Internationally acclaimed environmental activist Sandra Steingraber spoke with my First Day School class this morning. (“First Day School” is Quakerese for Sunday School; I teach the 6th to 8th graders.) Sandra’s specialty is researching and writing about the links between the environment and cancer. It’s truly sobering stuff, which you can read about in her books or see about in the movie Living Downstream to be released next month. I invited Sandra to speak with us because I admire her as an activist, and I hope to emulate her approach in my work as a bicycling activist. She describes herself as a “shy activist” who would rather do the science side of things and support brasher activists rather than be a brash activist herself. And maybe people would rather listen to the science than the rhetoric any maybe people would rather hear it from a shy person than a brash person.
Because of my quest to Blame the Cars for All Badness I was pleased to find the following paragraphs in Sandra’s book Living Downstream:
The even better news [better because environmental causes of cancer are fixable whereas genetic causes are not] is that the synthetic chemicals linked to cancer largely derive from the same two sources as those responsible for climate change: petroleum and coal. Finding substitutes for these two substances is already on the collective to-do list. The U.S. petroleum industry alone accounts for one-quarter of toxic pollutants released each year in North America. This does not include the air pollutants generated from cars and trucks burning the products that the petroleum industry makes…vehicle emissions are linked to lung, breast, and bladder cancers…Investments in green energy are therefore also investments in cancer prevention. In this, it feels to me that we are standing at a historic confluence, a place where two rivers meet: a stream of emerging knowledge about what the combustion of fossil fuels is doing to our planet is joining a stream of emerging knowledge about what synthetic chemicals derived from fossil fuels are doing to our bodies.
…By-products from the burning of fossil fuels are under particular suspicion. Breast cancer, as we have seen, was first linked to potential sources of air pollution in Long Island. Subsequently, associations have been found between exposure to traffic exhaust during puberty and risk of early-onset breast cancer. Perhaps not coincidentally, a growing body of evidence suggests that tailpipe emissions have estrogenic activity. Air pollutants may alter breast density in ways that raise the risk for breast cancer. A 2007 review of the literature concluded that the risk of breast cancer associated with exposure to engine exhaust and other aromatic hydrocarbons is roughly equivalent in magnitude to some of the well-established risks for breast cancer, such as late age at first childbirth and sedentary lifestyle. Corroborating evidence comes from the laboratory: members of a family of combustion by-products called aromatic hydrocarbons—of which benzo[a]pyrene is one—cause breast cancer in animals. According to researchers at Albert Einstein College in New York, aromatic hydrocarbons inhaled by the lungs can become stored, concentrated, and metabolized in the breast, where the ductal cells become targets for carcinogens.
Bladder cancer, too, has been linked in several studies to air pollution. The strongest evidence comes from Taiwan, where researchers found positive associations between air pollution, especially from petrochemical plants, and the risk of dying from bladder cancer. An investigation of bladder cancer deaths among children and adolescents in Taiwan found that almost all those afflicted lived within a few miles of three large petroleum and petrochemical plants.
Worm farming is an important source of income in corner country. Just kidding.
It’s pretty much like this all the way to Ovid.
Corner country. Note the corners.
This morning I took a long ride out into the country for the express purpose of finding out how far I could go before my battery gave out. And the answer is: it depends on which way the wind is blowing. I headed towards Ovid, which is 26 miles from my hometown of Ithaca. My strategy was to bring two batteries, and to head back when the first battery ran out. I found I could easily maintain 20 mph. I got to Perry City Road (9 miles) in half an hour. I made it to Trumansburg (12 miles) in 45 minutes. And Interlaken passed under my wheels in an hour. I made it to Ovid in an hour and a half. This very much exceeded my expectations and I was in high spirits until I happened to glance at a flag and saw that I had had a significant tailwind. Getting back home was a struggle. The first battery gave out after 30 miles. The second battery started to go after heading into the wind for only 15 miles. I managed to make the last few scraps of electricity last another 10 miles. The theoretical power limit of my battery is 360 watt-hours. When I finally made it home the battery had given me 385 watt-hours.
The landscape beyond Ithaca is pretty bleak. Those of us who grew up in big cities tend to equate poverty with the inner-city and wealth with the country. This however is poor country. The small towns encircling Ithaca look like they were once thriving little spots. What happened to them? Here I must (predictably I’m afraid) blame the automobile. What were things like here before cars? Here’s a possible clue: the roads in this area form a very precise grid with each cell one mile to a side. Towns sprang up at the crossroads: Hayt Corners, Marsh Corner, Applegate Corner, Whipple Corner, Bostwick Corner, Trumbull Corners and even Cat Elbow Corner. Why did they choose a mile? My theory is that this was a convenient distance for people to walk. Once people could drive, however, they skipped over these small towns to go experience the big-time entertainment in Ithaca. Maybe when the automobile infrastructure topples we’ll see these small towns in corner country come back to life.
(A friend has since told me that the spacing of the roads has to do with the size of the Revolutionary War Bounty Land Grants given to veterans here.)
Winter biking can be excruciatingly uncomfortable in Ithaca. (It can also be dangerous—see Making Winter Biking Safer.) This winter I developed two bike accessories to combat the cold: electric bike gloves and a bike canopy (which is still in development).
If I bike an errand longer than a few miles and the temperature is in the teens, my fingers and toes tend to go numb. Numb is okay until I stop and warm up; I then become doubled over in pain as my extremities thaw. I’ve tried all kinds of gloves to no avail. And I discovered that if I wore several gloves at a time my fingers still got cold because their circulation was lessened. Finally I hit upon the idea of using electric socks and glove liners. Personal electric power is just one of the many design opportunities presented by electric bikes that have yet to be explored (while the transportation industry wastes their time with stupid technologies like hybrid cars and hydrogen power). The electric socks and glove liners I bought (from Brookstone) were powered by a total of 12 AA non-rechargeable batteries that you had to strap to your limbs (three batteries for each limb). I realized that with a little inventiveness I could power them all with the bike battery instead.
Using the bike battery required figuring out how to get the electricity from the battery to my extremities. First I lined my coat and some snow pants with wiring using safety pins, and then I added Anderson connectors and a central connection block. Anderson connectors are a wonderful kind of connector for inventing things. You can just crimp the wires on and then snap together as many connectors as you need.
I also needed some way to step down the voltage from the battery’s 36 volts to the electric clothing’s 4.5 volts. I found that ebikes.ca sells such a converter especially made for electric bikes. (These are the same folks that made my front and rear LED flashers.) A word of caution: I learned from experience that if you plug the converter in backwards sparks will shoot out of it. However, it still works! I marked all my 6-volt connections with purple tape.
Finally I wanted an easy way to connect my clothing to the battery as I got on and off the bike. I expected that some sort of slick magnetic breakaway connectors like the ones Macintosh computers have would be available. There was nothing. Two possibilities—the Belkin BreakFree or Replay breakaway headphone adapter advertised in 2007 and 2008—are nowhere to be found. I suspect that Apple has a patent on magnetic breakaway connectors that is preventing others from selling them. So I ended up just using my Anderson connectors.
The results: after some trial and error it worked. One problem was that the wires I used were old and they broke a few times. (Once my left foot suddenly grew uncomfortably warm while my hands suddenly became cold.) Also I was nervous that I might damage my expensive LiPoFe4 battery. It is true that LiPo batteries can be damaged by either too much charging voltage or dropping too low in voltage. However, most of them also have very sophisticated battery management systems built in to prevent this. Finally it was too inconvenient to attach and detach the wires all the time so I started using an old NiCd battery instead.
Next year maybe I’ll explore some alternatives such as handlebar muffs or windscreens or heated handlebars grips. I wonder if it’s possible to find flat wiring that you can sew into a garment. And here’s another design opportunity: one problem with biking in winter is that you are too hot on the uphills and too cold on the downhills. With electric garments you can control the heat. One way to do it is that you could have a clutch to spin the motor on downhills and switch on the garment connection. Or you could use the computer to sense your speed and switch on the garment connection when you are going over say 15mph. I’ll keep you posted.
After my bad fall last December I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make winter riding safer. The first step was to install studded snow tires for both wheels. My fall was caused by only having a snow tire on the back wheel; my front wheel slid out from under me when I was going downhill at 20mph with my daughter on the back of the bike (she was unhurt). There is no good reason not to wear snow tires during winter. My tires of choice are the Schwalbe Marathon Winters, which are designed for icy pavement rather than deep snow.
Another safety factor is simply learning to recognize danger. Some conditions are more dangerous than others. Just before my fall last December I had ridden five miles without incident. It was only when I turned onto a new road that things became dangerous. The new road was recently plowed and the shoulder had a thin layer of innocent-looking slush. Unbeknownst to me the slush hid a layer of ice that was my undoing. I’ve since learned to recognize this “killer slush” and avoid it.
Another danger to watch out for is of course the legendary “black ice” (see photo above) which is caused by melting snow forming puddles which then turn into patches of ice in unexpected places. Now when I ride in the winter I periodically set my foot down to test the slipperyness of the road. If it’s too slippery I either walk my bike or resort to “outrigger mode” (described in the last paragraph).
After my fall I imagined all sorts of technological fixes that would enable bikes to handle snow and ice better (see some of my sketches below, and see http://www.ktrakcycle.com/ for a seemingly successful commercial product). Could bikes have anti-lock brakes? Apparently motorcycles do, and electric bikes already have the electricity and the computing power that is required. Could bikes have roll bars? How about caterpillar treads?
Black Ice Skid Tests
Black Ice Skid Tests
studded snow tires are de rigueur
I also wondered whether a trike would be less likely to flop over when it encountered ice. I made a lot of sketches of trikes, and contemplated Xtracycle to trike conversions. I imagined outrigger wheels that could perhaps fit into the Xtracycle H-rack mounts and prevent a bike from falling over, kind of like giant training wheels for adults. However, someone I know who rides a trike says that in the same situation as my fall a trike would probably flip over rather than lay onto its side. I scuttled my plans for constructing outriggers until I was riding with my son Jasper last week in packed-snow conditions. The going was so difficult that he simply stuck out his legs, planted his feet on the road and let the motor move him along. It struck me that here are the outriggers I was looking for—our legs! They were right here all along at the end of our torsos. So for riding on packed snow I recommend lowering your seat, taking off your toe clips, letting some air out of your tires, taking your feet off the pedals, and taking off. This style of riding wouldn’t have been possible without the advent of electric motors for bikes. Now how about roller-shoes for pavement or ski-shoes for deep snow?
