BU Bikes

it’s just lovely.  found it on YouTube:

All winter, biking on the esplanade was quiet and serene; all the usual river wildlife was absent and the joggers and bike commuters were few. So with the return of warm weather it has taken some getting used to the influx of joggers and the sight of returning wildlife and foliage. Biking to work on the esplanade today, I stopped to take my windbreaker off when a loon spreading its wings on a man-made float caught my eye. Just then, the BU rowing team gracefully rowed by:

The loon, the weathered conductor, returns home to its symphony orchestra, the Charles river. The rowing team the stealthy, prominent, often overlooked, yet necessary bass drum.

Earlier today I was walking to class when sidewalk pamphleteers from Sovereign Bank handed me a booklet advertising free checking accounts coupled with a fridge magnet. Realizing I needed neither a free checking account nor a fridge magnet, I chucked them both into the next trash can I passed. Later on I stopped by BU’s bike safety day at the Sargent parking lot where I was handed a free bike headlight, taillight, patch kit, raffle entry to win a free bike, a Mountain Dew, and a bike registration sticker from BUPD, all things that I will use, and for that, I thank and applaud the BU bike committee for putting Bike Safety Day together.

Well some time after three-o-clock when bike safety day ended I was hanging out outside the GSU when I saw something beautiful happen. The BUPD officers were riding their bikes back to the station and blowing their whistles to drivers of cars parked in the bike lane. All the cars scurried off except one that was unattended, so a BUPD officer stopped to write up a ticket:

About a minute later the driver burst out of the GSU and over to his car. I was hoping the officer would finish writing the ticket, but alas, he let the driver go with a warning. Ah well, it was still great to see about six parked cars get kicked out of the bike lane. At least now six more drivers out there know not to park there.

Speaking of stuff in the bike lanes, it still looks like we have a long road ahead of us before people drivers start taking the bike lane seriously. Last week, in front of the science building I almost ran into the door of an unattended pickup truck, which was left wide open long enough for me to stop, take my camera out, take a photo, and proceed to carefully bike around the obstruction, resisting the temptation to slam it closed:

And today, BU facilities, in addition to beautifying the grass patches around SED, installed a BMX dirt ramp in the bike lane:

Well I forgive them because at least in addition to good looking grass they also added four new bike racks to that corner:

And speaking of racks, I was surprised to see an old friend of mine today, looking more dapper than ever: this K2 bike carcass that I first befriended months ago when I spotted it buried beneath the snow:

Stripped and abandoned of all traces of it’s bikely nature, except, of course, its in-tact frame and cranks, there stood this K2 bike, still holding onto that dear bike rack by its last best friend, the loyal U-Lock that has served it well for an entire fall, winter, and spring through windy rain, ice, snow, and sun. It’s only a matter of time before BU facilities, by natural force of season, separates the two.

Here’s another installment of my weekly column in BU’s Daily Free Press.  You can check out the link here : http://www.dailyfreepress.com/mook-individual-solutions-1.1644713

(note: the word “energy” is used 8 times, “power” 8 times, and “bike” only twice)

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Imagine if each stationary bike, treadmill and elliptical machine in the Fitness and Recreation Center used the friction created while you ran to charge your computer battery. Think of it — all those feet powering all those computers and all that energy going to a practical purpose. I wonder how much we’d save by simply unplugging our laptops from wall outlets.

There’s a professor in the geography and environment department, Nathan Phillips, who does just this. His laptop, desk lamps and telephone are powered by a “deep-cycle” battery that’s charged by the stationary bicycle next to his desk. Professor Phillips is able to provide enough power to effectively take him “off the grid,” meaning he can close up his wall outlets, along with his energy loop, and produce renewable energy with his feet. It takes about a half-hour’s worth of pedaling to run his office for the day. And going beyond the Flintstone simplicity of this idea, since his office faces south, he also has two solar panels on his windows for extra output.

He got this idea by working in a field out in Amazonian Ecuador, where he needed to run his research equipment in places far from any outlet. He initially relied on solar energy but converted to pedal power during the rainy season when clouds rolled in and cut down the sun’s rays. Back in the United States, he decided to put his idea into practice right here on campus. It was a simple enough plan — he had the bike generator, so all Professor Phillips needed was to go to his local electronics store and buy a few power converters to channel his 12V battery into the proper voltages for the appliances.

There’s certain independence that comes with this do-it-yourself attitude that most people in this society don’t understand. “It really forces one to treat energy as precious and worth conserving,” he says. Plus, one big benefit of being self-reliant is that if the grid were to ever fail, he’d still be going strong.

Now, I’ve been thinking about a global application for this idea. I’ve been to Bolivia, which recently discovered that it is holding roughly 60 percent of the world’s known lithium reserves.

Lithium is the essential element in rechargeable batteries, such as those in your laptop, and will soon be in each of the city’s hybrid taxis. Yet even though Bolivia may be rich in the natural resource, that doesn’t mean it has the infrastructure to do anything with it. It will probably rely on foreign investors to suck the lithium out of the ground and refine it for batteries, thus reaping the profits for themselves. But if the country can develop a closed energy loop, say, by constructing batteries that are also powered by bicycles, it can distribute do-it-yourself power to rural areas, providing energy to the most impoverished communities without necessitating power lines stretching across the Andes mountain range. This multilayered self-sufficiency may just be the trick to spreading energy equity to the impoverished sectors, allowing technological advances for people who know nothing of laptops or elliptical machines.

In London, on April 1, protesters descended upon the financial district to voice their anger over the collapsing world economy, the coming climate crisis, increasing poverty and mass unemployment.  And some of them decided to use a bicycle as their means of voicing frustration.

OK, I mean we can all sympathize with the legitimate anger coming from these protesters, but isn’t there a more constructive way to go about this?  Breaking windows? Tearing up the streets?  Throwing bikes?!

Let’s be civil lest the world truly fall apart.

Unless they were trying to give the bikes to the cops, you know, as a means of transport that doesn’t consume fuel and offers quick, easy access to and through the city, to better allow them to do their jobs.

(photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)