Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Real Reasons to Ride a Bike; The Challenge Begins

When I started this blog, I had no idea how big a bike would be for Mesquite Hugger. The more I write, learn, and ride, the more I see the life-saving, earth-saving beauty of a simple bicycle.

This post has three places to look and learn:
  • a great video talk
  • a great blog post (someone else's blog)
  • the beginning of the National Bike Challenge (just five days away)

The great video talk

Last week I ran across a TedX Talk by Zach Krapfl on Electric Bike Insider. For a seemingly low-key guy, Zach is a very engaging speaker, and I have no plans of taking a road trip with him. (Watch the video if you want to know why.)

In the video, he talks about one image that has become a screensaver in my head:

Scott at Small Potatoes Farm
 
Please watch the Change in your Transportation Future to see why. (It's 16 minutes, but it flies by on slender tires.)
 
The great blog post
 
[Feel free to skip this part, it is a blogger self-motivation sidebar: I am a semi-reformed gasoholic. While there may have been other seeds germinating, there were two events that defined my conversion: the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Both of those tragic events were direct results of our people lustfully pursuing oil in places we should not have been. That realization led me to a lot of questions that keep leading me to the need to stop seeking fossil fuels.]
 
 
One of my favorite bloggers these days is Bob Sharpe over at Bike 5. Bob is not a problem guy. Bob is a solution guy. His blog title comes from his belief that trips under 5 miles are better served by a bicycle. His most recent post asks a fuel question - What Do You Run On? It's obvious that Bob and Zach have come to a lot of the same conclusions from different directions.
 
If you pay much attention to either or both of them, you might be looking for motivation within yourself to hop on a bike more. Well, here is one that got me rolling a few years back.
 
The Challenge
 
More about the bike challenge in tomorrow's post
 
May we pedal our butts off and make the world safer, healthier, and better for all!

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