Friday!

My Friday ended like this:

Online Award Claim

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How was yours?

Minus What?

I dropped my car off at the shop today. Apparently the brake lights don't work. At least that's what the guy behind me told me. He looked like he knew what he was talking about too.

--

I’m not dead…I’m just working. I’d like to say I’m ready for spring but the 10 day forecast shows 30 and 40 degrees and that doesn’t even make me sing. It makes me think slush and mud.

In good news, the first ever South Dakota Bike Summit is this weekend and registrations are above the embarrassment threshold (if you build it they will come) (maybe but this isn’t baseball). Keynote speaker is Gary Sjoquist - Bikes Belong Director of Government Relations and Quality Bike Product’s paid advocate. He’s part of the reason Minneapolis is Cycle City. I noted a SDDOT registrant too. If you can go, GO. If you want free transport join FAB and e-mail DirkThePresident and ask him for a ride. It’s in Chamberlain on Saturday, and I think it’d be funny if 20 more people contacted him wanting transport. (Hi Dirk!) You still have to register for the summit too.

Bike 2 Work day is May 19th. Imagine a city where all the bike shops work together to raise awareness of Bike To Work day. What if they hosted bike donation drop offs? Like leave your old bike and buy a new one. What if the donated bikes went to x-cons trying to get to work? And what if there were pancakes for breakfast May 19th? And what if some of your favorite bloggers (well they’re my favorite bloggers) worked to put that together? Anyway…that’s the dream - at the moment.

Last night I read the Recreational Trails Program 2008 Grant Manual and Application. See, there’s this group of people with a dream of urban singletrack that’s…how you say…close enough to ride to. It’s not really my dream at the moment but it sure would be nice to be able to ride off road on something that’s not 1 or 4 automobile hours away. Anyway, it was scintillating reading if you like that sort of thing and this state's got $1,000,000 burning a hole in its pocket. I wonder how many parking spots are required for an off road bike trail?

A laugh a minute. I gotta go to work.

HVD!

My Valentine got me one of these today.



It’s not a tank top. It’s a ChicoBag, “Helping humanity kick the single-use bag habit.” She found it at the food co-op.

It stuffs into itself and gets rather smallish.



And then the red lights started flashing. The whistle in the basement started to blow (we had to move it to the basement because it’s too loud). Somewhere, somehow, a website had placed a link to The MinusCar Project.

Drop everything and find it.

Sustainability at BSCS is a new blog documenting efforts as Bradley Stoke Community School attempts to become more sustainable.

Welcome to the blogosphere Bradley! And thanks for posting this YouTube video. I like it. I like it a lot.



Parts of this post, like the whistle in the basement, might be exaggerated.

(maybe the whistle is in the kitchen)

The Omnivore's Next Dilemma

I've been downloading TED Talks on my iPod. This is one video podcast I wish I'd gotten in on the ground floor.

Here is Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma author, talking about what's next. It's excellent. If the embedding doesn't work (and signs indicate it won't) check the page here - http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/214



Don't know that TED is? Pay more attention.

The other three TED Talks that I'm unable to delete from the device are:
* Jaime Lerner - Sing a Song of Sustainable Cities (15:43)
* Ben Dunlap - The Story of a Passionate Life (19:08)
* David Gallo - Underwater Astonishments (6:01) (this one I shared with The Boys)

Report: January 28 – February 3

One last comment and then I’m done with the very sad and sorry situation in Massachusetts. People are deciding that schools and voting aren’t such good matches. While so many are thinking so radically about the relative safety of school children occupying the same space as your average car driving, lever pulling, primary voting, American…

How about we ban automobiles from polling places?

For the second report in a row - “That is an S.U.V; Humans ride in then because they are slowly losing their ability to walk.” – from Over the Hedge: The Movie.

Trips -

MinusCar: 6
Multi-occupant Auto: 9
Single occupant Auto: 3
Destinations: 21

I didn’t do much bike riding this week. But I didn’t do much car driving either.

My Car Miles: 2
My Bike Miles: 10

I figured out a new and improved way to utilize the bus. I ride with The Wife downtown and grab a bus that drops me 1 block from work. To the casual observer – and others more familiar with the local bussing system – this might seem to be a colossal waste of time.

You bet it is…if holding hands with The Wife and having a nice together time in the morning sans kids can be considered a waste of time.

For a lot of days this week, with the help of cellular technology, we even coordinated a transfer of my person to her car at the bus stop nearest our home.

Aided by these 2 miles this is the fewest miles The BlackBeast has gone in January since the beginning of The MinusCar Project: 2006 – 324, 2007 – 204, 2008 – 155.

Headlines

Over there on the right is the headline that a car struck an 88 year-old cyclist.

The flawed logic of comparing one isolated incident with another isolated incident notwithstanding (and isn't that what Bill O'Reilly is all about anyway)...

"Elderly driver hits girl at school polling place"

Apparently age disparity plays into a car or drivers responsiblity in a collision.

...part of an ongoing informal study of car/non-car collisions.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Google News here are related headlines. It's a tight race. 8 headlines think cars drive people. 6 headlines think people drive cars.

* Children scatter as SUV crashes at school, injuring girl
* SUV hit girl as Randolph schoolchildren looked on in horror
* Girl, 8, hit by car at school poll
* Girl, 8, Hit By A SUV At Randolph School
* Dozens of kids saw girl hit by car: Second time in a year that a ...
* Girl hurt in accident at Randolph polling place
* SUV hits 2d grader in Randolph
* WEB EXTRA: Vehicle strikes girl at Randolph elementary school

* Man Hits Girl With SUV At Polling Station
* Elderly driver hits girl at school polling place
* Elderly Voter Strikes Child With Car at Massachusetts Polling Place
* Driver, 86, hits Randolph girl at polling place
* Girl run down by elderly voter at Lyons Elementary School
* Man, 86, strikes girl with car after voting

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South Dakota Bicycle Summit

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