Friday!

My Friday ended like this:

Online Award Claim

This is to inform you that your email ID has won US$1,000,000. 00 in the first category of our computer ballot email lottery with the said winning numbers giving below;

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

I Am Simpsons

Which Character on The Simpsons Are You?

Created by BuddyTV

South Dakota Bicycle Summit

Click image to enlarge and make bigger.

Report: January 14-27

They say it’s too dangerous to do it in the winter. Or it’s too cold! They ask, aren’t you afraid of falling?

It happened today. A nice dusting of snow last night covered up all the icy spots. I barely touched the first icy patch…

…and down I went.

I fell right off my feet.

I was walking.

No injuries.

There’s no way I could do that without thinking of this - “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: 9
Multi-occupant Auto: 14
Single occupant Auto: 9
Destinations: 58

This is two weeks worth of reporting. I took advantage of the extremely cold weather…and I suppose the need to have a reason to not bike…and scheduled The Wife’s car for some maintenance. Four days in two different shops meant The Black Beast became The Family’s primary auto.

That means lots of car miles, and lots of picking up and dropping off.

My Car Miles: 119
My Bike Miles: 31



Here's what I missed out on. 7 miles, -30 windchill. This guy's a Lunatic.

Feeding the Beast

A commenter suggested I include bike related expenses in the context of analyzing my savings from minimizing my car use.

No.

Here’s why.

The MinusCar Project is not about saving money on transportation costs. This, isn’t about that.

I think car use is a waste. A waste of energy. A waste of money. Additionally, I think it’s probably a waste in more ways than I can imagine.

It’s easy for me to show that I’ve diverted between $4,000 and $6,000 over the last three years from the big gaping maw that is the black beast sitting in my driveway.

What if I spent $6,000 more on bicycle related expenses? Does that negate my argument that car use is a waste?

No.

If I spent $6,000 on bicycling I:

Gave $6,000 to a local business owned by my friend The Owner.

Gave $6,000 to the staff (and my friends) at The LBS.

Gave $6,000 to my health.

Gave $6,000 to a hobby.

If I give that to the beast – not so much.

Bag It

Today's commute was 20 minutes into a -12 headwind. Some people at work are having a hard time adjusting to my bike commuting.

I noticed Cycling Sasquatch has some nice Home Depot re-usable bags.

For New Year’s The Family again participated in this city’s First Night celebration. The first thing we did was head to the LEEDS certified Museum of Visual Materials to decorate re-usable canvas bags in our own unique style.

The Wife now keeps four bags in the back of her car for her trips to the grocery store. (I use my messenger bag.) The other day the checker, apparently inspired by something she saw on Oprah, asked if we’re going to change our lightbulbs to CFL’s. Done. The checker also told The Wife that they say we’re also supposed to unplug appliances when not in use. Uhh…yeah, we plug that sort of thing into a power strip and turn them off there. I think my biking to work came up too.

It was fun to have already adjusted to all that.

My brother-in-law made the bag I wish I had.

Report: January 7 – 13

Today The Boy 5 began to tell me how to grow a beanstalk. Start with beans. Get mom & dad’s permission and toss them out the window. Then it grows. Thinking I knew a thing or two about beanstalks I asked him about climbing it. He said yes, climb it to get to Canada.

I blame the liberals!

Not a particularly good MinusCar week, but hey…I’m trying. Besides, I made up for it by not going a whole lot of places. Let’s not forget, it’s very January.

Trips -

MinusCar: 3
Multi-occupant Auto: 3
Single occupant Auto: 3
Destinations: 24

One of those multi-occupant trips was KT and DDD and I playing the occasional annual DDD birthday round of disc golf. We uncovered two discs buried in the snow and nearly lost one ourselves. Stomping through the snow at lower Tuthill got pretty tiring. Maybe snowshoes are in order.

We all drove together.

My Car Miles: 34
My Bike Miles: 25

This week I crossed the 5,000 mile mark since the beginning of The MinusCar Project. 5,025 in 31 months = 162 average.

I filled up my car with gas 7 times in 2007.

Drove 1,977 miles compared to 1,917 the year before.

Rode 2,580 miles compared to 3,378 the year before.

Auto service three years prior to MinusCar inception = $210/month.

Auto service since = $86/month.

Fuel three years prior to the MinusCar inception = $135/month.

Fuel since = $143/month.

An increase of 6%.

Average fuel price three years prior to MinusCar inception = $1.54.

Average fuel prices since = $2.49.

An increase of 61%.

It's clear that my lack of demand for fuel is causing quite an increase in prices.

Sorry about that.

Update: after a couple hours of sleep I recognize that I may have a faulty understanding of the law of supply and demand. I'm not a rocket economist. The numbers though - those are correct.

Well, It's Not YouTube...

I keep going back and watching this. I think it's very funny. I think the mysterious zapping death is cheap and easy, but the rest I think is golden. There are echos here about American's and their automobiles that make it relevant to this this blog.

It also relates to BikingBrady and his housecleaning staff.


In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

Report: December 17 – January 6

Nothing here for commentary, but hey, at least my reports are caught up.

Trips -

MinusCar: 14
Multi-occupant Auto: 14
Single occupant Auto: 5
Destinations: 69

--

My Car Miles: 66
My Bike Miles: 95

--

This period’s low temperatures:
1/1 | 4 degrees, 21mph wind, -17 windchill
1/2 | -3 degrees, 4mph wind, -12 windchill

Why So Much You Tube?

Headlines

My momma always said then bicycles will only lead to trouble: Girl's new bicycle leads to fatal accident.

And then there's the kids. They can be a frustrating lot, eh? Mother accused of bumping son off bicycle. Perhaps she was thinking this sort of thing happens all the time. It's part of the risk of riding a bicycle.

Report: December 3 – December 16

Like the butcher who backed into his meat grinder…I’m getting a little behind in my work. I’m going to combine two weeks in this report.

Trips -
MinusCar: 9
Multi-occupant Auto: 17
Single occupant Auto: 4
Destinations: 57

Not much for MinusCar trips, but at least they’re still twice the single occupant trips. I remained in a pretty un-motivated state these two weeks.

My Car Miles: 86
My Bike Miles: 45

This week’s low temperatures: 12/5 | 9 degrees, 6mph wind, -1 windchill

Merry Christmas

"A lighter lifestyle is the smart, cool, intelligent and healthy way to live. Don’t be tied to outdated and dangerous 20th century ways of living. Live light because it will make you feel complete and free.

When you choose to live light you are setting the pace for the 21st century. You will see the people all around you trying to catch up. And when they do we can all work together to build a world that is cleaner, fairer and happier and that you will be proud to leave to your children."

-- George Marshall, Don't Save The Planet

or...as No Impact Man says: "Don't Waste"

There's Still Time For You

Fatty's broken but you still have a chance. Forsake your car. Ride to the ride.

Happiness is...

a dry base layer.

Don't forget to dry your fundies under your desk during work today.