You are what you eat?

Two related articles that I wanted to share:

• The Guardian - Inside the food industry: the surprising truth about what you eat
• Whole Larder Love - That's a reality I'd like to see change

I'm not anti-science at all - everything we eat is chemicals and we're a bag of chemical-using biological processes - but I'd much rather eat a cake made at home using an egg from a chicken living at the bottom of our garden than one produced in a factory using "potato protein isolate" in place of the egg.

Food for thought?

Inspiration

I'm attending a talk at Darlington library tomorrow night by Alastair Humphreys - adventurer, author, speaker. Alastair has done lots of cool stuff, like riding round the world by bike and completing the Marathon Des Sables and is soon to attempt to make the first unsupported journey to the South Pole and back (with Ben Saunders). His talks have recieved some excellent feedback and I'm really looking forward to going.

Via Alastair's blog, I rediscovered Dean Karnazes. He runs very long distances and completes challenges like running 50 marothons in fifty states in fiftey days, then running home. Dean's blog and this interview are full of fantastic snippets of wisdom and inspriation.

People like Alastair, Ben and Dean make me want to move my bike riding up a notch. I'm even contemplating running!

New Shoes

I got some new shoes on Sunday: Simple Shoes Eco Sneaks Sno Tire. They're black, but green:

* Washed leather and organic cotton canvas uppers
* Organic cotton linings
* PET laces (recycled plastic bottles, apparently)
* PET pedbeds
* Yes, that outsole used to be a car tire
* Vulcanized rubber sidewall, toecap, and heelcap
* 100% post consumer paper pulp foot forms

Lots of inspiration

I'm going to have to add Ben Saunders' site to my feed reader. I had it bookmarked on my old laptop and it was one of the sites I checked weekly.

There are so many things just from the last few posts that I wanted to link to, or requote here.

"We are richer now, but more overworked, more deeply in thrall to the addictions of getting and spending. We have more possessions, and they tyrannise us. Each new mod con must be shopped for, maintained, insured, upgraded; each new thing must be stored, kept track of, kept secure, tidied; and the whole package is paid for in overwork, time-poverty, round-the-clock availability and round-the-clock insecurity.

We have more, and we have less. In such a world, freedom is both more precious and more elusive than ever. And one of the few surefire ways of liberating ourselves from the tyranny of the consumer society is to put ourselves beyond its reach."

[quoted in Ben Saunders: Thought for the year]



[Ben Saunders: And my feet hurt]

Arctic sea ice cover comparison

There's a scary difference between the Arctic sea ice cover on my second birthday and my thirtieth birthday.

[via Kottke, via Ben Saunders]

No bike ride, but the veg patch gets closer

Instead of going for a ride this morning, I did some more digging. I finished digging over the second bed, made a brick pathway running between the two beds (using bricks we've found in the garden over the years), transfered some more rabbit-poo goodness into the beds and put the two wooden ends to the first bed.

Each of the two beds if 2.2m by 1.2m, so we've got about 5.25 sq m of growing space in these two beds. The old bed is 2.3 sm m and the small patch outside the back door is about 1.5 sq m. So that's about 9 sq m of growing space in the back garden.

(I did make a quick trip to work and back this afternoon, for a massive 5 mile ride...)

The Good Life

We made a start on our veg patch today. We dug up turf from the side of the house, roughed up the "soil" underneath and then shovelled on the soil from where the rabbit pen used to be; seven years worth of rabbit poo and bark chips have made brilliant soil! We've returfed the old rabbit area with the grass we dug up.

We finished digging for one 1.2m by 3m bed today and I'm going to put in another tomorrow. There's space for another two or three the same size if we need them. We've got a small area outside the back door we can use for herbs and salad leaves, plus the area we used this year for tomoatoes and sweetcorn. I'm going to build a wooden edge for the beds, using the wood from the small rabbit pen.

E was a brilliant help, finding worms to put in the beds to make the soil better. L took off her shoes and socks and wandered about in the dirt barefoot.

I'll try to snap some photos tomorrow, but I'm also going to try and get out on the bike; I'm in danger of not hitting triple figures this month!

Edit: I just worked out that I've only done 43 miles so far this month. I'll be doing another 18 over Monday and Tuesday next week, plus 5 on Saturday to get to West Park and back. That's 66 miles, so I need to do 34 miles tomorrow at least.

simplicity

Try to live simply. A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength. Do not be persuaded into buying what you do not need or cannot afford. Do you keep yourself informed about the effects your style of living is having on the global economy and environment?

- Quaker Faith and Practice, Advices and Queries 1.02.41 (scroll down)

We've got a copy of the Quaker Faith and Practices book at home. It's great to dip into.

I read Thoreau's Walden a couple of months ago, after seeing it mentioned so much in a lot of the blogs I read. A lot of what he wrote on simplicity really chimed with me, and I keep being reminded of things he wrote when doing something completely unrelated.

Center is not a destination

there is something special about the ebb and flow of life that I'm happy to be a part of. Injury stokes the fires of passion. Challenge brings new understanding. Failure leads to future strength and resolve. All of these phrases describe how life itself is rarely centered. You rarely experience the "perfect moment" when everything comes together. Instead it's a series of events that often swing wildly from one extreme to another. Or sometimes all you get is a gradual change until one morning you have to put your jacket on for that brisk fall commute. Center is not a destination. It's something to wave to as it passes it by a few times a year and I wouldn't have it any other way.

- Slip Angle - Finding Center

Riding a bike almost every day is a great way to notice the natural ebb and flow of the seasons. Having kids seems to have made life's swings seem even more extreme :)

Green consumerism

Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet, according to George Monbiot. Reading the free Ethical Living magazine we got free with our veg this week was interesting, after reading this article.

No Impact Man

No Impact Man:

A guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, composts his poop and, while living in New York City, generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic who tries to save the polar bears and the rest of the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby daughter and Prada-wearing, four seasons-loving wife along for the ride.

Hope

There were three separate news stories on my Google homepage today, which give me some hope:

* The Guardian: Welcome to Modbury. Just don't ask for a plastic bag - we don't need to wait for big business and governments to do something, let's just get on with it
* The Guardian: UN: we have the money and know-how to stop global warming - it's not a hopeless task
* Wired: China Vows to Work Harder to Control Greenhouse Emissions - no text there at the moment, that I can see, but even the headline gives hope

I needed that after reading some crap on forums recently.

(Off to meet my MEP soon to talk bikes and trains.)

Stop shopping... Or the planet will go pop...

'Many big ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet,' begins the argument by Jonathon Porritt, government adviser and all-round environmental guru.

'Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.'

According to Porritt, the most senior adviser to the government on sustainability, we have become a generation of shopaholics. We are bombarded by advertising from every medium which persuades us that the more we consume, the better our lives will be. Shopping is equated with fun, fulfilment and self-identity. It is also, Porritt warns, killing the planet. He argues, in an interview with The Observer, that merely switching to 'ethical' shopping is not enough. We must shop less.

The Observer: Stop shopping... Or the planet will go pop...

Some really good links at the bottom of the article too, and mention of a TV programme: Big Ideas that Changed the World: Tuesday 10 April, 7.15pm, Channel Five

New purchases, and a sale

(Originally published on Bike Darlington - The Darlington Cycling Campaign blog.)

Today we became a seven-bike family (four of them are mine). My wife got a free bike from her brother which has been sat in his garage for a couple of years. It fits her and is serviceable enough, although it's not the best bike in the world.

Since she wanted to be able to take out youngest around and about on it, we were thinking of a rack-mounted child seat, but when we was Halfords were selling the two-child trailer for 30% off, we bought that instead. This has the advantage that we can fit both kids in, as well as shopping and toys, and it seems pretty waterproof. It also converts very easily into a pushchair, which will come in useful.

We've had a play with it in the street, but not taken it on a longer ride yet. Once we put four stone of children in you can feel it but it's much easier to pull than riding a bike with heavy panniers fitted, which is what I expect a seat would feel like.

Tomorrow is the big test, when she takes out eldest to the town centre. Thinking about the route has shown to us again that there are still major gaps in the cycle network; pavements will be ridden on at times. If "The Magnet problem" is ever solved we will have an almost traffic-free route from home to town, but for now when faced with a choice between riding on a badly laid out bit of road with the cars or on the pavement we'll be choosing the pavement option I'm afraid.

So, that's the new purchase, what's the sale? Our car. We hardly use it but it costs us a fortune, so a week on Saturday it will make its final journey with us, to some friends in Leeds who are buying it off us. After that we will be car-free.

We've been lucky in that we made decisions which mean we had already minimised our car use: we chose to buy a house close to our family, I only applied for jobs I could get to on public transport, we live near to local shops (and only a ten minute walk from Asda), and we tend not to drive unless we have to. We'll see how it goes, and will report back here.

If no one seems to understand, Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

Just call us Tom and Barbara

Had a brilliant family day today. We walked to the shops, with E and L riding their bikes, to get a WiFi adapter for the old PC I salvaged from work and a new toilet seat. When we got home, S cut the grass while me and L did some gardening and E slept.

We moved a couple of plants from the back garden to the front to make room for a small (2m x 0.7m) vegetable plot. I used a left over piece of wood to make it into a slightly raised bed, and laid down the cardboard box my Solitude came in as a weed-suppressing mat and covered it in 3 or 4 inches of compost from our composter.

The idea is that the cardboard stops the grass and weeds below from growing up through the new soil on top, which we use for growing veg. After a while the card will rot down, but by then the weeds below will also have rotted. I saw it on TV on It's Not Easy Being Green last year and looked it up online. S was sceptical, but it actually looks OK since you can't see the cardboard.

We've not planted anything yet, but will be growing peas, tomatoes, salad leaves and other stuff.

When E woke up, she helped for a while, then S, E and L made dough for pizzas and bread. We had the pizzas for tea, and will have the bread for breakfast tomorrow.

Brilliant day!

I've turned into one of those people who write letters to their local newspaper

I've just sent a reply to a letter in today's Northern Echo, which was about a photograph of me in Monday's paper. Last night, I was guest speaker at a local Liberal Democrat meeting. On Saturday, I was speaking at a meeting of 50 people I helped to organise.

How did this happen?

That Channel 4 Climate Change Programme

Just in case anyone watched it and believed it:

Bad Science: Insert “swindle� joke here
Comment is free: Don't let truth stand in the way of a red-hot debunking of climate change
Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4

Babs To Brisbane

babs2brisbane

My aim is to travel from the UK to Brisbane for one of my best friends' wedding. Plane travel is so environmentally damaging so I am looking for another way. I also think that by travelling over land and sea I will be able to understand our world better as I will connect with the people and landscapes and not just look at the departure board in the airport. Any tips gratefully received!! Departure date 1st September.

From STW:

She is now heading back towards the UK and due to a couple of complications has chosen to fly from Oz to Bali. In order to offset this she intends cycling the final leg of her journey, South France to Wales.

Plan is to take 2 weeks, starting 7th April.

Wanted.
Quote
"..... South of France to Wales. If anyone has any advice or tips, lives along the way or would like to join me/put me up along the way then please let me know"

Possibly a bicycle in south of France, suitable for av. height woman (read short, but im 6'0, so 5'4"/5'5")
Accomodation - anything between the Med and the Channel.
Company, support, like minded cyclists.

Can anyone help?

Red Noses Illegal! (near Parliament)