hillary dixon rust

But George Hincapie is really really awesome. 


http://www.aridewithgeorge.com/weeblylink_new_window



Really truly awesome. I even think this is an amazing documentary for people that aren't into cycling at all. 


Chirp,
hillary

It's been raining for over 24 hours straight in Los Angeles. I know in a lot of places this is a normal occurrence that is of little note but here...


It sounds cliche but I cannot remember the last time it rained here before Monday. It causes everyone and everything to go into a state of disturbance. It's like a stone being thrown into a pond. You may not even see or hear the stone break the surface, but the ripples come regardless. 


The first thing you notice is that everyone talks about it. It starts off with "Well we sure do need it." and "I LOVE RAIN!" and quickly switches into "Oh come on! Still!?" 


People's driving patterns change rapidly and none of the changes make any more sense than how people were driving before the rain but now the roads are slick and it makes it even scarier to be out and about. Some people slow down to well below what is safe and others speed up even faster than they would normally drive to get around the slow pokes. The people that slow down a little (like say, to the  posted speed limit (which many would consider normal behavior for driving in the rain)) get trapped in a bizarre game of dodge the idiots. Which is almost exactly like driving in LA all the time anyway but somehow the rules have shifted even though the board looks the same. Like playing Scrabble in French but with the same old English board and letters. 


I went and saw a movie in an old theater last night with some friends and there was caution  tape wrapped around in a strange Bermuda type triangle on a large group of seats in the front section. We assumed it was some kind of construction or remodel issue. The movie started and the rain picked up and the water poured through the roof all over the seats that were taped off. The hole in the roof could have been there for months and no one would have known because there was never any water to come through. It was an interesting situation. How can you blame them for not repairing a hole they didn't know was there?


 I personally am still enjoying the rain. I went for a walk in it yesterday just because it seemed like a good thing to do. People in the Pacific Northwest jump out of bed when it's nice outside to make sure and take advantage of the few sunny days they get every year so why shouldn't I make sure and feel the rain on the rare occasion it decided to spit down? Plus this gives me good excuse to sit down and do some real research into the documentary. 


I've pretty much decided to try to seek out DIY types, urban farmers, environmentalists, and anyone pursuing sustainable living. Essentially people that live not on the edge of society really, but sort of on the edge of "the system". People that aren't waiting for the government to come along and solve the problems of clean water and food that's free of pesticides etc. People that are forming their own ways of making this country livable. Or at least something like that. Heck, maybe the only people I will meet will be selling worms on the side of the highway. That could be cool too though.


The weather is supposed to make a turn for the sunny by tomorrow and then it goes right back into high 70's and sunny until we all forget what rain is again. Hello Halloween!


Chirp,
hillary

This isn't an actual fight so I'm sorry if you're disappointed. 

What this is, is a very casual comparison between the cost and efficiency of riding a bike vs driving a car. I say "casual" because I haven't done any real research to find the facts I'm going to present. I googled a few things and used a calculator to do some rough math. I will say that I have tried to be as fair as possible and that I will continue to be. I will do my best to explain "fair" as I go along. In every case I basically gave the car the benefit of the doubt and the bike whatever the opposite of that is. 

The car I chose is the Toyota Prius. I'm using reported stats from Car & Driver (online) for the 2010 Prius except for the price where I chose to use the 2009 lowest possible estimated cost for a new one because it was cheaper. I chose to use the Prius because it is the most readily available and best known of the "environmentally friendly" cars.

The bike is imaginary. What I mean is that I'm making a "commuter bike" out of tons of different types of bikes to make it the most run-of-the-mill I possibly can. Not the lightest, not the most expensive. Maybe something along the lines of a Trek Portland http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/portland/portland/weeblylink_new_windowor Trek 520 http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/520/520/weeblylink_new_window but fully kitted out with everything you could possibly need for commuting including shoes, backpack, pedals (which aren't included on any bike from a bike shop these days) etc.

So, let the battle begin. 

Round 1.
The Prius weighs in at a surprisingly light (at least to me) 2,932 lbs. 
The Bike comes in (sans rider) at around 30 lbs. 

This means that if you assume that all the same materials are used in the same percentages, you could make about 97 bikes for every Prius. That's 97 people commuting everyday versus at most 4, if we assume the Prius owner is also a dedicated carpooler. 

Round 2.
For the lowest cost brand new 2009 Prius you'll find it listed at $22,000.
For the bike, with an entire world of commuting goodies, $3,000.

The average person could own an entire fleet of bikes for the cost of a new Prius. You could get a grocery bike, a bike to ride to work, a bike to ride in the rain, a mountain bike for trails, and a road racing bike and still come in under $22,000.

Round 3.
The 2010 Prius is said to get a combined (city and highway) 50 miles per gallon.
A bike gets an estimated 638 miles to the gallon.

A gallon of gas is roughly 30,000 calories. Estimates suggest that it takes a human 47 calories to pedal a bike 1 mile at 10 miles per hour. The Prius would consume about 56 gallons of gas to get to New York City from Los Angeles. The bike? About 5 gallons. 

Of course to be fair, The Prius can do it in about 43 hours of non-stop driving if we assume they are doing the speed limit. The record for the RAAM (Race Across America) Is something like 8 days and change and at that rate of speed you're burning a lot more than 47 calories a mile but you're still under 55 gallons.

Round 4.
Disclaimer - The amount of CO2 to produce/dispose of either of these has not been factored in.  
Prius produces an estimated 4 tons of CO2 per year. 
A bike produces zero. 

Everything I've read says cutting our CO2 emissions is a good thing. 

Round 5.
Average speed of a Prius in city driving conditions is about 20 mph. 
Average speed of a bike is about 10 mph if you're trying not to sweat.

What does it mean to take twice as long? Most people don't live that far from work. If you live in Los Angeles and you're riding in rush hour traffic on your 6 mile (average distance) commute I can assure you the difference won't be that much. It used to take me an hour and a half to go 13 miles in my car everyday. If your work is 30 miles away then it will take you a bit of a while and you'll have to restructure most of your life around your commute. 

Round 6.
The Prius had heating, air conditioning, and a roof. 
The bike has none of those.

If you're on a bike and it's hot you'll sweat. If it's cold you'll be chilly, and if it rains you'll get wet. The good news is that with all the extra gear you get with your $3,000  you'll find that a lot of very smart people have been thinking about how to alleviate these issues and they have done a pretty good job so far. The cold and rain are almost a non issue with the cycling specific coats, pants, hats etc. The heat...well, you can't ride naked but if you're a full time commuter you can always bring a change of clothes and a spritz of deodorant right?

Round 7. 
The cost of owning/maintaining a Prius over 100,000 miles & or 12 years is estimated at $8,000.
The cost of maintaining a bike used to the same extent is under $3,000.  

This area is sticky for me. I checked around A LOT and couldn't find any real average service costs for the Prius. Just averages as projected by dealers etc. Also, Most other car/driving facts are estimated from 150,000 miles or roughly 12,000 miles per year so I'm not sure why Toyota chose 100,000 miles or 12 years. Maybe there is evidence that Prius drivers actually drive less. $8,000 still seems awfully low  but...$3,000 to keep your bike tuned and fresh and ridable is including having someone else do the work. If you do the work the cost is less than half of that seeing as how your $150 tune ups once per year just got sacked. 

Round 8.
The Prius has a reported 72 cubic feet of cargo space.
The bike fully blasted out with front and back panniers and racks comes in way behind with like 10 cubic feet.

This sounds like an awful defeat, but think about a majority of your hauling needs? What do we use all that space for most of the time? Yup! Groceries! Now take into account that the largest refrigerators have about 30 cubic feet of space. When do you go to the store and buy enough food to fill up your entire refrigerator? If you've spent the full $22,000 and added a dedicated grocery bike with a nice front basket to your fleet then chances are you will never have to worry about having enough space to get everything home. 


Round 9.
The Prius can seat 5 adults.
The bike just one unless you get a tandem and then you get two.


The Prius wins this one hands down when it comes to family trips and say, getting your wife to the hospital when she's having a baby. But let's be serious, if you're this dedicated to cycling, your hippy wife is having the baby at home anyway so...The Prius is awesome if you find yourself constantly picking up hitch hikers or stray animals as well. 


Round 10. 
The Prius holds its value better than most cars.
The bike holds its value far better than the Prius.


Assuming that the Prius will depreciate in value at about the same rate as most other cars, in 20 years it will be worth about 1/20th of what it is worth when purchased new if it is in good condition. 20 year old Bicycles on the other can routinely be found for 1/2 of what they were originally sold for. And even if the bike isn't in great condition (which means it's cheaper if you're the buyer) you can spend $150 bucks on new parts and add in a little effort and it will be running like a champ again. 


Okay, that's all I've got for now. If everything goes the way I want for the documentary we will have a hybrid car of some sort as our  "chase" vehicle and we'll be doing a real world test of me on a bike vs a car. 


It's raining in Los Angeles. 


Chirp,
hillary 

I bought business cards so that when I'm out riding I can give them out to people that I meet. It probably sounds kind of cheesy but I have met tons of other cyclists while just cruising down the road and there's normally at least a little small talk. So I guess I figure it's better if I have a little something to give them instead of just telling them about my idea and then having them forget about it the moment we part ways.


Hopefully the cards will be here soon. I made them as simple as possible and I think I managed to get them on recycled paper. I got them from Moo.com the site was a tad on the confusing side for me but Sara made cards with them before and they are pretty cool.


Okay, it's rest day and I need to get to it.


Chirp,
hillary  

I've already made myself into a liar so...


Let me swoop around to a time not all that far in the past and explain how I am able to find myself sitting at home typing instead of "working". It is a long and convoluted story but basically at 11:30 pm  last night I went to bed having not told when to be at work today. 


I did eventually get an email with a call time but it was after I fell asleep and by the time I read it at 8 am today the person who sent it had written me another email explaining that she'd had to find someone else. 


So I'm left to my own devices. 


Riding is all I can really think to do. I stared at a map of Los Angeles for quite a while and made up my mind where I would go but then a funny thing happened. I remembered an article I read recently about "recovery". It was written by a guy who is or was a trainer for professional cyclists and he said that the hardest part for him was never getting people to ride and ride hard and train hard. It was actually getting them to not ride or even ride slow so that their body could recover. I vowed that I would never be one of those guys. 


I then got on my bike and rode to iMartin (the bike store)...very slowly. I got some straps for my pedals because the ones I have are beginning to deteriorate and I want to be ready.


I rode home instead of riding out to the Santa Anita Race Track like I had planned and now I'm going to make sure I get in some serious recovery time on the couch reading my new book and watching No Reservations with Anthony Bourdaine. Which, if you haven't seen it, is quite possible one of the most interesting shows I've seen in a long time. 


Alright, I have to lie down now so I can be faster! 


Chirp,
hillary

Well, well, well. Another day another blog. I rarely come to these things thinking that I will have anything to say and yet, like in most situations, after I get started I seem to find myself doing "just fine". At least by my standards. 


I went to work at 2:45 pm on Wednesday which, for those of you who don't know, means I got off at about 3:15am. Truth be told I'm not convinced they needed me for a full 12 hours (plus the 1/2 hour for lunch) but I got to read my bicycle magazine and eat until my heart was content and my belly was splitting at the seams so I won't complain too much. 


It gets tricky because on Tuesday I went to work at 9am, which combined with the 2:45pm call for the following day had me nice and sleepy by about midnight Wednesday. It was pretty cold, I'm guessing low low 40's and my wonderful and concerned wife Sara told me in no uncertain terms that she would be more than happy to come pick me up so I wouldn't have to ride sleepy. I began to doubt myself. I started to wonder if it was worth it. I mean, aside from trying to "get ready" for riding to Austin, there is no real reason for me to feel any pressure to continuously ride 65-75 miles everyday to make a Reality TV Show (is that really a "proper" noun?) that I've never even seen.


The entire day I kept feeling worse and worse and wondering if maybe Sara was right. Maybe it was better to have her come get me and spend the 2 gallons of gas ($7.00) and pollution and her sleep so that I wouldn't have to endure the 34 mile journey through the cold-ish early morning So-Cal darkness.


I got the nod from the powers that be that I was officially finished for the day and by this point I was convinced I would call. What I did instead was put on my long sleeve Old Navy shirt that I got from Sara's mother for Xmas a year or so ago, a weird Nike exercise hoody thing I found in the lost and found at work while I was in the closet looking for tape, and my trusty old hoody that I got from I don't know where about 6 years ago. I changed into my riding shorts (some Walmart khakis pants I got in South Dakota and cut off into shorts) and took off. I figured worst case scenario I'd have to call Sara from somewhere closer to home.


One of the strangest/best things about being on the coast of California is the constant wind blowing in from the ocean. It's not always noticeable (I hate spelling that word. It just never looks right) on the beach but when it gets channeled into the canyons it is a force to be reckoned with. Heading down it ruins your day. You think that you're going to bomb through the steep turns and get a chance to go fast while relaxing but what ends up happening is that the wind forces you to stay ducked down and pedaling much more than you would want or expect. The good news is that the same wind that makes you hate the fact that you rode all the way to the canyon when going downhill will make you feel like a climbing giant when you're going the other way! I average faster speeds going uphill on the way home than I do coming down on the way to work. 


Once I got past the initial uphill experience I decided that I was completely and totally fine and forgot entirely about calling for a rescue car. My head was free and clear to think about all sorts of other things. Like the fact that it is technically a shorter distance (by about 4 miles) to take the Pacific Coast Highway to get out to work. The only issue is that Malibu Canyon gets narrow and windy (not windy, curvy) and in the day time there is a ton of traffic from Pepperdine University and surfer types cruising the beach for waves and babes and dudes. Besides the traffic, from my house to the beach and then down the PCH to Malibu is essentially flat. Which means on the way to work the entire ascent that is normally spread over 30 miles or so would be crammed into the last 8-10 miles. Leaving would be fine (minus the afore mentioned wind) but at night there is little to no light for most of the way and...I make a lot of excuses and I promise that I will find a way to tackle Malibu Canyon in both directions before the end of my work in the area. 


Another thing I had time to think about was the fact that for the documentary I want to meet people that are living as close to "outside" of the "system" as possible. Not renegades or revolutionaries, but people that simply aren't sitting around waiting for Obama or the government to give them permission or help to form the world they want to live in. Not that I think "the system" is a complete and total failure...I guess I just think people in general know what we need to do to survive and some people are already making the changes voluntarily by making rooftop gardens and community spaces that support more than just themselves and they do it all in their "free" time which is much more valuable than any of us like to admit because mostly we do nothing with that time instead of working towards creating the things we want and need. I don't think we should all quit our jobs and build greenhouses in our living rooms but I do think there are millions of interesting things we can explore and enjoy and "work" on that may not make us money but could make us much happier and more interesting.


I hear a dinner bell.


Chirp,
hillary
  

Just to get it out of the way, I'm not planning on going to Juarez Mexico. I'm not sure why the map makes look that way but...El Paso is close but for the documentary I have no reason to go to Juarez no matter how interesting it may be.

1 st off I'd like to say this - 


Dear LA busses,
You are bullies. Just because you are big doesn't mean you can pull out without checking your mirrors. Especially not the 3rd time. That one I'm not going to let slide. Also, I'm not letting slide the part where you honk at me incessantly because there's too much traffic for you to pass and I'm not going fast enough for you even though we are clearly headed to a red light where you'll have to stop and then when the light turns green you gun it around me actually cutting off the driver in the next lane over and then you cut back over in front of me and slam on your brakes to make your stop at the bus stop that is just past the intersection where, I might add, there is no one waiting for you and sine I was trapped behind you I could clearly see that no one got off. Good for you busses. You guys are doing a great job.

So I'm officially riding to Mullholland Highway in Calabasas CA every day from our apartment near 3rd and La Brea for work for the foreseeable future. It's a pretty good ride I think as far as my "training" goes. 33 miles to get there and then between 32-42 on the way back. There are some nice climbs, good decsents etc. The time of day dictates the route I take home because Los Angeles traffic is dumb and certain roads end up being essentially a death trap during peak traffic hours (aka between 7am and 9pm) with lanes merging together in an apparently random manner which causes cars to change lanes often and rapidly and...I add on 5 or 10 miles to save my brain from feelings of certain doom.

One thing I've learned is that people in cars aren't "looking for bikes". Which sounds like a big load of horse BS (and it is) but it is apparently a viable excuse (sorry if this is a repeat story for some of you.). I was hit by a lady that blatantly ran a stop sign where the cross traffic didn't have one.  I was the cross traffic and got to do a sweet "Dukes of Hazard" over the hood of her car and she drove away . I was "lucky" and was basically unhurt. The bike was "ridable" but essentially worthless. The cops came, I had 6 witnesses and a the license plate number. The officer that was assigned to the case seemed bored and underwhelmed by the whole situation. He called me 2 weeks later after the daughter of the woman that hit me called in an insurance claim to her insurance company for the apparent hit and run damage on her sweet old mother's car and it through up a red flag from my police report. That's some good detective work if you ask me especially considering he only had the license plate number and make and model of her car. The officer went over her side of the story and told me "She just wasn't looking for bikes." and he seemed to find that to be a reasonable answer as to why after having hit someone with her car she drove away. Then the woman's insurance company called me to assess what type of settlement I should receive. The agent assigned to the case explained that "Motorists aren't looking for bikes.". I dare you to use this logic next time you get a speeding ticket. "Well, you see officer, I just wasn't looking for signs. And since I only see what I am looking for you really have no right to issue me a citation." The agent then offered me $350 dollars for a bike that was worth about $500 and explained to me that since I really wasn't hurt that it was "very generous" and "more than fair" and that I should consider myself lucky. And I do. 

I don't know about you, but I see things even when I'm not looking for them. I also am sometimes distracted by any number of things like multiple giant electronic flashing billboards (But driving with a cell phone to your ear is illegal?) and don't always see everything. Close calls happen to everyone for any number of reasons. Accidents happen more often than we would like. And completely avoidable accidents happen to the very best of us. Some people are fully capable of driving and talking on the phone at the same time. Some people can't even drive when there is only a radio to distract their attention. I think if we all make an effort to try to be a little more aware of what we are doing at all times instead of assuming that multitasking is a necessity we may all have the crap scared out of us less often and also think better of other people. Because as we all know, "Never admit fault". Yes that's right, it's ALWAYS someone else's fault. I'm going to go not look for trees now.


Chirp,
hillary