Greeneroo

Save money and promote green activities or explore your Eco-self. What are the best examples? Here are some to take advantage of:

SAVE ENERGY

1. Boil water in the microwave rather than on an electric stove top (use up to 60% less energy).
2. Lower your thermostat in the winter. You’ll save enough money to buy a beautiful organic wool sweater! Your heating bill goes down by a whopping 3% for each degree you reduce of heating!
3. Take short showers and you’ll save heating money and water. A fifteen minute shower each day costs about $310 / year. And while you are waiting for hot water, gather the cold water to water plants. Put a bucket in the shower so you don’t forget, and take it out when you step in.
4. Stop idling your car! Did you know that 10 seconds of idling = restarting your car (in terms of gas use). For 2 minutes of idling = driving a mile. Turn your engine off.
5. Evaluate gas vs. flying for a vacation, use fuelcostcalculator.com or costtodrive.com  … and when you are finished with a trip, unpack your truck. Every 100 pounds can cost you 1-2% of fuel cost.
6. Ride a bike to errands. Simple, easy and healthy.
7. Green Tax Credit. Install qualifying energy efficient windows, doors, water heating, roofing. Check the details at energystar.gov. You can get up to $1500.
8. Drive under 65 mph. Fuel efficiency goes down an average of 5 mpg for each 10 mile an hour speed increase. Jack rabbit starts from stops also reduce your gas mileage an additional 3 mpg.
9. Add Biking to your vacations. You can drive to your destination, park your car and then use your bike rather than the car for the daily fun outings. Lots of communities have great bike lanes and hiking trails, check the League of American Bicyclists or the Alliance for Biking and Walking. If your community isn’t bike friendly these links may inspire you to push for improvement.
10. For more info on CA biking + walking check the local Alliance listing.
11. Grow your Own! Tomatoes and Herbs are good plants to start with for beginners.
12. Walk to the local Farmer’s Market. This is a fun outing for kids and adults.

REDUCE your Impact!

1. Rent an extra room. You’ll meet some great people, get extra cash, reduce the housing crunch for singles, and you can arrange with your tenant to do chores like take out recycling or gardening or dog-sitting. With so many people downsizing, this is a viable alternative to apartment living. In the SF Peninsula / San Mateo County, go to HIP HOUSING  which offers an excellent  free matching service where renters (looking for Housing or with Housing to share) are interviewed and checked out  in San Mateo county.  Make an appointment for your interview and they will send you people that meet your criteria.
2. Rent space in your garage. Check out SpareFoot.com or Storeatmyhouse.com for general sites. Craig’s List also has extensive free listings on sublets and rooms.
3. Use Freecycle- don’t dump. Have Yard Sales – you can find yard sales in your area at yarsaletreasuremap.com, also garage sales are on Craig’s List.

Exploring Your World

1. Free Sightseeing! A local resident can show you the town – globalgreeternetwork.info. Walking tours are a great way to see everything, check this site, europtours.eu  and the Chamber of Commerce and Visitor information centers have walking information.
2. Bird Watching far from home! BirdingPal.org will connect you with a local birder, this sounds like great fun!
3. Craig’s List has many events and activities in local areas. Meet Up also has hiking groups in local areas, the San Jose Hiking Meet Up keeps me busy and there is a great variety of places to go that are new to me.

CoHousing is an innovative approach to building community, providing better housing, and developing a focused green way to live. Cohousing residences look like any other, but there are community and group facilities and even group concepts that make it very different. The residents collaborate on decisions and work together to connect the community housing ethics to thier living space. It makes sense that they would have an innovative approach to sharing their mission …. visit Bay Area co-housing by bike! Great idea! 

Note:  They also have bus tours and visits to housing that is much futher away.

Tour de East Bay Cohousing, Saturday, July 31st 9:15-3:15
Pump up your tires and get ready to bike to 6 East Bay cohousing communities. We’ll be biking approximately 8-10 miles on a flat route at a leisurely pace with frequent stops. We’ll start at Berkeley Cohousing, ride on to Doyle Street in Emeryville, Mariposa Grove in North Oakland, Temescal Commons and Temescal Creek Cohousing in North Oakland and end at Swan’s in downtown Oakland where you can jump on BART or pedal home.
Karen Hester, founding member of Temescal Creek Cohousing, is your tour leader.
Cost is $35 with cold drink provided, $45 with chicken sandwich lunch from Bakesale Betty and cold drink provided. Limited to 20 participants.
To Register:
Use Paypal at http://www.hesternet.net/events.html and send me an email telling me if you need a veggie sandwich (otherwise you’ll be getting chicken!)
Please mail checks made out to:
Karen Hester
320 45th St, Oakland, CA 94609.
Please include your name, email, phone number and whether you’d like lunch provided. Also indicate whether you prefer veggie (egg salad) sandwich.

• Bikes are everywhere! You’ll enjoy these links, I’m always glad to gather them up to share with YOU!
  For a great local Bike trails map, check out the Santa Clara Valley BIKEWAYS map, it is published by the Santa Clara VTA and are available at most biking events. VTA also has bike lockers. To contact VTA: email customer.service@vta.org  The 24 hour phone number is 408-321-2300.
• Bike Share, the VTA has a bike share program in three South Bay Cal Train stations: San Jose Diridon, Mountain View Castro Street and Palo Alto University Avenue. Train riders can borrow a bike for the day! CalTrain information is www.caltrain.com or 800-660-4287.
• Velib is the name of the Bike Share program in France. Each bike is ridden about six times per day, that totals to about 120,000 daily rides – what a great program. More information on Velib and Paris.
• Pedals for Progress, has donated more that 120,000 used bikes and $10.8 million in spare parts to 32 developing countries. To learn more go to P4P.org  They have stopped collecting for the summer but will start back up in September.
• Employers are able to give their Bike Commuters $20 /month as a benefit, the employers may write it off as a business expense. This program was started in 2009.
• From 2005 to 2008 the City of San Jose reported a 206% increase in the number of Bike Commuters  (reported by EucalyptusMagazine.com )

Dust off your bike, and get pedaling. Call a friend help them get started in the wonderful world of biking. It has important health benefits as well as a positive environmental impact and cost savings.

This tough- lookin, cruiser style, art-bike is made just for YOU!!

Description
If you like steel then the Broncks Raw is the bike for you. Fabricated in New York City, each bike is a work of industrial art with the hand brazed brass joints and distinct color characteristics of the bare steel visible through the protective clear coat finish. It features the same limited edition leather saddle, sustainable cork handles, chain guard, fenders, kick stand, rear rack and hand crafted wooden crate and is dressed up with our classic Bowery Lane Bicycles brass headbadge.

This vintage inspired cruiser is comfortable to ride, easy to maintain and theft resistant. It’s great for commuting to work, going to the store, or just getting out to meet a few friends. All Bowery Lane Bicycles are handmade in New York City with American steel. You will once again have the coolest bike on your block.

$595, with $50 shipping. Check ETSY: http://www.etsy.com/listing/49236586/broncks-raw

Blazing Saddles in SF rents regular bikes, but also rents Electric Bikes. How Fun!! Pedaling the world’s second hilliest city on a bike? Leave that to Lance Armstrong. Instead, jump-start your two-wheeled tour of San Francisco by bike! This is a reliable 20-year-old company, the bike is reliable too: UltraMotor A2B will take you up and over the city’s 50-plus hills with style and grace at about 20 miles per hour. The 24-hour rental includes a map, helmet, lock, front bag, back rack, and a bungie cord. And with a 24-hour drop-off location on Hyde Street, you’ll have plenty of time to sleuth out 49 square miles of otherwise intractable land.
Blazing Saddles does occassionally have half-off deals through LIVING SOCIAL DEALS and you can sign up for the emails.  The regular cost is about $75 a day.

2715 Hyde Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 202-8888

5/13 put the car away, BIKE TO WORK! Celebrate biking and enjoy this event. Free Swag is at dozens of SF Bay Area locations and Monterey Bay— you’ll see REI Energizer Stations at various public, transit, and Park areas.

BART: Pleasant Hill, North Berkeley, Fremont  PLUS Santa Rosa City Hall, Redwood City Cal Train and there are more locations!

For more information: www.bike2work.com  ,  http://www.youcanbikethere.com/

Register in the giant RAFFLE to win prizes: http://btwd.bayareabikes.org/register

REI has great classes on bike maintenance the basic class is free and very informative. They also do bike mainenance for you, to get your bike alligned, lubed and in top working order. There are stores all over: San Francisco, Peninsula, North Bay Monterey… they are a great biking resource.

The free Bike Maintenance Seminar at REI was great and THANKS to my friend  for recommending it. Sign up for the next one!
I learned a lot, the highlights were

• DONT use WD 40, will encourage rust on the chain
• Use Tri-Flow (about $4) on chain while pedaling backwards (you don’t need a bike stand) and once it has gone around several revolutions, take a rag and wipe down the chain (all dirt will come off)
• You can use lube with wax ($5-10) and dirt will slough off the chain
• Lube after every rain, and every week otherwise (depending on how much your ride)
• Also in your tool kit make sure to have a tube and a tire lever (yellow ~$2)
• They have a advanced repair class for ~$85 and you learn brake adjustment, tuning etc.
• REI members bike tune-up is about $65 for them to do

While I was at REI I learned that there are now digital GPS’ for bikes.  That’s good it won’t tell you to go on the freeway and maybe it will know the “back” paths.

I found a book that I like, with good pictures and clear directions: A Woman’s Guide to Cycling by Susan Weaver, it answers all the questions I didn’t even know I had. It also talks about fitness, which is a good place to start, because I don’t want to give up before I really learn how to love this sport.

Join the TOUR du GREEN exploring the majestic Pacific Coast & mountain ecosystems between Malibu & Santa Barbara, with over 5000′ of climbing along carefully crafted Metric & Century routes. This May 15th tour will challenge your cycling skills, expand knowledge of all things GREEN and fund-raise for charity.

Tours of outstanding national sustainability sites feature the latest technologies in solar, water, agricultural & municipal innovations along with local food & drink tastings. Safe Family Coastal Ride (10- 25 mi.) with educational stops like City of Ventura’s LEED certified Working Artists WAV Complex.

Joining the American Society of Civil Engineers, Team Ventura Velo will once again provide outstanding SAG, host abundant fueling stations & tours of multiple “green-stops.”

For more information www.venturavelo.org

Events that get us moving and outside are the best! Why not try a food shopping / picnic / bike ride combo!?
Here is the plan: Select  a Sunday – walk the Campbell Farmers Market picking up yummy stuff for the picnic.  Then take a leisurely ride down the Los Gatos Creek Trail to Vasona Park where we will pick a grassy spot by the lake and enjoy a delicious picnic with your friends!

If you need to rent a bike call Tread Bike Shop at 408-792-7191. They have bikes available for $20 for 24 hours. Make sure to call and reserve your bike in advance. You can pick up the day of the event. It is located right across the street from the ride on the Los Gatos Creek Trail!

Information on Bike Sharing programs and tax incentives for riding to work are changing often. Several groups are getting the word out for our California based information, there is alot more information available, this is a start…

• California Bicycle Colation
• Bike to Work Week in California MAY 11-15 2009 Lets look forward to 2010!
• Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition

TRAVELING?  You could benefit from bike sharing. The best kind of Tour de France! The Dutch had long been sharing pedals, and the French company JCDecaux is providing a way to pick up pedal power in France. The kiosks are located all around town (Lyon was the test city, also in Paris).

Some communities are combing Bike Sharingwith their RideShare programs, these programs are expanding all over the United States.

Canada has Vancity Bike Share among others.