Big Bike

The Dad

What's In The Box?

Big Box

That's A Big Truck

Some Of My Favorite People Are 70

Wendell Berry has long been a hero of The MinusCar Project.

“When we talk about these characteristics, that happen to be characteristics of good agriculture — diversity, versatility, recognition, and acceptance of appropriate limits or getting the scale right, and local adaptation — those ideas, it seems to me, put us in reach of work that we can do. To assume that all experiences like that oil well can only be handled by experts at great expense is a mistake, I think.

What we need to do is to get it to where we can have a say in it. If we don't then we lose the personal ground of hope and the next thing is we all go around saying things like 'it's inevitable, there's nothing you can do about it.'"

It's why I garden. It's why I buy so much food from the people who grow it. It's why I transport myself as much as I can with my own body.

It's hopeful. It's not inevitable. There is something that can be done.

Watch the full episode. See more Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

Diversity.

Versatility.

Recognition, and acceptance of appropriate limits or getting the scale right.

Local adaptation.

6/7 Transportation Donut

I haven't done The Twitter much but this week I'm totally riding the Tour deKota and the Race Across America vicariously by reading peoples twitter-bits. It's great fun.

Mike Dunlap is predicted to arrive at Time Station #2 around 12:30 tonight in his RAAM. Know that if I awake in the middle of the night I'll be checking to see that he's through it. At that point he'll have 2,863 miles remaining.

--

I have donuts to share!



Importantly The MinusCar sat in the driveway all week.

Unfortunately, I remained home Thursday and Friday giving the beat down to some high sinus pressure. So the bike miles couldn't quite push the car miles below 50%.

All in all it's a not a bad donut.

Car-free Sunday

I might have a new hobby...

Trip one was early for donuts and a few groceries with The Wife. We tacked a couple extra miles onto the grocery store loop. There were TWO people walking around the store wearing helmets. Weird.

The checker, "did you ride here?" I think my wife responded, "44,000 people die each year in car crashes. We wear helmets all the time." But she might have just said "yes."

Speaking of the word "just"...if you're at Starbucks and you want a chai tea latte, with soy, extra hot, no water and a couple other specifications, prefacing your order with "I just want a..." might be an oversimplification.

--

Trip two was more of an excursion. More specifically a 3 1/2 hour geocaching excursion with The Boy 12. With that many hours outside we definitely put the tan back in tandem...


Here is where we went...


We experienced a BLFT. A Bike Lane Flat Tire is a flat tire caused by derbis brushed off the roadway by automobile traffic into the bike lane. It's one of many reasons that bike lanes occasionally should be ignored.

A quick tube change and we were back at it. I was a prepared daddy today.

I finally got to visit the 100 year old mostly forgotten Forest Home Cemetery. I've wanted to for a long time but never had enough of a reason to sneak in there...


Riding the tandem was pretty great. We did a fair amount of off-road riding. There were three grassy hills that made us prove ourselves. On one we experienced a fair amount of rear wheel slippage, which is rather exciting for passengers not familiar with such possibilities.

I wasn't aware that there was a view like this just feet from a road I commonly travel on. Maybe I'll get off that road more often when I have my mountain bike with me...


When I was more ignorant of geocaching (two days ago) I imagined hitting all the Sioux Falls geocaches by bike. Today I discovered this map feature of the geocaching website...


3 hours a Sunday isn't going to be enough.

Car-lite Saturday

We broke some new ground today.

I woke The Boy 12 up bright and early (actually it was cloudy with 80% chance of rain) so that we could mount the tandem bicycle and head out for some disc golf.



Just before our arrival we intermixed with the tail end of the Washington Pavilion Wellness Festival 10K.

This is the second full round of disc golf for The Boy 12. He's improved over last week. He tied me on a few holes at the end. I threw 10 times more than I did last week. In my defense it was very moist out. Slippery discs make for early releasing.



After we finished up the round we headed north to the Downtown Farmer's Market.



On this leg we intermixed HEAVILY with a walk event. Lots and lots and lots of "on your left"-ing. Lots and lots of folks not remembering their left and right. I can tell the ones who have trouble remembering because on the way by they say, "oh, I had to think..."

We got through without any entanglements.

It's nice having a passenger - in the midst of navigating the walkers the phone rang. I passed the phone back for him to answer.

At the market we met up with the rest of The Family for the multi-occupant vehicle ride home. I love the market.



This is Dakota Natural Beef ring bologna and sugar snap peas sauteed in oil and onions and various other spices. The Wife likes to try new things. I like to eat new things.

---

I was called away twice while typing this. First for the best rainbow ever...



...and then for the cool sunset lit clouds.

Bicycles, Moving At Human Speed

Streetfilms interviews Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt.

Mark: [3:41] Let me see if I can find this in your book. "Vehicles are moving at velocities for which we have no evolutionary training. For most of the life of the species, we did not try and make interpersonal decisions at speed." We live in a city where you have this interaction between people moving down the street at pretty fast speeds and the people who are on that street, and how they're almost in a completely different worlds.

Tom: [4:08] You probably begin to lose eye contact at around 20, 25 miles per hour. That's exactly when the level of potential pedestrian fatality really begins to soar. At up to 20 miles an hour a pedestrian still has a pretty good chance of surviving a crash with a car. But beyond that, it really begins to accelerate. So just at that moment when we cut ourselves off from the eye contact is really that moment at which we're not evolved to be able to survive an impact. So just an interesting sort of suggestion that's been put out there.