Bike Commuting

I recently realized that one reason I love riding to work is that I actually get more relaxed as I travel to work. What a difference that makes in my day! Even when I wake up crabby not wanting to work that day, by the time I get there I can't stop smiling and greeting everyone. I'm sure people think I am crazy with all that unbridled enthusiasm early in the morning, but it really is unbridled. I even feel a little silly sometimes, but my grin refuses to settle down.

Yesterday, in a conversation with a work friend about this condition, he said "I don't even call it bike-commuting anymore... I am simply going on a (bike) ride and then I end up at work."

How great is that? I agree. From this point forward, I will call it Bike Travel!

Kids Banned from Biking

As you may have noticed, I think that bicycle transportation is the "bee's knees," so to speak. Mainly, because it is the SINGLE MOST EFFICIENT mode of transportation currently available to humans.

I am alarmed by an (hopefully) unconscious effort in the U.S. to thoroughly destroy this most perfect machine. See this story from the LA Times about the school that has a written rule that students in grades K-4 may not ride their bicycles to school.

I guess its surprising to anyone that watches the news, reads billboards or listens to the radio that crime rates have been continually dropping and we are actually safer than 30 years ago.

...as rates of child abduction and abuse move down, rates of Type II diabetes, hypertension and other obesity-related ailments in children move up. That means not all the candy is coming from strangers. Which scenario should provoke more panic: the possibility that your child may become one of the approximately 100 children who are kidnapped by strangers each year, or one of the country's 58 million overweight adults?

Encouraging Quote

"We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different"

Kurt Vonnegut

A Couple Ideas for Improving Your Vocabulary

If you have never heard of the ideas of planned obsolescence (an idea my friend Owen calls a socioeconomic conspiracy), perceived obsolescence, or Earth Overshoot Day, you should understand these terms.

Start here. A short video about the story of our stuff and why we always "need more."

Another Reason My Bike is Better than my Car!

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I went out to use my car and after 2 hours of digging, backing, rocking and blocking, I finally got out of my drive, down the alley and into the street.



On the worst day, its only taken me 20 minutes to change a flat and get my bike on the road. Granted, we had not driven the car in over a week and there had been quite a bit of snow. Regardless, maintaining and driving an automobile should be more fun.

Biking on Ice Roots

Today was my third day in a row bike commuting through this crazy Seattle snow. Since it has stopped snowing Ice Roots have started to grow on the roads, so the riding has gotten more and more difficult. I am calling them Ice Roots because they ride much like wet tree roots kicking your bike all over the road!

I stole this blurb on bike commuting from the Performance Bike site:

Bicycle commuting is a rewarding experience in many ways. Commuting is a way for you to stay fit, reduce pollution, and reduce automotive traffic. Bicycle transportation is also a great way for you to save money considering the ever-increasing cost of gasoline and automotive maintenance. It can be a great source of enjoyment, too. Commuting on your bike is more than just transportation; it is a lifestyle decision for the greater good. You are making a positive contribution to the environment and there might even be employment benefits. In efforts to reduce pollution many companies like Performance Bicycle reward their employees for commuting with incentive programs. In densely populated or high traffic areas, bicycle commuting can actually be faster and more efficient.

Snow Bike

Riding a bicycle to work has many benefits: sneaking in some exercise, saving some gas money, reducing my carbon footprint. But for me the greatest benefit is not having to drive. This summer, walking less than a block to work each day made me realize that getting in the car first thing in the morning is a great way to ruin my day. Driving a car for me just isn't fun anymore. It was great for the first 10 years, but now I'm over it. I keep trying to talk my wife into selling our single remaining car, but she is not ready yet (even though she never drives!)

So I choose to recreate on the way to work, instead of stressing. It's fun to not remember the last time I drove the car and not have to buy gas very often.

I've been riding my road bike to work since we've been in Seattle; it's only about 8 miles roundtrip and takes about the same amount of time as driving, due to all the traffic lights.
This last week it's been snowing and I am determined to prove that it's not too difficult to bike-commute year round. So finally, I made the commitment and pulled out the mountain bike. I let the air pressure in the tires down to 35 and hit the road.

On the way home, I got some great pictures.

It's cold, but not as cold as it looks. I end up sweating quite a bit more on the snowy rides, because I have to get so bundled up to start the ride.

Fortunately, my workplace has a shower, even though I've never used it. I have a very bike-friendly employer.

Looking back down the hill towards Lake Union.


I actually had to stop to take off some layers here.
But I gotta get moving, don't wanna get too cold.

Oddly, enough this is the first time I've ever ridden my bike through the snow to work! I can't recall ever doing that before, even when I was in Breckenridge.

The future of the economy?

I found this interesting article which forecasts what seems, at first glance, to be an ominous future for the U.S. economy. When looking deeper, I began to see the seeds of a "slow" future. Slow as the word is used in the slow food movement, as in voluntary simplicity.

Not to mention it brought me my new favorite word - lumpenprole.

The economy we’re moving into will have to be one of real work, producing real things of value, at a scale consistent with energy resource reality. I’m convinced that farming will come much closer to the center of economic life, as the death of petro-agribusiness makes food production a matter of life and death..... We still think that “the path to success” is based on getting a college degree certifying people for a lifetime of sitting in an office cubicle. This is so far from the approaching reality that it will be eventually viewed as a sick joke — like those old 1912 lithographs of mega-cities with Zeppelins plying the air between Everest-size skyscrapers.

The American experience for a few generations has produced an adult population with very childish instincts, increasingly worse each decade. For instance, the desperate power fantasies among the younger tattooed lumpenproles — those with next-to-zero real economic power — suggest a certain unappetizing playing-out of resource competition when the supply of Cheez Doodles and Pepsi starts to dwindle. But even the heretofore gainfully employed middle classes are pretty lost in fantasies at least of comfort and convenience. For years now, I have wondered how their sense of grievance and resentment will be expressed when the supermarket shelves run bare and the cardboard signs get taped over the local gas pump and the cable TV gets cut off for non-payment."

Full article here.

Although I don't buy into the foreboding overtones of piece, there are so many valuable points to be taken: occupying ourselves with real, productive work instead of mere "busy-work," relearning sustainable local farming, reducing our reliance on the personal automobile and losing our cable TV. It's all about improving our quality of life!

"How does all this relate to being happily underemployed?" you might ask.

Trimming the fat from our lives can prepare us for whatever is to come. Choosing to reduce or remove the very expensive objects from my life that do not provide good value, in other words, things that cost more than they actually improve my quality of life, gives me freedom. Gaining practice in choosing gives me confidence in my choices.

Ultimately, those choices have given me the opportunity to be underemployed, no longer suffering under the ultimate anthem of helpless victims of capitalism, "I am underpaid, if only I made more money!" To my brethren whom I have left behind I say, "If only you spent less money!!!"

And finally, of course, I enjoyed the allusion to the Futurist drawings like those of Architect Antonio Sant'Elia.

UK happily underemployed, not slackers?

I found this UK article while searching for others like me! Not exactly my situation, but close. My career path has been more about learning something new and fun that interests me. And about living more simply. Ultimately, about a higher quality of life.

"Being happily underemployed runs counter to the prevailing wisdom.... the happily underemployed are willing to forgo working a "fulfilling" 80-hour week for fun, satisfying lives outside the office.

"These people are dropping out of the rat race - except they're doing it at work. They don't feel compelled to imprison the meaning of life in their careers.

"But the happily underemployed are, in fact, exercising choice. "I chose in my mid-20s to buy a house, when I had a job with a dotcom," explains Eve. "It's my choice to keep that mortgage rather than sell up and pursue a career change. I don't deny that I'd like to have a job I love, but to work in theatre I'd have to take a 50% pay cut."

Full article here.

Not so happily today

The galliant OK Senator Tom Coburn has done us a favor by listing the most wasteful government spending of 2008. He must be a hard hitting, fair and unbiased, rebel kind of Senator. He really wants to crack down - on the Fort Collins Bike Library!

I just sent this email to Mr. Coburn. Please ignore my "partisan" issues, if they offend. (I am obviously from the "Good-Will-To-All-Except-Congress" Party!)

But if you want to spread the bicycle love, you should send him an email also. You can click here.


Currently, there is a poll on his home page that has the Bike Library tied with a $5 million Zoo bridge as the WORST WASTE OF 2008!

Dear Senator Tom Coburn,
I wanted to vote on your worst wasteful spending poll but the no-bid contracts of the War on Iraq was not on the list, neither was the Wall Street Bailout Plan, nor Congressional retirement plans, nor Congressional health care benefits. All of which wasted exponentially more money than the Fort Collins bike library. Oddly enough, all these wastes are in direct opposition to the welfare of most Americans, while this tiny "wasteful" bike library is actually achieving its goal of reducing air pollution. I may be wrong here, but it seems that even the good people of Oklahoma could benefit from clean air!

Thanks for distracting your constituents from the real wasteful spending issues!

It's never not worked, yet!

Today, my friend asked me "How did you decide to quit your architecture job, if you didn't know if you could live on less money?"

Wow... huh... I realized I had forgotten years of struggling with the decision to follow my dreams. It took me some time to remember.

....I had/have been struggling with this for years. I say struggling because not until recently has it been pleasurable. The single most important key to following my dreams (which change alot) is the sentence "It's never not worked, yet!"

Architecture in the beginning was my dream, but when I outgrew that dream, I was stuck. I suffered for a few years; I ended frustrations with my work by leaving the company and going to another, then another etc, etc. All the while believing that I couldn't live on less than I was currently earning. After much soul searching, discussion and coaching... and a sprinkle of Wisdom, I saw what had me paralyzed was my own beliefs. I literally felt that without a job I would die, not gradually starve to death, but die almost immediately from the lack of a job. Obviously, this has no basis in reality; nonetheless, it took quite a bit of work to get this idea out of my psyche.

Ultimately, I could find no evidence that I wouldn't make it. I had never "failed." In reality, I had never given up, I had always adapted. It had never not worked, yet. So I began a sort of secret mission to become more and more daring, more and more ostentatious in my demands for my dreams... Surprisingly, this pursuit has still not killed me.

Guess what - a river guide doesn't make as much money as an architect (well, some days he does, but not most days!!!) Neither does a climbing gym manager, a bike mechanic or a first aid instructor.

How many hours should we work?

When I was hired at my new job, I told my boss I needed at least 32 hours per week to meet my budget demands. Since October, we haven't been able to fully staff because of a revenue shortfall. So I have been getting between 24 and 28 hours per week.

While I feel that I should continually remind my boss that I need 32 hours, I don't really. I have been eating well, my rent and utilities are paid, I have gas money for my car. Sure I could pay off my credit cards faster and I could get internet at home, but secretly I enjoy working only 24 hours a week.

So why do I feel that I need those hours - I think I should work more, because that's what you are supposed to do. I feel guilty hanging around enjoying myself while my wife goes to work, even though she says she enjoys working full-time.

In the 20's, at the height of our cultural progress, people believed that because we had become so productive that ultimately the U.S. would see a 4 hour work day. Kellogg introduced a 6 hour work day, that everyone enjoyed. The idea was to use our productivity to job share, not to convince the public to consume more... Industrial designers developed the ideas of planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence to convince us to pick up the slack... all that extra stuff we were making, by being more productive, that we really didn't need.