Cory and his Surly 1X1

Here is a brief profile of a recent, happy customer who took delivery of a custom-assembled bike by Cycle 9. One reason for profiling Cory is to get the word out that Cycle 9 is not just an "electric bike" store. Some people have come to see us that way. It really hit home recently, when one of our friends went out and purchased a new commuting bike, without even having a look at what we had to offer in our store. Seeing that we have a full inventory of non-electric commuting bikes by Marin, Breezer, Surly, and Downtube, I was a bit offended. But since I talk about electric bikes and electric conversion kits so often, it is understandable that some people think Cycle 9 = electric. We are actually about getting people to ride their bikes more, whether electrified or not. Bikes are the ultimate local transportation solution, and we're here to help people realize that.

Cory with his brand new Surly 1X1, with Nuvinci continuous variable hub (not an electric bike).

Cory wanted a better way to commute that was virtually maintenance-free, like a singlespeed would be. However, his commute involves traversing hills with over 20% grades, often carrying a loaded backpack. He didn't feel that this would be practical on an every day basis with a singlespeed bike. With Cory's input, we came up with a great solution for him. We started with Surly's great singlespeed platform, the 1x1. We added to it an internally geared, continuously variable hub by Nuvinci, with a custom wheel built by Cycle 9. On top of that there are nice touches like the Surly Mr Whirly crankset and Soma Noah's arc handlebars, and Cory has a bike that is rock solid, will require very minimal maintenance, and gives him an extensive gear range for hill climbing. This is a bike that will still be running in 20 years. It was not inexpensive, but it will far outlast many of the less expensive bikes, being a much better bargain in the long run.

This is the kind of solution we're here to help people with.

To Maine on the train

Jim Kunstler is famous, or perhaps infamous is a better word, in the "peak oil" community for his prophecies of gloom and doom to be set upon the USA due to our profligacy and oil dependency.

Kuntstler is a controversial figure, in part because he constantly predicts doom to beset us, and in part because of his rather loudmouth style that includes lots of swear words to make his point. While some of what Kunstler says may hit some underlying truths about whether our lifestyles are sustainable (or not), his message is weakened by a few problems. First, the constant prophecies of doom don't come true. And second, he is a hypocrite.

In his most recent blog post, titled "The First Die-Off" he talks about driving his car back from a vacation on Cape Cod, and being stuck in traffic. He claims there is "no train service" and uses that as his excuse for having driven the car.

Please.

I just came back from a trip to Maine on the train, with 3 small kids in tow. We stayed on the beach in a town not all that far north of Cape Cod (south of Portland, Maine). The train was comfortable, relatively convenient, and relatively cost effective. We rented a bike once we were there, and used it for most of our errands.

Kid on the beach in Maine

It annoys me to no end to have someone like Kunstler constantly harping on "the end of the world as we know it," and then in the very same essay, to be so blatantly participating in the very activities he laments as leading us to The End.

In fact, from the comments section by user "signalfire" after his blog post:

Isn't the problem that EVERYone thinks THEY are the ones who are 'special'?? THEY deserve a holiday at the beach. THEY deserve cheap energy. THEY deserve big houses. THEY deserve their Escalades, Hummers and Jet Skiis..

This hits the nail on the head. Why does Kunstler preach that we're going to have a massive die-off on the one hand, and yet so blithely participate in the very same activities, such as driving to and from the beach? People pay attention to him. If he had taken the bus, or ridden his bike, or taken the train, then his diatribes might not have seemed quite so silly.

I noticed something in the small town of Biddeford Pool that we stayed in. It was an excellent place for getting around by bike or foot - except that there was so much tourist-related automobile traffic, that it wasn't that great. One of my friends there, who likes to bike, remarked that it would be great if there were less traffic. The very same person was the one out driving the car nearly every day to run this errand or that, such as to pick up morning newspapers.

Biddeford Pool, ME

The main difference between my friend and Kunstler is that one might expect Kunstler to know better, given that talking about Peak Oil is the main focus of his life. His efforts to educate people on the topic are greatly diluted by such obvious hypocrisy.

I don't claim to be perfect - I consume some oil, too. But I make efforts to minimize it, and set an example as to how life can be enjoyed with a minimum of oil. Aside from taking the train as frequently as possible for trips - which I've come to really enjoy - I like to show that bikes can be used for tasks that people often think of as requiring a car. The most recent example is the move of several heavy server systems from my Lab from an old location in an out of date server room to a much more modern facility. The computers are 8-core Apple Xserves, each weighing about 40 lbs. I readily carried two of them together, totaling about 80 lbs, on my bike, and the errand was far quicker than it would have been by car, because parking on campus is a nightmare. With the bike, I rode right up to the door at both the starting point and the destination. Later, when we have to move 40 of them, I'll enlist the Yuba Mundo, a bike that can carry up to 400lbs or so of cargo. By moving 8 of them at a time, with each trip taking only 5 minutes, we can have the moving part done in under an hour.

Moving 2 Apple Xserve servers on the electrified Surly Big Dummy bicycle

So I challenge James Kunstler: if you're serious about all this gloom and doom, then go out and set an example of how to avoid it. Show us the alternative. Don't just whine about how bad it is going to get. Help provide an alternative.

That's what I'm doing in my "spare time" - helping customers of Cycle 9 find oil-free alternatives for every day errands and tasks. Really, I don't have any spare time - with small kids at home and a more than full time faculty job, my life is often seen by others as "insane". People ask me how I do it. How I do it is by being inspired to help people. The thing that keeps me going is seeing the joy of people whom we help discover there is a better way than dependency on the oil companies. A way that is healthy and brings regular joy in the way that being stuck in a car in traffic does not. The latest example is Cory, who is profiled in the next blog post.

Kunstler, it is your turn to help people find a better way, rather than just being seen as a whiner.

electric bikes don't give no exercise!

On Wednesday evening I dusted off my poor road bike, a Lemond Buenos Aires, to take her out for a ride. I hadn't been on her for 6 months or so. The tires were flat, and the chain needed a serious lube. I got her going, and went out in the popular Dairyland area North of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC, for a pleasant ride in the rolling hills (some would say these hills are more than rolling).

Starting out, I thought that I was going to suck wind on this ride, since it was my first ride in so many months on the road bike (which does not have electric assist!). In fact, aside from my electric assist Big Dummy, the only other bike I've been on in the past six months is my 29er mountain bike - exactly 3 times. My life is way too busy right now for regular recreational rides on the road bike or the mountain bike. The only bike I have time to ride is the one I get to and from work on and do errands on - which has an electric motor that some folks tell me they consider "cheating".

I have a cycle computer, and being somewhat of a geek, I like to keep track of my stats when I'm on my bikes. But, for my road bike ride, I didn't want to look at my average speed during the ride, because I figured it would be so slow. Instead I just kept the distance displayed. I noticed many times that my instantaneous speed was hovering around 20 mph, and a few times that it dropped down to 14-15 mph on a big hill, but I thought I was doing ok. Well, except for the time that a pack of hard-core racer types - all guys - whizzed past me going 23-25 mph. I held them off on a hill, but once we got to the flat stretch, they were gone.

Anyway, after my 21.4 mile loop with 1,043 ft of climbing (plus 7 miles to/from home), I stopped and checked the average speed: 18.91 mph - very close to 19 mph. This is not Olympic level riding - but neither is it slouch riding. Even back when I was training on the road bike regularly, I rarely would average much over 19 mph when riding by myself (and often 22-23 mph or so in a group for this hilly area).

There goes another nail in the coffin of the myth that "electric bikes don't give you exercise" or "electric bikes are cheating". I couldn't have pulled off that kind of speed if I hadn't been riding almost every single day on my electric cargo bike. Some days on my electric bike I don't pedal very hard, if I'm feeling tired. Other days I pedal a lot to get the exercise. But I do pedal, every day - because I feel goofy riding the bike without pedaling.

It reminds me of a customer whom we're going to profile soon on video. She bought an electric eZee hub motor kit from us last year. She put it on her commuting bike, and logged over 2,000 miles on it in the past year. In the process, she lost 90 pounds! She recently brought her bike in to have us take the motor off, and to put that on a cargo bike with an Xtracycle for her. She is in such good shape now, she no longer needs the electric assist for her regular commute on the regular bike. I don't think her 90 lbs lost and all those car trips saved are "cheating" - exactly the opposite.

Fear

Fear pervades our culture. That's because fear sells. And marketers figured this out long ago, so we all get a healthy dose of fear, every day. We've become a society that fears far too much, and usually the wrong things.

That's because fear sells news. It sells all sorts of products to keep you "safe". And it makes people crazy.

Fear is one of the basest of human emotions. It drives all sorts of negative behaviors - from violence to anger to greed. Why is someone greedy? Often because they fear going "without" so they hoard.

Fear is often misplaced. We fear the "unknown" more than the "known". For example, many people fear biking because of the "unknown" factor of car drivers on the road who might hit us. Yet the number one killer, heart disease, does not raise the same specter of fear. Why not? Every time a cyclist gets killed in my area (about once or twice a year), that news gets rapidly spread all around amongst the cycling community. What if the same propagation of news happened every time someone had a heart attack, or cancer? There would certainly be far, far more news reports of it than the cyclist deaths. And so it becomes familiar. And because it is familiar, it is not feared. Yet many fear the very thing (biking) that would drastically help reduce the chance of heart attack. People fear a minor killer that would avoid a major killer. Fear is not rational.

But there is a more insidious difference. Why do we fear biking? For one thing, bike helmet campaigns. (I wear a bike helmet, so please don't consider me anti-helmet). There are many people who benefit from promoting helmets through fear. If you are afraid of getting hit by a car and splitting your head open, you're much more likely to buy a helmet than if you're not afraid. And so marketing campaigns for helmets are often fear based - it sells more helmets. This is true not only of helmet sellers, but a small group of people who believe their will should be imposed on everyone because they are sure that helmets would save lives (contrary to the facts).

The thing all this fear does is very insidious. So many people that come into our shop have fear as the number one reason for not biking. Yet it is that very fear that makes biking less safe. It has been very strongly proved that the more people are out biking, the safer it is for everyone (helmeted or not). If many people are afraid of biking, there will be (and are) less cyclists on the road, so it is more dangerous for all of us who do cycle. Fear is self-fullfilling. Even though helmets may be good for the individual, their fear-based promotion is not good for society. That's because so many people end up just driving their cars rather than biking, which leads to all manner of ills like hear disease, cancer, pollution, oil dependency, etc.

Perhaps an even more egregious case is another product that I see advertised in all the bike magazines, an identification device to wear in case something happens while biking and one needs to be taken to the hospital. Every one of those ads has a story about some cyclist who got hit by a car and wound up in the hospital, with the ID helping "save their lives." Talk about promoting fear of cycling. The last time I read one of those ads, my active imagination took over, and I had repeated visions of waking up in a hospital after being hit (and no, I've not had similar visions of waking up in the hospital after a heart attack, though the latter is more likely). This does nobody any good whatsoever, except for the seller of the device. I'm sure they will sell more IDs through the fear they generate. But they will also convince people that biking is unsafe. In general, it might be a good idea of having an ID for any activity where one isn't carrying another form of ID. But targeting it specifically at cycling in this fear-based way will only turn people away from cycling, which, again, makes cycling less safe for everyone.

It reminds me of something that happened last year. I was in a bike race where a fellow died, after loosing control on a steep and fast descent (he was going at least 50 mph down the hill, and the accident didn't involve a car). Everyone in the race was shocked. I was quite amazed to see his daughter state after the fact that he died doing the thing that he loved, and she sounded very sad but not overwrought. After having lost a family member to cancer, which was a slow and painful process for everyone, it makes me wonder - is that really a better way to go (hooked up to a machine and slowly degenerating), than doing something one loves to do?

It is not that cycling is without any dangers. It is that everything else we do in life is dangerous - living itself is dangerous. Fear often misplaces that perspective. And fear causes anxiety, a form of stress that is not at all healthy. We all are going to die, and only a few of us will be lucky enough to have that death be peacefully in our sleep when we are in our late 90's. I can't find statistics for it, but it is probably only 1 in 10 or less that will survive that long and in good health.

It is not only in cycling that fear has run amok. There are many other examples:

1. Peak oil. Peak oil is a real and important phenomenon, where once we pass the production peak in world oil, it will become more expensive and more scarce. Since our economy is quite dependent on cheap oil, this will be a major hiccup for us. I don't debate the basis for peak oil, nor do I debate that we are likely past the world's oil production peak (Summer 2008). But for many people who inhabit places like the Oil Drum and other peak oil sites, one may notice that a sense of fear (i.e. "gloom and doom") pervades. There are many folks who follow the views of James Kunstler that society will degenerate and fall apart. Every blog post by Kunstler indicates that the degeneration is just about to begin.
These are fear based responses. People like Kunstler gain a great amount of traction, because fear sells. And there is actually a chance that peak oil could lead to a worldwide collapse of human societies, if a lot of things go wrong. But, these folks underestimate the human penchant for muddling through. While they may point to past societies that have collapsed -- the most famous case being Easter Island -- there are many more societies that have survived drastic calamity and not collapsed. For example, Europe suffered the Black Death, killing more than 1/2 of the population. Yet with 1/2 of the people gone, society did not collapse. Nor did it collapse after the Irish potato famine. Nor did Germany collapse after its hyperinflation in the 20's, the rise to power by Hitler, and its defeat in World War II. Economies have often collapsed without a societal collapse.
Economic collapse - a quite common occurrence throughout history -- happens when societies and governments overspend and overreach. It is just like a household that overspends and has to declare bankruptcy. It is not fun or pleasant. But it is not the end of life, either. Collapsed economies lead to some years of hardship and pain for many, they are also opportunities - for new businesses, and for forging closer ties with ones community. And so the world keeps turning. Economic collapse has happened many times, and in only a very few of those has society itself collapsed.
My point is that the fear revolving around peak oil is useless, and worse, often incapacitating. If one pictures total collapse of society, then what is the point in doing anything to prepare? One cannot prepare for utter collapse of society. There would be nowhere to hide (unless you have access to a mighty nice spaceship). But it is possible to prepare for lesser forms of hardship, such as oil price spikes due to a US dollar devaluation. Bikes are one way to prepare, and there are many others. Those include moving closer to town, growing a garden, raising chickens, etc. Preparation shouldn't be about fear, it should be calm and rational preparation for the unexpected disruption of things we rely on for daily survival (food, shelter, transportation). This preparation will be useful regardless of the cause of disruption - whether due to hurricane, earthquake, economic collapse, or one of many other things that could happen.

2. Fat. Seriously, people fear fat. Somehow, marketers have convinced folks that everything they eat must not have fat, or they will collapse right away due to a heart attack. But the funny thing is that the link between fat and heart attack is still not that clear. What's more, there are many fats that are absolutely essential to body function. In fact, the Omega-3 and monounsaturated fats look like they prevent heart disease. And there's even accumulating evidence that butter is good for you. The only true "bad" fats that consistently are linked to heart disease are - get this - trans fats that were sold as an "alternative" to butter because they were supposedly "healthier". Talk about fear leading us up a blind alley.

3. Child abduction/etc (parental fears). When I was a kid, I started walking to school 4 blocks each way, every day, when I was in 2nd grade. Parents would never do that now. It would be considered crazy to let a child walk on their own. Yet fears of things like abduction are far overblown, it is an extremely rare occurrence. What is not so rare are cases of childhood obesity (an epidemic), childhood ADD, and many other ailments associated with kids being kept indoors and not getting enough exercise. Yes, an abduction of a child is horrific. But isn't a child developing arteriosclerosis by age 10 similarly horrific, especially if it is 100 times more common? A lifetime of health problems and medical costs for all of us? And fear of going outside? That seems plenty horrific.

I could go on and on - the examples of fear being used to sell are all around us, and as a result, so many people I know live in fear. I have been trapped in it myself at times. When I learned of Peak Oil, I became trapped in a cycle of fear about it for quite a while. But when I'm in that mode, I can't live life happily. A while ago, I began practicing a martial art. The initial reason was fear - wanting to be better prepared in self defense. But I soon realized that fear was not the best reason to do it. What I figured out was that I enjoyed the exercise, focus, release of aggression, and that those benefits far outweigh the whole fear thing. And doing it for those reasons, I find myself more relaxed about it, which leads to faster progress.

Fear of the future prevents enjoyment of the present. And then, what's the point of living?

I have recently started a campaign: "say no to fear". Except in rare instances, fear is a waste of human energy.

For more reading on the subject, check out the book "The Culture of Fear" by Barry Glassner, or "False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear" by Marc Siegel. Also, there's a great podcast on Fear by Gil Fronsdal courtesy of Audio Dharma.