This morning the League of American Bicyclists awarded EcoMetro city Portland with platinum level recognition as a Bicycle Friendly Community, rising from the previous gold level status. The only other city in the US with platinum level recognition is Davis, California. Read on for our local biking information and coupons for local shops as well as the application points that earned the title. Redmond is a Bronze level city, Seattle is not ranked.

Google Maps has a driving directions page that already tops all the others. After all, after you enter your starting and ending addresses, you already can click the option: "Take Public Transit," and it will give you several options--even calculating the price of driving vs. the price of riding!

What are you missing? Click to watch the video for the surprising results. Watch the video while tired, talking on your cell phone, at night...well, you'll get the idea.



Do the Test

I love having books recommended to me. It doesn’t mean that I always like the recommended book, but it usually takes the work out of trying to decide what book to read next. 

How was your ride? Write about it in a short message and compare notes at Velog Seattle.  Like a bike computer meets a text message (in the 140 word limit familiar to users of Twitter.com), Velog capitalizes on the urge to tell your pals about your bike ride and the need to keep it short and sweet. Calling itself "the worlds simplest cycling log" Velog allows users to post on a message board open to "bike commuters, roadies, mountain bikers, cyclocrossers, randonneurs, weekend warriors, and anyone and everyone with a bicycle under their butt." If you had to google randonneur (long distance cycling) or haven't seen your bike since the leaves hit the ground, use the Velog ride descriptions as encouragement.

This bumper sticker has been around at least as long as Oprah. Appropriate, maybe, to include on a list of New Year Resolutions. Actually, I’m OK with the first part, but no longer the second.

Americans spend well over $20 billion annually on personal care products that are intended to clean, protect and beautify our bodies … mostly on the surface. But look below the surface and the truth about what many of these items may be doing to our health – and that of the world around us – is anything but pretty.

I finally got my boyfriend aware of organic milk. And when I say 'aware,' I mean that he actually buys it.

His initial reaction was, "Look how much more expensive it is! Are you crazy?" But eventually, he realized that he got a lot of praise out of me if he bought it. So, like Pavlov's dog, he associated anything organic with receiving affection. Good boy!

I used this bumper sticker to introduce our “green” household audit and to relate taking more responsibility for the environment to taking more responsibility for the 2,770 sq. ft we occupy …our house. Perhaps not as compelling a message to my kids as “Save the Earth … it’s the only planet with chocolate,” but …

“Time for a family meeting.” These are the five most dreaded words uttered at my house, occupied by a husband, two teenagers, two cats, and a dog … all highly skilled at avoidance tactics. But the word certain to elicit groans and sudden recall of urgent needs to be elsewhere … is “sustainability,” dubbed the “S” word.

Recently I went for broke and declared the S word the topic of a family chat. A bumper sticker that could describe the response is: “Better living through denial.” Yeah, better for them. Denial is no longer an option for me.

I should disclose upfront that I work for PCC Natural Markets, a Seattle-based natural foods cooperative. Five years ago — pre-PCC — sustainability was not in my vocabulary. A junk food mom who could barely define organic, I joined PCC and, since I do the household buying, so did my family. After a few weeks at PCC I started introducing lots of new terms at the dinner table … genetically modified, irradiation, trans fat … the result of working with people who are genuinely passionate about all things natural.

I’ve transitioned gradually from the dark side — one organic- shade-grown-and-fairly-traded cup of coffee at a time — and I’ve discovered that incorporating sustainable choices in my life isn’t as hard as I’d feared. I’ve not yet tried hemp milk in my coffee, I don’t drive a hybrid, and I don’t pee in the dark to save electricity, but I do recycle all my Diet Coke cans, bring my own bags for groceries, and try to get my family to embrace the S word.

Back to the meeting. I quoted a bumper sticker I saw on a truck during a farm tour I took last year: “Compost. A rind is a terrible thing to waste.” It’s no surprise that composting is not a natural impulse for teenagers just beginning to venture out into the world, far from the warm, familiar source of comfort and possibilities (the TV, not their “parental units,” as we’re described to their friends). After all, composting may be a fine idea for people who actually like to do stuff like that, but the garbage disposal is a lot handier and if it clogs from too much sticky rice forced down the drain, dad knows how to fix it.

I was tenacious and declared a composting campaign, promising we’d have even more fun than our last family fire drill. (Well, fun for them; I had to be sedated after finding two smoke alarms had been disabled by my son because low batteries made them beep and woke him up.) We downloaded some composting information (great stuff at seattletilth.org and cedar-grove.com and seattle.gov/util) and will begin our adventure in composting this weekend.

Next up is a “green” household audit covering all the ways we can conserve energy, reduce waste, and still keep peace in the house. I already have a bumper sticker in mind for that. Stay tuned.