2 cycle 2 gether

Kai Featured on Aviation Justice Express

Sheila — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:00:57 +0000

Aviation Justice Express, a group of activists and organizers that work toward creating a “leaner, greener, more just aviation system, as well as better alternative to an unsustainable system”, provide a wealth of information on their website about the aviation industry and its affects on climate change and communities. They cover stories like how a group of citizen activists fought a decade-long battle against powerful lobbyists to prevent the expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport and present a myriad of activist views on aviation justice.

Yesterday they featured a post by Kai on their website. Read the full article here!

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Santa Barbara :: Meeting John Jones

Sheila — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:00:53 +0000

After a wonderful night’s sleep at Refugio State Park, we rode through Goleta then on to Santa Barbara for the evening. We couldn’t help but stop to window shop as we made our way to the Agave Inn, a sweet little place, which we strategically picked due to its proximity to our scheduled appointment with world-renowned and master wheel builder, John Jones.

View of Goleta (pronounced go-LEE-ta) Sweet Room at Agave Inn Kai buying a new helmet at Bicycle Bob’s Prana Storefront (Sheila suppressed an urge to buy all of their ‘Made In USA’ clothing).

On John Jones, Master Wheel Builder

Remember the problem I was having with spokes on my rear wheel breaking? Although we had picked up extra spokes in Santa Maria to take care of the occasional replacement, we knew there was a larger problem, considering all of the breaks were up inside the nipple. So, during our stay in Lompoc, Kai did some research into who we might get to rebuild my rear wheel before heading further south. It turns out that there was really only one obvious person to rebuild my wheel, and we were lucky enough to be heading in his direction.

The renowned John Jones, owner and sole proprietor of Jones Precision Wheels, lives and works in Santa Barbara, and he had a history that spoke for itself. A previous club racer, John had moved from England in the mid-eighties to enter the realms of the professional cycling world as a mechanic and wheel-builder, and has worked with a plethora of pro cyclists and teams over the years, including, most recently, the Garmin-Cervelo team at the Tour de California.

With a reputation that proceeds him, we thought it might be a long shot that he would be able to fit us in to his schedule on short notice, or that he would even want to, but we shot off an email to him anyway. He surprised us by returning our email with a personal telephone call. After reviewing the problems with us, he laid out his recommendation, based upon his experience with Rohloff hubs and wheels, and then he proceeded to ask us all about our travels. It was as if we’d found an old friend! We couldn’t wait to meet him, so we coordinated a trip into the highlands of Santa Barbara to pay him a visit.

John Jones in his workshop.

And so, after checking in to our inn and grabbing a rare vegan pizza for dinner, we made our way toward John’s workshop, which is attached to his home and, as expected, we hit it off instantly. John had previously invited us to stay, chat and watch the creative process, and we were excited to have the opportunity to watch a master at work. Upon arrival, he offered us our choice of tea or wine and, once warm mugs were in hand, we settled into his peaceful workshop. While chattering away with him, John expertly took apart my wheel and cleaned the individual parts in preparation for the rebuild. The act was almost unnoticeable since he prefers to not cut spokes, opting instead for the wheel to relax naturally as he unscrews each spoke and nipple combination until all is apart. At that point, realizing it was late, we bid him goodnight after making plans to visit him again the next morning to pick up the finished product.

On our walk back to the hotel, we effused about how wonderful an evening it had been and how impressed we were with John’s commitment to the craft. It was obvious he was doing something he truly loved, and his final creations showed it. A gentleman and true professional, sincerely interested in building relationships, we lamented over how he was a rare find in this day and age of mass-produced products and impersonal business transactions.

The next day we picked up my beautifully rebuilt wheel, feeling confident that spoke problems were a thing of the past, and feeling blessed that we had met and befriended John Jones.

Thank you, John, for making time for us, and for offering us a glimpse into your craft of wheel building. You are, truly, one of a kind!

Sheila and John chatting. In years past, John opened and owned coffee retail outlets. His dream is to combine his love of coffee and bicycles in a future bike-coffee shop. As he says, “Imagine the smell of espresso mixed with Park grease!”. Picking up the finished product. Beautiful!

I remember building a wheel late one night, after the shop had closed and silence reigned, when I was struck by a thought that has stayed with me ever since. It was a Mavic MA40 on a Sanshin cartridge bearing hub laced with Wheelsmith 14gauge butted spokes, but I don’t think the components, or the beer I was drinking, were the source of the notion I was about to entertain!

I was struck by the similarities between building a wheel and building a life. A wheel has, if you count all the nipples, spokes, rim and hub, somewhere between forty and eighty components that would prefer not to be bound in states of great tension with each other and be required to work as a single-minded entity. Then, they are expected to run true for long years over ruts and holes, loaded with a rider in all kinds of weather and circumstances. How similar to a life, I thought. All our lives have competing interests and obligations, not just the big stuff like our marriage, children, careers and health, but also the small stuff like remembering to pay bills, keep food in the house, get the laundry done, and find time to sit, relax and finish a book. Our lives have competing forces pulling against each other and we are expected to keep all those tensions in balance and produce a harmonious whole that allows us to live well.

How like a wheel.

~John Jones, Thoughts on bicycling in general and the bicycle wheel in particular.

After saying our goodbyes to John, we loaded up our bicycles and rode out of town on the Pacific Coast bicycle path, briefly stopping alongside the beach to enjoy our normal lunch of avocado, tomato and cucumbers wraps.

Stopping for lunch in Santa Barbara The Pacific Coast bicycle path

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Next Stop: Carpenteria State Park & Point Mugu

Palms & Petroleum :: Lompoc to Refugio State Beach

Sheila — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:00:05 +0000

We ate lots of oranges while working in Lompoc!

We left Lompoc, California, with peace of mind, knowing we had tackled many large ‘to-do’ items on our year-end lists. Well rested and feeling ready to get back on our bicycles and the road, we made a quick side trip to a post office to send home our third box of gear deemed ‘unnecessary’, then we set our eyes on the horizon as we pedaled up, up, up, and out of town.

The climb was long and gradual but the beautiful landscape kept us company as we rode. Calling it a day, we set up camp just off the peak of San Julian Road. We figured why spend the $20 or more for the hike/bike site at Gaviota State Park when there were numerous online complaints about the fierce winds and noise from the trains when we could camp for free and in peace?

Highway 1 (San Julian Road) heading out of Lompoc Wild Camp off of Highway 1, San Julian Road

The next morning we continued on till Highway 1 merged with Highway 101 and led us to the coast. We decided to stop at Refugio State Park for the night because other Californian cyclists had recommended it as the best of the three local parks, and they were right! It was the first hike/bike site that we had come upon that offered cyclists camp quarters directly across from the beach and as far away from the rail tracks as possible. It was also the first park that allowed us to pay for our stay via a credit card machine, found directly outside the door of the entry kiosk. After meeting our camp neighbors (a local family who rode in from Goleta for the weekend) we set up camp and wandered along the beach.

At the peak of San Julian Road, heading toward Highway 101 The Old Highway 1 near Refugio State Park Camping at Refugio State Park Thanks to Tim & Laurel for taking this photo of us!

While walking along the beach I noticed small patches of what looked like oil slicks on the sand, immediately contributing it to leakage from the oil rigs seen just off shore. However, Kai noticed a “disclaimer” sign about the oil being “natural tar” which had been in the area for centuries. We laughed, assuming it was another marketing ploy by the oil industry to cover their own tracks, which it ends up, may or may not be true.

The Disclaimer Oil Rig off of Refugio State Beach

I did a little research and discovered that there actually has been natural oil seepage in the area for centuries. In fact, the coastline running from Santa Barbara to El Capitan State Park, aptly named “Coal Oil Point“, has the largest natural oil and gas seeps in the Western Hemisphere and accounts for a huge amount of environmental pollution. It’s estimated to release 40 tons of methane, 19 tons of ROC (reactive organic gas), and from 100 to 150 barrels of liquid petroleum per day. Staggering!

But there are differing views of where the majority of the oil is spewing from.

Several groups, including UCSB and Stop Oil Seeps in California, claim the seepage is coming from natural spouts and propose that offshore drilling be increased, claiming that, historically, drilling has reduced the pressure of reservoirs, and thus, the rate of seepage. I, personally, find it hard to swallow their recommendation, after considering the USCB’s funding sources and SOS member connections to the oil industry. When I dug a little deeper, it appears USCB’s Hydrocarbon Seeps Project is funded, in part, by the U.S. Minerals Management Services department, the same department that continued to issue pardons and exemptions for big oil companies in the wake of 2010′s Gulf of Mexico spill, despite a government ordered moratorium on off-shore drilling. And a quick read of the biographies on SOS’s “About Us” page shows several members have been employed by or directly benefited from the oil industry in the past, and some are even serving as current board members for oil companies. Are we to believe that these financial connections don’t effect either organization’s recommendations?

Postcard showing oil extraction was prevalent in the pre-regulation past.

Others, mostly local citizens who have done some historical digging, claim the seepage was caused by the oil industry in the first place, and that the majority of oil is not coming from naturally occurring seepage points. History documents wide-spread oil exploration in and around “Coal Oil Point” well before any regulations existed to prevent environmental damage or to oversee the clean up of sites after oil extraction was exhausted. They claim the leaks are coming from hundreds of old wells, pre-regulation age, that weren’t capped correctly, or at all. Despite citizen calls for clean up and capping of the old wells, there wasn’t much I could find in the way of media coverage (or of government or oil industry sponsored studies) of this possible source of the leaks. That’s not surprising, though, since our media industry, over the last couple of decades, has generally gone the way of following the money rather than following the story.

Regardless of where the oil is coming from, the seeps, as well as current or future off-shore drilling ventures, pose a huge environmental problem, affecting the air and water quality in and around the coast. Kai & I were pretty surprised that we hadn’t heard anything about these issues before.

The Glow of Off Shore Oil Rigs in California, as seen from Refugio State Park

WHO CARES ABOUT SUSTAINABLE ENERGY ANYWAY?

Although our current administration claims to support “clean energy” and recently rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, it continues to support our addiction to fossil fuels and dangerous extraction/production methods, while under-funding more financially and energy efficient methods:

In 2010 the administration continued to approve offshore exploration waivers to oil companies, even after saying they were temporarily halting drilling due to the horrific Gulf of Mexico spill.

In his most recent State of the Union Address, Obama committed to “open more than 75% of potential offshore oil and gas resources to exploration“, and to ramp up harmful natural gas extraction methods like ’fracking‘.

Obama continues to support expanding nuclear power plants and proposes providing federal loans to build new factories, despite the obvious environmental hazards, as demonstrated this past year by Japan’s tragedy. Although the U.S. hasn’t built a factory in over 30 years, he recently approved the building of one in the state of Georgia, despite a massive public outcry.

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Our GPS tracks for this route at BikeToastRouter

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Next Stop :: Santa Barbara