ruminations of a bicycle racing programmer

My girlfriend sent me a link that I initially wrote off, but after checking back into it I decided to act upon it. The link she sent was to the East Bay Bicycle Coalition page about the Bay Bridge Bike Path.

I went to the corresponding form for the Alameda county form, where I reside, to send an email to the correct advisors and people in charge to try and persuade them to support the completion of the path addition to the bridge.

I appended the following personal statement to the letter:

With the current environmental conditions, epidemic of obesity in the US only growing, as well as many other reasons, we should be in full support of encouraging, supporting and developing a way for people to be more active in the way they cross the bay between San Francisco and the East Bay.

I for one, as well as many other people I know would utilize a full bridge crossing to San Francisco to commute for work, go to job interviews, exercise and more. It isn’t just going to benefit the most active people. This effectively ‘free’ way for people to access San Francisco and the East Bay will extend the quantity of affordable housing for people working in San Francisco that can not afford to take BART, AC Transit, or the Alameda-Oakland to San Francisco Ferry. Also, with the substantial amount of tourists that cross the Golden Gate bridge for the great views – we can only expect them to also ride over to Yerba Buena Island as well as onto the East Bay to explore Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley and more! This can only be beneficial to these communities and their slow economies as well as benefit local businesses like restaurants as well as retailers.

Please consider this. I know there is no “free” crossing overall, but contributing money towards actually completing a path across the bay for cyclists, walkers, rollerbladers, skateboarders and more will be a benefit not only to our local society, but also bring more awareness worldwide that we as humans need to concentrate more on being more active and being more responsible and accountable for our emissions.

It makes sense to me. Slap stickers on your public transportation vehicles that say things like “Clean Air Vehicle” and “Zero Emissions Vehicle” to greenwash it. I understand that at the end source, that AC Transit bus that you look at drive through the intersection, whilst you are sitting alone in your car may make you remark something in the effect of “Really? Clean air vehicle? That’s kind of cool.”

Basically, I’ll let you read more into it yourself, but hydrogen needs to be produced by humans to be used in these fuel cell vehicles. It takes energy (fossil fuels, nuclear, “renewable” energy, et al) to produce this hydrogen. The problem with this is that production of hydrogen from water requires more energy to produce than is released when hydrogen is used as a fuel.

There are many different ways to produce hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid-electric cars batteries, “renewable” energy sources (windmills/solar panels). I want to know the end result over the entire lifecycle.

• How much energy/emissions does it take to produce? (solar panel/batteries/fuel cell)
• How much energy/emissions does it take to transport the above product/resource to it’s destination?
• WHERE do the emissions occur?

There are a lot more factors, but everyone just looks at the sticker on the vehicle and doesn’t think through the entire process. They just get the instant green feeling that “Oh, I drive a hybrid, I’m saving the environment.” They don’t think that the hydrogen propelling the bus they are riding was produced somewhere in Nevada or elsewhere and they have to deal with the emissions from the coal plant that provided the energy to produce the hydrogen.

Here’s your homework – go read up on Thorium and how it should be used in nuclear power plants instead of uranium. I’ll give you a hint – it won’t result in another Chernobyl, doesn’t need a low-population buffer zone, and the byproducts aren’t able to be used in nuclear weapons. Nuclear is the wave of the future. Combine this with electric cars (assuming that the environmental impact of all these batteries that have a limited life-cycle are produced well) and we will be better off that we are now.

i’ve been unemployed for three and a half months now and it has helped me realize a few things.

first, you don’t really gain that much “free time” when you become unemployed. i feel like i am busier now than when i was working at Xtracycle or even when i was commuting 17+ hours per week from San Francisco to Apple. while i don’t have more “free time”, my time is spent doing the things i choose to – whether it be clean out some old bike parts onto craigslist, go on an extended trip up to Portland for a cyclocross race, or spend 3 hours at a coffee shop people watching and catching up on some rss feeds on google reader.

second, being near a computer most of the day and having more time to see more of the social media experience (mostly via twitter and facebook), i realize how much bandwidth, energy (power), and time is wasted by so many people posting worthless information. this isn’t internet of 1995 where just anyone can go off and get a geocities site where they can throw some animated gifs they found in a poorly written HTML page. this is 2009! it’s time for people to see the usefulness of the internet when used with clear and concise communication. “just took a shower”, “on the bus”, et al may seem fun and entertaining for you to post, but in reality, most of it is a waste. the best thing i have done to help my clear and concise communications have been to ask myself “does this add any value/is this useful information?” before sending/posting. please try it for yourself.

third, and last for now, make sure you have things to look forward to in life. plan a trip or learn something new. just do something you enjoy and things will work out.