Well I've got two big changes that have been keeping me away from the bike lately. The biggest is a new daughter. We went the adoption route but were lucky enough to be there when our daughter was born. So far parenting isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Our daughter is being a good baby and staying pretty quiet throughout most of the night. Parenting is awesome and we're also very happy we adopted.
The other big change is that I'm leaving REI. I'm getting back into the recruiting business and will be hiring designers and game developers. I'll miss REI - as companies go, they do more things right than any other company I know of. This is especially true of the bike business - an industry known for low pay, meager benefits, and here-today-gone-tomorrow companies. REI runs a solid business, they give away a ton of money to great causes, and they treat their employees far better than the vast majority of mom and pop shops.
Leaving REI also means I'll no longer be in the bike industry. I'll merely be a consumer. Yikes. ;)
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Good for the environment?
Lately I find myself pondering a somewhat heretical question: Is the outdoor recreation industry good for the environment?
The instinctual answer for most of us is "Duh, of course it is!" But when you think it through a little more I'm not so certain. Let's take my initial question and tweak it slightly:
What causes more pollution and environmental: sitting on your ass at home playing on the X-Box or spending 4 hours in a SUV driving to and from a mountain to go hiking or mountain biking?
Well we all know how bad auto emissions are for the environment. Even a Prius puts out more greenhouse gases than simply sitting in your living room. Now imagine what would happen if the millions of people playing X-Box all put down their controllers and hopped in their cars and motored off to the local trailhead. That's a lot of car exhaust being spewed into the air. It gets worse the more serious you are about the outdoors.
After a while climbing the same rock face or riding the same singletrack gets a bit stale and you find yourself seeking out new adventures. Thus is born the "adventure trip". This fulfills the desire to explore new lands and to get even further away from the imposing confines of civilization to seek out ever more pristine natural beauty. Of course the flipside of this is you create exponentially greater damage to the natural world. The simple act of hopping on an airliner involves spewing far, FAR more pollution in the air than any Land Rover. In the 30 minutes a typical 747 spends driving on the ground taxiing, taking off and landing it will spew out 190 pounds of nitrogen oxide - that's more than a car will burn in an entire year of driving! People who insist on flying halfway around the planet to go mountain biking or rock climbing are definitely not in a position to point fingers at people who commute to work in an SUV. These self-righteous adventurers (God help you if you call them tourists even though that's exactly what they are!) do more damage on vacation than the redneck in a pick-up truck does in an entire year of driving.
Of course the air isn't the only part of the environment to suffer. More people on the trails means even more wear and tear on the trails. It also would generate a need for more and wider trails. Narrow, sinewy trails that gracefully drape themselves through the forest suddenly become wide, gravel scars on the land. Anyone who has been to Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon has seen this first hand. It's no great secret that many of our best known National Parks are getting loved to death. Is this how we want all of our public lands to look? Probably not but by encouraging people to put down the X-Box and pick up the Leki pole that's exactly where we're heading.
Speaking of those Leki poles, have you looked at your outdoor gear lately and considered the cost to the environment it took to produce it? Time was many products were made with renewable resources such as wood and wool. Now most are made from synthetic materials and those materials are made with chemicals drawn from the same dinosaur mausoleums that power Hummers and line Dick Cheney's wallet.
While there is no doubt that getting outside is better for your personal health I do wonder if it's better for the health of the planet. The one saving grace of the outdoor industry is that most of the leading companies in the industry - REI, Patagonia, North Fave, etc. - are very actively involved in maintaining and preserving the outdoors for future generations. In this respect they are well ahead of the video game industry which routinely forces consumers to dispose of equipment in a landfill after just a couple of years use.
The instinctual answer for most of us is "Duh, of course it is!" But when you think it through a little more I'm not so certain. Let's take my initial question and tweak it slightly:
What causes more pollution and environmental: sitting on your ass at home playing on the X-Box or spending 4 hours in a SUV driving to and from a mountain to go hiking or mountain biking?
Well we all know how bad auto emissions are for the environment. Even a Prius puts out more greenhouse gases than simply sitting in your living room. Now imagine what would happen if the millions of people playing X-Box all put down their controllers and hopped in their cars and motored off to the local trailhead. That's a lot of car exhaust being spewed into the air. It gets worse the more serious you are about the outdoors.
After a while climbing the same rock face or riding the same singletrack gets a bit stale and you find yourself seeking out new adventures. Thus is born the "adventure trip". This fulfills the desire to explore new lands and to get even further away from the imposing confines of civilization to seek out ever more pristine natural beauty. Of course the flipside of this is you create exponentially greater damage to the natural world. The simple act of hopping on an airliner involves spewing far, FAR more pollution in the air than any Land Rover. In the 30 minutes a typical 747 spends driving on the ground taxiing, taking off and landing it will spew out 190 pounds of nitrogen oxide - that's more than a car will burn in an entire year of driving! People who insist on flying halfway around the planet to go mountain biking or rock climbing are definitely not in a position to point fingers at people who commute to work in an SUV. These self-righteous adventurers (God help you if you call them tourists even though that's exactly what they are!) do more damage on vacation than the redneck in a pick-up truck does in an entire year of driving.
Of course the air isn't the only part of the environment to suffer. More people on the trails means even more wear and tear on the trails. It also would generate a need for more and wider trails. Narrow, sinewy trails that gracefully drape themselves through the forest suddenly become wide, gravel scars on the land. Anyone who has been to Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon has seen this first hand. It's no great secret that many of our best known National Parks are getting loved to death. Is this how we want all of our public lands to look? Probably not but by encouraging people to put down the X-Box and pick up the Leki pole that's exactly where we're heading.
Speaking of those Leki poles, have you looked at your outdoor gear lately and considered the cost to the environment it took to produce it? Time was many products were made with renewable resources such as wood and wool. Now most are made from synthetic materials and those materials are made with chemicals drawn from the same dinosaur mausoleums that power Hummers and line Dick Cheney's wallet.
While there is no doubt that getting outside is better for your personal health I do wonder if it's better for the health of the planet. The one saving grace of the outdoor industry is that most of the leading companies in the industry - REI, Patagonia, North Fave, etc. - are very actively involved in maintaining and preserving the outdoors for future generations. In this respect they are well ahead of the video game industry which routinely forces consumers to dispose of equipment in a landfill after just a couple of years use.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
More pushing the puddle...
Welding class has progressed to the point where we're actually welding things together using filler rod. It's starts simple enough: clamp to pieces of metal together on a jig in an L shape and weld them. Simple, right? Wrong. For starters, I quickly figure out that the heat from the torch warps the metal so by the time I'm halfway across your 6 inch strip of metal the two pieces no longer touch. Into the scrap heap with that one. Next up I realize I need to tack the metal at several points and then weld it. Duh. Did this several times over and eventually started cranking out some really nice tidy welds. Dare I say welds good enough looking to rival those found on bikes. Finally having some pride in my work I take it to the instructor for evaluation. He acknowledges it sure looks pretty from the outside. Then he flips it over and points out the lack of penetration. He has me hammer the piece flat along the weld and sure enough, when I hold it up to the light I see numerous pinholes. Drat. My problem is too little heat. It's tough developing the touch - too little heat yields a weak weld. Too much heat resutls in burning holes in the material. Seveal dozen L welds later I've finally got it down pat and cranking out tidy looking welds with solid penetration.
At this point the instructor has me reach higher up in the alphabet - instead of welding an L-shape now I'm going to weld an inverted T shape. Seems simple enough. I jig the work, fire up the torch and have at it. I quickly realize this is going to be MUCH more difficult. Simply changing the location of the material radically alters how the heat effects the metal. The vertical part of the T quickly heats up and begins to burn through while the base isn't even puddling. Many, many mangled pieces of metal later I finally figure out the right combination of torch angle, movement, filler rod, and oxygen/acetylene mixture.
All of this is giving me a new respect for framebuilders who have to weld numerous tubes together without distortion, too much heat, too little heat, too little filler, etc., etc. Just one bad weld can be the end of a frame. Realizing all of this I think it's something of a miracle that anyone can make a bike frame for under $500 with even the cheapest of tubing. Much as I respect the customer artisan builders I reserve even greater respect for the guys at Maxway and the other Taiwanese factories who can crank out thousands of frames in a year. It's one thing to create great welds in a small shop setting and a whole different thing to do it in a mass production capacity.
At this point the instructor has me reach higher up in the alphabet - instead of welding an L-shape now I'm going to weld an inverted T shape. Seems simple enough. I jig the work, fire up the torch and have at it. I quickly realize this is going to be MUCH more difficult. Simply changing the location of the material radically alters how the heat effects the metal. The vertical part of the T quickly heats up and begins to burn through while the base isn't even puddling. Many, many mangled pieces of metal later I finally figure out the right combination of torch angle, movement, filler rod, and oxygen/acetylene mixture.
All of this is giving me a new respect for framebuilders who have to weld numerous tubes together without distortion, too much heat, too little heat, too little filler, etc., etc. Just one bad weld can be the end of a frame. Realizing all of this I think it's something of a miracle that anyone can make a bike frame for under $500 with even the cheapest of tubing. Much as I respect the customer artisan builders I reserve even greater respect for the guys at Maxway and the other Taiwanese factories who can crank out thousands of frames in a year. It's one thing to create great welds in a small shop setting and a whole different thing to do it in a mass production capacity.
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