This weekend instead of riding, or blogging about bikes, or even thinking much about bikes, I worked with my wife Lyanda on a big post for her blog The Tangled Nest about our chicken coop design. Enjoy!
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Art Velo
GoMeansGo has put up a great show of bike-related artwork, called Art Velo, for a very limited time. The show is at Alley Cat Eats and Drinks, which is located at 3516 Fremont Place North, in Fremont (alley entrance). It’s only there for two weeks, so hurry! Might I humbly suggest this weekend’s First Friday artwalk in Fremont might be a good time to stop by? Details here.
Upcoming Dark Days Photo Contest
Speaking of GoMeansGo, I’ve teamed up with Ryan to organize a “dark days” photo contest. We’ll be soliciting bike-related photos taken outside after dark (which is most of the time, these days here in the Northwest), and wrapping up the contest on December 20, the darkest (weekend) day of the year.
Details are just being finalized, and I’ll post an official call for entries here in the next few days, so you can just consider this a little teaser. We’ve lined up two great sponsors: both Planet Bike and Bikeglow will be providing bike lights as prizes for the winners of the contest. In fact Planet Bike will be giving a full “commuter package” including lights, fenders and more, to one winner. So start thinking up creative photo ideas, and stay tuned.
Val Kleitz
Because all cycling is local, I’d like to draw your attention to the way the Seattle cycling community is rallying to support one of its own, the mustachio’d man about town, Val Kleitz, who is currently battling cancer.
Aaron’s Bicycle Repair and Redline Bicycles are raffling off a Redline 9-2-5 fixed-gear commuter bike to support Val. Swing by Aaron’s to buy a ticket, through mid-December. Raffle tickets must be purchased in person at Aaron’s (Washington gambling laws…), but Aaron has setup a PayPal account for donations for far-flung folks to support Val.
Designer Needed
And finally, I’m putting out a call for a designer to work with me on a Bikejuju site design facelift. It’s time this site moved beyond its stock Wordpress theme. I have a limited budget, and am seeking a designer with Wordpress/CSS design experience, a portfolio of visually bold work, and preferably someone who shares the bike love. Can be located anywhere. Email juju at bikejuju dotcom if you’re interested.
Oh and by the way, wouldn’t you like to sign up to receive Bikejuju by email? Yeah, I thought so.
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As fall sets in, I’ve coined a new term, velomycology, the search for mushrooms by bicycle, and I find myself slowing to look for birch boletes, shaggy manes, candy caps, and other fall mushrooms on my commute 
(it’s one way to look forward to the cold and rain!). Last week, while practicing velomycology in the dirt under some bushes between an Amoco station and busy Delridge way, I found a heart-shaped mushroom (Scleroderma areolatum).
In other news:
And now this little bike poem, found via Urban Simplicity:
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Did you know that I also sometimes post on my wife Lyanda’s blog, The Tangled Nest? The Tangled Nest is a blog about our experiments in “cultivating an urban-earthen household,” or what some might call urban homesteading. Lyanda does most of the writing there (she’s the real writer in the family after all), while I do most of the photography. But I also try my hand at posting from time to time.
I just posted a fun post there about using sundews and other carnivorous plants to keep your fruit flies under control (verdict: only mildly effective but very amusing).
I also recently posted about using your car as a food dehydrator, a post that got picked up by Lifehacker, and many other places from there.
And in a nice companion to my Bikejuju post on Ethiopian Bikes, I posted on The Tangled Nest about a wonderful old Ethiopian woman and her mysterious backyard chickens-raising habits.
The Tangled Nest is a great blog; here are a few other posts you may enjoy:
The Best Sandwich Bread Recipe Ever (and a little baking story)
Why We’re Raising Chickens in the City
Backyard Harvest: Cherry Oh, Cherry Oh, Baby!
Deep PB & J: Easy Homemade Peanut Butter
Leucy, A Most Unusual Crow, RIP
A Subterranean Clothesline–Thinking Outside of the Dryer
A Bird in the Hand (Will NOT be Abandoned by its Parents!)
Homemade Pita: Cool Bread for Hot Days
Tangled Nest Granola Recipe–Just say “NO” to Cereal Boxes
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One year ago, as I cycled to work the morning after the long Labor Day weekend, on a quiet residential street in our neighborhood, I crashed head-on into oncoming car. She had cut the corner on a 90-degree turn we were each negotiating from opposite directions, and suddenly there she was in my path. My disk brakes locked up, my back wheel skipped into a skid, and I thought “Ohhhhhh shiiiiiiit…”
I was extremely fortunate – she was stopped by the time I hit her bumper at an angle, and I flew diagonally across her hood, took off her passenger mirror with my thigh, and somehow managed to tuck and roll as I fell onto the road. I stood up immediately, with a huge “I’m ALIVE!!” adrenaline rush, and went to reassure the driver that I was ok and sort it out. My body was mostly fine – a major bruise on my thigh, a sore wrist, an adrenaline jag, but my beloved Trek was toast – taco’d front wheel, bent front chainring, bent frame, broken brake lever, etc.
Site of my accident.
One year later, on my 9-mile ride to work today – over the same route where the accident happened – I was pondering bicycles, traffic, and accidents. Seattle has had a terrible summer for bicycle accidents, with multiple fatalities and an unknown number of collisions, injuries, and near-misses. Safety and accidents are not a topic I like to dwell on, but every urban cyclist I know thinks about it, and a decent number of people I talk to stay off bikes out of the perception that bike commuting is dangerous.
Photo by Richard Masoner.
I was going to post a fact-filled discussion of the relative merits and dangers (and joys!) of bike commuting, but the truth is that for all the statistics out there, none of them are actually very good – most bike accidents and injuries are unreported, and it’s hard to quantify risk per mile or per hour because nobody really knows how much people cycle in America (though that number seems to be going up steadily).
The short answer is that cycling is a little dangerous, but it’s probably impossible to quantify whether it is more dangerous than sitting on your ass (heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and kills over 400,000 men and women each year) or driving in your car. It’s more dangerous to ride across intersections, in the “door zone,” and out of driveways into the street (a frequent kid accident). And it’s less dangerous the more experienced you get, the more careful you are, and most importantly, the more others are out there riding too.
Yes, seems pretty clear from the studies that have been done (see Pedaling Revolution): when the number of cyclists goes up, the accident rates go down. There’s safety in numbers. Come on out and ride!
Photo by Bike Portland.
“The gain of ‘life years’ through improved fitness among regular cyclists, and thus their increased longevity exceeds the loss of ‘life years’ in cycle fatalities. (British Medical Association, 1992)
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Coming on Wednesday, I’m handing the reins of Bikejuju over to another local author for a guest post. I’ll keep his identity a secret till then, but I’ll give you a hint about his topic: what do Paris-Roubaix, Mt. Ventoux, and Breaking Away have in common?
PS: While I haven’t been posting much on Bikejuju, it’s not like I’ve been slacking off: my guest post on The Tangled Nest got picked up by Craft and Lifehacker. Meanwhile my wife’s book got reviewed in the Sunday New York Times, my daughter prepared to start fifth grade, and I had a brief staycation: relaxed, inoculated shiitake logs, pioneered an innovative new approach to fruit fly control, and picked enough berries for twenty half pints of blackberry jam, one or two of which will be awarded as prizes on this very blog in the near future. Stay tuned, and keep riding!
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All cycling is local. It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted a compendium. Let’s remedy that with some local news:
Dead Baby Bikes rider. Photo by slightlynorth. Click for full size image.
Two fun cycle events in Seattle this weekend! Saturday, the Bicycle Music Festival at multiple locations and times (It’s aliiive! It moves!!). Sunday the fourth annual Seattle Bike-In at Cal Anderson Park, bands at 7, the slapstick bicycle-themed movie Jour de Fete at dusk. (Watch for me, I’m on an old stickered blue Miyata 1000 with a classic brass bell on the bars.)
Blogs I have been enjoying, Seattle edition:
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It’s been just two months since I declared “The Summer of Juju” and started blogging on bikejuju more seriously. Thanks for joining me!
In those sixty days, I’ve posted about thirty posts – a lot of really fun stuff – and had about five thousand page views. Since I’ll be offline a bunch for the next week, on Mount Hood and then in Portland for a few days (Lyanda’s reading at Powell’s on Monday – stop by!), and since a lot of readers came late to the party, I thought I would post a quick recap of favorites.
First, my three favorite posts, that capture the spirit of where I want to take this blog (which is in the direction of more posts about bicycles in Africa and other places, bicycles as a tool for development and social entrepreneurship, and bicycle-related arts, crafts and creativity of all kinds):
(Picking these three is a tough call – I also love the Grocery Getter, Yale-Vassar silliness, this amazing dreamy bike-in-flight photo, the 1952 freak bike, the upcycled innertube floggers, and my mom!)
Now your picks! Here are almost all my posts to date, in order of popularity (according to my stats):
‘Less gas, more ass’ at nude bike ride (A perennial winner – a handful of searchers looking for “nude bike rider” and its variants find the site and this post every single day. Hope this guy does not disappoint them!)
There is just NO WAY Pic of the day: “Bike fail” deserves to be last, so let me close with it again. Am I really the only one that finds this image hilariously bizarre?
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Today is the release of my wife Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s long-awaited book Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness.
So forgive my while I digress momentarily from bicycles, in order to tell you about this book (which you should rush out and buy!).
This won’t really be a review. Though I do love the book and think it’s her best yet (she published this and this previously), spouses probably shouldn’t post reviews of each other’s work. But I will tell you that enthusiastic reviews are rolling in.
“With her sensitivity, careful eye and gift for language, Haupt tells her tale beautifully, using crow study to get at a range of ever-deepening concerns about nature and our place within it, immersing us in a heady hybrid of science, history, how-to and memoir.
Sadly the book does not address Lance's breakup with Cheryl Crow, or Russell Crowe's choice of bike.
In a starred review, Library Journal recommended the book saying,
Haupt delivers a delightful meditation on our role in the natural world. By focusing on the proliferation of the American crow, she provides a rich context for exploring the relationship between humans and nature.
But here comes the cycling part – one of the key themes of the book is that we must deepen our connection to our native place and the wild life dwelling within it, even if that place is the city or the suburbs. For Lyanda, that process is chronicled in the book, which is a kind of meditation on changing her habits and expectations as she traveled through the urban spaces where we spend the majority of our time. Early in the book she explains how, if she was to become an urban naturalist, she would need to start throwing her binoculars and notebook into her bag every time she left the house, even if she was just headed to Target. “I would wander everywhere as I wander in the forest, ” she writes, “prepared to see.” And see she does, as you’ll read in the book.
The parallel for me is about getting on a bicycle to do my urban traveling. Since more fully committing to cycling about two years ago, my eyes have been opened as well. Life is no longer racing past outside the window of a bus, my thoughts distracted by my iPod, or the fidgeting of my seatmate.
I’ve found a beaver pond on my route home, and I pause every evening as I cross the wooden bridge by its dam. By Seattle’s main container port I’ve watched this spring’s three fledgling Peregrine Falcons venture from their nest high above, under the freeway overpass. I’ve paused and taken a photograph every time I’ve crossed the Duwamish River for months. I dread the chill of pedaling through the microclimate of a particularly frosty lee when the temperature drops, and I know just where I’ll hit a cool marine breeze on hot weeks like this one. I’ve started seeing, and experiencing, the urban environment in a much deeper way from the seat of my bicycle, and it’s happened in parallel to Lyanda, really, without us talking about it too much. (Aaah, the modern marital condition: “Did you read my blog post, honey?” “Yes, did you see my Facebook status?”)
I’ll be honest: Crow Planet is not about bicycling. It’s about the idea that “we can learn another kind of attention that is deeper, wilder, more creative, more native, more difficult, and far more beautiful than that which has come to be accepted as adequate.” And that we do so by starting to see, really see, the nature and wild life all around us, even in the city. Beginning, because it’s as good a place as any, with crows.
For me, that process is happening on a bike, as I roll through my neighborhood twice a day on my commute. Which makes Crow Planet incredibly relevant. (And also lovely, wonderful reading. Buy it!)
Lyanda reads from Crow Planet this Friday at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Books, August 10th at Powell’s on Hawthorne in Portland, August 13th at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, August 25th at Village Books in Bellingham, and more dates to come. Follow her schedule on her website.
Lyanda’s awesome blog on “cultivating an urban-earthen household” is The Tangled Nest.
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A quick weekly compendium before we get to the main event (today’s entry written while sporting the stylish Fat Tire beer can hat I won from Tacoma Bike Ranch!):
You probably saw this Sunday New York Times article exploring the evidence that drivers on cell phones are homicidally distracted, but in case you didn’t, it’s worth reading. And terrifying (though not quite as terrifying as whoever is shooting blowgun darts at Seattle cyclists).
Action Wipes Giveaway Raffle
Now to the main event. It’s been unseasonably warm in Seattle this summer (the locals refer to it as “hot,” apparently not knowing that term is reserved for temperatures above 90 degrees). My daily commute takes me from the High Point neighborhood (literally the highest point in Seattle) to my office on First Hill, so it finishes with a hill no matter which way I am headed. Mornings I inevitably leave the house late and do my best to keep up with carbon fiber roadies on East Marginal Way, and then if I’m feeling masochistic, I make like a messenger up Yesler. Leaving me a sweaty mess when I arrive in my building, where there are no showers or bicycle facilities, other than a sad, overcrowded rack in the parking garage.
Not to sound like an infomercial, but I recently discovered Action Wipes (”natural, full body wet wipes for when you can’t shower”). Action Wipes aren’t quite a substitute for a shower, but they do make the transition from sweaty to meeting-ready much more pleasant, and the outcome less… fragrant (I think my office mate is probably a bigger fan than I am!). They have a mild-but-tingly, tea tree/eucalyptus scent.
Martha at Action Wipes was kind enough to add a freebie to my recent order, sending me a 5-pack to give away on the blog, so here we go. The raffle is open until midnight next Friday, July 31, at which time one lucky random winner will be mailed a packet of 5 Action Wipes. In order to enter, please do one of these two things between now and July 31 (midnight Seattle time):
One entry per email address, winner drawn at random on August 1st. Good luck, sweaty cyclists
PS #1: Bikedate was kind enough to write about this post and link to it, saying that he was introduced to Action Wipes by this post on (the awesomely redesigned) Bike Skirt blog. It’s a circle of blog Action Wipes love!
PS#2: In the last 24 hours over 100 of you have seen this post, yet there is a paucity of comments. So I’m guessing either you’re shy, you’re not interested in receiving free stuff, you lack sweat glands (and thus don’t need Action Wipes), or you came here in search of naked cyclists and everything else bores you…
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