Tioga Pass, CA 9,945 ft. to the top From Tom’s Cascades Sierra Cycling Tour 2011

We have completed 2 full years of writing for the Biking Architect and have reached a Summit.  As the primary writer, I have decided I need to put my energies in 2012 into launching my Wise Ears, Professional Listening Services business. As fun as writing here is and making so many new and Green discoveries, there are folks who are doing this full time with full funding and they are making a difference.   I invite you to subscribe to their work and endeavors to keep you in the GREEN.

Brightworks Sustainability Advisors whose job it is to educate and keep people informed. I read every word they put out, it is so good.

SIGHTLINE Daily or Weekly Newsletter  are fabulous updates about everything that is happening in the Pacific Northwest to do with the environment.  Alan During keeps his staff investigating local trends and actions along with writing about all the politics and movements in the area.

So I will not say goodbye, because when cycling season starts again, I am sure we will have some more news and tours to share…and of course when I can afford a new bicycle you will be the first to know!

I am not stopping or quitting, I just need to earn a living so am off to Wise Ears and Listening.

Oh, by the way, I just listened to a young fellow practice his presentation material for Microsoft and he got in….You just may need my services more as a listener!  Come on Over…Check us out.

Thank you for your continued support – you are appreciated.

Patricia

After the Run

I did not do the Seattle Marathon (in the pouring rain storm) this year, nor have I done it in the past.  But I did do the Turkey Trot in San Jose with 21,000 other folks.   2 of my daughters joined me and we took our canned goods for the Second Harvest Food Bank.

I came in 901 in just about my best time and that was #17 for my age group for the 10K.  My daughters did very well too, but feel the slow down at the finish line did not give them a very accurate reading for their time. We had a great time and it was great fun to do as a family event.

My neighbors were in Long Island, New York and 9 of their family members walked or ran the Turkey Trot near Flushing Meadows.   They thought it was a fabulous way to celebrate Thanksgiving with the family too.

Upper Berry Creek Falls

Before Thanksgiving we spent some time walking other parts of the San Francisco area.  This time we headed for the Hills.   Our first day long hike was at Berry Creek Falls Loop at Big Basin Redwoods State Park;   a marvelous day and another good time with family.

Down the Steps

On Black Friday we avoided shopping and once again ventured out into the wilderness and fresh air.

North Peak at Mount Diablo State Park was a strenuous day hike we shared with a number of families that day.

View of Mt Diablo North Peak from Mt Olympia

We were cautioned to watch for Poison Oak and rattlesnakes – and to leave the Banana Slugs alone (Not a problem for those of us from Washington State rain forest!)

View from the Top of Mt Diablo North Peak

I can highly recommend this as a good way to spend your family time together.  None of us overate and that was a boon to our time together also.

Have you ever thought about Turkey Trotting?  Changing the old traditions?

Necessity is the mother of invention, but without education, integration and understanding people (of the general species) we are not able to comprehend or develop solutions.

I had a conversation with an architect this morning who was designing a house for a family in a planned community.   He was scratching his head because they wanted something unique but exactly like all the other houses in their group.  The designer was frustrated that he had to squeeze in a bazaar little room between the 4 bedrooms and yet not add any square feet or cost to the house.  The little room would make the house even more similar to all the neighbors’ houses but create only a small space big enough for a desk and chair.  Not big enough for a TV room or exercise space; maybe replacing the idea of a telephone room with a computer room?  The fellow was trying to figure out how to educate these folks that making 2 of the 4 bedrooms a bit bigger would actually make for a better design and usable area?

Education is so key to our lives and many people are just not able to visualize or understand – they have to see it to believe it.

A local conservative mega- church has just put in a car wash to make enough funds to keep going.  I suggested to my community (in 1975) they should use their building for a recycling center and create a gym in the large wing of their building since they were right downtown and near the lake walk.  They thought I was being humorous.   Some of the mainline churches own whole grocery store chains and fruit juice production companies to supplement their income and stay true to their beliefs.

As my community gears up to sell grapefruit, oranges, coffee and chocolate for yet another season of feeding and supporting the homeless in our midst – I can see clearly how I failed to educate and create understanding and I can see how architects are not helping the re-creation of their communities in an educating way either.

When I was feeling hopeless and discouraged, in came my new weekly TED newsletter…And Garbage Man Mike was a tremendous inspiration – I wanted to share his short video with you and see if your find it amazing also….Ingenuity  in action.

Mike Biddle A Garbage Man

What did you think?   Did it raise your level of awareness?  Ignite the Ingenuity levels of your work? What Questions are you not asking yourself?  How can you re-create your work to educate and illuminate?

Are we still going to let all the coal we mine pollute our nation twice and keep shipping it off to foreign lands?  I think we will be back to Greed, not Ingenuity.

House Plan

House plans are some of the most important parts of living.  Not only from the idea of building a new house or structure, but also to incorporate changes and meet new needs in your existing structure.

As we approach the holiday season, lots of my clients are contacting me for a new set of drawings, evaluations, or plans to make changes to their homes.   Some need new heating systems and want to make changes that will make their homes more efficient and sustainable.  My neighbors are now caring for a young grandchild and one of their mothers; their home needs to be modified.  The role of the architect is to keep current and help the client anticipate what will be required to make their homes not just a patch job, but a testimonial to their lifestyle and a virtue to an ongoing community.

House Plans are important as our family contemplates how long we will live in this house, what repairs will need to be completed – like replacing our 20 year old professional oven – and how the kitchen and other rooms in the house will be used in the future.  Will this house become a model home for the future or will it be an eye sore and a problem for the community?

House Plans are about research and communications.  Yes they are, about digging in and sticking with the conversation until all the questions are asked and satisfied.  House plans are important to the neighborhood and community, just as caring for the trees, native plants and wild life that share your space.

Are you cleaning  your gutters and the storm water drains in your neighborhood?

I thought I would like to share with you a link to a solid decision making model that our family has used for the past 34 years and it has assisted us in making value oriented, cost effective decisions with our house plans

How to Make Decisions and Change

What considerations are important to you as you make house plans?  What are your life style considerations and personal style when you are working with your house plans?

This is what I have been thinking about while the Biking Architect is off cycling.  I have been thinking that the architectural providers need to look closer at water and the earthly relationship to water.

I know that there is a worldwide shortage of clean drinking water.  I know that we use clean drinking water to shower and flush our wastes away.  I know that our local treatment plant (LOTT) has a new Platinum LEED building and a huge education center and they clean the water and then use it to water the grass and gardens in the city.  And, I was just in a building in Tacoma, Washington that had reuse water in the bathrooms.

I want to look at water from another view.  I am a very sensitive person.  My body speaks to me with headaches and inflammation and pain when it breaths in, lives in, and ingest things which it will not tolerate.

I grew up on clean, pure artisan well water.  I believe this is why I survived my childhood.  Seriously, I think this was a vital element in what helped me to grow and become.

Now our water comes from a spring a few miles away and there are so many people that the water is chlorinated and I have purchased an expensive charcoal/ electric water filter to clean this chemical out of my drinking and cooking water.   I have a chlorine restrictor shower head also.  I can smell and get a headache from chlorine outgasing from people’s clothing (laundry products) and house cleaning products.   My children suffered allergy attacks from cleaning products. My ovarian cancer was formaldehyde consequential and my fat is storing toxins.

We are allowed in the USA to bring anything into our own homes that we want to – and apparently people want to, because toxic chemicals and cleaning products are purchased at a high rate in this country – along with the perfumes to cover up the chemical smells.  Then we drink caffeine to dull our senses and make us artificially feel better – or create a sugar high.

Many bottled water companies just use regular tap water in their products. BPA in the bottles.

We are chasing feeling good, but we have lost the definition.

I have detoxed my system of mercury -  and now even wild, fresh caught salmon is too toxic for me to eat.

I have another concern surfacing:  synthetic estrogens.  I have been researching for nearly two weeks everything I can find on the subject.  Now estrogen occurs naturally in the environment and our bodies sometimes have trouble dealing with it but synthetic estrogen is another problem area.  We know that it increases the risk of breast cancer for women and men.  Many industrial and agricultural chemicals are synthetic estrogens. We know it is in chicken to plumb them before sale.  We know it is in birth control and hormone replacement therapies, and we know that it is used in other prescription drugs and medications.  We are creating new learning problems in children; a new dementia.

What we may not be aware of is that it is a huge pollutant factor to our water and it is not easily filtered out -  Our Sound and waterways are being inundated with this carcinogenic pollutant.

Then add farm runoff, industrial runoff, and chemical runoff and our water ways hardly stand a chance.

I believe the architect and the planners need to add this information to their information systems for clients.  I know this will be hard…

I just listened to a family member who constructed a permanent structure on their beach property and had to use special products and plant hundreds of beach preserving plants shout out: “No Governor is going to legislate whether I can use my chemical fertilizers on my roses or that I have to remove my roses from the beach property!”  “ I am not going to pay someone to learn the environmental rules they are enforcing.”

So I would just like to say that some of us on this planet are already having major issues with our water and the pollutants.  We are being sickened and our children are being denied health and are having learning problems.

I think we need to insist on more green – more living buildings more education and as a group architects need to blockade any building of more toxic sites.   No matter the complaint about expense – we need to educate for the future as often as possible.

What did you do today to make the water cleaner?  To Educate?  To Inform?

I am living the experience and I want my children and grandchildren to have a future and I fear it is almost too late.

Estrogens in Plastic Water Bottles Effecting Boys

What Dow Does Not Want You To Know About Your Water

After making 5 trips to the City Planning Department to get all the right paperwork and permits submitted for review and becoming concerned that each person on task wants something different, one can get discouraged and frustrated – even architects.

Lots of DIY homeowners try to skip this process altogether – It is better if they do not skip it.

Recently we listened to a home owner complain about all the “right” codes and regulations that he had undertaken to build his new beach house on his family heritage property.  It took him 4 years to get everything taken care of and the project finished.  He was required to add 250 new native plants and a rain garden on the beach facing side of the property and was now waiting for approval.   Over the course of the weekend, he told many variations on the problems he faced and solved growing angry with each frustration recounted.  The owner had used an architect on one project and then followed through on that expensive experience with a drafting person to complete the second phase of the project.  He never stated whether or not the architect or the drafting individual were LEED certified – from all the problems encountered I would conclude not.

The week before, we had gone to hear and get training at AIA (American Institute of Architecture) lecture on the new Living Building Challenge Project completed or underway.  Those firms were all LEED certified and the Institutes were focused on what the requirements would be to go beyond the greatest LEED certification.    Both projects that were detailed involved hours of time by a professional group which was creating a data base and tracking down the products that would comply with the regulations and the RED LIST.   It took 22 researchers over a year to create the data base for the new University Building in Portland.   22 people working full time.

The room was not full enough of architects, engineers, developers, and construction people to consider it more than just a baby step in the educational right direction.  Continuing Education credit was offered. The applauded and were grateful for the new data base of products and code definition; including exceptions.

Our Do It Yourself (DIY) homeowner was rightly frustrated and right to believe that folks are just learning what all this means.

He was particularly nasty about our current Governor’s role in all his learning curve of projects and was very vocal.  We thought he needed to become proud of his efforts and celebrate how much he learned by doing these projects and reclaiming his beach.  His grandchildren may very well still have a homestead and beautiful view in their futures.

One of the frustrations for the DIY fellow was that on several bills he was charged for the time the city official had to sit down and LEARN how to use the new codes and regulations.  He did not want to pay for someone to learn – the county or city should pay for that.  What do you think?

The DIY homeowner did not wish to become an environmentally solid citizen – he just wished to comply and do what he wanted to do and finish his projects.   So he is doing that – he got his less expensive windows and now lives with out-gassing (PVC- top of the RED LIST) throughout the projects.  They use an extremely environmentally toxic laundry detergent and dryer softer and they have eliminated their solar clothes line.

Education    Education    Education    Education    Education    Education – NEEDED

Do you think he learned anything that will be useful or will his anger at Architects, the Governor, the City-County people, the Shoreline Management Folks – outweigh the benefits to everyone and especially the future of the environment?

Change is a process and sometimes very hard with the first steps.

Composting Toilet

I have heard it said that 3 times something comes up in one’s life there should be some response or action taken.  Composting Toilets have been part of my life 3 times in the past week.  So I thought at the very minimum I would write about this threesome here.

My first encounter was at a friend’s lake front 100 year old cabin, with electricity but no running water. At my age, I was a bit concerned that I was about to encounter a pit latrine of some form or other.  But this was not to be the case, for in the area that might have been a bedroom at one time, was a lovely, modern composting toilet.   Quiet. Clean. Efficient.   I was relieved.

The next night I went to a program on the completed Living Building Challenge 2.0 projects in the USA.  Very exciting experience and I wrote about it at PatriciasWisdom I was thrilled to hear about the completed Science Building at the Bertschi School in Seattle, Washington and how elementary school children are learning this is the NORMAL way buildings can be and how healthy their environment can be.  I asked a question about the composting toilet there and the architect said, “Right after the ribbon cutting the children raced to use the composting toilet to see how it worked – they were fascinated!”

My original encounter with a Composting Toilet was at a local county park also on the water front and a bit more isolated, but still a huge success for keeping waste out of the ground water and Sound.  I thought it quite good foresight for our community.

Wikipedia  has a fabulous definition and I found a thorough diagram of how the systems functioned which answered most of my questions.

Now I am wondering about how one gets a whole community to begin thinking seriously about these issues and retrofitting what is already here but needs a whole treatment facility to deal with these issues- it is located in an amazing energy efficient LEED designated building -  So how do we get more people involved and making changes to their thinking and to their waste outcomes?

Our 5 week Mountain Passes trip from Canada to Mexico is just 3 weeks away ( August 15-September 25,2011).  My front panniers, which my children gave me for my birthday and Father’s day have arrived, along with another back pannier for my tent and sleeping gear and that made me happy.   It will be nice to have water proof equipment on my good old bike.

I did an 85 mile trip alone through rain and wind last weekend because everyone else was off doing other things and I have 3 weekends full of weddings and family visits between now and departure.

So besides packing and practicing with my bike loaded, besides getting the chain cleaned and adjusted, and besides purchasing 2 new armadillo spare tires, I thought I needed to excite my brain by shifting into gear with some Mountain pass videos and pictures.

I thought you might like to come along for the ride?

Hope you enjoy these:
Andy Scholl cycling mountain passes in WA

Cycling North Cascades Highway before cars allowed because of the snow – beautiful ride

Highway 20 North Cascades: NW Bikers

Unbeatable Bicycling: Prairie City Oregon

Could You Help Me Gear Up for my Bike Tour?

Stockholm Library Render

Just some other thoughts about our solar panels:
March 2011 was a very, very rainy month as has been since the start of 2011, but the stats for my solar panels was so telling  – with no snow cover during the month at all we still saved 322 pounds of carbon offset which is similar to planting 4 huge Evergreen Trees. Our electricity bill was not huge even with the flash flooding on our street one day and the sump pumps running continually for nearly the whole of the month – and the heat pump. Our panels were still producing power.

Now we just have to give warning that the solar hot water tank when the sun is shining – is so hot and the water comes right away that we need to keep turning it down so that no children will get burned!

There is so much snow pack in the mountains this year, that several of the state’s wind farms are being turned off as there is enough energy even for California!!

How are you doing with your power bills with all this unusual weather?  I would like to know…

Bill Sloan

Bill Sloane took us on a sail boat ride out to Boston Harbor this past week so that I could show our part of Puget Sound – AKA The Salish Sea – to our Danish friends.  Although cloudy with almost no wind, it was one of the most relaxing days we have experienced out on the calm waters.

The children were delighted with the Harbor Seals resting and showing off and we enjoyed seeing a Blue Heron take flight and I was amazed at the huge build up of houses along the shore line.  It had been 12 years since my last boat trip this direction!   What a change and what huge monster houses!

Lots of jellyfish floated by.

On the way back home a dolphin began breaking through the water going the opposite direction from our boat and everyone was delighted.   I do not think I have ever seen a dolphin in Puget Sound.  The only Orca whales that come into our shallow bay are coming to die.  This one was quite alive and well.

Then Sightline Daily had this article posted just today:  Boston Dolphins spotted off Boston Harbor – Puget Sound

I was born at a little cabin at Boston Harbor because C-Sections were not allowed then at our only hospital which was Catholic! I loved hearing that foghorn and seeing the light from the lighthouse as a child.

I have been reading and gathering a slew of articles on ocean pollution and know that synthetic estrogens are truly creating a problem for the wild and ocean life in our area – but sometimes I seem to be alone in my concerns.  Does your laundry soap contribute?

Then I found this poignant article by Al Gore in Rolling Stone Magazine. Have you seen or read it? Al Gore’s Climate of denial

So what did you do for the solstice?   Are you thinking about water and the oceans these days?

I think folks have been too distracted by a Congressman’s underpants and missing the environmental issues.