Eco All the Way

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Ride Across America Report from Janeen “Noodle” McCrae

A Note from Fatty: You might have first gotten to know Janeen “Noodle” McCrae on this blog when I featured her 100 Miles of Nowhere video last year. Well, this year, she rode across the United States — helping Team Fatty raise thousands of dollars for LiveStrong along the way.

Noodle is, in short, an inspiration.

So when Noodle sent me a brief ride report along with photographs, I definitely wanted to pass them along. Enjoy!

Just a quick note to let you know that I finished my ride across these great United States on Wednesday (Oct. 13) at around 4.30pm. Hoping you can let peeps know of this news so that I may thank them for their support, followings, and random-showing-up-and-the-side-of-the-road antics. I actually have a lot to say about this trip, but I am currently struggling to pull my thoughts together into any kind of sensical ramble. It will come, just not today.

Here are 3 spur-of-the-head thoughts:

1. America is big. A lot of it is empty. I would like to thank all the stupid song writers in the world (mostly from the 80s) who buried their dumb lyrics deep in my head so that these songs would appear randomly in the silence and torture me for HOURS in these locations. Thanks in particular to Billy “You’ve got a nice white dress and a party on your confirmation” Joel, and Randy Newman for the Three Amigos theme (which I actually didn’t mind too much. I can really hold that note for a long time.)


2. America is beautiful. Even those empty parts. I would like to thank Mother Earth for shifting plates in her china cabinet to push mountains up in frighteningly wonderful messes, and flatten out the land in other parts like linen cloth on a table. There were days when landscape changed dramatically several times. Wow is a word that actually doesn’t sound corny and hollow when you see these things for the first time. People need to get out there and feast their eyes on this stuff, if they haven’t already.


3. America is not full of axe murderers. Go figure?! I experienced moments of great kindness, which has reaffirmed my faith in humanity. For every jerk who yelled “Why don’t you just go kill yerself” out a car window, there were 20 who offered a meal or asked if I needed anything. Cheer up america. You’re not as full of suck as you are lead to believe. I’d like to thank everyone who wasn’t a jerk.



And if you would indulge me this one personal note. I would like to thank you. I could have jumped on my bike and ridden across the USA and that would’ve been that and life would have gone on and whatever whatever so long and goodnight. But Team Fatty and raising money for LIVESTRONG became a key component of this trip for me. To the point where I sucked in some friends at Breakfast NY who made Precious (my bike) a brain and donated that brain and a website to help me raise money - refusing my lame attempts to pay for any of that stuff every time I half-heartedly offered.



Although my fundraising goal wasn’t huge, we reached the initial goal and so I upped the ante. Sure, I will fall short of that ambitious $21,310 goal, but I feel that the awareness my lovely tweeting bike raised for LIVESTRONG has served its own function.

For every email or tweet that I’ve gotten about how I’ve inspired some person to get on their bike or donate to the fight, I think about how it’s really just a knock-on effect from you. Your story was the initial hot coal under my seat to get off my arse and do something.

From you, to me, to … the next in line. I wonder who will inspire us next in this fight?

Ride on, Team Fatty!

Janeen “Noodle” McCrae

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Take the Lane: Sometimes, we could give up the lane

Baltimore Sun article:

October 18, 2010 at 6:00 am (Commuting, Cycling Rights, advocacy, safety)

Driving your bike is a dance.

For the most part drivers are courteous. Courtesy demands thinking of one another. And it works both ways. We’ve all seen rude cyclists riding two and three abreast and refusing to give way.

That’s illegal but what about taking the lane? Usually the problem is the cyclist is too convinced of his own inferiority and tries to give way too much. It takes some courage to fill up a lane to prevent a motorist from passing on a blind corner.

On the other wheel, cyclists need to adjust to the road conditions even if it means giving way when you strictly speaking do not need to. For example, I often coast a bit to give that passing vehicle more room to pull back in before reaching that blind curve ahead. I can also speed up to get into the corner sooner controlling the lane so the passing motorist isn’t tempted to make that pass that might push me off the road should he enoucnter oncoming traffic.

In this way, I make a dance of my ride alternately leading and following but always remaining predictable.

Be sure to click through to the original newspaper story below.–Corrie



This column by Michael Dresser of the Baltimore Sun addresses an issue that a lot of cyclists and cycling advocates dance around but don’t directly address: pulling over to let motor vehicles pass.

I think we get so caught up in the mantra of “share the road” that we automatically think that sharing means “me first.”

via Take the Lane: Sometimes, we could give up the lane.

Awesome Eco Trail!

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/bike-trail-being-paved-with-plant-based-asphalt.php

Bike Trail Being Paved With Asphalt Made From Plants Instead of Oil
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 10. 7.10
Design & Architecture (materials)


Bioasphalt developer Chris Williams and paving machine.Credit: Photo by Mike Krapfl/Iowa State University

Asphalt is usually made from the bottom of the barrel, the dregs of the oil refining process. But then along came the tar sands and better technologies for refining heavy oil into gasoline, and the price has climbed. John has noted that it has got so expensive that rural roads are going back to the stone age.

But Chris Williams of Iowa University has come up with an interesting alternative; he has cooked up a bio-oil from plants and trees that can replace the asphalt glue that holds our pavement together- Bioasphalt.

avello bioasphalt process

It's made by fast pyrolysis, "the rapid thermal decomposition of carbonaceous organic matter in the absence of oxygen", Science Daily explains:

Bio-oil is created by a thermochemical process called fast pyrolysis. Corn stalks, wood wastes or other types of biomass are quickly heated without oxygen. The process produces a liquid bio-oil that can be used to manufacture fuels, chemicals and asphalt plus a solid product called biochar that can be used to enrich soils and remove greenhouses gases from the atmosphere.

Robert C. Brown of Ohio State developed a process of fast pyrolysis, (perhaps this reactor shown in his patent 5711771) which was licenced to Avello Energy. Mr. Williams developed Bioasphalt using their product and is testing it on a bike path.

It is not the first bioasphalt; Shell Oil paved a road in Norway in 2007, and Vegecol, an asphalt made with vegetable oil binders was patented in France in 2004. In Australia, Ecopave is made from sugar cane and molasses. They also have trademarked the name Bioasphalt so Mr. Williams may be in for a bit of a fight over the name.

bioasphalt process image

The stuff can be made from crop and mill residues, "woody biomass", AKA trees (the bike path was evidently made with oak) and since this is Iowa, what they discreetly call "energy crops", AKA corn. I am not too enthusiastic about paving our roads with food and trees, but there is enough other biomass around to probably pave much of America. They also note that the process works with switchgrass, reed canary grass, giant cane, miscanthus.

It sounds like a good alternative to digging up the tar sands for tar. More at Science Daily and the University of Iowa

Getting back to business

Hey all!
Sorry for the lack of involvement as I get my life in order and get into a good schedule in my PhD research.
I am back and getting this club in gear! pun intended.

Spring Bike Sale
SUNDAY, MAY 16TH 10 – 4PM
PURCHASE A 2009 RENTAL BIKES FOR AT LEAST 50% OFF!
RECEIVE A CARD GOOD FOR 10% DISCOUNT ON SERVICE & RETAIL
AT OUR NEW LOCATION AT UNION STATION WITH BIKE PURCHASE
CASH ONLY. ALL SALES FINAL.
12th St NW between Pennsylvania and Constitution Ave
Rear plaza of the Old Post Office Pavilion

Chain Gang's first ride of the season was meant to be at Gwynn Falls but spontaneously got changed to Loch Haven Resevoir. A beautiful day with great weather, easy ride but hilly and a nice rest at a restaurant. Good start to our second year riding!