Environmentalists need to examine if their words and actions go together

As the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the gulf continues to wreak environmental havoc, I’m sure the reaction from many environmentalists will be loud calls to stop drilling and curtail offshore oil drilling. This may be something we should do, but I wonder how many of these same environmentalists will continue to drive their cars every day, mindlessly burning up oil while they wait for electric or alternative vehicles to solve their transportation guilt. In today’s episode of Go By Bike, I talk about his connection.

For a more detailed discussion of this viewpoint, see this excellent article from Jason Henderson, Geography Professor at San Francisco State University .

Send your comments below!

-Elise

Go By Bike is a daily video series that talks about how to be green by riding more and using your car less, including electric bikes, electric kits, cargo bikes, bike safety, and getting motivated to bike

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Some people are really right.  And they know it.  Let’s give them handcuffs and a gun so they can arrest us all.

Ok…. I was in a hurry today, late for an appointment.  I’m riding along on my bike, and I come up behind this tall dude on the bike path, riding on his mountain bike on the path.

I have an electric assist, but when I caught up with him, I was intentionally not using it.  See, I don’t like to pass people on the bike path, especially using the assist, and especially men.  They get a bit “torqued” out over that.

So instead, I pedal up behind him by dint of pure leg power, just to make sure that, if I were to pass him, it would be by human power alone.

We were on the twisty part of the bike path, so there wasn’t a clear opening to pass. I hung back.

Then we got onto the road. He wasn’t giving me any room, and there was oncoming traffic.  So I was stuck behind… (you know, kind of the same feeling you get when you’re in your car and get stuck behind a pack of cyclists?)

Problem is, I was in a hurry.  We got to a stop sign, and we both turned right.  We turned onto a multi-lane road, and he was pulling into the left lane to turn.  So, feeling a bit impatient, I passed him on the right (with at least 10 feet to spare), then I did the left hand turn.  Since I was now on the road in traffic, I used a bit of the extra e-assist to get past him safely and with plenty of clearance.

His way wasn’t impeded by this at all.  Nobody’s safety was in jeopardy, though, technically I wasn’t supposed to pass on the right.

But, as I suspected (I have a feeling about certain cyclists) – he didn’t like being passed by a woman on a cargo bike.

I could see in my rearview that he sped up, trying to catch me.  Whatever, dude.  I’m in a hurry, and I already spent 3 minutes of my day stuck riding behind you.

But it was clear that he was motivated to catch me.

Anyway, I got to the next light, which was red, but it was a right turn for me.  And at that particular intersection, the opposite side of where I was turning is a parking lot – not a real street.  So even though I normally don’t run reds, I make this intersection the exception.  That gives momentum for the next hill.

So, I slowed a bit, then go right through the red.  I see a few other cyclists riding up the hill.  As I go past them far to their left, I call out “on your left”.  One of them even thanked me, “thanks” she said!

I get to where I’m going, barely on time for my errand. (The location happened to be Cycle 9, so that I could pick up a lock, because I’d forgotten mine, and had to go for dinner downtown, and didn’t want to leave my bike unlocked… I’d already left it unlocked on campus for two hours because I’d had no other option …. it was one of those days…)

Here comes big dude on bike, riding right up, with a bug up his fanny.

“You broke every law in the book, you’re the worst cyclist I’ve ever seen!!!” (Exclamation point)

I say, whoa, hold on mr uptight dude, what’s got your panties in such a bunch?  (Actually, I kept my calm and said nicely, “Hey, let’s discuss why you’re so upset” – he ignored that and continued….)

“You shouldn’t be on the road, you’re an awful cyclist!  I was watching you, and I even talked to that other dude you passed and you cut him off!  You should be banned from the road!”

Then he rides away.  No civil discussion.  No explanation for why he ran the same red light that I did, but felt that it was justified by his need to chase me down and point out my own particular “cycling flaws.”  No explanation for how his passes of those other cyclists were better or more justified than mine.  No explanation for why he felt the need to get “moral support” from another cyclist I’d passed (with at least 4 feet to spare, on the open road).

No, pretty much it was all lecture, all crap, with the sole intention of spewing his negative garbage on me.

Some people are really, plain and simple, jerks.  That would include this guy.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that.  He probably just had a bad day, working in some lab at UNC (that’s the University of North Carolina) where his adviser probably gave him a hard time about his latest experiment on fruit flies.  Maybe he fed them tainted bananas and they all died, so he just lost two years of his PhD, and his adviser told him that he won’t get his degree.  Or something.  Poor guy.

But, here’s the problem – for whatever reason, he singled me out as the focus of his angst.

Actually, it is not for “whatever reason”.  I know the reason.

Because I’m a female, who passed him on a bike.

C’mon dude: deal with it.  Unless you’re a racer who rides 200 days a year, I’m probably faster than you!  That’s because I ride 300 days a year.  It doesn’t matter whether I have electric assist or not – I ride fast.  I’ve been riding fast for 25 years, and I’m not about to stop because I’m insulting your ego.

When I’m not riding my electric bike, I go out and ride a road bike or a mountain bike – and I ride them FAST.  I like speed.  I don’t like going slow.  If you are slow, I’m going to pass you.  I will try to do it gracefully, but that doesn’t always happen perfectly.  Get over it.

Here’s what’s so stupid about this.  If I were another guy, he would have never confronted me like that – because it likely would have come to blows.  Another guy would have punched him out over a lecture like that.

Good thing in my old age I’ve calmed down a bit, because otherwise, it just may have come to blows.

I’m not dainty, and I’m not cowed by obnoxious angry dudes who feel like they have a right to yell at me because I’m a woman.

I used to be a bit of a hothead.  If a car or cyclist cut me off, I’d yell, pound my fists, and raise the finger.  Evil people!  I’m going to yell at them until they realize how evil they are!!!

Yeah, right.  It never works like that.  This guy was the one being the asshole, which became obvious the moment he showed that he couldn’t actually stop ranting for long enough to hear the other side of the story.

Did I bike “perfectly”? Nope.  But neither did he.

Would I like to have executed a better pass that wouldn’t have raised his ire so much? Yep, but I’m not perfect.

The thing that really irks me about this whole thing is that biking is supposed to be a pleasant, healthy alternative.  (Usually it is, excepting occasions like this).

But for some reason, this is not the first guy who has taken offense at being passed – and then resorted to yelling at me simply because I passed them.

Do you guys do the same thing on the highway?  Every time a woman in a car passes you, speed up to make sure she doesn’t “get the best of you”?  Or, if someone makes a bad pass on the highway, do you chase him/her down to the next McDonalds and take it upon yourself to start yelling at that person? No, because the person might pull out a gun and shoot you dead.

I happen to know someone who used to carry a gun on his bike, everywhere he went.  He was a vet, and he didn’t like people messing with him.  Maybe he still carries it, I don’t know.

I’d like not to resort to that extreme measure.

But, you know, people have lost any sense of civility these days, and it is really sad that it spills over to biking.

And here’s the worst thing – judging from this guy’s bike and his (lack of) speed, he drives more often than he bikes.

You know, if you’re going to lecture me about my biking, the least you could do is get out and bike year round yourself.  Don’t be an armchair bike cop.

Better yet, don’t take it upon yourself to lecture, because it never works.

When was the last time that a driver you gave the bird to suddenly decided to be a more cyclist-friendly driver as a result?  Probably never.

Next time I see you, mr lecturer guy, I’ll make it a point to pass you even faster (but, for everyone else, I’ll continue to attempt the most gentle and gracious passes that I can muster).

If you search the blog for “red light guy,” you’ll see this isn’t the first time.  There are one or two other guys out there, who clearly don’t like a woman passing them on a big cargo bike.

If I had passed him in an unsafe manner, the guy might have a point.  But the only argument that could possibly be made about safety would relate to my own.  By riding fast, I am mostly endangering myself.

Sure, cutting off another cyclist (if I had actually done that) would be unsafe.  But just passing someone 8-10 ft to his right, though technically not “correct”, is not inherently unsafe – especially if I yell out when I do that.

I’m not sure what particular argument the guy was trying to make.  It likely boils down to something pretty simple:

1. I, a woman on a big heavy bike, passed him going fast.
2. Male ego gets insulted
3. Male ego must respond by tearing down the person that “insulted” it

Well, dude, get over it.  I’m not going to stop cargo biking, and I’m not going to stop riding fast.  It isn’t an insult to you or your ego.  It has nothing to do with you, except that I executed a poorly planned pass because I was in a hurry, and you were in my way.

If you are so deluded as to think that it is an insult, read this piece by Seth Godin.  Stop taking things like this personally, and try to be kind to other people.

You’ll get a lot more distance out of life than you’re getting right now.

It is campaign season again, and there are a number of candidates running for the Board of Aldermen in our sleepy little town of Carrboro, NC (right next to Chapel Hill, NC).

It’s been a while since I posted to the Cycle 9 blog. The hiatus was in part due to a lot of grant writing that I had to do for my day job. There’s this thing called the “stimulus” that congress passed, and they are trying to stimulate scientific research. And so government agencies like the National Institutes of Health are accepting grant proposals to spend the stimulus money. Well, since I work at a major research university (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), I was obliged to write some grant proposals. With all the grant writing, the blog was left a bit lonely.

But in the background, a lot has been going on at Cycle 9, in terms of bike stuff. Let’s see what I can dig up from the recesses of my memory:

• We got a few of the Marin hardtail mountain bikes in stock. Some folks had asked for a more aggressive looking bike for their everyday riding, and the Marin bikes fit the bill. They make a great platform for an everyday commuter bike, or for an electric conversion. We’re not about to switch over to carrying a whole shopful of full suspension mountain bikes. I love mountain biking, but that’s not what the store is about. We’re here to promote transportation and utility biking. And we have the mountain bikes for people who prefer the look and feel of that to a more road oriented bike.
• We have lots of kids bikes in stock from Marin. They make a nice lineup. We also have the “running bikes”. These are bikes without pedals, that the kids use by “running” along while seated on the bike – kind of like Flinstones. My daughter learned how to bike this way, and it was a lot faster that learning how to deal with pedals. Once she was balancing on the running bike, then moving over to a regular pedal bike without training wheels was easy.
• We’re getting some of the new “electric mountain drive” assist kits in from Ecospeed. It is a chain-drive electric assist, that has the advantage of using the bike’s existing gear set. So they are claimed to be better for steep hill climbing, and to have better efficiency than hub motors. We’ll be testing one out extensively, and we’ll also have a demo in the shop.
• Speaking of demo bikes, we are also a Stokemonkey dealer (the only one on the East Coast!), and now have a Surly Big Dummy utility bike (great for kid and grocery hauling), with the Stokemonkey installed. The Stokemonkey is like the Ecospeed, but it is designed specifically for cargo bikes like the Xtracycle, Big Dummy, and Yuba Mundo. It is a very high efficiency, quiet motor setup that has power for big loads and very steep hills. Come try it out!
• If you want to charge your electric bike battery faster, we now have a new line of chargers in for the long-life LiFePO4 (lithium ion) battery type. One of them is a dual-voltage dual-amperage charger that puts out 9 amps in “fast charge” mode, fast enough to recharge a 10 amp-hour pack in just over an hour. But since charging batteries fast too often may shorten their life, this charger also has a 4 amp slower-charging mode, that will take 2-3 hours for a full charge. Not only that, it has dual voltage, so it can charge either a 36 volt or a 48 volt pack, at either current rate! We have a few 20A/48V chargers for large electric vehicle batteries. And we have some 6 amp dual-voltage chargers (36 and 48V). In this first run, we only have a few of each kind. Once they’re gone, they’re gone for a while.
• We now have the small Day 6 frames in stock, available for a test ride. The Day 6 is an extremely comfortable ride like a recumbent bike, but it is more upright. Several folks have come in to try the Day 6 before or after testing a Townie at another bike shop in town, and a lot of them prefer the comfort of the Day 6. The new small frames are designed for people 5’3″ and under.

I’m sure there is a lot more to talk about, but let’s save that for another post. I want to talk about the economy for a few moments.

Lots of people seem to think we’ve got green shoots. It would probably be best for our shop to just pretend that is the case and act as if everything is going to be hunky dory tomorrow. But sorry folks, it isn’t. I’m a bit of an economics junkie. I do a lot of reading. And there’s an elephant in the room. That elephant is:

DEBT

If I could have used a larger font for that word, I would have. The reason why is I want to emphasize the scale of the problem. Our country is in hawk. Under water. We’ve sold off our children’s future to the pawnbrokers.

This has all happened before… during the 20′s. See, back then a similar thing happened. There got to be a very few rich industrialists at the top of the pyramid, and a lot of other folks who were quite poor. The disparity between rich and poor got more and more extreme. But most people didn’t know it – because there was a debt bubble. So, while people were getting poorer, they kept feeling richer – because they got more and more in debt. That was the roaring 20′s, until it came to a screeching halt in the crash of ’29. But ironically, in 1930 there were newspaper reports very much like our “green shoots” reports now. Everything was going to go back to normal. Things would start roaring again. And what happened next? It was three more years until the economy would bottom out in 1933. The middle class was eviscerated. So were the poor folks. A few rich folks were just fine, but everyone else was not. There was a debt hangover that had to be cured.

Well, our debt as a country is bigger now than it was at the height of the great depression, when FDR was doing all-out government spending to try to dig this country out of the mess. Obama is trying to spend our way out of it – but the problem is, the spending is all in the form of ever more debt (not that the alternative of outright printing is any better). But our country can’t handle more debt. Our creditors like the Chinese are getting sick of lending us money – because they don’t see how we’ll pay it back. And they’re the only ones lending these days.

To bring it back to bikes, here’s the thing: we import well over $500 billion per year in foreign oil. What do we trade this for? Debt, debt, and more debt. Not anything real – the US doesn’t produce all that much anymore, except debt, and dollars (which represent debt).

I frequently have conversations with folks about oil. People seem to think there is a “glut” of oil, and that oil prices should come back down. Well, aside from the fact that the “glut” consists of only 20-30 days worth of US oil consumption, there is a much bigger fact being ignored: the price we pay at the pump is a direct correlation to the strength or weakness of the dollar. If the dollar gets stronger, that means oil and gas get cheaper for us. If the dollar gets weaker, that means oil and gas are more expensive for us. The dollar got a lot stronger last winter, which is a major reason why gas prices dropped. Now the dollar is weakening again. While it could do anything over the next 6-12 months (go up or down), the long-term prognosis is absolutely clear: there are too many dollars in the system, and our creditors are getting tired of taking those dollars in return for real, tangible things like oil and manufactured goods. This will not be dollar positive. What that means is that, even if we ignore the major geological constraints on oil supplies (i.e. peak oil), that it is very likely to get much more expensive for us at the pump in the future. We can “drill baby, drill” all we want, and it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what we import.

So, folks, be prepared for increasing costs in the future. Unless our government and the Federal Reserve bank manage to pull off a miracle of getting an economic recovery while holding the dollar’s value, we will be paying more and more at the pump.

And cap-n-trade isn’t going to help, either. I’m anti pollution and anti-CO2 being released, but this cap and trade thing has me mad. It is just another scheme for some very rich folks to get even richer trading in carbon credits. It would have been far better to just be honest about it and charge a direct carbon tax. And then to use that tax to build things like bike paths, rail lines, and etc. But, no, we’ll just let some rich folks get richer, and we will all pay more money at the pump.

So, anyway, why would you want to buy a bike in this economy? Because bikes are one of the very cheapest ways to get around for short and medium-distance trips. Far cheaper than a car. For anyone who is struggling financially and asking “can I afford a bike” – if you can’t afford a bike (at least a used one), then you definitely cannot afford a car. Each month of owning a car costs as much as buying a typical low-end transportation bike. Think about gas, insurance, repairs, and parking. Just the other day, someone I know had to pay over $300 to fix the electric window opener on her car. She had a sudden insight – all it takes is a few such repairs, and an electric bike would be paid for.

It’s funny that occasionally when I’m riding along on the road, some guy in a big pickup will honk or something, trying to tell me to get off the road. I’m sure that most of these folks consider themselves US patriots. But how can they be patriots when they are dependent on foreign oil? When they are contributing to our large US debt, that will weaken our currency?

There was an interesting discussion on the RootsRadicals about the effect that having a US flag on the bike has with folks who might otherwise treat cyclists with disdain.

In that vein, we’re going to do a t-shirt. Here’s a mock-up/draft version:

This t-shirt points out that it is patriotic to ride your bike and free our country from foreign oil. Maybe it will help some drivers who “don’t get it” to start figuring it out. We hope to have this shirt ready in August. Drop us a line if you want one. They’ll be printed right here in North Carolina using organic cotton and chemical free dyes.

Happy 4th, I hope everyone had a great celebration of our country’s independence – and I hope we have many more to come.

Today I got to combine work and pleasure: I rode 38 miles round trip on my electrified Big Dummy (the Firefly) to Duke University. I gave a seminar on Bioinformatics, and then rode home. It was a cold day out (at least for these parts), with my ride home dipping well below freezing. I brought along a thermos with hot tea, and stopped several times to top off my tea cup (mounted in my handlebar beverage holder). On the way home, I even stopped at my favorite place to waste spend money, A Southern Season, to buy some more tea and sundries.

Why is such a trip even of note? For a couple reasons. First, today we spoke to one of our bicycle suppliers on the phone. He was asking us about electric assist, and saying that he didn’t really “grok” (understand) the whole electric bike thing.

Today’s trip is a perfect example of why an e-bike works. I have ridden many miles on road bikes; I could have ridden the ~40 miles on my (non-electric) road bike on a recreational ride in better weather – easily. HOWEVER, I wouldn’t have done that in a down coat, with insulated boots, with a thermos of tea, with a handlebar stereo, with a large U-lock, with a full change of dress clothes (to give the talk), with my computer, with a full array of bike lights for after dark, and other miscellany. If I had ridden my road bike with that assortment of gear, I would have arrived very tired out (and also about 1 hour later).

With the e-bike, I got two hours of exercise (I was pedaling moderately the whole time), but I did the trip in luxury (especially since the Big Dummy allows me to carry so much stuff). I never got cold, since I had plenty of spare warm gear, and big heavy duty boots, down parka, etc. I was drinking hot tea for the whole ride there and back. I had good tunes. In the narrow, fast moving parts of the road, I used the electric assist to keep my speed faster to not impede traffic. I hauled my load of stuff up some steep hills without problem. I arrived for the seminar feeling good from the ride, but not worn out. I left after the talk with plenty of energy, and had a (mostly) pleasant ride home, through some back neighborhoods up some very steep hills (to avoid the more traffic filled routes).

Simply put, I wouldn’t have done this trip without the electrified longtail bike. I would have ended up driving a car. Comparing the energy usage of that:

Car: 25 miles per gallon. That’s about 1,320 watt-hours (KwH) per mile. If I still had a Prius, that might have been as good as 45 mpg (doesn’t do as well in cold weather), or 733 watt hours per mile. In other words, each mile traveled in a Prius would have consumed the equivalent of 7-hours running a 100 watt lightbulb. For the whole trip, that would would amount to 27 kWh – the equivalent of leaving a 100 watt lightbulb on in my house for 278 hours or 11 days straight (that’s with the more efficient Prius!)

Bike: 18 watt hours per mile (about 1,833 miles per gallon). The whole ride consumed 684 watt hours of electricity. That’s equal to less than one mile in the Prius, and about 1/2 mile in the big car! I could charge my battery with the equivalent of 7 hours of 100-watt lightbulb usage, easily doable with the solar panel on my roof.

Why highlight the stark difference? Simple: I never used to think about how much energy I was using when I got into the car to drive. And I suspect most people don’t. Gas has been so cheap for so long, there is no motivation to think about it. But, when put in the above context, it is all the more clear how much energy it takes to move that hulk of steel around. It doesn’t matter whether the car is electric or hybrid or whatever. It is heavy, and it travels fast. Both of those factors mean that it is intrinsically inefficient, and consumes a lot of energy. For those folks concerned about CO2 emissions, the above numbers say a lot.

But here’s the sad part. I studied the maps carefully before going, to find a route where I wasn’t going to be fighting traffic. And the best route I could find was far less than ideal. There was a 5-mile stretch of former country road, that is now used by commuter traffic. It was busy. It was narrow. It had no shoulder. And it was the least of all evils connecting the towns of Chapel Hill and Durham. Sure, I know about things like “ride big” and “take the lane”. I did those things. But as I watched in my rearview mirror for approaching traffic, it was a constant concern; would the car slow for me? Would I have to get out of the way? Statistics show that for slower-paced roads, concerns about being hit from the rear are overblown. That doesn’t change the basic human instinct to want to know what is going on behind, and not liking having a zillion cars whiz by. It is the number one reason more people don’t bike.

It just seems absolutely crazy that two neighboring college towns, Chapel Hill and Durham, don’t have a reasonable bike route connecting them. I blame this firmly on the old boy network in North Carolina’s DOT. Maybe I shouldn’t say this on a public blog, but those guys need to get their heads out of their rear ends and realize that we are in the 21st century, not the 1950’s. Maybe in the 1950’s we needed more roads to be built; now we don’t. Now, we need more bike paths, sidewalks, railways, and other means for people to get around without burning ridiculous amounts of energy. And doing this would benefit the drivers too – it is never fun for a cyclist to be passed by a bunch of cars on a narrow busy road. But it is no fun for the drivers, either. Building out infrastructure to appropriately accommodate both would make everyone’s lives better.

Would I do the trip to Durham/Duke again? Yes. It was great. Much better than sitting in a car or bus. I got exercise, and an adventure, all wrapped within some important work-related business. I would probably plan my ride for a bit less busy time, if possible. But, regardless of whether I would do it, most people just won’t face such a ride, without the kind of experience I have commuting by bike. And some people think I’m crazy, anyway. To get more people on their bikes, and less people using up tremendous amounts of energy to move metal boxes around, we need to invest in bike facilities, now.

Why isn’t that part of the economic stimulus?
(note: there are token amounts in the stimulus for bike paths, but they pale in comparison to road funds).