Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Time for a TurnaroundWell, my friends, things are finally looking up, and good timing, too, since I’m sure you’re all sick of me bitching. Recent bike build, including wheels… fun! In what feels like a fairly short time, I’ve come from sitting around … Continue reading → […]
- This Raised My PulseHey, baby… wanna ride? I may be injured, but I’m not dead yet. I can still have racy thoughts. Here’s more info. In other news, UBI was an awesome success! I had a blast. I highly recommend it. Overhaul day…. … Continue reading → […]
- Time for a Turnaround
- Edgy Veggie
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Dinner for a cause
We all need to eat. So plan ahead for Wednesday, March 2.
PLAN-Boulder County’s annual dinner will be held next Wednesday downtown at the Hotel Boulderado (2115 13th St.). Swanky drinks, a delicious buffet and keynote speaker Van Jones will keep you well fed in body and mind.
Jones (Oh, and here’s the Wikipedia link in case you’re headed there next) is known across the globe as a pioneer in human rights and the clean energy economy and was the primary advocate for the Green Jobs Act.
The deets:
Who: You and PLAN-Boulder County, a citizen’s organization devoted to making sure Boulder’s city and county governments comply with environmental causes.
What: PLAN-Boulder County’s annual dinner
Where: Hotel Boulderado
When: Wednesday, March 2; cocktail hour begins at 6 p.m. followed by dinner and talk at 7 p.m.
Cost: $50 for dinner and the program
For more info, check out www.planboulder.org.
Tour deThrift is Tour deAwesome
Ruth Bushard of Erie shops at Rags Consignment in Boulder in December.
I seriously love to thrift. It’s partly because I don’t make a ton of money but mostly because I love the challenge of it. Getting something awesome — and often practically brand new — for a fraction of the cost just feels, somehow, like you’re winning. The game. Whatever that is.
Oh, and it’s also awesome for the environment. And in Boulder, there is no less than 30 thrift-type stories. You read that correctly — 30. The thrift stores cover the entire spectrum from clothes (check out Rags Consignment or Buffalo Exchange) to bookstores (The Bookworm and Redletter Secondhand Books).
If you want to check them all out — leave no thrift store unvisited — search no further than Eco-Cycle, which publishes two awesome maps to help you out: a Tour deThrift for both Boulder and Longmont.
Awesome.
Not so Xcel-ent for rebates
Homeowners hoping to install solar panels for financial incentives may change their minds. Photo by Zak Wood.
Boulder’s local utility provider Xcel Energy is altering its rebate system to significantly decrease the financial incentives it offers solar panel owners.
Xcel said Wednesday that, effective immediately, the combined incentive for new solar installations would decrease from $2.35 to $2.01 per watt. The company also filed paperwork with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday that, if approved, would further drop the combined incentive to $1.25 per watt.
Members of the Colorado solar industry say the deep and sudden cuts to the incentive program could be ruinous.
Read the rest of Laura Snider’s story “Boulder County solar industry decries Xcel’s plan to slash incentives.”
Cycle tracks to replace bike lanes?
We like bikes here in Boulder. Some of us use them to get in a great workout. Others pedal to and fro to wherever they need to be. And those who drive are typically kind enough to share the road.
We’re proud of this bike-laned land we call home. But are bike lanes good enough? Advocates of cycle tracks don’t think so.
Question: So what the hell is a cycle track?
Answer: It’s a completely separate lane for bikers protected by a curb or a concrete barrier.
The cycle track is an idea we Americans have adopted from our neighbors across the (big) pond in Europe. The cycle track makes biking super safe, but building them might mean adding a lot more cement to our beautiful city.
So what do you think? Are Boulder’s bike paths extensive enough, or do we need cycle tracks as well?
Read more about them at Grist.com in Elly Blue’s article, “Cyclists shouldn’t ‘share the road,’ they should have their own.”
Green Drinks Boulder: January at the Hotel Boulderado
Green Drinks Boulder: January at the Hotel Boulderado, photo by Caroline Treadway.
On the last Tuesday of the first month of the new year, Green Drinks convened at the historic Hotel Boulderado — the perfect locale for a “Shining” remake in my opinion — for another round of high energy, semi work-related, sustainable fun.
Paige and Chris Rogowski with Dana Richardson, photo by Caroline Treadway.
Before I could fill out my nametag, I met Paige, newly relocated to Boulder, who informed me that Green Drinks is, in fact, international. It’s true. If the bubble bug bites hard enough, Boulder Green Drinkers can leave Colorado and network their way across the globe, from Kazakhstan to Colombia to Canada, where a multitude of Green Drinks evenings await. Paige, who’s two weeks into her new job at a certain well-known organization dedicated to not littering, suggested it would be a great way to travel. Keep that in mind when ramping up your carbon footprint.
Vicky and Carrie at January's Boulder Green Drinks, Hotel Boulderado. Photo by Caroline Treadway.
I’d barely wrapped my head around international Green Drinks, when I met Vicky from Blue Drinks. Yep, blue. Vicky, whose turquoise eyes perfectly matched her beaded necklace, lives in Denver and misses the ocean, deeply. So deeply, in fact, that she’s united local ocean-lovers in an effort to save the big blue liquid that surrounds us. According to Vicky, even though we can’t see the ocean from here, a mile high, it’s still worth saving.
Kira Davis, a massage therapist wearing a pink smock, says she’s been practicing her craft since she was three, thanks to her ailing mother. Having just moved from Hawaii, she too misses the ocean, and can’t wait for warm weather so she can bike to Fort Collins and swim across Horsetooth Reservoir. Offering 25 percent dscount massages to Green Drinkers who chose planet-friendly transportation that evening (extra incentive, as if any was needed), Kira’s really into worms. She claims to have 500 pets, all of them, of course, nematodes. She’s extremely passionate about worm composting and hopes to promote this planet-saving measure in City of Boulder apartment complexes.
January's Boulder Green Drinks at the Hotel Boulderado, photo by Caroline Treadway.
Thanks to the very tall, well-tailored realtor who wears a suit even on weekends, the evening ended on a literary note, courtesy Zig Zigler: “You have to be before you can do, and you have to do before you can have.”
A welcome respite from last year’s holiday grind, the 2011 Green Drinks debut was a blurry celebration of work-inspired socializing, which of course, makes it legit.
EPA in trouble?
Are you siting down, fellow Boulderite? You’re about to read some scary stuff.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton is sponsoring a bill to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
It appears, however, that Upton might have trouble rallying support.
“The bottom line is now clearer than ever: Democrats, Republicans and Independents across America want politicians to protect the health of America’s children rather than the profit-driven agenda of big polluters” said Pete Altman, Climate Campaign director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Chairman Upton and other members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will now be hard-pressed to ignore the fact that their constituents want Congress to let the EPA do its job of safeguarding the health of American families.”
What would this mean for Boulder?
Cold vs. Green
We don’t have to tell you this, but in case you’ve been stuck inside: IT’S BEEN REALLY COLD OUT THERE for the past few days.
Uncharacteristically cold even.
Are you as burly as Rich Rotunno? Photo by Jeremy Papasso.
So I’m curious (no, not nosy, curious) about whether the harsh bite of the frigid air has superseded your dedication to being green.
Are you still biking to work?
Did you take a longer than normal shower this morning after your run?
Other thoughts?
Hit us back!
Want more info on winter weather? Stay up to date at the Daily Camera.
Climbers’ stewardship
The Boulder Climbing Community, a local group of, you guessed it, climbers, wants to clean up its own mess in Boulder Canyon.
The BCC’s proposal suggests a cooperative effort to restore damage already done and to prevent harmful impacts in the future. Briggs lists five to 10 approach and descent routes that are in critical need of attention, but he hopes to eventually establish marked trails to the nearly 100 climbing rocks in the canyon.
“We’re trying to get permission to be our own stewards and to solve our own problem,” said Roger Briggs, who founded the BCC last January and is known as a local climbing legend for his 104 ascents of the Diamond, Longs Peak’s treacherous east face.
Beetle woes to continue
Boulder residents are wondering if something good could come from this bitterly cold weather, namely a decrease in the pine beetles attacking lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees.Unfortunately, the answer is no. Despite highs of 12, 3 and 10 degrees for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, the beetles will return this summer.
“It’s very unlikely that these temperatures will be cold enough to significantly affect the pine beetles,” said Tom Veblen, professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Data collected by D.A. Leatherman, I. Aguayo, and T.M. Mehall in their report, “Mountain Pine Beetle,” determined that temperatures of at least 30 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) must last for five days at the least in order for freezing temperatures to make an impact on the pine beetle population.
Yes, we hate you Mr. Beetle. Photo by Jeff Mitton.
Veblen explains that the cold’s duration is necessary because the beetles are in an extreme state of dormancy during the winter, offering them great protection. Also, the recorded temperatures are vastly different from what the beetles experience.
“The temperature at the weather station is likely to be quite a bit colder (than where the beetle is,) beneath the snow and beneath the bark,” he said.
To the dismay of many, the beetles will be back.
For more information about the recent cold spell, see “Temperatures in Boulder climb back towards normal.”
Go green(er), get funding
Here in Boulder, we’ve got people who care about animals, who protect plants, and who worry about rocks. We’ve got groups watching out for mammals, birds and rodents. We love our outdoor sports and work to take care of the environment in which we play.
In short, Boulder rocks at being green.
Yep. There are groups out there protecting little rat things like this. Photo by Jeff Mitton.
And so I have a proposal for all of you environmentally savvy individuals: Enter yourself or tell someone you admire to enter him/herself to be a winner in the Green Awards before March 6.
Mr. or Ms. first place winner gets $25,000 and a trip to Los Angeles for the Green Awards celebration (although why they’re hosting the bash in such a smog-filled city is beyond me).
So here’s the place to sign up: https://www.thegreenawards.com.
And please, get in touch with Courtney, Laura or Dave at the Daily Camera when you win. It’ll make a sweet story.
