Father's Day Haulings

I spent my father's day running errands with the kids. We went to the pool and then the grocery store. The XtraTrucker handled the load with ease. The only sketchy moment was when my youngest decided it was fun to throw her weight from side to side to make the bike wobble.

When I got home I used the bike to return a neighbor's tiller with plenty of room left over.

Happy Father's Day to me!

New Blog Series: Will It Compost?

Most of you have probably seen the "Will It Blend?" website that made the rounds a while back. The idea was to see if the latest must have personal electronics equipment could be taken out by a blender. The answer was always yes, yes a blender can destroy an: ipod, cellphone, game system... whatever. I thought it was pretty stupid at the time but a variation of the idea might be pretty cool. Recently I purchased a set of Ergon GP1 grips (which I love),  and noticed the substantial "green" engineering effort that went into the packaging and I had my variation.

Will It Compost? 

The idea is to put packaging that is supposedly "green" to the test by subjecting said packaging to a month in my worm composting bin. Then I'll be able to judge weather the companies claims of eco-friendliness are legit or full of compost. If my worms don't eat it, it ain't green. At the same time I will be getting an education on green packaging, as I don't know much about it. 

And just to clarify, I'm not going to put recyclable plastics or any other petroleum based product in the bin, unless the product claims to be biodegradable.

So Ergon, think your packaging is sustainable? Let's find out.
As you can see in the photo below, Ergon uses soy ink and 100% recycled paper. There is also some glue holding the cardboard tube to the rest of the package. 

Step 1. Cut a hole in a box...  Soak the packaging.

Step 2. Shred the packaging to make it easier for the worms to work with.

Step 3. Throw it in the bin!

Tik-Tok Tik-Tok... (fast forward a month or so...)

DING! We have our results.

The worms ate almost all of the packaging. They went through all of the pressed cardboard material leaving only a ring of glue mentioned above and the thin "waxy" outer layer that made up what the main graphic was printed on. One cool thing about worms is that they leave behind only what they don't like. A good example is this Starbucks cup I threw in there a while back.

The worms are about halfway done with it. They eat the paper leaving behind thin layer of wax that made the cup waterproof.

I'm pretty happy with these results. Most companies would put a product like this in clear plastic, which even if it does make it to the recycling bin uses more oil and more energy to make it into yet another piece of plastic.

In this case (for most of this package), I represent the end of the line, converting a useful product, paper, into an even more useful byproduct, fertilizer for my winter greens and eventually food on my plate.

In conclusion I think Ergon did a great job with their grip packaging. The only improvement would be if they  could find a way to print the graphic directly onto the cardboard and use less glue.

Please comment with any "Will It Compost?" requests.

Happy Mondaying

Lethargy And Vermiculture

So I'm still under the weather. Still not biking. It's been 7 weeks since I felt well.

SEVEN WEEKS...

Grasping for perspective and anything positive I've turned what little energy I have toward hobbying. I started to think about all the cool things that I wish I had the time to get into but never did. The list was long but somewhere near the top was vermiculture. No, it's not something to do with breeding rats, it's composting with worms. I have been considering this for some time and it seems like just the low energy distraction I need.

A bin of worms will eat most non-meat non-dairy kitchen scraps as well as newspaper, cardboard, egg cartons etc, turning it all into highly effective fertilizer for my veggie garden.

There are several different ways to make your own worm composting bin. Most of which can be done with things you already have lying around your house (google it). After some research on worm compost bin design I settled on a simple one bin system from seattletilth.org. There are benefits to doing a stackable system where the worms will separate themselves from the compost on their own but I thought for my first venture I'd keep it simple.

My worm bin is coming along. I have a few vents installed but I think I need a few more. Rather than spend more money on fancy louvered vents I think I'll just drill some 1" holes and glue screen to the inside of the box.

PamJ is kindly helping me out with the worms, which I will get as soon as I'm finished with the box and bedding. Hopefully they will like their new digs.

UPDATE:
The 1" holes with screen worked out great with a healthy serving of super glue. I believe the bin is adequately ventilated.

Then You Get De Power: 14 Months Of Batteries

There are many ways to keep a house somewhat green when a new baby arrives. Cloth diapers and glass bottles come to mind. I am surrounded by daily reminders of how "ungreen" having a baby in modern society is. Just about everything that comes near a baby is either rubber or plastic of some kind. We try to get as many used toys as we can. I just don't like the idea of giant toy sets and exersaucers made of thick non recyclable plastic being used by one child then thrown away where they will eventually end up in the ground or the ocean where they will stay for EVER. If I can get a toy that has been used by at least one other baby and pass it on when I am done with it, I won't feel like the factory made a piece of indestructible garbage just for me.

The other area of guilt is battery consumption. All these little toys, bouncy chairs, fake cell phones, and swings need batteries. Lots and lots of batteries. The first idea is naturally to use rechargeable batteries to lessen the environmental blow. The problem with rechargeable batteries is they cost money. I know regular batteries cost more in the long run but more money up front is a huge factor when the check out folks at Buy Buy Baby know me by name.

Knowing I had all new reasons for battery use I decided I would collect all the used batteries and at some point find a place that recycles them. This would allow me an accurate idea of how many batteries a newborn would use in a little over a years time. Also, I wouldn't be slowly adding them to my local land fill.

Our daughter was borne 14 months ago and since then I have not thrown away a single battery.
Some of these batteries were used for flashlights and cycling computers but the majority were used for baby stuff.

So in that time we have used:

7 - D batteries
34 - C batteries
26 - AA batteries
30 - AAA batteries

9 - 2032 batteries (mostly for bike lights and computer)
2 - N batteries (for bike lights)

1 - 9V battery

I didn't record the cost of these batteries but I would imagine it's much more than a set of rechargeables that would do the job of most of these.

With children, most of the things you can do to curb their environmental impact seem small on their own, but a bunch of small things will hopefully add up. Looking at the big picture, the most beneficial thing to come out of these small steps will be to create positive examples for my daughter.

Bike Tubes For Household Use

There was a gap between the floor boards and a joist running under my closet that would vibrate when the furnace kicked on. I was having trouble finding a solution until I thought, "what would Sheldon Brown do"? I figured cutting up an old schrader tube and wedging the pieces in to the gap to serve as rubber bushings is just the sort of thing he would have come up with.

Pabst of Yore

I was working in the basement this weekend and decided it would be a good idea to go spelunking in the crawl space. What I found there was a treasure every cyclist and cheap beer aficionado would be proud of. Whoever built my house in 1937 was drinking on the job, god bless em' and dropped a few empty cans of PBR into the foundation before slapping the house on top. These cans sat still for 71 freakin years, waiting for someone with the lack of common sense to shimmy their way into the darkness and yank them into the 21st century. There they could achieve the greatness those cans were destined for... a handy tool holder on my peg board! With a can opener, a dremel tool, and a wee bit o' moxie I brought a little more honor to my beloved workspace.

suck it.

Details:
I used a dremel cutting wheel to make a cut around one inch long at the top of the back of the can. Then it was just a matter of sliding the peg board bracket in through the slit. I finished it off with some glue to keep everything tight.

Work Space, The Final Frontier

Since the dawn of time man has been drawing lines across the earth, borders, if you will, that separate one space from another. Walls and fences that say Hey, this is my space, and in here I don't need any pants on! This quest rages onward in modern day in many different avenues. Be it a place to park your car or a little piece of the internet where you can blather away, we are all working to find that space for each part of our lives. For the cyclist, no space is more important than “Work Space”. A place to cram all those wonderful machines, tools and broken parts we wouldn't dare throw away. “Work Space” can take many different forms; from the bike stand in your bedroom and the sock drawer full of tools to the dedicated bay of your garage. My first workspace was in the garage of my parent’s house. From there I moved into a little apartment on 16^th street where my only bike had its place in the living room up against the bookshelf with a cardboard box of tools under the bed.

Over the years I have fought for many a work space. I have defended my humble plot from many threats, such as the wife who wanted to store my bikes in the crawl space or piled on top of the lawn mower in the tiny aluminum shed in the back yard. My wife and I and our four bikes just moved into a new house with a basement. The basement is small but it’s all mine. Perfecting the space is an ongoing process that may take years. I installed pegboard and shelves and lighting so far and with some effort I think I will be able to squeeze a few more bikes down there.

Cycle Jerk HQ

Here are a few tips if you have a space like mine:

Use the rafters
If you have an old house like mine you probably have a low ceiling with exposed beams. This is a perfect place to hang brushes, pumps and larger items.

Glass Jars
If you nail the lids of jelly jars into the rafters or under the stairs you can screw the jars up into them making perfect place for screws and bolts and all the small things that clutter up your workspace.

Custom Shaped Pegboard
You don't need a 4x6 section of wall for pegboard to be useful. Use whatever spare wall space you have and cut pegboard to fit it.

Old Man Winter is Going Down

My wife and I recently moved into a house built in 1937. It's a cool little house that comes with a lot of charm and unfortunately cold floors and drafty windows. We had similar problems in our old house but didn't do much about it. I have no intention of living with the cold again, so I scored a Thermoworks infrared thermometer to measure the surface temperature of the walls, windows, floors, ceilings, and just about anything else I point it at. Aside from being a fun new toy, it has proven very useful in the fight against the heating bill. I have found places around doors and electrical outlets where the heat escapes. A 5 to 10 degree shift in surface temp can lead you to an unsealed door frame or a window that may need replacing. At $100, it wasn't cheap, but well worth the price.