Last Sunday afternoon, we and about ten biker friends got together to move Sarah's household by bike trailer. Most of us had "Bikes at Work" trailers, designed and built by Jim Gregory here in town. More than anything, I think the motivation was to prove to ourselves (and lookers-on) how much bikes are capable of. This was a full house, with big ( Read more... )

OK, then, I said I would post my semi-daily logs. 90% for myself, but possibly of occasional interest to friends or family. These are lightly scrubbed to protect the innocent.

( My June logs, last to first ... )

No updates for close to two months: yeah, inexcusable. An excuse, though: flat-out swamped at work. Conference in California comes up in a week and a half. First, I have a talk and a poster to prepare. And a review paper to write. Another to co-write. Another, on which I am second author, will be submitted within the month. The journal? Nature ( Read more... )

A business for Zambia: building bamboo bike frames. They look cool, they dampen vibrations, they are tough, they use a local material, they provide jobs and income.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8125274.stm

Good read for today: NY Times article, In German Suburb, Life Goes on Without CarsWe figure that we now put more total mileage on our bikes than on the car. That's even with most of our bike trips being under 2 miles. We just bike several times a day, and take the car only a few times a week (or not at all some weeks ( Read more... )

We've had a weekend of intensive gardening. Thursday evening after work we went to the student organic farm to water and help mulch. Our peas and shallots are up. Friday, we both took the day off work, as it was the first really warm day (85 F) of the season, and pretty, and rain was forecast Saturday and Sunday. I transplanted Lotus and lupine ( Read more... )

Still on the topic of "energy descent", this counterintuitive idea today: Can the Oil Shock Alone Explain the Financial Crisis?, and discussion at Hacker News.

The previous post was about our token "green" efforts. I ended it by saying they won't be worth that much when the shit really hits. A lot of people are privately aware of this, I think. We just can't bear to dwell on it, or even to try to think through what things may be like on a much hotter planet in 10 or 20 years, with much much less cheap ( Read more... )

I just visited the top link from Google's Earth Day search: http://earthday.net/ . Nice site. I decided to register one of our "green" actions at the site, under the "A billion acts of green" project. I picked "green transportation," and said ( Read more... )

I read an article today that says that there is no evidence that running shoes reduce foot or leg injuries. The idea is that running shoes encourage an unnatural heal strike rather than forefoot strike; the heal strike induces a deceleration on with each landing, which puts extra strain on the leg joints. And, plenty of people do just fine running ( Read more... )