BU Bikes

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.

Here’s another installment of the weekly column “Spoken Wheel”.  Check out the link to the Daily Free Press site here .

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Bikes Not Bombs

As the spring rains wash away the last of the gritty city snowpack, signs of life that remind us of good weather but have been forgotten for months stick their way out from underneath winter’s white blanket. I’m talking, of course, about abandoned bicycles. You’ve seen them around campus, I’m sure — rusting, mangled carcasses, heaped at the ends of bike racks or U-locked to parking meters, left behind as the owner invariably bought a T pass and never looked back once the temperature dropped below freezing.

Well, as we gear up and grease up for bike-riding season, there’s a place those old weather-beaten bodies can go. Bikes Not Bombs, a charity organization/bike shop in Jamaica Plain, will take the old frames, strip them down, fix them back up and ship them over to war-torn countries like Guatemala, Ghana, Tanzania and South Africa, so that destitute people whose societies have been torn apart by violence can have free sources of transportation.

BNB also sends tools and technicians along with the bike shipments, so local organizers can establish bike shops and the communities can sustain the whole operation themselves. They even send cargo shipping containers that get converted into tin-walled shops with holes cut out for windows. And it’s not just bicycles that are built, but other related technologies, like bike-powered washing machines, bike-powered water pumps for wells, bike-powered grain mashers and even bike-powered blenders. Just take out the motor power and insert your pedal power. Voila, do-it-yourself life.

“Lasting peace and social justice require equitable and sustainable use of resources.” These are the opening words of the mission statement of Bikes Not Bombs. For 25 years, they’ve been creating concrete alternatives to war and environmental destruction by combating overconsumption and inequality. Each year, they rebuild about 6,000 bikes and ship about 4,800 overseas. Along with recycling and donating, they make their money by selling and fixing bikes to urban riders, but it’s all to support their foundation. They have a big shop right next to the Samuel Adams Brewery, just so you know.

BNB also provides classes on bike maintenance for youth programs in the lower-income neighborhoods of Boston. Volunteers work with local teenagers to build the bikes, and the kids in turn learn a valuable vocation. It’s nice to see a group working to make a difference globally while also providing a service for the local community.

In the end, this organization is working toward finding solutions to worldwide problems. The current models of transportation, sustainability and overconsumption are all obstacles to civilization and have to be surmounted. Bikes Not Bombs is a smart, effective alternative for all three issues. The key to its success though is not just that the technologies are donated and resources shared globally, but also that successive generations are being educated. This idea is transmissible and can spread through a single cargo boxcar being placed in the right location with the right minds behind it.

Did you know that the first American bicycle race was held in Allston on May 24, 1878, at what was then Beacon Park? Allston also used to be home to the Charles River Speedway, where such studs as A.J. Furbushat and H.B. Ralston furiously raced their horse-drawn carts at the turn of the century.

And did you know that Packard’s Corner is named after one of the largest car dealerships from the early 1900s? So is the Fuller Building on campus.  Both were part of Boston’s “automile,” which stretched down Commonwealth and Brighton avenues from the Boston University Bridge to Union Square. The industry brought such booming prosperity to the area that automile founder Alvan Tufts Fuller, who was a former championship bicycle racer and owned one of Boston’s first bike shops, had a successful run for governor under Former President Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party.

Neat history, right?

Fuller was convinced that the future of America belonged to the automobile, and he took steps to become a central figure in the industry, abandoning his bike shop and moving into cars and politics. By the mid-1920s, Boston’s automile was lined with no less than 117 automobile-related businesses, and Fuller had moved from the State House to the Governor’s Mansion. Fuller abruptly abandoned his political and business positions in 1929, right at the onset of the Depression, a short while after he refused to commute the death sentences of immigrant radicals Sacco and Vanzetti. But the automile survived until the 1970s when it went into rapid decline, and the dealerships moved to the suburbs — the Oste Chevrolet became a Shaw’s and BU got a new art gallery.

Stories like this mark the timeline of the transportation battle that raged for the past century, with cars overwhelmingly running down bikes — except during those brief bicycle booms in the 1890s, 1930s, 1970s and today — and urban planners responding by building larger and faster roads.

But I digress. Competitive cycling certainly has changed since Harvard University’s C.A. Parker raced across lower Allston’s riverfront in 1878, winning his place in history. Competitions these days include carbon fiber bikes on giant indoor tracks (like NASCAR for the spandex-clad) or crowded, dimly lit bars filled with kids on bike rollers seeing who can get to 666 meters first without puking in the trash can.

There are also marathon races – of Tour de France and “The Triplets of Belleville” fame – which bring sponsorships and prize money to organized teams. And cyclocross races, which are all-terrain obstacle courses over mud and rocks via bicycle.  The Alleycat races, though somewhat illegal, are part urban exploration, part bicycle-race scavenger hunt, for bike messengers to show their mettle and intuition. All this diversity of competition shows how tight-knit and spread out the cycling community is.  Knowing this, I’m reminded each time I pass the showroom at the International Bicycle Center on Brighton Avenue how we’re in a bicycle boom and how happy I am it’s not another Honda dealership.

*photos courtesy of Brighton-Allston Historical Society*

Have you ever been “doored” while biking and not quite known how to handle the situation? After a near-death experience, in the frenzy of shock, anger and injury, it’s hard to tell what the best way is to hit the jerk up for money after he just hit you with his door. But now, thanks to the Massachusetts Bicycle Safety Law, just passed into effect in January, you can feel comfortable asking, along with any ensuing legal or medical costs, up to $100, which is the Massachusetts fine for dooring someone.

Senate Bill No. 2573 requires acts of common sense for drivers, such as changing lanes to pass bikers, not hitting bikers when they’re riding to the right of traffic and not opening your door when a biker (or pedestrian) is within striking distance. As stated in Section 12, “Whoever violates the proceeding sentence shall be punished by a fine of not more than $100.”

So depending on the scope of the damage, you can demand your rights as a cyclist. This can be expressed as: “Hey, buddy! You either hand over 60 bucks to me, or we can get the cops involved and you’ll owe $100 to the city!”

On the flip side, Massachusetts law already requires bikers to adhere to all applicable motor vehicle laws, such as coming to a complete stop at stop signs and using hand signals. Legally, bikers can now ride two abreast, but no more than two, and can only take up one lane of traffic. Imagine, instead of blocking rush-hour traffic as a huge clump, the Critical Mass parades of hundreds of bikers ride as two long lines stretching down the street, stopping at lights, filling up random blocks throughout the city.

Also, all riders ages 16 and under are required to wear helmets.  Bike rental shops must supply helmets. too.  And the bike registration law was repealed for being an unenforced waste of resources.

This is a great achievement for the grassroots cyclist organizations that have pushed this bill for years, writing and calling legislators and governors, asking to place accountability on drivers for dangerous and irresponsible conduct.

Of course, laws only go as far as they’re enforced, and we all know the relationship between bikers and cops has been a historically strained one.  So the law firstly applies to police departments by requiring a bike safety curriculum in their training. This may lead to more enforcement on the streets and cops understanding the trials of being an urban biker. Now, if we could only get some mutual respect of the law from the bikers, we’ll stand in good stead.

The thing that really gets me though is that it takes such a law and the threat of fines to get it into everyone’s head that people are getting hurt. Cars can be deadly weapons, and we’re talking about saving lives.  The real shame of the reality of cycling in Boston is the chance of death involved in choosing a bicycle as a mode of transportation. And each intersection with a “ghost bike” memorial reminds me — we have a long way to go.

check out the link to the Freep site: http://www.dailyfreepress.com/1.1568871-1.1568871

Have you ever wanted to travel cross-country? To see this glorious land as it truly is, from sea to shining sea, redwood forest to Gulf Stream waters? The rolling hills of Ohio, Route 66, the Grand Canyon?

How would you do it? By car, shelling out cash for gas? By train, with Amtrak’s monthly pass? Greyhound, with its bus stations and potential decapitations? Hitching it by thumb? Hoofing it by leather? Or have you ever thought about traveling by bicycle?

I met a guy who biked from the United States all the way down to Argentina. The worst thing that happened to him was that he was hit by a car in the deserts of Mexico. The best thing that happened to him was that he got to experience the entire hemisphere by bicycle, on the ground, using his own two-wheeled volition.

Think about it: traveling at your own speed and with your own momentum. Your route — 20-mile days or maybe 100-mile days — going where you choose, completely independent. Think of the sense of accomplishment, making use of foreign public libraries, the chance to meet friendly locals who want to get you drunk, the lessons you’ll learn on “lightening the load.” Think of your desire for adventure. I once saw a sign that read, “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving.”

I have a couple of friends who biked across Europe one summer. In Ireland, they reassembled their bikes, cruised through Wales fueled by two liters of hard cider, ferried to Amsterdam, peddled across Holland — the Promised Land for bicycles — stopped in small Belgian taverns, ate local French cheeses, camped along slow Italian byways and didn’t stop until they swam in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. They stayed with bikers networked through WarmShowers.com, the bike community’s take on couch surfing. It only cost them what they could eat and drink and the occasional spare tube.

If I ever became nomadic, this is how I would go.

Of course, there are more organized, productive ways to travel long distances by bicycle. I have another friend who is part of the Bike and Build Program here in the United States; the program is a charity that helps combat the housing crisis. After raising $4,000 per person, she and her group of young adults will bike for five days, arriving at a destination and helping to build a house for a day or two before continuing with their journey. She’s about to graduate and was never able to do as much community service as she liked because of school and her part time job. Yet after coming back from Tanzania, she wanted to see our country’s terrain, its hills and valleys, its deltas and deserts, its cities and towns and highways and byways. She just got fitted for her bicycle and is so excited she’s practically bursting with anticipation.

It’s a bold plan. After deciding to travel 2,488 miles from Providence to Seattle, it kind of puts that one- to-two-mile commute to campus into perspective, doesn’t it?

check out the link to the Freep site: http://dailyfreepress.com/1.1360291-1.1360291

For one day, the normally clogged, smog-filled, traffic jammed, steep streets of La Paz, Bolivia were free of cars. They were free of microbuses, free of taxis and mopeds and free of noisy intersections that would otherwise be polluted with the blaring sounds of horns and whistles from traffic cops. But on this one day, there was peace. To go out into the city was glorious, liberating, inviting and safe.

The excuse for a car-free La Paz was because the Bolivians were voting on a new national constitution. As mandated by law, they were all out at the polls. And as is also the law, for 24 hours, from midnight to midnight, all streets in the entire country must be clear of all non-official automobile traffic.

I’ve heard several reasons for this, the most compelling being “it’s to prevent election fraud” –– past incidents of bandits on mopeds driving up to polling stations and stealing ballot boxes have marred the processes of this young democracy. But I think the no-traffic rule is designed more to keep people in their neighborhoods, to encourage voter turnout and to keep stores closed on that Sunday.

The new constitution passed 60-40, and the result was that the local economy and neighborhood jubilation boomed! Fairs were set up on empty avenues, impromptu markets filled traffic circles, children raced on skateboards down La Paz’s slopes and everyone, from cholitas to mestizos, joined in the fútbol games. Best of all, people were out riding bicycles. Astounding! Biking in crazy ol’ La Paz! It seems like some fantastical dream of urban purity.

Yet this isn’t as implausible as it may seem. Many cities shut down their busy thoroughfares every once in a while and open them up to people, all for the sake of fostering urban solidarity. You might have missed it, but Boston hosts the Hub on Wheels, which allows bikers and pedestrians to legally take over Storrow Drive once a year. Cambridge closes Memorial Drive, from the JFK School to that insane Watertown intersection, every Sunday from April to November. And Jamaica Plain has its various street fairs, led by costumed clowns on stilts and sponsored by Spontaneous Celebrations.

The best example I know is Bogotá, Columbia, where every Sunday 120 kilometers of major avenues are liberated and volunteers set up sports, aerobic classes, music performances and bicycle races. It’s called Ciclovìa, and it brings the city out to dance, have fun and exercise together. Due to its popularity, the city has radically changed its transportation infrastructure, giving priority to public spaces, pedestrians, bicycles and mass transit. In Bogotá, the city’s attitude has progressed from hopeless urban suffocation to pride and unity. Much of the success can be attributed to former Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who is visiting Boston this week to talk about his work, sponsored by the LivableStreets Alliance.

So now, imagine a car-free Bay State Road. Or a motorless Commonwealth Avenue. How far would that go to transform our isolated, fragmented Boston University community?

 check the link to the Freep site: http://dailyfreepress.com/mook_whose_streets-1.1321642