. A few days later, after a man saw them struggling
up a steep mountain pass, he let them stay by a hot
springs in a private ecological reserve. "Our joke is
that The Pleasant Revolution may not be a revolution,
but it definitely has been pleasant," Spencer said.
After camping that night on the rim of a gorge
under Ponderosa pines, we woke the
next morning to shouts, laughter and
exploding firecrackers. Correction: It
was still night, starlit and cold, but
hundreds of jubilant pilgrims were
streaming through camp, which, in
our exhaustion, we'd pitched more or
less right on the trail. Some people
carried clear plastic boxes on their backs that held
statues of the Virgin; others had rocks in their shoes
to increase the ardor of the pilgrimage. Many had
been trekking for days.
We reached Talpa at midday after an exhilarating
descent from a mountain pass. The historic pueblo,
cradled in the valley below, was flooded with cele-
brants. Gilded steeples rose above the stone church
that held the miraculous statuette. In the plaza out-
side, men blasted trumpets, trombones and tubas at
triple forte; couples danced; and strangers would
hand you a beer if you stood still for a minute. The
location was ideal for a show.
That night Dante Espinosa, band engineer and
roadie-in-chief, put two bikes on stands so that the
rear wheels no longer touched the ground. When
pedaled, they would generate electricity to power the
sound system. As a crowd of curious Mexicans gath-
ered around, Dante and another
entourage member mounted
the bikes and pedaled. Spen-
cer and Lopez began to sing
and strum, and sound explod-
ed from the speakers, no elec-
tric outlets in sight.
The music combined rock,
bluegrass and reggae, with
lyrics in both English and
Spanish—Lopez is Uruguay-
an, and Spencer speaks profi-
ciently as well. The songs had
the chilled-out confessional
quality of Jack Johnson and
the internationalism and
political bite of Manu Chau.
The audience response was
tepid initially. Lopez called
for volunteers to pedal but
nobody came forward. Speaking in Spanish, Spencer
announced, "We're here to educate people about
how to live without gasoline. It's a slower but more
fulfilling way of life." He kept his composure even as
an exuberant man lurched forward and attempted to
pour rum down Spencer's throat.
The band kicked into a second number, then a
third. With each one the crowd got louder, larger and
more appreciative. Between songs, a man wearing
riding chaps and a Stetson came up and told Lopez
that he never liked American rock music—until now.
"No electricity?" asked another man, looking amazed.
Lopez just smiled and nodded. I learned later that
these reactions were typical. At first the Ginger Nin-
jas were the crazy norteamericanos, but soon everyone
wanted to be their friends. The first show in a new
place would be free, but the next night and the night
after, locals would hire the Ninjas to play, providing
much-needed funds to keep the tour afloat.
The next time Lopez called for volunteers, two
men came forward immediately; for the rest of the
set people were practically fighting each other for
the opportunity to pedal-power the band. The gre-
garious drunk found his way back to Wollard, who
accepted an offering of rum, while playing, but only
after he realized that the man was going to pour it on
him whether he opened his mouth or not. Hundreds
of people cheered as the band kicked into an up-
tempo ska number. Spencer and Lopez sang together,
"Call it a renaissance, call it anything you like; the
revolution is coming on a bike."

JAMES VLAHOS is a writer for National Geographic
Adventure and other magazines. He lives in Berkeley.