September 14th marked the 108 yr anniversary of first pedestrian death at the hands of an automobile in the United States. On September 13th, 1899, Henry Bliss stepped from a streetcar on Central Park West, in New York, and was struck by a taxicab. He died of his injuries the next morning. The event was reported on the front page of the New York Times.

In 2005 alone, 39,000 automobile crashes in the United States accounted for 43,000 deaths.

Given the anniversary of Bliss' death, it's appropriate to think of September as an automobile awareness month, culminating in International Car Free Day. September 22nd is the day that cyclists, transit access activists, and municipalities the world over celebrate a moment of independence from the automobile.

But with the local Smart Commute Challenge moving to the spring (it will return in April 2008) and neither Durham nor Chapel Hill hosting any Car Free Day celebrations, September 22nd came and went much like any other day in the Triangle. The Triangle Transit Authority's Fare Free Day, on Friday Sept 21st, was the closest thing going.

Many places around the world celebrate their car free days more enthusiastically. This year, Montreal closed off sections of its historic district to private automobiles on Friday, September 21st. Last spring, Mexico City's Marcelo Ebrard launched a series of weekend efforts to encourage bicycle usage. By closing off selected city streets, the mayor creates ciclovias, or bike paths, on Sundays. Ebrard arguably borrowed the idea from Bogotá, Colombia where approximately 75 miles of its city streets are closed to motor vehicle traffic every Sunday. These car-free programs allow cyclists to gain confidence on the road before relying on their bikes as transportation.

Every day is an automobile awareness day in some parts of London. Since February 2003, London has levied tolls on drivers who take their automobiles into the core of the city. Congestion taxation, as the practice is called, aims to reduce private automobile traffic in dense urban areas by charging drivers fees, then reinvesting the profits in public transportation. Since 2003, congestion in London is down 30%. Michael Bloomberg has openly endorsed a similar tax program for relieving congestion in New York City.

But this September, we took another step backward in the US, another step tpward furthering our dependence on the automobile. A post on Google's official GoogleBlog put out the word that the software giant is soliciting proposals from entrepreneurs who think they can design the next generation of electric hybrid automobiles.

The fact that Google wants a hand in designing electric automobiles is not so surprising,considering that Tesla Motors is a Silicon Valley start-up company. Tesla Motors makes an all-electric Roadster, a $98,000 two-seater that outpaces Ferraris on the drag strip. But perhaps it is because Google is known for outside the box thinking that their request for proposals strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.

Entrepreneurs who answer Google's challenge are likely to produce exactly what it asks for -- new designs for electric hybrid automobiles. The continued focus on the automobile is a limitation on creative thinking. A shift from the era of the Ford Mustang and Porsche Cayenne to an era of electric Ford Mustangs and Porsche Cayenne's is not the radical shift in our transportation design that this country needs.

Teslas and Google cars may not run on gasoline (though, as hybrids the Google cars probably will), and weaning ourselves off petroleum products will surely reduce greenhouse gases. But keeping transit focused on the free-wheeling automobile will do nothing to address the 40,000 deaths per year that result from automobile crashes.

After all, the taxicab that killed Henry Bliss was electric.

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Posted by nicomachus at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Durham Rising brought a lot of people downtown on Saturday -- 12,000 by some estimates. A surprising (yes, even to me) number of those folks were cyclists. So, if you walked around downtown at all that day, you surely had to step around some of their bikes. There wasn't a lamp-post, street sign, or sapling that didn't have a bike chained to it. Outside Bull McCabe's, the new Irish pub replacing Jo and Joe's, signs and lamp-posts secured two and three bikes a piece.

Where were the bike racks?

I left downtown that day feeling disgusted, and no, it wasn't from gorging on Locopops.

The city of Durham spent more than sixteen million dollars on its Downtown Improvements project as the civic investment in re-energizing downtown. They developed a new central plaza, realigned streets, and marked pedestrian crossings with stamped brick designs. But no bike racks? I was incredulous.

Turns out, bike racks were on their way. They just weren't installed yet.

Hopefully, you've been back downtown since June. As of the end of August, one city program installed bike racks downtown, and one will continue to install them throughout Durham.

First, the streetscape project did include bike racks; they simply couldn't be installed by the Durham Rising event. Ed Venable of the City says that bike racks were installed in eight locations in July. See them outside the Professional Center, the Empowerment Center, and the CCB Plaza among other spots inside the loop.

Second, the CityRacks program secured funding from the state and federal governments to install bike racks all over Durham. Under a Congestion Mitigation for Air Quality (CMAQ -- often pronounced see-mack) Improvement Program, Durham will be installing bike racks all over the city. CityRacks, as the CMAQ funded program is called, will install "inverted U" bicycle racks on city-owned property. Look for them to start popping up this fall.

There's a common story told on many college campuses (whether myth or fact doesn't matter) about how it was decided where sidewalks should go. It usually goes something like this. Suppose you want to lay out a campus, and you want to put in sidewalks only where the students will use them. The best way is to wait a few years to see what pathways the students wear into the lawn, and put the sidewalks there, because those are the pathways students use to get from building to building. Otherwise you'll have sidewalks, and then you'll have pathways across the lawn where the students actually walk.

The CityRacks program takes a similar strategy with bike racks. By letting citizens (cyclists) request where racks should go, the City ends up installing racks where they will be used.

Dale McKeel, the city's new Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation planner, says that the first bike racks were installed downtown in August at locations selected more than a year ago. Before the 2007 year is out, a total of sixty seven racks will be installed at parks, commercial districts, museums, universities, and libraries. For those of us cyclists, that means we will no longer have to lock a bike to a No-Parking sign outside Brightleaf or Ninth St.

Piedmont Parks, Inc. of Greensboro won the $48,000 contract to install the racks, and the upside-down U design was chosen by the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, who says this style bike rack is the most secure.

In 2008, the City Racks program will focus on installing bike racks at public schools throughout Durham. And in 2009, the public will again be invited to request bike racks at locations around Durham.

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Jim Reingruber, using Google Maps, has started a website noting all of Durham's bike racks -- at least, all the ones he can find. Check it out at http://www.durhambikeracks.com/

For the full list of all planned bike rack locations, see the pdf available at http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/works/bikerack_form.cfm

Posted by nicomachus at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

why couldn't these have been bike racks?

Posted by nicomachus at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

On a recent Sunday, while I was dropping off some donated wheels and frames at the Durham Bike Co-op, two of Durham's newest taxi cabs stopped by for repairs. MarcDreyfors parked his cab on the sidewalk, jacked up the front end to remove the front wheel, and brought the wheel inside the Co-op for aligning. After a few minutes in the truing stand, his wheel was straight, and he popped the front wheel back on his pedal-powered taxi cab.

photos by Marc Dreyfors

Riding in the back you feel the wind in your hair, the connection with the street, and without the sweat or muscle burn.

Rickshaws -- more commonly used to ferry sightseeing tourists around cities of the Far East, west Africa, or Manhattan -- will soon be shuttling folks around the Bull City.

"Greenway Transit is the merger of our green transportation business and Greenway Pedicabs, which opened in Chapel Hill in 2006," says Marc Dreyfors, owner of the business. For shuttling people around the Triangle, Greenway Transit offers a 6 passenger minivan that runs on ethanol and 12, 15, and 34 passenger buses running on bio-diesel. But modeled on the success of their pedicabs program in Chapel Hill, Greenway Transit's pedicabs will take to the streets of Durham in May.

I have said before in this column that Durham's hot spots of commercial activity are like islands -- Ninth St, Brightleaf, Five Points, American Tobacco -- and that the areas between can be difficult for pedestrians to navigate.

Throughout the summer, Greenway Transit's pedicabs will provide an alternative mode of transit between Durham's islands. Dreyfours expects to run shuttles between Ninth St and Duke's campuses, between the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and Durham's downtown core, and between downtown Durham and Brightleaf.

Just imagine it; from dinner at Xiloa on Ninth St you could take a bicycle-based taxi to a Bulls game, from a Full Frame session to Amelia for coffee, or from The Federal home safely.

Thirteen year old Mike lives near Greenway Transit's industrial facility near the intersection of Alston and Angier Avenues. Curious how someone could make fuel from vegetable oil, he started hanging around the business to learn about biodiesel. Dreyfors perceived Mike's mechanical inclination right away and started teaching Mike what he didn't already know about bike repairs.

At Durham's Earth Day event, Mike drove a pedicab around the festival's parking lot demonstrating the pedicab concept and helping get the word out.

"He came back to me at the end of the day asking what he should do with the money he made," says Dreyfors. "I told him he could keep it."

"Riding people around Earth Day was fun," says Mike. "I carried six people. Kids were pretty amazed by it, telling their moms they wanted to ride."

Dreyfors echoes Mike's observation. From the driver's seat of a pedicab, Dreyfors sees people break into smiles and wave when he rides by. "We need to get back to the sense of neighborhood, sense of community, and [the pedicabs] do that," he adds.

While we're talking, Dreyfors hands Mike a multi-tool so that the young apprentice can adjust the handlebars of the two-person pedicab. Later, Mike takes me for a spin down the sidewalk. He says the hardest thing about driving a pedicab is remembering that it's wider than a regular bike. "You have to be careful about the sides."

After a short trip, we switch places. While I pedal Mike back to the Co-op, he says "it's cool; it's like being chauffeured." But the best part about driving a pedicab is the attention, Mike says. "People just sit and stare," when they see the pedicab driving down the road, he adds.

"You can make some pretty good money on the weekend shifts," says Dreyfors.

Though the details of the incentive structure for drivers are still being worked out, Dreyfors says driving a pedicab can be "a good part-time job; you set your own hours and, after an initial buy-in, you keep what you make." He tells the story of a UNC student and pedicab driver in Chapel Hill who, because the student is willing to work the late shift (i.e. 12AM -- 3AM), can make more than $125 in one night.

Anyone who wants to learn how to work a pedicab shift, rent the pedicabs for an event (a wedding or party), or learn more about the company can reach Greenway Transit at 957-1505 and find them on the web at http://www.greenwayrides.com

Posted by nicomachus at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

David Hartgen's plan to repave the state of North Carolina might be accepted in some towns, but not in Durham.

Hartgen, a professor at UNC-Charlotte, recently released a study of transportation planning that looks at urban areas around the state. His conclusions simply amount to statistically backed reasons why urban areas should reduce transit spending, divert saved funds to highway construction and road widening, and embrace the private automobile as the keystone species in the ecology of economic progress.

The 200+ page study is available for download from the John Locke Foundation's website, and I encourage you to read it for yourself. At the very least, read the 15 page section on Durham because it is rife with interesting tidbits that don't sit well with his conclusions.

By his own admission, single-occupancy driving declined in Durham between 1990 and 2000, the time period at which his academic gaze is focused. The data show, and so he also admits, that carpooling and use of public transit increased. He notes further that "Durham is the only urbanized area in the state to report declining solo driving times and increased carpooling and transit shares between 1990 and 2000." You might think, then, that the conclusions he reaches for Charlotte or Raleigh ought to differ from the conclusions he reaches for Durham's future.

Across the state, however, it's all the same. Eliminate transit. Widen roads. Pave early and often.

His consistency reveals his incorrigible proposition. Any good social scientist knows that an "incorrigible proposition" is a belief that answers to no one. It is a telling sign that you've fallen prey to an incorrigible proposition when your prejudices guide your research in such a way that you always conclude what you previously believed to be true.

"I think that Hartgen essentially approaches the issue with blinders," says Durham resident Barry Ragin. "He assumes that 'congestion' is the problem which needs to be solved." In the case of Durham, congestion is the problem that just hasn't happened yet.

Hartgen guesses (but can't cite any studies to back him up) that a slow economy explains why people ride the bus and carpool in Durham. So if his prognosis is that the personal automobile is the cure for what ails Durham's economy, then, you might wonder what Hartgen recommends for combatting ozone pollution and bringing the city into compliance with federal standards. That'll take care of itself, he says, "as vehicles get less emittting."

But emissions aren't the only concerns swirling around the monolithic transportation infrastructure Hartgen dreams of. "Hartgen calls for government to spend heavily on more roads without imposing any land-use restrictions -- a combination doomed to fail," says Kevin Davis, senior IT manager at Duke. "If we don't introduce transit and bike/pedestrian services in combination with smarter growth, we'll end up as gridlocked as poorly-planned, car-centric cities like Houston and Orlando."

Instead of car-culture's monolith, a thriving city is one with a truly multi-modal transit authority. That is, the more options people have for getting around town, the healthier the people of the town and the healthier the economy. Hartgen implies that congestion limits individuals' freedom by restricting their use of the personal automobile. But a city without buses, without bike lanes, without trains is a city without options. Meaningful options are what people want, and those options don't always look like more asphalt.

"This report suggests that the state should spend money here on traffic-signal optimization instead of public transit. That's ridiculous," says David Mills a Durham resident and Executive Director of the Common Sense Foundation. "Durham needs visionary leadership to make public transit viable, not backward studies such as this one."

Durham's residents have spoken loud and clear on this issue. In response to the North Carolina Department of Transportation's current plan to widen Alston Avenue, which would turn it from a neighborhood street into a mini-freeway, citizens and government representatives expressed a united voice to say that Durham values its pedestrians being able to cross streets safely.

Whether DOT will side with the John Locke Foundation or Durham residents remains to be seen, but the question remains for each of us to consider.

Do roads exist to serve people or cars?

Posted by nicomachus at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some winter mornings, while riding in Cornwallis Road's new bike lanes, I can smell Counter Culture Coffee roasting those fairly traded coffee beans two or more miles to the south. The same still air that pools summertime ozone over the region's largest employment hub wafts the unique smell of coffee beans expanding in heat, releasing their caffeinated oils. Whenever I ride through one of those invisible, aromatic clouds, I breathe deeply.

Problem is, I can also smell the exhaust from the surrounding cars at every intersection.

No doubt, on-road cyclists are more vulnerable to their environments than drivers. It's not just that we're naked next to multi-ton hunks of steel hurtling past us (in either direction) at deadly speeds and proximities too close for comfort, but we’re also exposed to the gases of the landscape. Any winter bike commuter has observed that cold air appears to keep exhaust fumes closer to the ground. Which means that while waiting at each red light, we’re treated to a special dose of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide, complete with that lovely smell (except for those biodiesel converts; then we’re tricked into thinking someone is cooking up French fries nearby).

Summertime cyclists know to check the ozone forecast just like the weather forecast. Summer ozone concentrations in NC can reach toxic levels, and athletes are sometimes advised not to engage in rigorous cardiovascular activity on those days.

So, I started wondering whether biking is actually an unhealthy thing to do. I mean, coasting up to each intersection, it sure feels like I'm breathing in more car exhaust than when I'm a passenger in a car. So who better to ask than public health specialists?

Doctoral students at UNC's School of Public Health and scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences help tackle these questions -- Do cyclists have any reason to worry about what we're breathing in on our (supposedly healthy) ways to work? And if so, which is the greater health risk -- the colorless, odorless ozone in the summer or the pungent, cloudy exhaust fumes in the winter?

Dave Love says that "cycling is a balance of risks." Love, a PhD candidate in UNC's School of Public Health, says that "the risk of getting into an accident is probably the most serious risk a cyclist faces. But lets say you are a careful biker, then another one to consider is your concern about taking deep breaths of exhaust during exercise. You are breathing more deeply and faster than drivers, so you are getting exposed to more exhaust and ozone. But, to look on the bright side, our urban air quality is probably better than 150 years ago!"

While a cyclist might be breathing in more noxious gases than automobile drivers, it's worth pointing out that a car doesn't protect drivers from those gases. Since a car's air-conditioning and heating intake filters cannot filter out volatile organic compounds like benzene, drivers are exposed to the same gases as cyclists. At best, automobiles' ventilation systems only disguise the smell of roadways by filtering the air through activated charcoal filters.

NIEHS scientist and avid cyclist Jerry Phelps says that, from his experience, the amount of air pollution from car exhaust probably doesn't change from one season to the next. It's more visible in the winter because the air is colder and drier. The water vapor mixed in with car exhaust is what we're able to see leaking from the tailpipe. The same amount of exhaust hangs near the ground behind cars in the summer too, but since humidity levels are generally higher in the summer months, we just can't see it.

Whether there's more exhaust in the winter or not, there's still the question of what those gases are doing to our lungs. "It's likely that the health benefits of increased physical activity are greater than the risks incurred because of increased exposure to air pollution," says Audrey de Nazelle, also a doctoral student in UNC's School Of Public Health. "But, if you have respiratory problems to start out with, then it's another story."

People with asthma are much more sensitive to particulate matter and toxic gases, which is why asthma sufferers are warned about the ozone levels in the summer.

Stephanie J. London, M.D., a senior investigator in the epidemiology branch and laboratory of respiratory biology at NIEHS agrees with Nazelle. "It's hard to say whether ozone or exhaust fumes are worse since both are basically bad. And even though you would probably breathe more ozone riding your bike than traveling in a car, the exercise will probably outweigh the negative effects."

Reading Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About the Bike, you learn two things. First, Armstrong is a lucky guy. The lottery of life granted him the abnormal lung capacity and the muscular distribution to become a world-class athlete. And second, the body’s ability to heal itself is the most powerful, restorative advantage we have when fighting disease. Armstrong couldn't have beaten testicular cancer without chemotherapy, but neither could he have recovered from the brutalized depths of chemotherapy without a resilient, toned body. The medical community surrounding Armstrong agrees that he recovered from cancer as well as he did because he is an athlete.

Exercise enhances the body’s ability to repair itself. Cardiovascular activity strengthens the immune system, and since both drivers and cyclists are exposed to the same toxins, the cyclists may come out better in the long run. In short, people who exercise have bodies that are better able to process the toxins we all take in.

Posted by nicomachus at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

DURHAM -- Cafeteria conversation at work on January 31st revolved around the predicted ice storm. Bread, milk, and bottled water would be cleared off grocery store shelves by the time we left work that evening we all joked. We also guessed that the next day's news would be littered with images of cars skidding off the road.

It's not that Southerners can't drive in wintery conditions. Neither can the local transplants from New England or the midwest. No one can drive on ice.

And since no one can drive on ice, the answer is not to drive at all.

What we can do to prepare for the next ice storm is break away from our dependence on the automobile. The problem with giving up the car is that our communities are designed so that driving is necessary. Walking to the store is often not an option.

Since the 1950s, residential development in this country has revolved around the personal automobile. Because cars enable us to drive farther, our communities have been spreading. Look at growth patterns for any major city in the US for the past forty years, and you'll see a consistent pattern. Unless locked by geographic features (like Pittsburgh's rivers) or municipal decisions (like Portland, Oregon's growth belt), cities grow at the periphery. They expand. And Durham is no exception.

So, no one lives around the corner from the corner store anymore, and very few of us live around the corner from work.

The outskirts of town is where new neighborhoods go up. But while residential development sprawls, employment hubs like downtowns, universities, government buildings, and dense commercial districts remain the daily destinations for hundreds of thousands of drivers Triangle-wide. Research Triangle Park is the archetypal employment center -- zoned for businesses only, every single one of the nearly 40,000 employees has to get into and out of RTP every week day. (Lest anyone thinks I'm pointing the finger at others, I'm one of those 40,000 traveling into RTP every day.)

The Triangle Transit Authority's buses serve the park, and DOT recently striped bike lanes on the freshly repaved Cornwallis Rd. But in an ice storm, neither buses nor bikes handle the roads any better than cars.

This growth at the periphery mindset is what drives big-box retail. Giant grocery stores and retail chains anchor parking lots larger than football fields, just waiting for us to drive to them. In fact, in some parking lots you get the feeling that you're out of place if you're not in a car. Try walking or riding your bike to Southpoint Mall. It's clear the expectation is that we drive to the store.

Not only do giant retail chains water down the flavor of business by making the suburbs of any town indistinguishable from any other (what Parisians are currently calling "banalization"), national chains drive locally owned hardware stores, fruit stands, and grocery co-ops out of business. And this means that our development patterns determine for us our transportation patterns -- car dependent and subject to the weather.

Why can't Durham lead the effort to offer up another development model?

Ice is not the only reason to think about creating different kinds of cities. Even OPEC, the cartel of the largest oil exporting countries, finally admits that "peak oil" -- the term reserved for the economic aftermath of a world in which oil production reaches a peak and then rapidly declines -- could happen in the next decade.

Crippling ice storms give us a glimpse at what life after peak oil may look like if we don't start designing transportation around something other than the automobile. While many communities around the country are already making plans for the peak oil crisis, the Triangle is back to ground-zero designing a regional rail system.

Of course, anyone who's seen the movie The Ice Storm knows that not even trains can move safely through the frozen glaze, so regional rail is not the answer. But as long as we look for the one thing to deliver us from auto-topia, our future planning will be as stalled as a Camaro on I-40 in an ice storm. Regional rail is part of the answer; so is a more efficient bus network. So is mixed-use, high-density residential development in our existing employment hubs. So is a sidewalk and crosswalk infrastructure that accommodates wheelchairs and strollers.

Each city and county has a development review board, which can be more than just a rubber stamp on developer-submitted plans. Durham County Commissioner Becky Heron knows that, and that's why she's one of Durham's best advocates for smart development.

In addition to being ranked among the "Best Places to Live" and "Best Places to do Business," Durham's most recent honor is a spot among Forbes Magazine's December 2006 list of the top ten "Smartest Cities". If we're so smart, then we can figure out how to make Durham a more walkable community.

Walkable communities are safer communities. Whether a community is safe isn't always a measure of crime -- a safe Durham is one where you can cross Roxboro Street without fearing for your life. A safe Durham is one where Duke Street and Gregson Street are no longer freeways running through the middle of neighborhoods.

A safe community is one in which getting to the store, running errands, caring for an elderly friend or parent, or getting to work isn't made impossible by the weather.

A walkable community is one in which during Triangle-wide ice storms, we can get to the food, firewood, or friendship we need to endure it.

Posted by nicomachus at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

DURHAM -- There was a year when I watched the sunset almost every evening.

Across the street from the school I was attending at the time began a neighborhood of houses that had been built in the 1950s. These streets and dwellings brought unprecedented order to the post-war town, carving their grid-like stamp into Southern countryside. The streets parallel to the main road separating the campus from the neighborhood ran only four or five deep, and the last street had houses on only one side. The far side of the street faced an open pasture where a farmer kept cattle.

The thin drainage ditch and barbed-wire fence formed an artificial boundary between the built environment and the natural, but it felt like the edge of the world each evening I sat there. Facing the trees on the far side of the pasture, you are facing due west.

I rode my bike to the same spot on that road each evening. After eating in the dining hall and before buckling down with books for the night, I rode through the twilit streets. I made no secret of this cyclical ritual, so occasionally friends rode with me. Tommy once tried to dance with the cows that were dining alongside the fence. Jennifer sat with me one evening before leaving for Honduras. Kimberly shared the sunset with me a few times years before she served and died in Iraq. Leighton, Joey, Josh, and Cathy each joined me other evenings. But mostly I sat there on the eastern side of the drainage culvert, bike on its side next to me, alone. And I sat there to make a daily point of being outdoors.

In the process of describing the physics of sunset, Christopher Dewdney, in his meditation on all things nocturnal Acquainted with the Night, tells of a group of friends, nature lovers, peace seekers, poets, and fellow scholars who gathers to watch the sunset each evening in Toronto. And although he explains both the science and mystery of that planetary spectacle, he talks too about the healthy reasons he looks west with friends each night.

Durham is a green city. It's flush with trees, both deciduous and evergreen alike. Trees that astound you with color, like the fall fashion show on Wrightwood Ave, or with grandeur, like that amazing hundreds of years old oak on old Erwin Rd between Dry Creek Rd. and Mt. Moriah. Even as we lose acres of forest each year to development, Durham is still a lush environment. All of which mean that Durham is a great city in which to be outdoors.

Bike commuters know that an outdoors activity after work brings a different perspective to daily life. So do the folks who walk the tracks at Shepard Middle School and Durham School of the Arts, as well as members of Duke's employees' Live for Life running and walking clubs who walk and run the gravel path around Duke's east campus each week. The city's open spaces and trails, from Whippoorwill Park to the New Hope Bottomlands Trail, are designed just for a morning or evening stroll, ride, or skate.

As we come out of the sickly-saturated consumerism of the holiday season, the empty promises of the cell phone and the plasma TV may catch up with you – especially around the time the first credit card bill comes in. These empty promises have to do with buying into the ideas that we need to surround ourselves with electronic stimuli and that everything we need is indoors. But the iPod generation needs to know there's a life without electronic media.

A recent Scientific American reported that women who worked out regularly had about half the risk of colds as those who did not exercise. Public health officials agree that being outside in sunlight for 45 minutes a day contributes to your health. It strengthens your immune system and is the most efficient way for your body to generate the Vitamin D needed for health.

But absorbing healthy Vitamin D is not the only reason to step out of doors. Since most people spend most of their time indoors, the experience of outdoor environments is a refreshing transition. It does as much for your mental health as exercise does for your body.

How would our lives be different if we each found time each day to unplug and adopt a low-tech outdoors habit like walking around the neighborhood? Why not take an evening bike ride with a friend?

As for me, I'm still looking for a place in Durham to watch the sunset.

--
Durham sunset pictures found on Flickr: LaDeeDah Lu, tsmyther, bikinisleepshirt, and elander

Posted by nicomachus at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)