It’s quite easy when on a bike to pull over, walk 10 feet, feel the breeze, and take a photo. In a car, I probably wouldn’t have noticed this, and if I did, I might not bother to stop and take a photo.
This is the kind of work commute that I like:
Author Archives: howrad
Project Alpha: Wind Power in Denton?
From the March 3, 2009 City Council Agenda, section 1(C)1:
C. Deliberations regarding Certain Public Power Utilities: Competitive Matters – Under Texas Government Code Section 551.086.
1. Receive a presentation from staff regarding negotiations between Denton Municipal Electric (DME) and a leading wind developer. The project is known as “Project Alpha”; discuss, deliberate and provide staff with direction.
Interesting. I wonder who the developer is, and I wonder if this will be actual turbines in Denton or just wind-power supply from elsewhere? I get sad seeing all those huge wind turbine parts trucked up I35E through Denton, as they travel to windy vistas elsewhere.
Funny enough, I was about to blog about the insane fickle winds north of town, near where I work off Hwy 77/N Elm. It’s windy every single day of the year out here. More than one UNT employee out here at Discovery Park has muttered “they could run this whole building with solar panels and wind turbines.” It seems much windier north of town than where I live in the center of town. Too bad the presentation was in a closed-door meeting, I’d love to see the details. Go Denton wind power!
bikes vandalized near Fry st
At 7PM last Saturday night, some friends and I went to sit atop the Cool Beans’ roof and enjoy veggie burgers and a couple beers.
Renee and I walked; the friends rode and parked their bikes in the rack at Riprocks across Hickory St.
When we came downstairs at 8PM, some friends on the Cool Bean’s patio mentioned that the bikes had been messed with. We could see a tangled mess of bike frames with wheels and handlebars jutting out at odd angles. We walked across the street and untwisted the two bikes to find that the nice Klein ladies’ road bike had the rear wheel completely taco’d. Eyewitnesses reported that 4 guys at Riprocks finished a couple rounds, then 2 of them got up and started slamming the bikes around on the rack. Our friends/eyewitnesses yelled at the vandals, and they yelled back “it’s OK, these belong to our friends!”
Yeah, right.
Here’s the rear wheel as seen that night:
The Riprocks bartenders said the same group of guys released some roid rage on the men’s bathroom by ripping the soap dispenser off the wall.
Yes, we called the Denton Police. Officer Don Lane showed up, surveyed the damage, remarked that a good bike shop could fix the wheel and that frames are almost impossible to damage, and then he filed a report. We beg to differ on how easy it would be to damage frames, particularly the aluminum Klein road bike. Now the Surly Long Haul Trucker, it has 4130 cromo steel genealogy in it’s favor.
Supposedly these hooligans are from out of state, so they probably left Denton to go destroy bicycles elsewhere. A UNT bicycle officer was simultaneously investigating and won us over with politeness and genuine concern.
Bicycle Path on the loop is re-using the Ultegra hub from the destroyed rim and building up a new wheel. The Wald basket, well, it’s steel so we bent it mostly back into shape. I’d guess anyone strong enough to mangle a Wald can bench press more than I can.
The more Fry St becomes like 6th st in Austin, the less I like it. Meanwhile, the square is kicking ass.
Peticab Woofbiking
The pup had a vet appointment this morning (for ehrlichia), and we both decided not to use the car. I think it’s about a mile or so each way, with a couple hills. We went down Hickory, through the square, and down Locust to the Small Animal Wellness Center. The Burley D’Lite trailer worked marvelously, and it take about 30 seconds to attach to a bike’s rear triangle. I put a blanket down so Chase’s nails couldn’t hurt the trailer fabric, and amazingly, he just curled up and even slept a little (when his nose wasn’t up in the wind).
He's so curled up, you can BARELY see his head in the trailer.
I CAN HAS SLEEPING
Whoa, this.... is the sign of a good vet. Love the autograph legibility and punctuation.
On Monday, Kimchi the ancient kitty will get the same peticab transit to the vet. She usually yowls during car transport, so we’ll see if this proves any different.
recycle electronic junk by bike
I can’t find much to like about big box stores, but Best Buy just announced a really intelligent electronics recycling program. They claim to adhere to some pretty high standards, and this is way beyond the pay-for-nice-electronics program that Radio Shack offers.
The intelligent part is that they give you a $10 gift card to offset the $10 cost of recycling a TV (under 32″) or monitor. They just used a recycling program to get you to walk into a brick-and-mortar store, with a gift card in hand, during a severe recession. No small task.
By comparison, the City of Denton electronics recycling program is more expensive ($15 for a TV/monitor), farther away from the city center (especially by bike), and only open M-F 7-4 Sat 7-12.
I just bought a nice Burley bike trailer. Someone give me a TV or monitor to haul to Best Buy, seriously. Sound perilous? It’s not. The Denton Rail Trail goes all the way to the Best Buy entrance.
cyclist hit at Hickory/Ave D
Anyone got the scoop on this? I found it on the UNT PD blotter page, which should have an RSS feed but doesn’t.
Friday, February 13, 2009
17:07 Minor Crash – A staff member reported a bicyclist was struck by a vehicle, W Hickory St/Ave D, City of Denton. Officers and EMS responded to the scene. A state motor vehicle crash report was completed.
indexified!
Finally, Harpers put 25 years of the index online, and it’s searchable.
The results for “sex” are… illuminating. Of course, I typed in “bicycle” too:
- Percentage increase, since 1975, in the number of Americans who commute to work on bicycles: 325
- Number of bicycles for every car in China: 200
- Energy, in megawatt hours, saved over thirty-five years by a bicycle rider who does not drive a car: 109
- Portion of these savings that will be used up over the extra years the biker will live: 9/10
Mega means million and a watt is a unit of power.
A megawatt hour is the amount of power used if 1,000,000 watts are used for 1 hour, or 1 watt is used for 1,000,000 hours. If 100 light bulbs each using 1,000 watts of power are turned on for 10 hours, they will use 100 x 1,000 x 10 watt hours = 1,000,000 watt hours = 1 megawatt hour.
Most electric companies charge for the number of kilowatt hours used. A megawatt hour is 1,000 kilowatt hours.
store-to-counter!
There’s no need to carry a heavy bag through the yard, garage, all the way to the kitchen. Can’t do that with a car, unless you live in a garage.
14% of Denton ride bicycles as primary transportation!?
UPDATE 2/8: The DentonRC just published a front page article discussing these same survey results. Unfortunately they only mentioned the top two citizen complaints. #3 is walking and bicycle trails. 😦
So I noticed the city posted a link on their site to some survey results. There’s a wealth of important data here, and a significant portion illuminating how dentonites feel about the state of our sidewalks and bike paths. There’s so much data that I’ll just post this little tidbit to get the ball rolling.
Respondents were asked how often they use a bicycle as a primary mode of
transportation. As shown in Figure 7, 85.9 percent of respondents answered “never.”
Fourteen percent used a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation either daily (2.8
percent), weekly (4.3 percent) or monthly (7.0 percent).
Primary usage of a bicycle (at least monthly) was greater among male respondents,
college graduates, employed respondents, renters, respondents with children under 18
living in the household, and Internet survey respondents (see Table 70).
So if that survey was assumed to represent the entire city population of 115,506, that would mean 16,171 people are riding bikes as their primary transportation.
Another quick observation which deserves discussion is that bike and walking trails received the 3rd highest negative response from all city service categories. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Cyclists and pedestrians of Denton, find your voice.
