Has been hot Green Transportation: Jim LaFortune and the MAMBA Challenge

By Jeanne McHale, Co-op Volunteer Writer

            
This column is written with a divided heart.  It features a man who left a wonderful legacy of trails enjoyed by hikers, bikers and skiers on Moscow Mountain.  In his 51 years, Jim LaFortune had more fun outdoors than three normal people. I am obliged to tell you about his generosity and the continuation of his trail-building work, and yet I want you to keep it secret. A web of well-maintained trails laces Moscow Mountain, accessible from Foothill or Moscow Mt. Rd. and roughly centered at Four Corners.   The trails are the work of Moscow Area Mountain Bike Association, with co-operation from Bennett Lumber and private landowners. Moscow cyclists love these trails and drive their cars to use them. How do I work that into a column about Green Transportation?

In the early 90s Jim and Kathie LaFortune were new to the area. Jim and his dog Bones began to explore Moscow Mountain looking for trails. In those days, the land was littered with shotgun shells and beer cans. The first trail Jim and friends cleared was North Contour in 1991, now a 1 mile “beginner” run. Soon he was collecting money for trail-building tools and developing a partnership with Bennett. Thanks to this groundwork, cyclists are now seen as good stewards of the mountain, and so is Bennett lumber.  But Kathie says Jim’s devotion to carving these trails was really a selfish act.  “He realized that Moscow was going to be his home for quite a while and needed a place to ride.”

The popular Headwaters Trail makes a roly-poly loop above Pond 9 on the west side. Its meandering switchbacks suggest a trail built for entertainment rather than transportation. Some of the trails are obscenely difficult to bike. The ridge road, which I used to climb on my road bike, is tame compared to Deep Vee.  I wonder if I could ever be as good a biker as Jim was, even in the last few months of his too-short life. I can’t handle the black diamonds on MAMBA trails, but I’m not scared of a little gravel and regularly cycle-commute from our home near the west parking area to town.  

I would like to thank the 500 or so MAMBA members who maintain the trails for all to enjoy.  

If you’d like to help, meet at Rosauers at 8:45 am on Aug. 6 or 27, bringing water, snacks, and gloves.   I would also like to issue this Green Transportation challenge.  Consider designating Foothill Road one of the official trails, call it “Washboard,” and letting your Moscow Mountain adventure begin right in your driveway.

Jeanne McHale looks forward to circumnavigating the wild Weitas Roadless area by bicycle on her upcoming vacation.

Green Transportation- The Thermodynamics of Bicycle Commuting

Jeanne McHale, Newsletter Volunteer

            Bicycling is an extremely efficient form of transportation.  A typical cyclist burns about 400 calories per hour, less than is required for swimming, jogging, or cross-country skiing.  Those calories must be replenished, or cyclists would literally vanish into the sunset.  In this column, I consider the energy cost of bicycle transportation as opposed to driving a personal vehicle.  You may find some of this data rather shocking, but please read on before you make out your shopping list.

             Food calories as a unit of energy are actually kilocalories (kcal). When converted to units of kilojoules (kJ), they must be multiplied by 4,184.  So the apple I just munched, nominally 80 calories, provided me with 335 kJ of energy.  But the apple didn’t grow in my yard, it had to be transported.  Agriculture accounts for a considerable portion of our fossil fuel consumption.  According to Barbara Kingsolver, author of “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” a typical food item travels 1,500 miles to reach your dinner plate, and the average American’s food consumption accounts for about 400 gallons of oil per year.  My husband and I rack up about 3,000 mile per year on our Toyota, which translates to about 100 gallons of gas per year.  Yikes, could we be burning more oil by eating then by driving?

            Let’s look at this more closely.  As often as I can, I commute to work on my bicycle, a 32 mile round trip.  This takes me about two and half hours, consuming about 1,000 food calories or 4,200 kJ. The same trip in my car would burn a gallon of gas, which provides about 125,000 kJ, based on the heat of combustion of isooctane. This is 30 times as much energy as that required to fuel the engine of my bike, which burns “fat” instead of “oil.”   Sounds better to bike, right? But according to Kingsolver, each food calorie consumed requires dozens or even hundreds of calories from fossil fuel to raise, market, and transport it.  So unless I make local food choices, replenishing those food calories spent cycling could actually increase rather than decrease my fossil fuel consumption!

            The solution to the problem is to cycle and eat locally.  The Co-op, the Growers Market, and the Moscow Farmer’s Market provide many tasty alternatives to petroleum-intensive food products.  Food tastes so much better when it’s been raised locally and even better after an appetite-stimulating bike ride.  See you on the trail.

Green Transportation is written by Jeanne McHale, who notes that her own efforts to grow food this Spring have required petroleum input in the form of polyethylene sheets to protect seedlings from frost.  

The Sustainability Review - The Hay Box

By Mike Forbes, Co-op Volunteer Writer

When you cook food much of the heat energy from your stove is used to overcome heat loss from your food to it’s surroundings.  Couldn’t we insulate our food so heat isn’t lost as rapidly thereby using less energy to cook it? Definitely.

Rice. Theoretically, once the rice boils the heat energy needed to complete cooking is present.  The heat leaves the rice because the food is insulated poorly. We overcome this loss by turning the burner down low and simmering it for 30-40 minutes, wasting electricity or fuel. 

What if we boiled the rice and then quickly put it in an insulated box where the heat energy couldn’t escape and the rice would then finish cooking? 

The catch is building a box that heat can’t escape from. What I’ve done successfully for years is build various insulated boxes from commonly available items.

I use them primarily for keeping food hot for a LONG period of time and cooking beans, millet and quinoa.  I’ve also been known to use it for steeping grains and preparing yeast in the beer making process…  If I put a hot food into the box I can pull it out 2-4 hours later still piping hot.

The trick to maximizing efficiency is to build a box that has as little air in it as possible with the largest pot you expect to use. My boxes are built from rigid foam insulation with a radiant barrier (shiny aluminum coating toward the inside).  I glue them together with hobby glue or foam adhesive (Natural Abode and MBS both carry non-toxic, low VOC glues that work well).  I put little strips of wood on the inside bottom to keep the hot pots directly off the insulation.  The door is just a rectangle of foam that wedge fits into the box. It is critical to make the door tight fitting, if you put a slight bevel to the door it will create a much better seal.  Using a table saw to make your cuts makes the process very easy and accurate.  Options for dressing up your box cosmetically are endless.  I typically wrap them in wood to make them more visually appealing but for years had a silver box wrapped in duct tape sitting on top my refrigerator.

If you build the box to your largest pot you can still use smaller pots with good success if you add more thermal mass to the box.  I found that filling small jars with hot water works well to eliminate these air spaces.

Currently we are planning on converting one of our kitchen cabinets into a haybox.  We’ll incorporate insulation into the door with the taper fit foam as mentioned earlier.   It is my understanding that this concept is old and that traditionally hay was used in the boxes as insulation, hence the name hay box.

Mike welcomes questions.  He can be reached at mike@technicalrescue.net.

Green Transportation

By Jeanne McHale

Not In My Backyard –Un-green transportation in the Pacific Northwest

             Lately I’ve been thinking about the size of the proverbial backyard. Our planet is small and easily perturbed by our energy dependencies.  A careless decision creates an oil slick visible from space.  A nuclear reactor survives an earthquake, but not the tsunami.  Politicians permit the conversion of scenic byways into industrial corridors, and our neighbors to the north find their drinking water polluted.  

            Highway 12 skirts the Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers in parallel to the Nez Perce Historic Trail and the path of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Throngs of visitors find solace in the syringa and soaring eagles here.  Part of the proposed route from Lewiston to the tar sands of Canada, Route 12 also parallels the TransAmerica Bike Trail. This popular bike route follows the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway on route to Missoula, the headquarters for Adventure Cycling.

Outspoken critics of the industrialization of Idaho and Montana bike routes, Adventure Cycling grew from an idealistic bicycle tour of the US that took place in 1976.  We could use a little of that bicentennial spirit these days.     

            At the Alberta tar sands, two tons of earth are excavated to get one barrel of tar. Pollution associated with the bitumen extraction process has led to increased cancer rates among First Nations people. Gooey tailings ponds are death traps for wildlife.  Clean natural gas is being burned to make the dirty tar, and a criminal amount of CO₂ is being released.  Making the equation even worse, a huge swath of the CO₂-absorbing boreal forest has been clearcut. Our governor, who recently told Congress that Idahoans don’t care much for wilderness, made us an unwitting partner to this planet-wrecking project by secretly approving the corporate takeover of Idaho roads by Big Oil.

            On March 20, a group of Nez Perce and non-tribal members from our backyard gathered in Kamiah for the Heart of the Monster Solidarity March, a show of unity for the First Nations people of Canada who are impacted by the Tar Sands.  At the Nez Perce National Historic Park, we gathered to hear an elder’s prayer, and people spoke of their local and global concerns. The struggle straddles numerous cultural divides: cyclists, fisherman and women, tour guides, and all who are spiritually connected to the land.  Not in our backyard, not in anybody’s backyard.

Green Transportation is written by Jeanne McHale, a lifetime member of Adventure Cycling and a veteran of the Northwest Passage Route. 

GM Search Update

By Andrika Kuhle

And the search continues…………….. The search committee is hard at work, with little exciting news to report. We are getting the word out that Moscow Food Co-op is hiring a new GM. We’ve posted announcements in numerous venues such as our local and regional newspapers, and organizations such as Tilth Producers, Sustainable Food Jobs and Cooperative Grocers’ Information Network. Do you know of a strong candidate that you would like to nominate? If so, please let the search committee know by sending an email to search@moscowfood.coop. We will begin screening applicants April 18. Stay tuned!

The Sustainability Review – LED and Dimmable Efficient Lighting

By Mike Forbes, Co-op volunteer writer

I’ve owned every sort of efficient lighting that has existed in the recent past. Always I am searching for a dimmable light bulb that closely emulates the standard incandescent light but offers lower energy use. Recently there have been large improvements in design that make these bulbs worth looking at but still there are issues. In this article I’ll talk about what is readily available and my perception of the technology.

First, LED lighting is making a step into lighting market. Until recently LED lights cast a very blue light and were very expensive ($50-$100/bulb). The advantage they have is the lowest energy use and ridiculously long life (50,000 hours+, that’s 5-1/2 years of continuous 24hr/day use). They currently cost approximately $18/bulb and use about ½ the power a compact fluorescent (CFL) does and 80% less than an incandescent. As a bonus, many are dimmable and are not affected by the cold as CFLs can be.

Let’s talk dimming. Incandescent bulbs are known for their smooth dimming, where as CFL and LED bulbs tend to be a bit more “jerky” in their dimming. This is due to the CFL & LED using electronics to control the light output. Older CFLs were horrible at dimming, they’d buzz loudly and cast a purplish, cold light unless they were on full. There is talk out there that you need a special dimmer for CFL/LED bulbs yet Consumer Reports did some testing on this with various bulbs and found no difference in performance.

The newer CFLs don’t buzz as much and dim much smoother but still don’t provide that infinite adjustment that the incandescent does. The light quality is good however on the whiter side. It is common to have the typical warm-up time that most CFLs have in varying degrees, gone is the startup flicker.

I purchased several LED dimmable bulbs and found them to behave and look very similar. There was a slight buzz, noticeable only when your head was next to the lamp, and they exhibited some of the jerky dimming but easily adjustable to various levels. The biggest drawback is that they don’t provide the warm, glow of the incandescent even thought the package claims to provide that color (soft white). I found the color of the bulb to be very cold, similar to the daylight bulbs out there.

Are they worth it? If you are concerned about energy use then you cannot beat the LED. If you are more concerned about nice, warm ambiance of a dimly lit room you might want to pass at this time. If I were looking for lights in my office, workroom, or any place I wanted a good, bright worklight, I’d definitely consider the LED lights. I think you’ll continue to see the price of these lights drop in the near future.

Mike welcomes questions and can be reached at mike@technicalrescue.net

How many things can we do with old newspapers?

“How many?”
By Miriam Kent, pre-cycling czaress

How many things can we do with old newspapers?
· Line the bottom of a bird cage.
· Twist them into “logs” for the fireplace.
· Rip them in to strips for paper mache.
· Wrap breakables when you move.
· Use the colorful funnies to wrap a gift.
· Protect the table for arts and crafts projects.
· Use them with a hot iron to absorb spilled wax from the rug.
· Fold a paper hat for your grandchild.
· If the ink is soy-based, use it to mulch your garden.
· Line cardboard boxes for storing fruits and veggies.

That’s ten, number eleven is your job.