Normally when you see a school bus on the road you usually quitely remember the times of your youth spent riding in school buses.  Or at least I used to think these things.  Now that I bicycle everywhere that I used to drive to, when I see a school bus I start emergency planning.  You see the only drivers that have ever come close to endangering my life are public school bus drivers.  They consistently pass when it is dangerous to do so and have run me off the road a half dozen times already.  I've even had one driver try to tell me it was OK that she ran me off the road because  I was moving to slow (the fact that I was 100 yards from a red light didn't seem to matter). 

    Now this bothers me for several reasons.  First off this means that a public institution is creating my biggest daily safety concern.  And secondly, how the hell are school bus drivers getting their jobs without knowing how to deal with slower vehicles!  I mean you would think that a job as resoponsible as shuttling our children would require that they have an above average knowledge of the laws.

Anyway, I complained, and hopefully it's not just going to fall down an administrative black hole.

    I actually didn't cycle today as everything I had to get out and do was less than a mile away and the weather was perfect(70 degrees F and sunny). So instead I just walked, pushing my daughter in the Bob. And I noticed, far more new people, cycling than I've ever seen out before, which is great.

    But, most of the new people I saw cycling where using the sidewalks. This is something that is actually pretty dangerous, more so most of the time than riding on the road. You see sidewalks are designed specifically for pedestrians, who move at 1-2mph, even joggers typically don't break 6mph. Which is slow enough for pedestrians to be able to safely negotiate passing and emergency collision avoidance on a 3' wide path. But even a casual cyclist will travel 8-10mph, and a cyclist moving at a good cruise will achieve 12-20mph. At those speeds the sidewalk is dangerously narrow for a bicycle, there simply is not enough time or room to safely pass pedestrians and other cyclists.

    To be fair, there are a lot of roads in the suburban environment that are also fairly dangerous for cyclists where the sidewalk might be a better choice. But realistically to be safe on a sidewalk a cyclist needs to slow down to less than 6mph and be much more alert than you would be on a street. Did I mention sidewalk designers don't care about blind turns either?

    While I've spent time working on and researching various “green” projects, I have realized that I don't have a really good grasp of what the local government is doing to help build self sustainability and protect the environment. So I'm going to start researching the local government and see if there is anything I can do to help push them along. We'll start out in the county I live in, Loudoun county Virginia, and I'll work my way through some of the nearby localities and then see what the state government is doing.

    The county is also sponsoring bicycle to work day, and on May 16^th along the WO&D trail (our local bicycling highway) with two pit stops: at Leesburg at Raflo Park on Harrison Street, from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.; and Sterling at Orbital Sciences Corporation from 6:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.  Not bad, I wasn't even expecting the bike to work week support. Normally the county seems downright dismissive of bicyclists needs. Maybe things are changing, I'll have to see if I can talk with some of the people involved.

    While exploring new routes for my summer commute by bicycle today I found 3 out of 4 routes that proved to be five minutes faster at a mild pace than the normal commute by car (30 minutes). That's mostly due to less traffic lights, and a more direct route, still makes me smile though.

    I also found out that, unintentionally, that dragon flies taste worse than grasshoppers!

More doom and gloom(Russia Today), but look at the bright side, if your reading this chances are you are rich enough not to be starved to death by imminent market pressure!

A turn key solution for home ethanol production(product site) is soon to be available.

A very impressive story(active.com) of what something as simple as getting on a bike can do.

Keeping things aesthetically pleasing doesn't have to be unproductive.

Oh yeah, it's a really nice day out. I'm going to go ride my bike.

It's been said before, its been said better before, its been said an awful lot lately, but I have to say it again. Stop buying bottled water! It's wasteful and pointless.

An average bottle of water requires: many times more water than you actually get to drink to manufacture and distribute; requires fossil fuel input for the plastics, bottling and distribution; is a ridiculously expensive investment in a disposable resource; and is not even necessarily any safer to drink than US tap water.

Here are some sources:

Wikipedia page

Tree Hugger page

Smithsonian page

In some countries where the tap water is not safe to drink, it may make more sense. But in the US, where the tap water is some of the cleanest and safest in the world to drink, bottled water is just ridiculous.

If you just can't stomach straight tap water, invest in one of these instead of disposable bottles of water.

So we've briefly covered some basic ideas about the cost of solar kit installations that tie into the local electric grid and sell unused power to the utility at wholesale prices. They are game changing home modifications, with major long term implications about what it means to own a home. But, maybe you aren't able to spend tens of thousands of dollars all at once, but you still want to get started doing a conversion a little bit at a time. In that case we'll start exploring alternative energy options that are completely separate from the electric grid.

These closed loop systems can be used to power specific devices or a small separate circuit in your household and are far more affordable than traditional grid tie kits. They scale down more easily, and for the DIY enthusiast, these systems are almost all entry level hands on installations. Non-grid tied systems are usually best suited for particular applications like hot water heaters, cell phone/mp3 player recharger's, AC/Heating unit boosters. But with a little ingenuity the systems can be expanded with battery packs and DC/AC inverters to power specific appliances that see infrequent, high wattage short term use, or long term low power use, like microwave ovens, laundry driers, dish washers, blenders, coffee machines, fans, radios, etc... In fact, you can slowly scale up a non-grid tie system until all your household needs are met and the grid is just there for backup.

     So what does it cost to reduce the amount of energy we consume on a household basis while maintaining the same standard of living?

     And the simple answer is the self defeating, "It costs a lot of money."

     Take for instance, an in home solar setup, pre-made kits that sell excess back into the power grid range from about $8,000 on up to well over $50,000 for serious 6kw setups(source). It's roughly the same cost as remodeling sections of your house. A small kit setup may be the same as remodeling a bathroom, a large setup similar to remodeling a kitchen.

     If you do it yourself you save money, I'll cover that in later articles.

     Most of the hard numbers equations for return on investment of these systems are disheartening to say the least. With household solar systems taking 7 to 20 years to pay for itself, it would seem like a poor and long term investment.

     But the truth is that it will eventually pay for itself, that in itself should be amazing. Something you change about your house will turn your house from a consumer to a producer. That's a fundamental change of no small significance, your house can now contribute to the national economy in a measurable way. Sort of like how you do by working, although it does so by just sitting there soaking up the sun.