I took the photo above during a recent cross-country ski outing that took me around the periphery of St. Olaf College on New Year’s Day. As I was taking photos of Regents Hall, St. Olaf’s impressive new science center,  I realized that the sky was fabulous that day.

I like the sky’s deep blueness in the center of the photo and its wispy clouds. The sky here says something to me about possibilities, about the wonders that exist near us and to which we are normally oblivious.

I’m glad I was able to get out on my skis, get some exercise, appreciate the natural scenery near our home, and take some photos. I’m thankful that I was able to start out the new year in this way.

See another photo of Regents Hall below.

The Democratic and Republican political conventions will be here soon, with the Democrats meeting August 25-28 in Denver and the Republicans September 1-4 in St. Paul. Both conventions will have an unusual feature: bike-sharing programs that will make available 1000 bikes to the public in each city for free.

The program is a joint venture of the Humana Freewheelin bike-share program and Bikes Belong, a non-profit bicycle advocacy organization funded by the bicycle industry. Humana is a large health insurance company that has had success with an employee bike-share program at its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.

I’m excited about the convention bike-share opportunity because I’ve been following the spread of “new generation” bike-sharing programs for the past year, particularly the enormous Velib’ program in Paris, France, which started last summer. These newer bike-sharing programs are more high-tech than the “yellow-bike”-type of program that some cities and college campuses have had. Those older programs have usually been plagued by theft, vandalism, and disrepair, since the bikes are not locked, there is no system of checking the bikes out, and there are few resources for maintaining the bikes. Read the rest of this entry »

How wonderful it is with summer at its height. The sun is out today, the purple blooms of our clematis are brilliant, and memories of a beautiful drive through the countryside of western Wisconsin on Sunday and Monday are still strong in my mind.

Our short trip took us only 100 miles or so from our home in Minnesota to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the largest city in western Wisconsin. We approached from the west, on scenic roads. Well, nearly every road is scenic in this beautiful area. Our route took us through Red Wing, Minnesota, to Highway 63, then Highway 72 and County Road C to Eau Claire. It’s a beautiful route through farming country and forest-covered hills, passing through the towns of Ellsworth, Rock Elm, Elmwood, Downsville, and Dunn. It includes some very hilly, thickly forested country - an area that was not covered by the most recent glaciers, and terrain that most people probably do not associate with the Midwest.

Two Minnesota organizations have released an important document, the Statewide Conservation and Preservation Plan. Created by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), the new plan makes policy and research recommendations that are intended to preserve the state’s natural resources in the face of increasing demands and impacts from our society, including climate change. Carbon emission reductions are one of the important goals of the plan.

I haven’t yet had time to do more than a cursory reading of the report’s executive summary and its transportation chapter. Here are a few excerpts from the executive summary:

The Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) funded a unique partnership among the University of Minnesota and the consulting firms of Bonestroo and CR Planning to evaluate the state’s natural resources, identify key issues affecting those resources, and make recommendations for improving and protecting them. More than 125 experts, including University scientists and public and private natural resource planners and professionals, participated in the 18-month effort. …

• The key issues for which recommendations are made in this report are:
• Land and water habitat fragmentation, degradation, loss, and conversion
• Land-use practices
• Transportation
• Energy production and use, and mercury as a toxic contaminant related to energy production

Here are the three recommendations from the Transportation chapter:

• Transportation Recommendation 1: Align transportation planning across state agencies and integrate transportation project development and review across state, regional, metropolitan and county/local transportation, land use and conservation programs.
• Transportation Recommendation 2: Reduce per capita vehicle miles of travel (VMT) through compact mixed-use development and multi- and intermodal transportation systems.
• Transportation Recommendation 3: Develop and implement sustainable transportation research, design, planning, and construction practices, regulations, and competitive incentive funding that minimize impacts on natural resources, especially habitat fragmentation and non-point source water pollution.

The report clearly deserves closer reading and the attention of state leaders. Note especially the involvement of leading state scientists and planners.

For more information, see the official press release and a Star Tribune article.

On Saturday, April 26, the 2008 Minnesota Bike Summit was held at Quality Bicycle Products (QBP) headquarters in Bloomington, Minnesota. This was my second summit, and the mood of the 100 or so people who attended was decidedly more upbeat at its conclusion than last year. The reason: QBP announced that it would fund (or help fund?) an Executive Director position for a statewide bicycle advocacy organization.

I’ve been told that Minnesota has lacked such an organization for several years now. Bicycle advocates are hopeful that a Minnesota advocacy group can be as successful as the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin. A former staff member from that organization, Dave Schlabowske, was on hand as a keynote speaker to explain its history and what would need to happen in Minnesota. Schlabowske is currently the Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator for the City of Milwaukee - the first person to hold that office.

The other keynote speaker was Tom Huber, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. During one session on bicycle facilities, I was able to hear Huber confirm that I’ve been on target in one of my concerns: the dangers of sidepaths, or shared-use paths that are adjacent to roads. Huber said that the warnings about sidepaths in the AASHTO Guide to the Development of Bicycle Facilities (1999) are still accurate, and he gave me a copy of the Wisconsin Bicycle Facility Design Handbook (2004). That source has some nice graphics that illustrate the problems with sidepaths. Another attendee told me that the sidepath warnings will become even stronger in the 2009 edition of the AASHTO guide.

Huber and Schlabowske spoke together about an “advocacy effectiveness triangle,” though they seemed to modify this into a “square.” That square includes four groups working together: professionals (usually government staff), advocates, politicians, and businesses. Simply put, things happen and get done on a particular issue when these groups of people work together.

I was struck by the close working relationship between advocates and transportation officials in Wisconsin. Each needs to rely on the expertise of the other. For example, the Wisconsin DOT contracts with the Bike Federation to do much of its education related to Safe Routes to Schools and other programs.

I took a tour of the QBP facility and learned a little more about this 400-plus person company. They employ over 400 people and are the largest bicycle products distributor in the country. The tour leader said that 5000 of the country’s 5,200 bike shops are their customers. To give you a sense of their size: they employ 25 buyers as well as two full-time photographers who take pictures of the products that go into their catalog.

QBP also pays employees who bike to work; I think the figure was around $3 a day for a certain distance. Over 100 people bike to work each day in the summer, and about 30 or so in the winter.

My only regret at this summit: I did not take pictures! Seeing QBP’s LEED Gold building and their state-of-the-art warehouse facility was a treat, and I’m sorry I can’t share some images with you now.

Earlier this month the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group (MCCAG) released its final report. This group of over 50 stakeholders was formed by Governor Tim Pawlenty to assist in developing a Minnesota Climate Mitigation Action Plan (that’s a lot of capital letters). It has some impressive names on it, including Will Steger, the polar explorer and climate change activist; Prof. David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, one of the most esteemed biologists in the world; and J. Drake Hamilton of Fresh Energy, whom I heard recently give an excellent speech on climate change and our response to it. The group also has many other prominent figures representing business, labor, churches, environmental organizations, and other groups.

I’ve read the executive summary and Chapter 5: Transportation and Land Use and was encouraged by what I found. The group has outlined policies for achieving a nearly 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2025 (with 2005 being the base year), and most of the recommendations were approved unanimously.

The public can now enter comments about the report online (deadline is midnight on Sunday, April 27), and I encourage people to do so. At the very least, you can read the executive summary before doing so, though it is not all that short at 16 pages.

It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether the report claimed that enacting the policies would provide a net savings to the state and its people. It seems the policies would save the public money rather than cost them money, judging by the discussion on page 6 of the executive summary. The report does attempt to quantify the cost of various policies. The most cost-effective measure, for example, is improved statewide building codes; that’s the no-brainer. Read the rest of this entry »

Something very encouraging is happening at my church, the United Methodist Church of Northfield, Minnesota. A group of us have formed a church “Green Team” to focus on Christian stewardship of creation.

Another label we might have chosen for the group is “Creation Care Team.” In some ways I like that better, since it connects us more to our Christian roots. For some, the word “green” has negative political connotations.

We had mentioned forming a group such as this for a while, but then rather suddenly a few weeks ago, following an adult education forum on energy usage, we decided to meet informally during and/or following the church’s Wednesday night dinners. Many of us were already attending these dinners, and child care is provided, so the setting seemed to be a natural one. Thus we began to talk about environmental issues each week.

Last Sunday, the team made a group presentation at the Sunday education forum, each taking a few minutes to address a specific topic. One person made an impressive, well-substantiated presentation on “peak oil” - the concept that a peak in oil production has been or will soon be reached. Another, an engineer, spoke on his long-standing connection to energy research, including work on solar power and innovative window designs. He said the obstacles to making significant strides in energy conservation are political rather than technological or economic. Another engineer spoke of his work on our city’s energy task force and his use of a device to monitor real-time electricity usage in his home. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the end of January I wrote about problems I was having with my hands and feet in cold weather. As time went on, I noticed that the end of my nose and the tops of my ears were also affected. I found the latter odd, since I rarely have my head uncovered outside in the winter.

When going outside in cold weather, I noticed that I’d quickly feel cold, even slightly tingly, in the mentioned extremities, despite dressing very warmly. When going back inside, those areas would become red as they warmed up and I’d feel a stronger tingling sensation.

As time has gone on, these symptoms have lessened, probably because of time and the end of winter.

When I saw the doctor about this in January, he thought I might have chilblains, which can sometimes involve a systemic problem with the blood thickening upon exposure to the cold. On the other hand, a friend said that I might have gotten “frosted,” which made me think that I may have experienced “frostnip,” the mildest form of frostbite.

I still don’t know the cause of these problems and can’t point to one incident that caused them. It may have been due to playing outside with my daughter in cold weather, sometimes around 10-15 degrees with wind, I think, though I was dressed very warmly. Or my troubles may have been the result of riding my bike in the winter, though I did that much less than usual this year and not in the coldest weather. Read the rest of this entry »

Much of the Upper Midwest received a late-winter wallop of snow yesterday, with as much as 8 inches falling in parts of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Can you see the birds in the photo above? Can’t they plow the bird feeders around here?

As someone said on the radio yesterday, if this had happened one day later - on the first day of April rather than the last day of March - I’d have been less accepting of this snowfall. As it is, the sun will dispatch this stuff soon, and we can move on to the next season. At least we hope we can.

Below is the scene in our courtyard, as seen through patio doors.

Stephen Regenold is a Minneapolis writer whose Ultrafit column in the StarTribune is one of our most important regional bully pulpits for cycling and a physically active lifestyle. I commend him for his attention to cycling not only as a sport but also as a means of transportation - even in Minnesota in the winter. His column a few months ago on winter cycling is very informative, as is an accompanying video.

I also appreciated his March 19 column, “A large fella on a bike,” which concerned Scott Cutshall, who has lost nearly three hundred pounds after taking up cycling - his only real option for exercise when he weighed over 500 pounds, he and Regenold say. Cutshall eventually moved from New Jersey to Minneapolis so that he and his family could “embrace the cycling lifestyle,” he said. He was drawn to Minneapolis at first because it is home to the man who built his custom-made bike: Bob Brown, of Bob Brown Cycles. See Scott Cutshall’s impressive blog, Large Fella on a Bike, and hear him speak eloquently of his journey in an audio slideshow.

Regenold’s column is just one example of the StarTribune’s praiseworthy coverage of cycling and transportation in general. Regenold also writes on outdoor gear for a wide variety of publications; see his web site, thegearjunkie.com.