My last post on flat tires was April 8. (Though not necessarily my last flat post.) Getting it fixed led to finding things, people, and places we might not otherwise have seen.
There seemed to be some larger purpose for today's flat too. It didn't happen until I was within blocks of where I was supposed to meet Brendan for lunch, so it was easy to push the bike and still be on time. After lunch we walked together a ways and then I headed toward the transit center on 6th and G.
There was a bus, sitting out the green light right there at the corner, giving me time to get a green and cross in front of it and see that it indeed was a #2 bus that would drop me within 200 yards of my house. I'd never had cause to use the bike rack on the front of the bus and the driver came out to show me the release lever and how to lock the wheel in. I got on the bus and off it went. Mind you, at that time of day, these buses go once an hour.
As I got on the bus I saw James, someone I had on my to call list, who I hadn't seen since probably last October. We sat together and caught up - nothing major except he's getting married next week! I couldn't help but think about how the flat had gotten me onto this bus so I could see James. I know that statisticians could show me that it was all within the probability of coincidence, but it is eerie.
I got home fine, found my patch kit, found the hole. Well, it turned out there were two holes, and got the tire fixed for my evening meeting.
But I do think having little tire repair shops scattered all over the place where someone else will fix it in a few minutes for 20 baht (60¢) would be nice too.
Brendan Joel Kelley, Assistant Editor/Staff writerat the Anchorage Press evited me to lunch a last week and today we connected at Ginger. This week's Press is out and he can relax a tiny bit before the Democratic Convention this weekend. I felt a little uncertain about my role at lunch - clearly I was invited because of my blog, but should I be there as a blogger? Brendan did let me take a bunch of photos. By the time I got back home and had done some cleanup, I decided this was worthy of a post. Brendan is a symbol of how open things are in Alaska. Although he grew up here, he split after high school and has been working as a journalist in Mesa, Arizona for the last 12 or 13 years. He's only been back here since December, yet he's been a real presence in the Anchorage media scene, even though his family all followed him Outside.
It was also interesting hearing his take on the future of the press - it was bought by an Outside company that has one other mid-sized city weekly newspaper like the Press and a lot of small town newspapers. The new owner has been putting money into the Press - Brendan got a new iMac with a big screen and the offices have been spruced up.
This is in sharp contrast to what I hear from people at the Anchorage Daily News, where the newspaper is getting smaller and thinner. The two newspapers have different roles - the ADN being the traditional newspaper, supermarket for all the news and the Press has been more like the small local quickstop market. As things switch to more internet, it looks like the small alternative paper, that's picked up free all over town, is in a better position to adapt easily to the changes, whereas the large mainstream home delivered paper is far less flexible with its large staff and headquarters.
The conversation covered a lot of ground, including the strong cooperation among the reporting staff of various media in Anchorage. Brendan is clearly enjoying himself at the Press and we're lucky that he decided to come home to Anchorage. But the Press tends to have a high staff turnover. How long will be here? Who will be next?
We get a lot of depressing international news (in addition to US news). My son emailed me a copy of his invitation to a presentation tomorrow (Singapore time, so in a few hours) night to hear the President of Rwanda talk. This is part of his Masters Degree program there. Here's what the invite says about the topic and the speaker. (OK, this is obviously pushing the good stuff, but the good stuff looks pretty good.)
THE AFRICA AND RWANDA: FROM CRISIS TO SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
You are cordially invited to attend the following lecture hosted by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy:
His Excellency Paul Kagame President of the Republic of Rwanda
Topic: Africa and Rwanda: From Crisis to Socioeconomic Development
Speaker: His Excellency Paul Kagame
President of the Republic of Rwanda
Moderator: Prof Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
Date: Thursday, 22 May 2008
Time: 5.30 pm - 7.00 pm
Synopsis
Perceptions and stereotype of Africa and Rwanda as perpetual 'basket cases' and 'donor havens' only sustained by aid, charity and pity no longer correspond to contemporary development of the past decade. Rwanda, under the leadership of one of Africa’s most able leaders, President Paul Kagame has undertaken considerable reforms leading to serious domestic and foreign investment.
President Kagame has single-handedly redefined the way African leaders should engage the best of the Western and Eastern world. He has appointed some the world's greatest minds in business and strategic investment to his council of economic advisers. President Kagame also put Rwanda on the global map by hosting UN secretary-general Ban-Ki Moon and US President George W. Bush.
Some of the recent indicators that prove President Kagame's esteem with world leaders include his appointment by Bill Clinton to the board of the Clinton Global Initiative. Tony Blair also recently became the Rwandan Government?s advisor for no fees; Bill Gates has personally been working closely with President Kagame in supporting the health sector in Rwanda. Paul Farmer, a Harvard professor and world's leading authority on public health-care in poor countries is advising President Kagame to develop one of the most innovative national health insurance systems in the world.
The strategic alliances between Rwanda/Kagame and some of the leading minds in business and politics around the globe are yielding good results. Improvements in health care, increased education opportunities, an investor-friendly environment and the transformation of the city of Kigali are some of the accomplishments that have started to take root in the country.
Rwanda is also aggressively seeking business opportunities with Asia. Dubai World has just signed a US$ 230m investment deal in Rwanda. The government of Singapore has been hired to advise Rwanda on how to build a modern city that serve as the region's service centre.
About the speaker
His Excellency Paul Kagame was sworn in as President of the Republic of Rwanda for a seven year term on September 12, 2003. Paul Kagame was born October 23, 1957 in Ruhango, Southern Province. In 1960 he fled with his family at the age of three and moved to Uganda were he grew up as a refugee. He returned to Rwanda as a leader of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1990. The RPF was the force that ended the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Under President Kagame?s leadership, Rwanda has been in the forefront of the prevention of genocide in Africa and elsewhere. Rwanda Defence Forces have become one of the major contributors to African peace keeping operations in Dafur as well as the newly created hybrid AU-UN force.
His administration has also proven its enduring commitment to peace and development at home as well as on the continent, greatly helping to sustain the emerging image of Africa as a continent leaving behind ugly images of violence and underdevelopment for the redemption of its peoples and institutions. As he has stated, "In Africa today, we recognise that trade and investment, and not aid, are pillars of development."
We look forward to seeing you at the lecture.
I'm sure J will post his observations on his blog afterward. We can see if he lives up to his billing. At least as a speaker.
Maybe everyone else found out about this while I was gone, but the Anchorage Assembly is now online live and you can get archived copies of older meetings - going back to the end of January.
Except, when I tried to view the streaming video last night it told me I didn't have the right plug-in. I downloaded it, but it still didn't work. Their streaming video support got me to this:
Microsoft has not released a Windows Media browser plug-in for Intel Mac computers. As an alternative, Microsoft is promoting the Flip4Mac program. Tested in May '07, Flip4Mac's WMV Player plays videos, though with some issues. Flip4Mac currently does not support some advanced features, in addition to other minor playback problems.
So, it sounds like I should be able to get it, but not well. Maybe someone has a tip for this MacBook user. And why couldn't the Municipality find a medium that Mac users could use as well as PC users? I thought the Municipality was into diversity.
A friend was organizing the Shining Lights dinner at the Sheraton Hotel and J was helping out Saturday and Sunday. This started as a synagogue event that honored people who were members of the congregation or the greater Jewish community each year and was held at the synagogue and was fairly low key. Last year's honoree was Jim Gottstein. The award honors individuals whose career is dedicated to public service and that demonstrates the highest level of character, integrity, and ethics. For the most part I think the people honored have fit that description, though one year, while we were out of the country, someone seems to have hijacked the award and they made a a terrible choice.
The event is also supposed to be a fund raiser as well. This year's five honorary chairs are the CEO's of BP, CIRI, BP Alaska, and JL Properties - none members of the Congregation or the Jewish Community to my knowledge - and the President of the Rose Foundation. Watching Joan and considering it was at the Howard Rock Ballroom at the Sheraton and all these corporate I was beginning to think this was going to be over the top.
But Carol Comeau is really an ideal recipient for this and the night turned out moving and inspiring. Here's are a few clips from the evening. I'd like to say highlights - but that implies I picked the best. Unfortunately I have limited room on my cardreader and so I video and hope I get some good parts to post. And the room was dark. And we were way in back. But you can get a sense of the evening.
Carol Comeau was the honoree this year and from my perspective it was a good choice.
Riding home from the Shining Lights dinner last night. It's about 10:15 as I get onto the bike trail in the middle of town, yet in this ancient woods. The sun's behind the clouds for a moment. The cool spring's delayed the greening. It's beautiful nevertheless.
I stop and wait a few minutes for this moose to wander a little further from the trail.
Almost home, now, I catch a glimpse of the sun setting from 36th. It's 10:30pm. Solstice is still a month off.
At Sunday night's Shining Lights dinner, Temple Beth Sholom's annual award dinner, which this year honored Anchorage School Superintendent Carol Comeau (I'll do more on this later) there was a silent auction. Among the many, many items up for auction were (separate of course) lunches with Mayor Mark Begich and with Senator Ted Stevens.
I got there just as bidding had closed. $125 was bid for lunch with Ted Stevens. I'm pretty sure this was the final bid. A person was circling the final bids on each item and was a few items away from this one when I got this picture. She'd already circled the Mark Begich lunch for $250 when I got to it a few seconds later.
Today's ADN has severalbikingarticles, which reminded me I had started putting together a video of my ride to the office in Chiang Mai. I'd wanted to find a way to strap the camera to my chest as I rode, but that never happened. Finally I just tried biking one handed and that worked. Sort of. Here's the daily ride I had, pretty much in real time, but using clips put together over several days.
Now that we're back after two and a half months without a car, we're reassessing all our daily transportation - can we walk? can we bike? Can we do this without using fossil fuel? A lot of the time we can't, but a lot of the time we can.
As gas gets more expensive, biking becomes more of an option for other people as well. But why are some people so torqued by bicyclists? I've thought about this a lot. I think people get irritated for different reasons - about anything, not just bikes. Sometimes it's legitimate because someone has done something rotten. Often though, the anger is more about the angry person than the target. Here's my list of reasons people don't like bicyclists.
Problems with the cyclists
Cyclists driving in traffic without regard to the dangers they are causing to themselves and others - this is especially a problem in the winter when drivers have enough trouble with slick streets already
Smug, arrogant cyclists who use their cyclist status as a holier than thou platform
Problems with the angry person suggesting deeper emotional reactions to cyclists
For some people, having a car is a symbol of success. Perhaps they had hard times growing up, perhaps it was pounded in by parents, but a car shows you've made it. Cyclists are seen as losers who haven't made it, or cyclists' talking about the merits of cycling seem to be attacking them as drivers.
For some people cars are a symbol of progress and development and cyclists are seen as greenies who would stop progress. This can be tied up with one's faith in capitalism as the only true path. People on bikes are thus seen as childish and preventing the economy from developing the way it should, essentially they are attacking the American way in these folks' minds.
People with health and weight problems may feel mocked or slighted by slim bikers zipping along in their tight shorts.
Some people are just mad at the world and bikes just make one more target - it's easy to play bully to a cyclist when you're in a Dodge pickup
I'm sure readers can add reasons. But it seems that one way to get past seemingly intransigent problems is to step back and look not at the apparent issue, but address the underlying problems. We need to stop using bikes as symbolic whipping posts for other issues. As we face the need to cut back on energy use, we could learn that there are plenty of viable ways to use less fossil fuels.
In addition, people have all sorts of reasons why they can't use a bike to commute to work.
Reasons people can't commute to work by bike
need to stop along the way to shop, pick things up
takes too much time
no place to shower at work
too far away
too dangerous
too cold
need to wear nice clothes at work
what if my kids got sick at school and I had to pick them up?
I have to carry things that I can't fit on a bike
We could add more and more such reasons. Many are valid, but only up to a point. This isn't an all or nothing proposition. There's no reason why we can't have hybrid car/bike/bus commuters. Someone could bike a couple days a week, when they don't have to be dressed up. Or they could leave an extra set of clothes or two at work. Buses have bike racks, so you could bus the bike to work and ride home.
The danger parts are legitimate in many cases - but if more people got serious about biking, bike lanes could get bigger and could be kept free of debris and could be well plowed. Cold is sometimes an issue, but if people can be out all day skiing or snow machining, they can bike 30-60 minutes each way to work.
When we are faced with something new, the normal reaction is to think about how it is going to cause problems. What we won't be able to do. The list above gives some reasons people offer why biking to work is impractical. But there are also benefits which are unseen. Things that make me feel great when I can use my bike instead of a car.
The benefits of biking
Individual
Little or no traffic on the bike trails (of course that's a good reason not to encourage too many people to start biking to work)
Get exercise on the way to work or on an errand (and Anchorage is cool enough, and biking allows one to move forward while coasting, and biking always creates its own breeze so one needn't get all sweaty)
Great scenery along the bike trails - I'm literally in the woods part of the way instead of on city streets
Great parking - free parking close to where I need to be
Time to think and reflect
No gas bills when I ride
It just feels good
Community
One less car per cyclist on the road (carpoolers excepted)
One more parking space per cyclist (carpoolers excepted)
Less oil used
Less pollution
Healthier population - lower medical costs
Happier population
This is not an all or nothing proposition. Not everyone can do their jobs without the storage space and speed of a car. Not everyone can ride a bike every day. And while the oil savings, for instance, of one commuter may seem negligible, if 30 million people (10% of the US population) rode a bike and saved one gallon of gas per work day, that would be 30 million gallons of gas. That isn't going to save the world by itself, but if we take a US Department of Energy estimate prepared for then Senator Frank Murkowski that there is
a mean or expected value of 10.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil in the ANWR coastal plain
and that there are 42 gallons of gas in a barrel of oil (it's more complicated than that, but that will do for now)
That comes to about 432,600,000,000 gallons of gas from ANWR. Divide that by those 30,000,000 a day saved by the hypothetical bikers and you get 14,420 days. Divide that by 260 workdays per year (we'll forget about all the people who work on weekends) and you get 55 years. So, just having 10% of the US population save 1 gallon of gas a day by biking to work would save the equivalent of ANWR's mean estimated oil in 55 years. (And that's estimated, it could be less. And it could be more.) That cumulative amount of savings is not insignificant.
(On the other, according to the Department of Energy's Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the Week Ending May 9, 2008 (page 6), in the US
Over the last four weeks, motor gasoline demand has averaged nearly 9.3 million barrels per day.
While barrels of motor gas and barrels of crude oil appear to be slightly different, if everyone - including commercial drivers - took a one day driving holiday per month, we'd save the equivalent of ANWR's estimated mean value of 10.3 billion barrels of recoverable crude in about 10 years.
Humans are amazing. We're amazing in how easily we get used to the status quo and don't want to change. But we're amazing in how we can solve problems and come up with totally unexpected solutions to problems.
So bike to work at least once this summer. Or bike part way to work and take a bus the rest of the way. And if you can't bike, find some other way to move your muscles and save gas.
My last post on flat tires was April 8. (Though not necessarily my last flat post.) Getting it fixed led to finding things, people, and places we might not otherwise have seen.
