Biking Good and Bads

First the bad. Dimond Blvd. between Old Seward and King Street. The shared trail along the street was thick with dust, sand, gravel and whatever else they used on the snow this winter. This makes riding - particularly if you have to make a sharp swerve or sudden stop - hazardous.





But there was an exception on this strip - all along where the Red Robin was. Someone from the Red Robin came out as I was taking the picture so I thanked him and confirmed that they did clean the sidewalk/trail. He said yes they did. Then added that he rides a bike. A little reminder that we see what we know and that people who bike see the parts of the world differently than people who don't. Again, thanks Red Robin for cleaning the path.


And now the good. I rode over to the Alaska Mac Store near the Dimond Mall (it moved from Old Seward and Tudor) for a Garage Band class via Lake Otis because I was cutting the time a little close. It took about 25 minutes from right near UAA. The trail along Lake Otis was nicely cleared of grit and sand, though on Lore Street and other streets much of the sand/gravel has just been pushed into what ought to be the bike lane. Also, to be clear, there are four Apple stores I know of in Anchorage. There's also the Mac Haus across the street from REI on Northern Lights, the Tech Zone upstairs at the UAA bookstore (their website is particularly lame), and the Apple Shop at Best Buy (their website is marginally better than UAA's, but it's not local) on Dimond.

After the class, I took the Campbell Creek trail home. I got on the trail from King Street at Taku Lake.




The feasibility of biking places is really in people's heads. If you're like most people, you just assume it's not possible. If you have two kids and a dog and need to stop at Costco it probably isn't, but if you're by yourself and need to go five miles or less each way and don't need to carry more than you can fit in a backpack (or bike basket) it is feasible. OK, if you haven't ridden a bike in ten years, maybe you should take a weekend leisurely ride to get your body accustomed first. But in Chiang Mai, we didn't have a car and it was bike or walk for most things. We even got good riding in Chiang Mai traffic. There are almost no bike paths and the sidewalks are hard enough to walk on let alone ride on. And back in Anchorage we've moved into assuming we're going by bike unless we have a good reason why that won't work.

In Anchorage, if your trip is in the right direction, you can do part of your ride in the woods. Mentally, riding along Campbell Creek, listening to the birds and the water, is much better than driving on any street in town. It's like a hidden wonderland, no cars allowed.

And for these short distances - even on the way back with lots of stopping to take pictures it was only about 35 minutes - it's not that much slower than driving. And definitely faster than waiting for the bus.

1 is near the Red Robin on Dimond.
2 is where I got on the trail at Taku Lake
3 is the Seward Highway. Here you get on a dirt trail and have to walk - even carry - the bike to get under the four bridges (a frontage road on each side and one bridge for north and one for southbound traffic) (This is scheduled for a real trail, but I don't know when.)
4 is Lake Otis where I left the trail and headed home. (The map is a creek map, not a bike trail map. 3-4 you don't go along the creek, but at 4 you get back to the creek.)

It then goes on a loops around over Tutor at Bragaw and connects to the Chester Creek trail and downtown. I'm hoping to post a guide for how to find the trail at the missing parts to do the whole loop including the Coastal Trail.

Biking in Anchorage

Talk of Alaska is discussing increasing numbers of bike users in Anchorage right now (the show will be available as a pod cast later today or tomorrow). There's a draft bike plan and the commenting period has been extended to May 7 I think they said. (As I post this the website still says April 30 is the deadline, but don't believe it.) Lori Schanche of the Municipality said they've already got 80 comments. I suspect that some people haven't commented because they didn't have the time to read the whole plan. But if you're a cyclist and don't have the time, just say you didn't get time to read it all and tell them you support the general idea of improving biking conditions in Anchorage.

I did ride my bike three days last week to the Indigenous Summit last week, but there was lots of summit stuff to post on and I feel that some people out there get sick of cyclists pushing the idea of riding. However, it really is a viable alternative for many people for many trips. Not everything. The parts of Chester Creek I was on were almost totally clear of snow and ice. The picture shows one of the exceptions on the first day. But just in the three days I rode my bike, things cleared up significantly. And while I was disturbed that all the gravel that had been on the streets was now piled in the bike lane (on A Street) and the bike path next to the streets. But then the next day they were cleaning the A Street bike path - see the picture - and the day after the E Street path was clear of gravel.

Our streets were designed for cars so many people think that riding bikes isn't viable the winter makes it impossible here. But improving the infrastructure summer riding can be much safer and the advent of mountain bikes and LED bike lights has made winter biking much easier. And if people can ski or ride snow machines in the winter, then it isn't too cold to ride a bike. Listen to the show pod cast to hear what they are doing. Here's the Talk of Alaska link again.

It started with the bike pump

Martial chaos in Bangkok. Clues to check out on the Stevens' case. Local outrage about the comments of the Palin attorney general pick, but with hints his nomination isn't doing well. It was already afternoon when we finally got up - not sure I can still blame this on jet lag. And as I write I realize I totally forgot about the Songkran celebrations at the Thai Wat here in Anchorage. Taxes to get organized. And I found a website with links to Thai music videos - a great way to work on my Thai since they have the Thai words below. And unlike on Thai tv, I can stop them and play them again til I get it.

The relative warmth - low 40s, about 7˚C - and the rapidly disappearing snow were calling too. The deck was clear, the back and front yards are showing a lot more brown in just the few days we've been home.

So let's chuck everything and ride over to Suttons and look for some seeds, maybe even some seedlings.

But when I got the bikes out, J's tires were soft. The pump wasn't where it was supposed to be in the garage. I seemed to vaguely remember thinking about taking it to Thailand with us back in January, so where did it end up? Not in the two most likely places.



Then I looked into M's old room which has turned into our store room. We'd cleared out some closets and drawers and cabinets to give our house sitters some room. It got a little rough at the end as we just threw things in to get them out of the way before heading to the airport. Was it in there?

Well, sorting through the old stuff and getting rid of as much as we can was also on the list of todo's and maybe the pump was buried in there. About two hours later, with a lot more floor showing, I found the pump. But it was too late to go. We lived in two rooms in Chiang Mai quite comfortably. Certainly we can get rid of a lot of stuff in here.

Bike Ride to Hang Dong 2 - Furniture World

[Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 10pm Thai time]

Lots happening, way behind blogging. Let me finish the bike trip from last Saturday. We arrived in Hang Dong about 12:30pm and there was a huge furniture store so we stopped to look around. When I say "store" it certainly wasn't like a furniture store in Anchorage or elsewhere in the US. It was mostly very open buildings and a lot of stuff was actually outside. It was really more like a museum.We parked our bikes next to the Chinese room and as we walked around a delightful woman discretely began talking to us, explaining what we were looking at.
And inviting us to see other parts. Soon she was back with a tray and a couple of cold sealed cups of water.


At this point, seeing the whole front - India now - I was overwhelmed at the kinds of stuff they had.

There was door after door after door. These two are Chinese, and these are the insides. There were Indian doors and Pakistani doors as well. Not to mention windows. Part of me is wondering whether these are from places that were demolished for high rises or whether they just bought them off of people's houses.

If I were a US interior decorator, I'd spend a lot of time in Hang Dong and simply convince my clients that the wait was well worth what you got. Things weren't not terribly expensive at all. Some of the elaborate Indian doors - not those above - she said were 27,000 Baht - about $755. You could pay that much for a door at Home Depot and not get anything nearly as exciting as these. Of course, the catch is the shipping costs. We didn't get into that since I wasn't buying a door.

Here was a small display under a corrugated steel roof of how you might furnish your room. If we had a room that big.

These men are guarding the Burmese room.

And then there was the room of mostly Indian lamps. Here's is where we broke down. Two small hanging lamp shades for over our dining room table. They assured us they'd pack them so they wouldn't break and we could carry them on to the plane But even if we didn't carry them on they wouldn't break. We'll figure this all out when we get home. Will the work over the dining room table? We'll see.

These are Pakistani beds. There were lots and lots of them.

Here's our host. She apologized that she couldn't speak English - her parents were very poor and couldn't afford school for her beyond a couple of years. But she was so charming and such a great host - very Thai in that regard. As you can guess, this place covered a lot of land.

Bathroom sink anyone? The water worked.

And there were little things too, like drawer pulls, door handles, hat and clothes hooks, and things I wasn't sure about. We bought some drawer pulls too. I have no idea what we're going to do with them, but we'll figures something out.


Here is part of the front of the store that faces the street. As you can see, this place is called the Golden Triangle and you can visit their website yourself. And order an Indian door or a Chinese door, or maybe have a Thai door made. My guess is that most of the website is the Chiang Mai store, not the Hang Dong. As you can see it is a little slicker presentation than here. And while she didn't teach me the pricing code on the stickers until we were in the last room we looked at, the prices she did quote me seemed to be much less than what is on the website. If you were really going to buy a few large items, you could pay for your trip to Thailand and more in the savings you'd get. And the selection is sooooooo much greater.

After the Golden Triangle, we were overloaded. We rode our bikes a little way, but stopped for lunch where we saw the Elvis and the King picture. This was on a street that turned off from the main road and was furniture store after beautiful furniture store. I'm not sure how far it went. Our host had suggested we ride out to a place called Baan Tawai that was 3 km away. We'd had our quota of furniture for the day, but I can imagine there were stores the whole way. Not sure though. There was a whole complex of buildings - most still empty - that looked like it was going to be a furniture store city. Above I peeked into a lamp store that wasn't open.

Here you can see just a small glimpse of this newly built set of shops - as far as the eye could see in the picture - most still empty.

And I couldn't help but take this picture of the exquisity wood doors on this brand new - well I'm guessing it's a house - in the middle of this area with all the storefronts. Well, on second thought, maybe those doors open up into a store, with the house on top. As I say, this would be an interior decorators dream trip.

Now, let's talk about beauty and consumption. We are in a phase of our lives when we are trying to get rid of things, not take in new things. We aren't the sort of people who economists say make the economy work. And I think we have to have a new level of equilibrium in our economy so that we don't keep wasting so many resources just to package the things we buy, let alone the resources for the things themselves. We try to limit our purchases to things that have practical use, that we need, and that bring aesthetic pleasure. I think beautiful things are probably calming. But we want things that are seriously beautiful and will continue to bring that satisfaction for years and years. So, our temporary fix of a dining room lamp, a Japanese paper globe that has some tears in it now, is in need of replacement. So the two lampshades, theoretically, are a purchase that has a practical use and one that we have a need for. Whether we will be able to get enough light inside these lampshades and then out into the room is another questions. But for us this was like walking through a museum of of beautiful pieces of art, pieces that also happened to have price tags.

We biked back to the Golden Triangle, picked up our purchases, crossed the street and hailed a yellow song thaew. The driver got out, climbed up to the roof, untied the giant bungee cord, and I passed up the two bikes and he put them in place and tied them down. In 20 minutes we were in downtown Chiang Mai, and biked the rest of the way home.

Bike Ride to Hang Dong 1

Yesterday, we took a leisurely bike ride to Hang Dong south of Chiang Mai about 15 km if you go directly on the main road. I've driven by there a few times on trips with work to villages, but never had a chance to stop. The weather's gotten warmer in the last week and so we decided to go before it gets too hot at all. I don't think we achieved the second goal. The weather was in the mid 90s yesterday. My inernal thermostat seems to have adjusted well. We weren't totally sure how to get there - the maps are a little vague unless you take the main highway. We wanted to start along the canal road which is near us and has much less traffic. So, it was a time of discovery.




We helped an Israeli, who stopped us near my office, to get to the main road where he could catch a song thaew, then rode on past Wat Ramphoeng which is as far down that way I've been.







We passed through a little village, where we stopped for some bottles of cold water, then past a huge sports field then found ourselves out on the canal road.











I've passed this strange building several times in a car. We were on the other side of he canal so we didn't have a chance to figure out what it was.




We made it down to the local neighborhood market where we took the opportunity to get in the shade. J got an iced tea at this stand and I chose a strawberry smoothie.








While waiting for my smoothie I snapped this shot of brown rice. The top price is per liter, the bottom price per kilo. One dollar equals almost 36 baht these days.







We'd been vaguely hoping to find the University of Chiang Mai's Agricultural Campus which I'd been told was a nice place to bike, but we ended up on the main road too soon. But we did find a part of it and went in to check out some of the animals. When I approached the ostriches, they all came over - thinking, I guess, I had food. The deer already had food so didn't pay attention to me. But the whole flock of sheep came over to see me from out in the field. You can see that the hazy season is back. You can barely make out the mountains in the background.




Biking limits how far you can go, but it also means you see a lot more in the places you do go by. This place was growing lots of different types of trees, presumably they are for sale.









And, of course, on a bike, it is much easier to stop at the ice cream stand - well this one was a side car on a motorcycle - and have some home made ice cream. The ice cream man told us we could cut over on the road over the bridge and get into Hang Dong on more rural roads, which we did. I'll post our adventure in Furniture World later.

Bike Ride to Wat Pa Dara Phirom Part 2

This really should be consolidated into one post. Here's the link to the first part, with the map. Today was the second day of the meeting at the Wat, so I have a couple more pictures. I also failed to say that I was starting out near Chiang Mai University. I just want to add a couple more pictures of the ride. Then I'll do another post with pictures I took at the Wat during meeting breaks. Another post about the meeting itself - what it was all about - is on the pile of to do posts, including more from the Petchabun meeting.

I also want to add that last night I got a ride back - I didn't see riding home in the dark along the highway, even with my blinking light in back, as a desirable option. As it turned out, I got a ride back today too as the meeting got out mid afternoon and there were pickups headed back to the office. It's a lot cooler at 8am than at 3pm and they didn't have to twist my arm too much. It was great getting in a longer-than-my-short-office-ride in - the Wat is about 14 kilometers from home - but I'm not excited about the highway part, even with relatively little traffic.


This is the key picture I didn't get yesterday - the part of the road where there's just this tiny space for a biker, up against the wall. There are three lanes of traffic and there was little traffic, so I never had anything bigger than a motorcycle in the lane next to me, but still, I didn't enjoy it. Where there was a road - paved, but more often not - on the other side of the canal, I took that. On the way home, in the pickup, I saw that the other side of the road has more sidewalk, but it isn't a clear shot - it's got trees and lots of signs as frequent obstacles. Things are like this maybe a kilometer past Huey Road until after the 700 Year Anniversary Sports Stadium.

It would be nice to figure out some other way to get out there - one that used neighborhood roads instead of the highway.  It would take longer, but be more comfortable.  I know J won't want to drive along this stretch.  

Then the 'sidewalk' appears. (See yesterday's post.) It's not perfect, but it gets you a little away from the traffic. And things look really nice. But I've learned that few things are accidental.

Perhaps this is why the highway is so good here.






Now I'm off the main road on this wonderful little road to the Wat. It turns out you can stay on the main road and the Wat isn't far from it either. But this way is so much nicer. Note the bridge in the background.


And today I took this shortcut - the foot bridge into the Wat. It maybe saves 1/2 kilometer, but it was fun too. (No, I wasn't about to put my camera down and do the automatic timer on the bridge. In places like this I make sure the camera string is around my wrist.)  Also, I see that the map is misleading here as the road across the bridge goes back right along the canal.  I started onto the bridge from the road that cut off from the highway and got off the bridge practically in the Wat.  

Bike Ride to Wat Pa Dara Phirom in Mae Rim

Pet drew a map to Wat Pa Dara Phirom Saturday night so I could ride my bike there for the Monday and Tuesday meeting. Let me just get this much up tonight and some pictures of the temple. I'll try to figure out what happened at the meetings tomorrow. He figured it was about 15 kilometers. That way he wouldn't have to come by and pick me up. Well his map was great and the ride was pretty good too.



This is past the stadium. It was nice to have somewhere other than the road to ride. Up until this sidewalk appeared I had to hug inside that white line. For a good ways, there was a small wall on the left (drive on the left in Thailand) and then the hill to the canal.



Then after the curve to the right, the separate sidewalk disappears and this bike/motorcycle lane shows up.



Pet had told me this is where the "Military - Horses" are. I guess that means the calvary. I joked that it probably smells and indeed, I smelled the horses just before there was a sign for the horses.


See, it's an official bike lane.




And there was the second military base.




And this is the great little road once you turn off the main highway.

[I've added a few more pictures and comments on this trip in Part 2]

Bikes, Barbets, Card Reader, and Anniversary Dinner

We woke up to an interesting call. I got up and made a sound memo on the camera and downloaded it. Joan found the bird on the top of the tree and once I looked through the binoculars I was pretty sure it was a Lineated Barbet. (There's a nice description and good pictures at the link.) I looked up lineated barbet audio and that nailed it. But when I tried to download the sound memo, I realized I couldn't and hadn't tried for a long time. I googled and found a forum where someone suggested to get a card reader. CARD READER! Of course. That's how I used to download all my pictures and audio until mine stopped working. That was on my list of things to buy once we got here.

Pet and Bon were picking us up today around 11 to look at bikes. The bike choices have been:

1. buy bikes and sell them when we leave (Someone wanted us to do this last year so he could buy my bike at a discount.)
2. rent bikes (what I did last year)
3. the manager of our building offered to buy bikes and rent them to us
4. let Bon and Pet buy bikes and rent from them.

We finally agreed to option 4 since both wanted bikes. I decided this was not a violation of the AJWS ethics rules which say volunteers cannot leave valuable equipment or donate money to their organizations when they leave. I could be wrong, but it seems to make more sense to help them save money on their bikes rather than give the same money to the shop. In any case, we went over the AJWS policy carefully so they knew all the reasons for the rules.



But I insisted we go to Cacti Bikes where we rented our bikes last year. The owner was really a decent guy and I wanted to support him. Maybe he had some used bikes he'd sell. He did and we got two bikes. Bon and Pet went off to their meetings and we rode off on our bikes.











(1000 Baht is about $29)
Not far, because the computer arcade is pretty much across the street and canal from the bike store. I found exactly what I wanted - the card reader and a new stick on Thai keyboard for my MacBook. The paper one I'd bought last year got worn out much to quickly. J did great even in the Chiang Mai traffic. We tried to go more round about routes through less crowded sois. We mixed in some walking.

















The old card reader I had bought in Thailand was great. It was tiny and just needed to plugged into the USB port. This new one has its own USB connection. 150 Baht or about $4.30.



Next we got the stickers. The old ones were paper and after about six months, the most used keys had been worn bare. I'd seen clear plastic ones online, but there were about $6 plus more than that for shipping. I figured I could wait, and it was good I did because I had to get the keyboard replaced. But now I can put on the new ones, and I need them here.





Checking J's map, we saw the YMCA was nearby and J decided we should eat there. I'd only been in the parking lot when we picked up the Japanese researchers last year. With the bikes, getting a little off the beaten path is much easier. We had a decent lunch and I found this map there. I'd been aware that maps were culturally biased by seeing that in Asia China was in the middle of world maps while in the US, the US tends to be in the middle. There's also the Europe in the middle version.

But the description on this map said that the size of countries, of continents even, were distorted so that Northern Hemisphere countries appeared much larger than they actually were and Southern Hemisphere countries smaller. You can see more of the details at the Peters Map Site. But I figure that Alaska-Mexico example is of interest to my Alaskan readers. And no, Texas isn't really bigger than Alaska too.

Then we went on home - J getting used to riding in Chiang Mai - a lot more exciting than in Anchorage where there are separate bike paths most places.




Since it was our anniversary, I'd invited some people from work for dinner and we decided on Khun Churn, a yuppie vegetarian Thai restaurant. I'd also invited the other AJWS volunteers, whom I hadn't met, but we'd gotten email connection. We rode through the Chiang Mai University campus agricultural department area.


We had a fun dinner, lots of laughing. M, one of the volunteers came too. I learned that there'd been an orientation for the Thai and Cambodian volunteers that week that we'd arrived. I'd never gotten any information on it at all. This was about the same time that I learned from Pet that A, one of the AJWS staffers, had told him today that I wasn't really a volunteer, I wasn't on the list. Since AJWS paid for my plane trip, I'm guessing I really am an AJWS volunteer. Anyway, a trick I learned at the first Anchorage International Film Festival was that when the picture is too dark, or otherwise funny, you can always play with filters to make it interesting. So this picture of us at dinner is with Photoshop's graphic pen filter. Much nicer than the original photo.

[Update Jan. 25, 2009 Sunday evening Thai Time:  I forgot to mention that folks got there late because some roads were closed off and there was an anti-Government demonstration.  J and I didn't see it at all.  But this is pro-Thaksin territory.]