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With gas prices skyrocketing with no relief in sight more and more people are fixing up their bikes and hitting the road with pedal power. I’m one of them. I didn’t dust off my bike because of gas prices I hardly drive anywhere anyway, but it’s time to get back in shape and it’s a great way to get around to the corner store or to pick a few things up at the grocery store.
Today, I got my old Trek 920 out of the garage all covered in spiderwebs and other things. Then it was lucky enough to receive a sponge bath with a Green Works sprayed sponge. Years ago my brother had made off with my seat post for his BMX bike and the seat was lost in the garage somewhere or so he says.
After a quick assessment I decided I needed 2 tubes, a seat and a seat post. A friend of mine let me load my bike up in his vehicle and we took a drive down to the closest bike shop. That was probably the fastest and most well spent $70 I’ve spent in a while. After all my buddy who was just down on vacation from Dallas spent $85 filling up his truck in Austin on the way back. Side note: I took him for a ride in the Prius and let him watch me use next to no gas while we made our way around town. Yeah, he’s totally gonna buy one now.
The bike works like a champ and I took my first ride in over 5 years today. Who needs baby steps I jumped on the sucker and road a mile to the store and then of course a mile back. A 2 mile trip in around 20-30 minutes isn’t too bad I’d say, but let me tell you my legs felt like jello when I hobbled up the stairs to the house.
Do you ride a bike? Why or why not? I’ll be doing it more and more for health and recreation while trying to figure out how I can replace some of my very little driving with biking. If anyone would like to see pics I’ll put a few up of me and the torture tool bike.
This short video(4.5 minutes) is from the TED2008 conference and gives us an amazing albeit scary look at how absolutely full of crap our current news media is. Take a look I think you’ll be quite surprised as I was.
Those of you who are thinking “Well, HA! Jason I get my news from Google” or some other online news outlet you’re gonna love the last minute or so of this video. Basically the whole premise boils down to it is cheaper to cover Britney Spears then put news headquarters in third world countries. [Read more →]
The Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorn announced that polar bears will be listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The polar bear is one of the most recognized and in my opinion cutest animals around, but it is losing its habitat at a rapid rate. Currently 23,000 - 25,000 polar bears survive in the Arctic, but scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey are predicting that in 50 years the number will decrease by 2/3rds because of habitat loss due it melting away.
What bugs me about it all is that there is controversy over the fact that this is the first animal added to the list because of habitat loss. Isn’t that an easier to control and easier to remedy problem then poachers? Granted we can’t just plant more ice, but this decision leads us to be able to classify other animals in the rain forests and old growth forests as threatened because of loss of habitat. This would or should in my opinion give way to more habitat restoration program. [Read more →]
Helotes, Texas is a small town just outside of San Antonio and has a population of about 5,000 people. The city government has done a lot to keep big business out of town and allow small business owners the ability to operate with out the threat of companies like Wal-mart. The city of Helotes is known for taking very good care of its citizens and its local environment with annual Helotes volunteer day and other programs to keep the area cleaned up.
Mayor Thomas A. Schoolcraft has announced that Helotes has committed to getting 100% of its power for municipal buildings from renewable resources through the windtricity program at CPS Energy. Because they get 100% of its power from wind the town is now considered a Green Power Partner by the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA). He also announced that he will be challenging the citizens of Helotes to join their city in lowering the carbon emissions of city by joining the windtricity program themselves. [Read more →]
The amount of active innovation in the green energy sector is amazing to me. This product is making its way all over the web and blogosphere, but I thought it worth a discussion here. Lumeta (a subsidiary of the construction firm DRI) has developed a peel and stick solution for installation of solar panels. It’s a quite ingenious way to speed up the installation process and in turn drastically cutting the cost of the solar panel installation that holds many businesses and homeowners back from going solar.
The problem I see which Lumeta admits is that you’re going to lose the ability to get the optimal sunlight angle on the panels. They claim its only about a 5% loss in power production compared to standard installation practices. I guess depending on the installation cost difference that 5% loss could well be worth it. [Read more →]
