Diana Nelson Jones of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette chronicles her two-month attempt to live without a car. Already able to walk to and from her office, she was living a car-light life, using her car on the weekends to meet friends or pick up groceries. Knowing she'd have a replacement car in two months, she sold her old car and was car free for two months. She found it both liberating and fun, but experienced occasions when she couldn't join friends because she lacked transportation. She carried a 40-pound bag of potting soil four blocks, traded strawberries for a neighbor's eggs and found rides when she absolutely needed it. She found that living car free made it easy to turn down invitations without feeling bad and made it easier to stick to a shopping list and budget. She saved money and as time went on, enjoyed aspects of car-free living more and more. She got a bike to get around faster.

But after two months, when her mother gave her a car, she returned to her car-light lifestyle, but learned to elminate big shopping trips, instead shopping for what she can on foot or bike. Her diary of the experience is an interesting read.

Looks like the bike sharing program put in place for the Democratic National Convention in Denver was a glorious success! According to BikePortland.org, which did an interview with Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong, the program got a thousand bikes onto the streets of Denver. The program, which was organized in conjunction with Humana Corporation, offered seven bike rental stations throughout the city for DNC attenders to use while going to and from events. Blumenthal said the program helped shift the "bike dynamic," creating a sense of awareness of the bicycles as well as a greater sense of safety. Many groups of convention attendees went on group rides on highways. Their goal was 12,500 miles, and they'd hit over 16,000 on the day before the conference ended. All this goes to show that more and more people are embracing the bicycle.

Next we'll see how they fare in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention.

An article on Health.com discusses how to get into hiking, an activity that’s great for your heart and overall health, and it’s fun.

Some tips:

• Prepare yourself for a good walk. A real hike is much
  different than a stroll in the park.
• Use yoga and other stretching to prepare your body and step
  aerobics or stair-climbing and lower-body strength training to prepare your
  legs.
• Bring lots of water and be sure to drink often.
• Eat protein-rich snacks, such as fruit or nuts.
• Buy a good, comfortable pair of hiking boots and make sure
  you break them in well before your hike.
• Be safe. Hike with friends or join a hiking club.

Popular
Science has a very cool feature about eco-architecture. The practice of
arborsculpture is to shape trees into objects, and Tel Aviv University
researchers are working to create large-scale structures. They’re talking about
playgrounds, bus shelters, benches, gates and street lamps, possible even
homes. Trees are grown using aerial root development, an air-based approach
that makes the roots more pliable, allowing them to be shaped.

 

The university is working with Plantware, and their online gallery shows everything
from a coat hanger to a toilet paper rack to a love seat, all made from trees. It’ll
be a while before they’re ready to debut a prototype for a home, and I can’t
wait to see what they come up with. I may never live in a tree, but it’s this
kind of out-of-the-box, creative thinking that is going to help affect positive
change in the world.

Jon Winston talks about how setting an example is important to bicycle advocacy.

Katheryn Sutters talks about the natural cycles of cities and explains peak oil.

Bicycle City meets up with Matthew Picio at Breakfast on the Bridges, an event promoting bicycle fun.

Bill Burton tells us about Library Bikes.

Check out Library Bikes at http://librarybikes.org

Clarence Eckerson gives us an example of actual change that happened in NYC as a result from his videos. He also tells us what he envisions in a car free community.