Thursday, May 10, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
New Spring Hours
The Bike Cave's expanded spring hours are...
Tuesday - 7-9pm (Female identified persons only, please!!)
Wednesday - 7-9pm open shop
Saturday - 2-6pm open shop
The Bike Cave is currently located at 1712 Jefferson St. around the house and through the basement door!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Bike Cave Hours
The Bike Cave is now open on Wednesday evenings. Stop by for community dinner at 6pm, followed by open shop from 7pm-9pm. If your bikes are hibernating for winter, come down anyway to help sort parts, build bikes for Spring, and spiff up the shop for next season!
We're hoping to host bike related discussions later this winter, so if you have an idea or want to learn something let us know!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
tons of bikes at FB4K!
"Free Bikes 4 Kidz is a passionate group of cyclistswho love giving as much as riding. It’s our goal to
help every child feel the joys and freedom of riding
his or her first bike. Through our bike philanthropy
method, we aim to help our communities grow
stronger and closer through the power of cycling."
This year FB4K is hoping to donate hundreds of bikes, and need help building them! If you're in the cities consider stopping by and to give them a hand.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/bike-cave-collective-duluth-mn
Happy Riding!
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
mechanics report; weekend of 4/16/11
This week should be warmer, come stop by and talk shop.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Bike Cave is open!
Here are the open shop hours...
Wednesday 5pm-8pm (Female identified night)
Thursday 5pm-8pm
Saturday 2pm-6pm
We're also planning Friday sweater rides for those of you interested... more to come!
Hope to see you soon. As always, email us at bikecave1712@hotmail.com with any questions or comments.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Open Shop Hours coming soon!
Email us: bikecave1712@hotmail.com
or call (218)728.3771
if you want to help out with open shop hours this spring and summer.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Ped Zepplin, a lighter than air human-powered vehicle fantasy
A Really Cool Idea from the Dorothy Day Dinner Table
You and your two travelling companions wake up to the sun rising over the South Pacific at Point Puponga, New Zealand, right at the tip of the south island . Your trusty Ped Zepplin bobs gently in the breeze, which is freshening out of the south, perfect for your trip of about 100 miles today across the water to the North Island.
The Zep is moored, but it rests gently against the ground, having lost a little hydrogen and dipped just below neutral buoyancy overnight. Venting a little more off to fire up your stove, you brew up some coffee, and as the sun crests the waters, you climb into the hull of your vessel, and throw the clutch that connects one of the on-board bicycles to your electrical generator. Last night, you set up the electrolyzing vessel beside the ship's hull, with the H2 tube leading from the cathode up to the rigid airship's envelope. You strap on a breathing mask connected to the anode and start to pedal.
As you spin, you inhale the pure oxygen byproduct of your efforts, while hydrogen goes up to re-inflate your craft. Each mole of diatomic hydrogen you produce requires 237 kj at the electrode. However, with this compact and portable electrolysis setup, the reaction is only about 80% efficient, and your electrical generator wastes some pedal power as well, so in the end you are able to transmit about 50% of your pedal power to the electrolysis reaction (hence 474 kJ/mole). This translates as 131 watt-hours, or a steady spin for an hour, or intense effort at 262 W for half an hour.
Checking you thermometer and barometer, you notice to your surprise that today's conditions are exactly the standard temperature and pressure for the gas laws. This means that the one mole of hydrogen you produced in your hour effort will occupy 22.4 L. This volume of hydrogen provides under an ounce (.88) of lifting force at sea level, so thank God we got the envelope tightened up in Sydney. Back when we launched, the three of us had to pedal at 131 watts for 252 days straight to fill the 407,000 L bulk of the airship that supports our collective 500 lbs plus the 500 lbs of the super-light airship. This might seem like a giant envelope, and it is. This particular model is a cylinder 6 m in diameter by 14 m in length. The volume is 12 times that of the largest tanker-trailers!
Fortunately, you always keep the envelope nearly topped up, and you're never in a hurry to descend, so this mole of hydrogen providing about an ounce of lifting power should be enough to get you and your friends on your way. Striking camp and casting off lines, you lift off to the north, again pedaling to drive propellers to help yourselves along.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Spring Fling at the B.C.C
Create Everywhere!
Redeem Everything!
Be A Fool!
The Bike Cave Collective
Saturday, March 27, 2010
fun With Statistics
Motorists usually at fault. The NYC group Right of Way says: "After NYC cycling fatalities increased twofold in 1999, police rushed to cover their, er, reputation by claiming (without analysis or supporting data) that cyclists are to blame in 75% of cycling deaths. Right of Way took a closer look. Surprise! The truth is just the reverse, as listed in our report, The Only Good Cyclist (PDF)." According to Right of Way, over 90% of cyclist deaths in NYC are the fault of drivers.
Most at-fault motorists who kill cyclists and pedestrians get off the hook. A study by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition shows that three out of four at fault drivers were never even cited for hitting and killing pedestrians. 22% of fatal pedestrian crashes involved hit and run drivers, yet, none of the runaway motorists were found or charged. In New York, 70-92% of drivers were at-fault in killing pedestrians and cyclists, but 74% didn't even get a ticket. (RightOfWay.org, 1999) The story in Austin is similar.
Auto crashes is the leading cause of death for people age 6-27, males age 6-23 & 26, and females age 4-6 & 8-28. (4)
Red Lights. This July 2000 article in USA Today has a lot of statistics about cars running red lights (which kill about 800 people a year nationwide).
Average age of killed/injured cyclists. In 1996 the average age of cyclists killed in traffic crashes was 31 years, and the average age of those injured was 23.2 years. In 1986, the average age was 23 years. (5)
Saftey in numbers. Worldwide, the greater the concentration of cyclists, the lower the fatality rate. That is, the more cyclists, the safer it is to cycle. By converse, the fewer cyclists, the more dangerous it is to cycle. This is a main reason why cyclists oppose helmet laws, because they're shown to reduce the number of cyclists, and that makes cycling more dangerous for those who remain (whether they wear a helmet or not). The Safety in Numbers principle was proved even within this country, as NYC has a similar rate of cycling fatalities per capita compared to the rest of the country, but nearly four times as many people bike or walk to work in NYC compared to the rest of the U.S. (Bicyclist Fatalities and Serious Injuries in New York City PDF, 1996-2005)
The most common bike-car collision is a driver failing to yield at a stop sign. (Bicycling Life, 1995)
Streets with bike lanes have a significantly lower crash rate then either major or minor streets without any bicycle facilities (38 and 56% respectively). (William Moritz, 1998)
Streets with bike lanes are safer than those without. Article also has information about the safety of bike paths. (BicyclingInfo.org, 2004)
Risk of injury from cycling compared to driving. 45,000 cyclists vs. 2.4M motorists were injured in 2005, from traveling 6.2 billion milies and 1.6 M-M miles respectively, yielding 7.3 injuries per million miles for cyclists and 1.5 injuries per million miles traveled for motorists, making cyclists 4.9 times more likely to be injured per mile of travel. NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts 2005 (PDF)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
"If I Ride": A Biking Poem
Monday, February 8, 2010
a few moments from last summer (Thanks Alice!)
Sadie, Seth and Greg in the backyard
Critical Mass!
Travis, Jeremy, Sadie, Eric, Emily, Seth, and Alice's Mom.
Greg, Sadie, and Seth in the backyard still...
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Stuck Accelerators: Toyotas and the Fossil-Fuel Growth Economy
by Jan Lundberg05 February 2010
From: http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=602&Itemid=1
The story of Toyota cars having accelerator-pedal and brake problems, causing out of control speed and possible crash death in a fireball, is a near perfect allegory for something far more serious: the burning of the planet with fossil fuels including gasoline for cars. The vehicle for the burning of the planet is none other than the fossil-fueled growth economy. The difference this has with the Toyota phenomenon is that we do have real brakes for the global vehicle of destruction, which Toyotas may not have ("News Alert: Toyota Says Prius Brakes Had Design Flaws" - New York Times, Feb. 4, 2010).
As a long-time car-free activist and defender of nature, I have had until now a reaction of boredom and disgust for what I see is a predictable, consumerist news story. I hate to see anyone injured by a car, especially pedestrian and bicyclist victims. Fiery crashes are tragic and avoidable if people would not buy cars. The drivers and passengers of any vehicle are taking great risk and do damage their health even without crashing, by virtue of sitting in a car excessively, filling up the gas tank, and causing psychic harm to themselves by driving in an age of known global warming. The animals crushed on the roads -- a million a day in the U.S. -- are never considered in government policy or corporate agendas. Instead, the effect of a recall of cars on stock prices is more real in the news.
It is doubtful that people will learn what they should from the Toyota fiasco: that driving cars is the problem, and that technology fails. When Ford Motor Co. calculated that Pinto cars could be made with gasoline tanks prone to rupture and explosion, just to save a few dollars per manufactured car, the news of this crime did nothing to get people to question the dominance of transportation by corrupt executives and stockholders. Lately, the problem of cell-phone chattering and texting has become a big deal, with New York Times editorials punctuating the apparent crisis -- when it is really the driving that kills people. Take away cell phones: over 40,000 U.S. citizens are still slaughtered per year in crashes, and another 100,000 perhaps from diseases from exhaust each year.
So can we finally question driving? Is our society incapable of reform, so that car-sharing and a preference for bicycling and mass transit can prevail? Not only would people be saved from crashes and disease, but they would save money and get more exercise. The average speed of the U.S. motorist is but five miles per hour, when adjusted for the time spent in traffic gridlock, in earning money to buy and maintain a car, to earn money for the fuel and insurance, etc. Unfortunately, the capacity to reform the system of corporate profit of dominant industries over human and animal life, and to protect our precious climate, is about nil.
That is because the accelerator of the fossil-fueled growth economy is stuck, and we are speeding toward the wall of resource limits and ecological degradation. Peak oil and overshoot of nature's carrying capacity have visited us before we had a chance to change land-use and work patterns. It is too bad President Obama is not an agent of real change, when preserving the big automobile companies and wars over oil take precedence over the welfare of the American people and the planet we all live on. The White House is more concerned over the Toyota corporation's and Wall Street’s reactions than the safety of drivers, when it wants Secretary of Transportation LaHood to never say again "Stop driving it." But let's not make the mistake of praising the Secretary, because his real policy is to keep four-wheeled global-warming coffins selling like hotcakes: he wants U.S. car companies to keep "getting their acts together.”
To take our foot off the accelerator of the fossil-fueled growth economy is to support local economies, stop commuting long distances, maximize local food production, establish cooperatives, engage in bartering and mutual aid, and love nature far more than accumulating dollars for hyper-consumption. These changes all have to come, but why smash into the wall at full speed when we can at least slow down and possibly lessen the impact? Is all we can do to avoid petroleum pollution is just step over the oil slicks on the asphalt wastelands of parking lots?
What can the average person do to gain some safety and to support local, ecological economics? Do not buy a car. If you must, buy a used one in order to keep money in the community. Don’t fool yourself that there’s a “clean car” to “help Mother Earth.” And, as the Transportation Secretary told Congress regarding the unsafe Toyota -- but applying his advice also to the fossil-fueled growth economy -- “Stop driving it.”
STUCK ACCELERATORS - by Erik Lundberg Scott
submitted to the New York Times byJan LundbergOil-industry analystPublisher, CultureChange.org(formerly the Auto-Free Times of the Alliance for a Paving Moratorium)Sail Transport NetworkP.O. Box 4347, Arcata, CA 95518 USA(215) 243-3144 jan "at" culturechange.org
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Cut up your Driver's Licenses, Kids! (or just don't get them in the first place)
The following article, from MSN Money--of all places--looks at Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute's recent findings on automobile purchasing trends. The cultural shift is in motion, folks.
"Better be careful, messing with the auto industry could take down the American Economy." -from a "pro-car culture" comment on the public response forum to the article.
The end of America’s car-loving culture?
The U.S. vehicle fleet shrank by 4 million last year, and fewer young people are getting licenses. Great news for parents, but what about automakers?
Posted by Money Staff on Friday, January 8, 2010 4:15 PM
By Anna Vander Broek, MSN Money
Facebook-loving teenagers and college grads strapped with debt could mean less work for automakers.
The U.S. vehicle fleet shrank by 4 million cars and trucks -- almost 2 percent -- last year. For the first time since World War II, Americans scrapped more cars and trucks than they bought. American’s dumped 14 million vehicles compared to the 10 million new cars sold, according to a recent report by the Earth Policy Institute.
One significant factor in America’s downshift is that fewer American teenagers are getting their driver's licenses. The number of young people with licenses peaked at 12 million in 1978 and is now under 10 million, says the same report.
Several factors, like young people socializing on the Internet, living in urban areas where cars are unnecessary and taking on more debt such as college loans, which can affect credit needed for a car, are decreasing the number of young car consumers.
Lester Brown, founder and president of Earth Policy Institute, writes that young people buying fewer cars is just one aspect of a larger cultural shift in America away from being a car-loving country.
All the unwelcomed woes of today -- the high price of gas, an unstable economy, rising parking fees -- are forcing Americans to take their foot off the purchasing pedal.
Mother Earth may welcome the reprieve, but this is just one more pothole for American automakers. 2009 was anything but easy for the auto industry with government bailouts, bankruptcies, major sales drops and many dealerships all over the country closing their doors.
Brown predicts this trend of scrappage exceeding sales will continue through at least 2020. He believes U.S. auto sales will never again reach the 17 million sold each year between 1999 and 2007, but rather expects between 10 million and 14 million vehicles sold per year.
