Los Angeles to San Diego – 3 Days, 135 miles

December 1st, 2005 by David

   Summary: Cars are scary, my passport was stolen, and I’m stuck in San Diego till I get a new one.
   Full account: After visiting Environmental Charter school Monday morning (see next entry), I found the closest bike store and asked for dirctions to highway one. They did not know any good ways to bike there, and I followed a busy street with no bike lane.

   At highway one, which has green signs reading ‘bike route,’ I found myself comfortable biking only on the sidewalk as rush hour traffic filled the three lanes. Traveling slowly, I stopped many miles short of a campground and was forced to stay at a cheap hotel near the intersection of two highways. (Watch the movie on the left if you have a high speed connection).
   I departed at little after 5 the next morning to avoid rush hour, and soon biked in the dark through steaming oil refineries and petroleum-smelling air. As the dawn came, I made it to Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, and found a bike lane and shoulder along the roadside.

   A tailwind blew, and other than a few busy towns, the riding was easy. In Camp Pendleton marine base, I stopped at a small convenience store, and, as usual, brought my bike into the store and left it within sight of the cash register. While talking with a marine outside, I must have left my wallet, with passport and drivers license, at the bicycle. In a few minutes, it was gone.
   Perhaps my guard was too low because I was still in the U.S., or my blood sugar wasn’t high enough to keep track of my stuff. My anger is mixed with feelings of frustration and ineptitude, and I hope I can use this as a lesson to keep better track of my stuff as I travel south. I am about to buy a better bike lock.

   Soon, two other cyclists with loaded bicycles pulled up to the store. The two friends, Gregg and Brooks, started in July in Alaska and are also riding to southern Argentina. They are raising money for diabetes research, and have a great website. We rode the last 15 miles to a campground in Encinitas, and talked about the road behind and ahead: What did you hear about that dirt road in Baja? (great but hard) Are you biking Colombia? (maybe) How will you get through the rest of Mexico? (go inland) When will you finish? (November 2006) What has broken on your bike so far? (frame, wheel rim) Have you run into others on this route? (Yes, at least one other group.)
   After sharing a campsite, I said goodbye to Gregg and Brooks the next morning. They will ride far ahead of me in Baja while I get a new passport, but I am sure our paths will cross again. I then biked 15 miles to San Diego, where I will stay with my friend Sheila Walsh until I get a new passport.

Posted in California | 4 Comments »

Environmental Charter School in L.A.

November 29th, 2005 by David

   After a night at my friend Julia’s apartment and retrieving my bike (which Julia stored in the corner for the week), I biked to Environmental Charter High School near Manhattan Beach in L.A. and talked to two classes of students. The school requires all of its students to take environmental science, and I enjoyed looking at photos on the walls of field trips to natural environments far away from the city school.

Posted in Schools | No Comments »

Carbon Offsets for a Trip to ?!Florida!?

November 28th, 2005 by David

    You may be wondering why the line on the map hasn’t moved in the past week. I’ve been in Florida, spending Thanksgiving with four (!) different generations of my family. I will be missing the next two Christmases, and I figured I could justify flying across the country for Thanksgiving.
    Unfortunately, flying across the country uses a lot of fuel. Even though airplaine efficiency has improved in recent years, flying still gives off almost as much carbon dioxide as driving. It is almost as if I drove across the country.
    So I have purchased carbon offsets. This means that I am paying someone else to not pollute, or I am paying someone to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. This is similar to how the Kyoto treaty works — if you emit too much carbon dioxide, you have to pay someone else not to emit it.

    Flying to Florida, I was responsible for about 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. I have paid $12 to www.climatecare.org to offset these emissions through their various projects.
   Anyway, I’m back in L.A. now, about to try to take public transit from this Starbucks to the other side of town (It takes three different busses to get from the Ontario airport to the metro station. And the first bus? It was to the rental car parking lot and I had to ask the driver to make a special stop so that I could take the second bus).
   Back to the bike tomorrow!

Posted in California, Climate | 5 Comments »

Biking in L.A. – to Hollywood and Back

November 18th, 2005 by David

   After talking with Mr. Ransom’s 9th grade class, I decided to bike through Los Angles to get a sense of the city. Following a city map, I rode 30 miles to Hollywood and back.

   I hoped to talk with cyclists to see how they managed to bike in LA. I found only two. One had lost his license, and was forced to bike. I asked if he had trouble with the cars. He replied, “Recently, I was hit by a Mercedes and then my arm was run over by a Lexus.” The man then listed his hospital bills. I biked on the sidewalk (slowly) afterwards.
   The climate in L.A. is perfect for year round bicycle commuting, yet few people bike because 1) everything is so spread out and 2) there are few (if any) bikeways or bike lanes. The public transit does work, but only a few people I talked with seemed satisfied with it. Most trips are in a car, and in traffic.

    Unfortunately, cars are an inefficient way to travel around a city. A person in a car emits, on average, twice as much carbon dioxide as a person in public transit. Also, by comparison, cycling adds almost no carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (see comment on this).
   I would love to see an L.A. with bike lanes and great public transit. It would require great change, but I think it is possible, and I think the city would be far better for it.

Posted in California, Climate | 7 Comments »

Universty High in LA — Can we trust climate models?

November 17th, 2005 by David

    Today I talked at University High School (it’s a high school, not a University) in West Los Angeles. The teacher, Mr. Ransom, who has masters in physics and has used computer models, argued that our models of the climate are simply not good enough to act on. He does not trust them.

   Can we trust these computer models predicting future warming? These models break the world into a grid, use basic physical equations, and figure out weather in every cell for the course of a year for many centuries.
   While these complicated models are not good at simulating some aspects of the climate (tropical rain patterns and the effects of sea ice, for example), they can generally reproduce the current climate of the planet. Most impressively, we can well simulate changes in temperature over the past century, giving us confidence that we do understand how the world’s climate works. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which reviewed all current climate science, decided that these models were good enough to make predictions, and the models have improved since then. While Mr. Ransom may have been correct a decade or more ago, I don’t think he is correct any more.
    This is why I feel I can make claims about California’s future—the science is good. To see a better defense of climate models, click here. To run a simple one on your own computer, click here.

Posted in Climate, Schools | No Comments »

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