Politicking My Way (Trip to Chattanooga Market)

Yesterday I went and watched the movie Food, INC., something that I think everyone should do. It shows very graphically what has been done to our food system and how we choose to eat three times a day is the the most powerful vote we have. I have always believed that along with how we choose to transport ourselves. So this is a picture essay of me on a day of power voting.

So what would that look like? Riding my bike to the Chattanooga Market, of course! It is a highlight of my week, I totally enjoy it, I get amazing food, and knowing this is a very powerful way of making Chattanooga and our world a better place is wonderful icing on it all.

The Chattanooga market is more then just food, it is a feast for the eyes, ears, nose and of course the belly!

Here is the Old Mill Kettle Corn Truck Stage-a feast for the ear, nose and belly all at once!

Flowers were in abundance!

Crafts and art is a major part of the Market!

But let's get down to business with my shopping. how can I resist a farm with the name like the Kinky Turtle, with prize winning organic butternut squash?

Mayfield Farms:

Chili peppers from Sheerlark Farms, another organic farmer.

Nothing says fall more then tart crispy apples (from Rainbow hills farms)

Ready for something to eat? How about some barbecue from Mr. Possum Man here?

mm

My favorite young entrepreneur, Warren of the wonderful Alchemy Spice.

And of course, Paul Smith who is responsible for bringing us the market every week!

After Market, I go to Greenlife for some more power voting, then loaded up, I trudge up the hills to home to cook up all my good eats. Now, this is the way I truly like to do my politicking!

Hobnobbing and Politicking

Last night I hosted a political function. I am not quite sure how this happened as I have made it a point to be politically low profile about who I think should be elected and I am not registered in any party. But I teach Marilyn Lloyd, our former Congresswoman(Dem) of 20 years pilates. She is still around, just as astute as ever and such a sweet kind lady. I would do anything she asked.

She started to talk one day about a function she was having at her house and I thought she was inviting me to attend and I enthusiastically said yes. But I discovered I was agreeing to co-host it! Yikes! How did that happen? The invitations were sent out and along with leading areas Democrats, there my name, actually third on the list. I am now branded!

I did invite, to fulfill my hosting duties, a few of my friends and family, but none attended. How can I blame them? The invitations was sent with a suggested ticket price of $500? When I actually got the invitation I immediately called Marilyn. "Marilyn, uhh, I might be naive about these things, I knew it was a fundraiser, but me and my friends? We are little people. We don't contribute $500 to ANYBODY no matter how much we believe in them. And nobody has even heard of this person yet." As gracious as ever, Marilyn told me to have everyone come anyway just for the party. None of my friends, I guess, felt comfortable doing so, so Q and I were the lone "little" people at this function.

Just briefly, I will say the person that this function was for was Paula Flowers, the woman from Oak Ridge running for the congress position that Zac Wamp is vacating for his bid for governor. And I was highly impressed with her. She is smart, she has worked in government, she has worked in insurance, and she calls herself the rational candidate (hopefully
Paula Flowers and Marilyn Lloyd 
Tennessee will be worn out by all the screeching, hysterical candidates and leaders by then). One thing that I found most impressive was that she has actually read the whole 1000 page health reform bill and understands it all! And she believes she has a good grasp of what is good and what is bad about it. Good for her! Watch for her in the next year. She might be just what we need to restore balance and sense into the government.

But enough about that. This isn't a political blog but a biking blog. Q and I road our bikes out to Marilyn's house by the lake.        Marilyn and me              We started out on Amnicola to save time, but as it was rush hour Friday afternoon, we abandoned Amnicola for the Riverwalk, and only reentered the highway when it was time for us to cross over Hwy 153. Then we got on Kings Road and weaved our way around (and UUUPPP and DDOOOWWWNN) to Marilyn's house on the lake. If you are unafraid of hills, a rider can go all the way out to Booker T Washington State Park and beyond without ever going on Highway 58.

                                                                                    We wore our regular clothes and arrived, after riding almost an hour in heat and humidity, only a little worse for wear. Q was a bit sweatier then me, regretting his choice of wearing corduroys but he soon dried out and looked his usual wonderful self. He always looks good! He was coming from his construction job he has been working on, didn't even shave and I would say he was the best looking man there. Aren't I lucky?

I believe at every Democratic function there should at least be a token of alternative transportation represented. As there so seldom is, that drives home for me what I know about how the system is so pervasive about leading us to believe that we either don't have a choice or the choices are too impractical to even think about how we are to get around. And the fact that the Democrats, who are the biggest proponents of health care, energy conservation, clean air and other such things, don't even recognize how they are blindly following the pervasive system that contribute so negatively to these issues without even questioning it for themselves. And if they don't question it, how can they change it? If this group had a habit of truly thinking about it, there should have been a mix of different methods. Q and I were the only alternative to cars there, and neither one of us are die hard Democrats. Though I tend to be concerned on the same topics Democrats are, their blindness to truly seeing solutions frustrate me. I am hoping to actually sit down with Paula Flowers and see if she has better visionary powers then most.

Again, enough about politics, Q and I had a wonderful time. It turns out Q is a natural networker-who knew?. He had all these people who we did not know before hand (only, since I have lived in Chattanooga all my life there were familiar faces and names-such as the city council member I went to high school with and the man who's sister that my brother dated over thirty years ago. This is after all a small town) eagerly carrying on long lengthy conversations with him. I attribute it to Q's ability to have that air of listening to every word you are saying. People love to talk about themselves and their ideas. Goodness knows, I have always fallen for this quality of his and that is why I love him. I get to talk and talk and talk about myself and my thoughts and he always acts as though he is listening and welcoming of it. And sometimes he actually is!

By the time it was time to go home it was dark. We had a most enjoyable ride, once we got off the roller coasters of King's Road, back home on the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk at night is a different experience, peaceful, quiet and otherworldly. That is until we were rudely slapped unexpectedly in the face by an aggressive water sprinkler! That brought us back to this world! But even that only added giggles to our ride.

A stop at the Great Ice Cream Show at the southside of the Walnut Street Bridge for ice cream and live music, sitting outside on a beautiful evening, greeting familiar faces ended our wonderful evening of hobnobbing and making a political statement with our bikes.

I love my life!

Quint and I went to Chicago over Labor Day weekend to visit his mother. We took time to go downtown to do the touristy thing. Of course we couldn't pass up a trip to wht was formerly the Sears Tower. As the now named Willis (as in "What cha doing, Willis?" ) Tower, glass sky decks were installed. Here we are, floating over the city of Chicago!

Whenever we are in different towns we always take note of the biking-how much, what kind of facilities and whether we think we would like to be riding our bikes.

Chicago on a holiday weekend would have been a great ride. We did visit the McDonald Bike Station where there were bike rentals, bike repair shop, and an elaborate indoor bike parking facility for the bike commuters.

Downtown Chicago showed signs of putting in additional bike parking. Quint, who is up in Chicago fairly often says the bike racks we saw were fairly new. The picture left is of a bike rack. Yes, those are the bike racks, not the bikes! It looked rather cool.

But we found they were rather impractical, the bike rack handle bars prevented the bikes's handle bars from sliding through. Bummer.

Quint is on a campaign for more bike parking in Chattanooga, preferably of the artistic type. Might as well combine art with function. But hopefully the art won't interfere with the function.

The most fun bike thing we saw was the puppet bike. This puppet theatre is set up on the back of a bike trike for street entertainment. What fun! Quint had to pull me away. I could have stood there for a hours! Actually, I was wanting to get a glilmpse of the operator inside but he never came out. I heard he could go hours inside, giving non stop shows. I quess he waits until nobody is on the street to jump out and pedal away. It did lend mystery to the set up.

We didn't get a chance to ride while we were there but we will have to at one point. I know it could be great riding-it was flat!

The Biking Queen

Because someone knew someone who knew me type of thing, I received a phone call asking if Quint and I would participate in the making of the commercial for Chattanooga Electric Bikes that is opening next week on Frazier Avenue. We thought this sounded like a fun thing to do on a lazy Sunday morning so we opted out on a more ambitious bike ride with the bike club to go. This shop is owned by Garnet Caldwell who has working for him a most enthusiastic promoter in his father Ted (unpaid as he says.) They believe these bikes will take Chattanooga by storm!

Me? I wasn't so sure. I figured you were a biker or not a biker. While there might be a few people, like the elderly who would fall in between and appreciate the electric assist, I didn't think there could be enough to actually keep a shop open.

That is until I actually got on one. The ease and manageability of it was addictive! Going up hills-wow!! Sitting up right, with just the softest whisper of a command from my legs, the bike smoothly and gracefully obeyed. If only my own bike obeyed like that! I was feeling like a biking Queen!

Without breaking a sweat ( one of the voiceover comments taped by a young girl for the commercial was "I'm too cute to sweat" which my voiceover reply was"but I'm cute too!". Here after I will always deny that it is MY voice saying that!), I, in very regal fashion, conquered all hills. I went immediately from thinking it would be a fun thing but who actually needs one? to imagining all sorts of people that would could use such a bike.

Who could use such a bike? Anybody who has ever said "I would love to bike to work but..." This bike takes away those buts...but it is too far... but there are too many hills... but it takes too long, and, yes, the can't get sweaty but. Poof! All gone! With this bike the practicality of using bikes as transportation goes up considerably.

I was unwilling to give up the bike after the commercial shoot so Ted insisted I keep it for the afternoon, so off to Chattanooga Market I went. Quint opted to ride his regular bike and having a regular bike to compare to, it was that much more noticeable the ease of it. Never too much or too aggressive but always just right. Exactly like a loyal subject should be. Quint was struggling to keep up with me-not something that happens in everyday life!

My bike had an option of pedal assist or straight motor. Even going up the hill of Forest Ave, I never felt the slightest need to go to straight motor. I liked to keep the feel of pedal assist so I could imagine it was my own effort that produced such immense response. I always wanted my riding to feel just like this!

The bike drew attention where ever I went and surprisingly to me, the most enthusiastic responses came from bikers. They all wanted to go to the Grand Opening next week to test ride one for themselves. Bikers are such equipment geeks!

After Market and grocery shopping at Greenlife and with a short visit at the Crit going on downtown where I felt I could have joined in with the bike racers with no effort, it was time to return the bike. My Queen self reverted back to my usual biking peasant self. My own bike seemed sluggish and unsteady (it seems the electric bike was very stable, something I didn't notice until I was back on my own)

As I slowly trudged up the hills toards home laden with all my groceries in true peasant fashion, I continued to dream of my Biking Queen self. Maybe I do see such a bike some time in my future. Time to let my inner royalty come out!

Officer attitude

I haven't written on this blog for a while and I have reggretted it. Much has happened in the biking world in Chattanooga and some of it has been quite tragic. With the death of David Meek in March, and other accidents and even acts of aggression against cyclists, the mood here in Chattanooga is darkening. A storm is a-brewing.

To add to the dark clouds gathering, a columnist from the Pulse, Chattanooga's alternative newspaper, decides to take his swipe against cyclist. The fact this is a police officer that usually tells dark cop tales makes the blow that much more powerful.

He starts with telling of reading of a news article of the latest cyclist struck by car story. That fact that the driver of the car did this delibrately and drove off did nothing to prevent this being a laughable matter in this cop's eyes. He sees the road as a "house" for cars and those that invade that territory is asking for something bad to happen. Can it really be that one of our finest would publish words like that? To read the full article go here :http://http://chattanoogapulse.com/columns/on-the-beat/on-the-beat-combustion-engines-the-preferred-method/comment-page-1/#comment-320

A Reality Bite!

Riding my bike all the time keeps the news about the gas prices and shortage strictly as an academic concern. But I unfortunately can't keep out of it forever. This past week I needed to make a trip to Atlanta. My gas tank was full as I had filled it up before this whole shortage thing and hadn't used my car since.





I was able to make it to and back Atlanta. But once I was in Atlanta, the lane of traffic I was in stopped. The left hand lane seemed to be making progress so I peered up the road as far as I could to see what was holding everything up. I could see a car stopped. Was it broken down? Was there an obstacle that necessitated a stop and lane change? I couldn't tell. But the other cars behind it didn't seem to be in a hurry to get around it.





I made the lane change and when I came alongside the stopped car I could tell what was happening. All these cars were in line for gas! Wow! Out of the gas station parking lot into the street. What a hark back to the seventies. I hadn't realized it was that bad.





As I drove Atlanta streets I could see that gas station after gas station had no gas. When the occasional one did, I saw lines, lines, lines! Apparently there wasn't much movement in the lines because I saw people out of the cars, socializing, smoking, cell phone calling or otherwise killing time.





Boy, I was grateful to get back home to my bike! Which makes me wonder why more people aren't riding their bikes in this gas shortage/price situation. Why aren't people doing it?





All right now! I can already hear the reasons being given for not riding bikes. Believe me, I hear it all the time. And there are many, many challenges that makes riding difficult. So let's just consider the group that most of these challenges don't apply to. So that would be everyone that live within 5 miles of their work, their work doesn't require them to travel from place to place, there are no kids to drop off and pick up, doesn't have carry much, and there are no physical disabilities ( being overweight and unfit doesn't count.) I am not saying everyone should, I am just wondering, as a response to the gas crisis, that more people don't think about it. It should would save many headaches and worries!





Personally, I think is as a lack of imagination. It is hard to imagine doing it if a person has never done it. But the more people do it, the more people start firing up the imagination. And people ARE doing it more. I guess I am looking for a grand rush as people get tired of being jerked around by this gas thing. But it is coming. In the mean time, I will be grateful that I don't have to stand in line to get gas

Doored!!

Recently I was riding through UTC on the closed street reserved for pedistrians and cyclists. On that day a Coke truck and trailor was parked on the street, right at the place where there are islands in the middle of the street, leaving about three feet for me to pass by. I slowed down to work my around this hulk of metal in my way, which turned out to be a very good thing.



I was coming up to the driver's door when bam! I found myself on my butt! Doored! Considering how slow I was going, the force that threw me to the ground was surprisily powerful. And it hurt! I wasn't actually hurt, didn't even break skin, but the impact shook me up enough to bring a bit a daze and a need for an inventory of all body parts.



The driver jumped out, crisp in his Coca-cola uniform, in a mild panic. He was apoligizing profusly, picking up the bike, straightening the saddle (ever noticed that even the mildest mishap with the bike the saddle takes that opportunity to do a little spin?) and trying to make sure I was ok. I am sure he was seeing a huge ugly blemish going on his driving record.



But after a minute or two, I was ok and didn't see a need to make a bigger deal about it. But I did give him a minuture lecture. I reminded him that he WAS parking in a bike/pedistrian zone so he needed to be expecting us. Always look before opening doors!



Generally I try never to ride in door zones. It is just too dangerous. I was going very slowly that day. It doesn't take much imagination to see how with a little bit more speed that incident could have been very bad, deadly even. .



That means, on narrow streets, if I am four feet away from a parked car, I will be in the middle of the lane An example of this is on McCallie Ave from Georgia Ave to Central. There are two lanes and parking on both sides of the street. There is no second lane for a car to pull into to pass and so many times cars must just stay behind me until there is a safe time to pass. Its never more then a block or so, so its not long.



But many drivers don't understand that. They act asthough I am expected to risk my life for their convenience. Sorry, I set my priorities different!



Someone might ask, why do I ride on that road if it is so bad and dangerous. I don't normally. Going up Oak Street that runs parrelell to McCallie is a much nicer road to ride on and it takes me more directly on my home/work route. (although that is where I was doored) But sometimes where I am going is right on that stretch of McCallie. I take it because I need to.



I think driving big suvs on such narrow lanes with parking and university pedistrians with a strong proclivity for jaywalking would be scarier! For everyone!

Davis California

While out west, Quint and I took in a trip to Davis, California. Davis has the highest bike tranportation rate of the nation (25%). We had to check it out. We weren't disappointed.

They had everything needed to encourage people to bike. They had picturesque bike paths:

Where there were highways they built overpaths: and under paths:

Some intersections were so busy the count could be as much as 1000 bicycles PER HOUR! To faciltate all that bike traffic they got creative. Here is a bike roundabout:

And special bike lights:

Bike parking lots were full:

Not detail was over looked. Scattered around town were bike air stations.

It was totally amazing. We went to Sacramento from Davis, riding on a bikeway alongside the interstate the whole way. Living there, it might be possible to never get in a car.

Which makes me wonder why the biking rate isn't higher then 25%. It is very flat out there, almost always sunny weather, doesn't get too cold in winter, and as the Bike director told us, most people live within four miles of town. It is easy to ride bikes to surrounding towns,(Sacramento was only 11 miles away on totaly flat bikeway) and there are trains for furthur commute.

With all the encouragement with facilities and perfect terrain, I would think bike ridership would be up to 75%. I would love to talk to a car driver there and ask why the car? Almost all the reasons that people here give are not valid out there.

Even though the ridership is not as high as the conditions seggest they could be, it was still good to see bike numbers totally unimagined here. I would love to see a 25% ridership here!

Davis

Hills of San Francisco

I tried to prepare for the hills of San Fancisco. For those who saw me riding around with big jugs of water in my panniers, I wasn't being crazy. I was trying to get in shape. I would load my bike down and go home by way of Missionary Ridge. Surely there couldn't be anything steeper then Oak Street going up the side of the ridge.

So what did my training get me? This is me on the first hill I came to in San Francisco:

Yep, that is me pushing up the hill. I got into the city, having been met by Quint who had biked down from Portland, Oregon and we had to get something to eat first. We found a wonderful place called the Stinking Rose, where they serve a little bit of food with garlic. I thought it was impossible to eat too much garlic.

But hitting the hill immediately after garlic gouging, I found out different. At this point, I am starting to wonder if I was going to throw up. I didn't. And that was the only hill I pushed up. But that queasy feeling from climbing a hill immediately after eating was repeated frequently through out our stay in San Francisco.

Good food, steep hills and stomach turnover- the three together will always say San Francisco to me!

Watch out!

I am going to tell on Jim Farmer.

I was going to work the other day going down Tremont, when a car, pulling out of a parking lot, pulled out right in front of me. I had to hit my brakes to keep from hitting it. Luckily, I wasn't going too fast.
I caught up with the car in the traffic stop ahead and looked inside. Who should it be? Jim Farmer, his biker self! And he was even coming out of the bike shop parking lot1

I knocked on his window and he rolled it down "Hey, Colleen, how are you doing?"

"Well, I'm fine, considering you pulled out right in front of me."

"Hey, I didn't see you!"

"Yeah, that's the point."

Jim got a look of horror on his face. "You mean I really did pull out in front of you?"

I took that look as an apology. Jim was horrified that he had pulled out in front of a cyclist. But it was a reminder. Even the best intentioned of us can get into our little world and not pay attention. As we go through this high cycling season, watch out for bicycles!