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Photo: Lauryn Ishak/Bloomberg.
Bukit Timah Truss Bridge on the Rail Corridor in Singapore.

Where I live, certain abandoned rail corridors have taken decades to be ready for biking and hiking. You know Americans: lawsuits. But perseverance pays off, and now you can go for miles on the Bruce Freeman Trail.

Meanwhile in Singapore, government moves faster.

Selina Xu reports at Bloomberg, “A former railway line running through the heart of Singapore has turned into one of its biggest conservation success stories, marking a departure from the more manicured approach to nature that the city-state is known for. 

“The 24-kilometer (15 miles) contiguous stretch of land was part of a rail track built by the British colonial government in Malaya and was returned to Singapore from Malaysia in 2011, more than four decades after the two countries parted ways. Singapore was now faced with a question: What should it do with the land?

“The Nature Society, Singapore’s oldest conservation group, submitted an audacious proposal to authorities: convert the railway into a green corridor that would connect existing green spaces from the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in the north, through some of the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods, all the way to the central business district in the south.

“Since 2012, parts of the rail corridor have been accessible to the public. The government has refrained from parceling out land for real estate development, keeping it as a green spine that’s 10 times longer than the High Line in New York, from which it drew inspiration. Authorities are now committed to preserving it in the long term, and continue to enhance more parts of the corridor, reopening them in phases.

‘When I gave that proposal to them, I wasn’t optimistic that they’d embrace the entire length,’ said Nature Society conservation committee chair Leong Kwok Peng, who spearheaded the campaign. ‘Never in my wildest dreams could I’ve actually imagined that would happen.’

“This month, an 8-kilometer northern stretch that had previously been under renovation was unveiled, with 12 new access paths connecting the corridor to surrounding residential estates and parks and an observation deck with views of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. More augmentations are still on the way, according to the National Parks Board (NParks) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority. 

“The focus on preserving the railway underscores a shift in Singapore’s relationship with nature. While half a century ago the city took a tamer and less ambitious approach to greenery, as encapsulated in the government’s ‘Garden City‘ vision which emphasized beauty and tidiness, the thinking now is to bring back the wilderness.

“The preservation of the rail corridor comes after Singapore’s development into a wealthy metropolis meant the sacrifice of acres of forests and wetlands. From 2000 to 2020, it experienced a net loss of 379 hectares (3.6 square kilometers) of tree cover, according to Global Forest Watch, roughly equivalent to 936 football fields. The railway, however, had been left largely untouched for decades due to land disputes between Singapore and Malaysia.

“ ‘The Rail Corridor passes through every terrestrial habitat you can find in Singapore,’ said Ngo Kang Min, a forest ecologist, pointing out on a map the patches of mangroves, marshland, forests and grassland alongside the railway tracks. By allowing the movement of species previously cut off from each other, Ngo envisions the corridor becoming a connector that can increase the genetic diversity of local flora and fauna.

“In October 2018, NParks and the URA began rewilding a 4-kilometer stretch in the central part of the Rail Corridor. Several endangered native primary forest species were reintroduced to return the landscape to its original rainforest state. To date, NParks has planted more than 52,000 native trees and shrubs along the corridor. The restored belt of native forest has since become a key passage, habitat and source of food for various animals, including the Sunda Pangolin, the world’s most trafficked mammal, and the Straw-headed Bulbul. …

“More rewilding will soon be happening in the north of the Rail Corridor, driven by the Nature Society — the largest-scale project of its sort under a nongovernmental organization to date. It plans to plant several thousand trees in order to bring back rare species and improve the canopy cover in a section of the corridor that’s mainly grassland. …

“The Nature Society is now lobbying the government to extend a trail along the Old Jurong Line, a disused railway track that runs through the western industrial tip of Singapore, where fragmented green spaces are scattered among factories, oil refineries and roads. The society is also focusing on preserving already-wild spaces along and adjacent to the corridor, parts of which will be disrupted by proposed housing development. …

“ ‘The attitude towards conservation in the past by the government has always been build, build, build first — economy comes first,’ said Ngo. ‘But now after Covid the conversation has shifted significantly. People want to see more green spaces. There can be room for more radical thinking and design in the way that we build those spaces.’ ”

More at Bloomberg, here.

We love the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail in Massachusetts.

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Photo: Mevan Babakar
Years ago, a 5-year-old Kurdish refugee received a bike from a kind man in the Netherlands. Recently, Mevan Babakar, now an adult, tracked down the man known only as Egbert to express her lasting gratitude.

As we break our hearts over what is happening to today’s Kurdish refugees, it may be time for a story about the beauty that can occur when refugees are treated with respect and compassion. The story is also about the good side of social media.

Megan Specia reported at the New York Times in August, “Memories of a brand new bicycle — and the mystery man who gave it to her when she was a 5-year-old in a Dutch refugee center — have played out as vignettes in Mevan Babakar’s mind for most of her life.

“Ms. Babakar, now 29, said the generous gift from a man whose name she couldn’t remember had shaped her childhood. On Tuesday, she suddenly found herself reunited with the man whose face had flickered through her memories for more than two decades.

“And it all began on Twitter.

“ ‘I was a refugee for 5 yrs in the 90s and this man, who worked at a refugee camp near Zwolle in the Netherlands, out of the kindness of his own heart bought me a bike. My five year old heart exploded with joy,’ Ms. Babakar wrote in a post on Twitter, before pleading with the internet to help her track him down.

“The photo she shared — a fading snapshot of the man that her mother had kept — was among a handful of belongings they had from that time. When he gave her the bike, she said, it made a lasting impact.

‘I remember feeling so special. I remember thinking that this is such a big thing to receive, am I even worthy of this big thing?’ Ms. Babakar said. ‘This feeling kind of became the basis of my self-worth growing up.’

“She and her parents fled Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s brutal crackdown on the Kurdish population in the early 1990s, which included a gas attack on a village near their home. Their journey took them to Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia — where her father stayed behind to work for the next four years — and eventually to the Netherlands. …

“Ms. Babakar took a sabbatical from her technology job in London this summer to retrace the journey, and visited Zwolle to spend a few days attempting to piece together her scattered impressions of her time there. … While there, she wrote a Twitter post that she described as a ‘last-ditch attempt’ to learn more about the man who had struck up a friendship with her and her mother, and gave her the bike.

“Within hours, Arjen van der Zee, who volunteers for a nonprofit news site in Zwolle, saw the photo and recognized the man.

“ ‘I looked at the picture and immediately knew this guy who I had worked with in my early twenties,’ said Mr. van der Zee. … Mr. van der Zee made contact with the man’s family on social media, and they put the two in touch.

“ ‘He started to tell me that he remembered Mevan and her mother,’ Mr. van der Zee said. ‘He said he always told his wife, if there were people he wanted to see again in his life it was Mevan and her mother.’

“They quickly scrambled to arrange a meeting with Ms. Babakar, who was due to travel back to London in the coming days. …

“ ‘He was, I guess, equally overwhelmed,’ Ms. Babakar said. ‘It was like seeing a family member that you hadn’t seen in a long time. It was really lovely.’ …

“Ms. Babakar was ‘incredibly humbled’ that her story had resonated with so many people around the world — both fellow refugees and those who just felt touched by the tale. … ‘I think it’s really easy for people to forget or to feel really powerless in the face of these big, abstract problems that we hear about all the time,’ she said. “It’s really a comfort to remember we are all very powerful in the way that we treat others. Especially in the small acts, we are powerful.’ ”

More here.

 

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Photo: FNRttC /Night Ride Cycling UK
UK participants in the Friday Night Ride to the Coast enjoy the casual pace. Smaller, more family-oriented night riding can be found in cities like Cleveland.

I’ve been meaning to write on this topic for ages — ever since I started seeing Mary Ann’s joyful Facebook posts on cycling at night with friends, family, and like-minded strangers in Cleveland.

In an article by Sam Walker at the Guardian, we learn that night cycling is a thing in England, too, but for more miles.

Walker writes that the Friday Night Ride to the Coast is a “carefully organised event run by the ‘Fridays,’ a club devoted to the singular cause of safely delivering you at a conversational pace from the Smoke to the sea. They do this every month from spring through autumn, requiring only third party insurance and an annual membership fee of £2.

“The FNRttC, as it’s known to veterans, has been spreading the joy of night riding for almost 15 years, flying quietly under the radar of most cyclists. …

“It was started by Simon Legg, who spent a decade escorting thousands to Brighton, Whitstable and other destinations with decent transport links. When he retired he entrusted his legacy to a group of seasoned ride leaders who take turns as mother hen.

“The distance ranges from 55 to 75 miles, and popular routes can attract more than 100 participants. There are tail-end Charlies and human waymarkers, sometimes recruited on the spot, to ensure nobody is lost or left behind.

“Rides begin at midnight with a chat about safety and etiquette, jokes optional. Mechanical problems along the way are met with expert assistance, though you’re advised to give your bike a thorough checkup beforehand. …

“It’s a great social mixer, but there are also opportunities for solitude as you pull each other along on an invisible stretchy rope. Punctures are a communal affair. ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ one of the minders will more or less transmit to the front, and so all will wait, grateful it wasn’t them. This time. …

“We ride at night because it’s there, conveniently out of the way of the usual routine. Less traffic is a bonus, but magic moments are made of more than this.

“There’s the moon, for a start: those times when it paints the road silver and the mist mysterious, inviting you to dabble in poetry. When not moonstruck, the darkness itself is the draw, a coverlet silencing the day’s concerns, yet granting permission for thoughts to drift forever out into space. …

There are bats and badgers and other nocturnal creatures clocking in, which helps rouse you out of any stupor you may have been falling into. Hills become easier. Shrouded in mystery, their summits mere conjecture, they are far less daunting.

“But possibly the biggest draw is the intimacy of cycling with people all on the same mission, getting a buzz off their energy, their tired happy faces in the morning’s light a mirror of your own.

“ ‘Why are you doing this?’ I’ve asked fellow riders … Answers ranged from: ‘I’m getting miles in to help with Paris-Brest-Paris’ – a 1,200km jolly – to: ‘My friend talked me into it.’ There were plenty of dreamy shrugs: ‘Why not?’ … For some, it’s an answer to a question they may not even have been aware they’d been asking themselves.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Could food delivery by bicycle be the wave of the future? Wayne Roberts, Canadian bicycle delivery maven from grade 7 to grade 12, thinks so.  Here’s what he wrote recently at the Torontoist.

“Bicycles never used to be thought of as central to the food system, but the Internet has allowed this particular wheel to be reinvented as a prime tool for localizing food systems while reducing traffic jams, cutting global warming emissions, and providing jobs.

“This innovation comes to light on account of Uber’s recent decision to reduce the fee it provides to UberEats bicycle couriers,” which has caused  controversy.

“But there’s another issue that got revealed here, which is the transportation system best suited to strong neighbourhoods and a vibrant and resilient food system. …

“The trip that’s a real killer from a space, energy, and hassle point of view — even worse than the short trip from the local warehouse to the local retailer — is the brief car trip from the customer’s residence to the retailer and then back home again. …

“If you want to calculate the embodied energy involved in moving food, the energy to move a two-ton car four miles to bring back 10 pounds of groceries is by far the most polluting trip any grocery item from anywhere has ever been on. …

“Putting food stores and restaurants back on main streets that are walking distance from densely populated neighbourhoods could be good for many reasons: good for fitness, getting to know neighbours, and building neighbourhood cohesion, which in turn is good for child safety and local response to emergencies. …

“To be resilient, cities need to localize as many services as possible to make them independent of outside control when it comes to the basics of life. Getting access to food is one of the basics, and the means of doing that should be as localized as the food and companies that get it customer-ready.

“The last mile needs to be in the hands of the people who live there.”

More at Torontoist, here.

Photo: Kat Northern Lights Man from the Torontoist Flickr Pool

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Who can resist a farmers market at this time of year? They are such joyful places.

Saturday we went with Erik and the kids to the Hope Street Farmers Market in Providence. It’s in a good-sized park where there is a playground as well as farmstands, crafts, live music, samosas, tacos, flowers, raw juices, fish, sausages, granola made by refugees …

After his grilled cheese and his Del’s lemonade, our 3-year-old grandson chose the little green and orange pumpkin below. It’s now on his dining-room table at home. His sister, when she wasn’t sleeping, worked hard at inspecting everything on the ground and trying to put it in her mouth.

A few words from the website on extra offerings that might interest backers of other farmers markets: “For your convenience, here are some of the unique features of the Hope Street Farmers Market: The Bicycle Valet at the Saturday morning market, run by Recycle-A-Bike, a volunteer-based community organization that connects people with refurbished bikes, provides practical bike knowledge, and advocates bicycle use by safer, more confident cyclists. Anyone can drop off their bike while shopping and know that it will be safely watched and sometimes even tuned up, for a small fee, while they shop. http://www.recycleabike.org gives a full description and mission of the organization.

“Knife Sharpening while you shop is another new feature of our Saturday market. You can drop our your knives (wrap them carefully and mark them with your name please!) to be professionally sharpened for a small fee while you shop.

“Live music at the markets features local musicians or acoustic bands playing every Saturday and some Wednesdays, so feel free to bring a blanket, buy your picnic lunch or supper and enjoy the entertainment.”

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This sweaty-looking athlete leaning into the turn at Cooneymous Road is John. He has just done the swimming part of New Shoreham’s triathlon in the ocean, and now he is into the first loop on the hilly biking course.  He will wind up with a run on Crescent Beach. Fingers crossed that the tide is out and the sand is hard.

Beautiful day for it. The peanut gallery has experienced our share rainy triathlons, and one that was cancelled because of thunder and lightening.

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TreeHugger frequently covers biking. And since my four-year-old grandson has mastered all but the braking on his new two-wheeler and expects me to start biking with him, I think I better cover bikes, too.

Here is an article by Derek Markham from the TreeHugger website about a new bike that aims to combine the best of two worlds.

Writes Markham, “When you go from riding a skinny-tired road bike to a mountain bike with fat tires, it opens up a whole new world of cycling, even if you don’t ever leave the pavement. With fat tires (and perhaps some suspension), your bike can float right over bumps and cracks in the road without rattling your teeth, hopping up or down curbs is almost effortless …

“But even with these advantages, there are still riding situations that can bog down a mountain bike, such as sandy and snowy conditions, and if you really want to go where most people don’t, then a fat bike is the next logical step.

“Fat bikes, with their extremely wide (4″) tires, can make a sandy wash or a gravel road as easy to ride as a packed singletrack (well, almost as easy), and riding in and on snow and mud can be something you seek out instead of try to avoid. But those big fat tires also take some extra effort, and if your thighs aren’t quite up to the task of pedaling a fat bike through and over slush, snow, sand, gravel, or mud, a fat bike ride can be grueling. However, when you add the power of a 500W electric motor to a fat bike, such as Biktrix has done, a virtually unstoppable Juggernaut is created.” More here.

Hmmm. An upstoppable Juggernaut might impress my grandson, but I am pretty sure he doesn’t want me to be as impressive as he is. He told his dad Saturday, “You need to be slower than me.”

Besides, the electric part reminds me of mopeds, and I really don’t like mopeds.

Photo: Biktrix

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Photo: Century Cycles 

In September, Mary Ann participated in the Neocycle night ride in Cleveland with 1,500 other cyclists and shared photos and enthusiasm on Facebook.

Joshua Gunter covered the story for the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Glowsticks and headband lamps replaced headlights in eastbound lanes of the Shoreway on Saturday evening, when about 1,500 cyclists took over the road for the first NEOCycle Night Ride.

“The unique ride, which started at Edgewater Park and featured the Detroit-Shoreway, Gordon Square and North Coast Harbor neighborhoods, was a highlight of the weekend-long NEOCycle — Cleveland’s newest cycling event and the Midwest’s first urban cycling festival.

“Cyclists as young as 8 joined the casual ride, whose full tour covered 15 miles, or two laps of the 7.5-mile course.”

For tips on getting ready for a night ride, check out Ohio-based Century Cycles, here.

Photo: Joshua Gunter.The Plain Dealer 

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A nonprofit book service in Portland, Oregon, has recognized that “people living outside” are as likely to enjoy a book as people who live indoors.

Kirk Johnson writes in the NY Times, “A homeless man named Daniel was engrossed in a Barbara Kingsolver novel when his backpack was stolen recently, and Laura Moulton was determined to set things to right.

“Ms. Moulton, 44, an artist, writer and adjunct professor of creative nonfiction, did not know Daniel’s last name, his exact age, or really even how to find him — they had met only once. But she knew the novel, ‘Prodigal Summer,’ and that was a start. So, armed with a new copy of the book, off she went. Such is the life of a street librarian.

“This city has a deeply dyed liberal impulse beating in its veins around social and environmental causes, and a literary culture that has flourished like the blackberry thickets that mark misty Northwest woods. It is also one of the most bike-friendly, if not bike-crazed, urban spaces in the nation, as measured by commuters and bike lanes. All three of those forces are combined in Street Books, a nonprofit book service delivered by pedal-power for ‘people living outside,”’ as Ms. Moulton, the founder, describes the mission. …

“ ‘It’s not just a little novelty act — “Oh, that’s so Portland and cute,” ’ ” says Diana Rempe, a community psychologist. “Taking books to the streets, she said, sends the message that poor and marginalized people are not so different from the ‘us’ that defines the educated, literate mainstream of the city, whether in its hipsters, computer geeks or bankers.”

More here.

Photo: Thomas Patterson for The New York Times
Laura Moulton and Matt Tufaro in Portland, Ore. Ms. Moulton founded Street Books, a nonprofit book service for “people living outside.”

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One of the biggest challenges for biking in cities is the intersection.

Liz Stinson writes at Wired, “Biking through a city can feel like navigating a video game staked upon your life. You’re avoiding pedestrians and potholes all the while making sure cars don’t run into you. …

“Even protected bike lanes have an Achilles heel: the intersection. Most protected bike lanes — lanes that have a physical barrier between bicyclists and drivers — end just before the intersection, leaving bicyclists and pedestrians vulnerable to turning vehicles.

“Nick Falbo, an urban planner and designer from Portland (one of the most bike friendly cities in the nation), is proposing a new protected intersection design that would make intersections safer and less stressful than they are today. Falbo’s design is taken from the Dutch way of doing things. … Falbo’s adapted design has four main components.”

They are the corner refuge island, the forward stop bar, the setback crossing, and bicycle-friendly signal phasing. Read what they are here.

“ ‘This design requires you to have a much tighter corner radius,’ says Falbo. ‘These large truck operators, they are professional drivers they can actually make tighter turns than these standards normally say they would. The real answer is that I think you’re going to have to be a little stricter on your trucks in any number of ways.’

“It’s a battle, but Falbo thinks implementing these bike lanes are totally possible, pointing out that protected bike lanes are just now gaining support across the country. …

“‘We’re trying to attract more riders,’ he says. ‘Some of these conventional facilities, they work and they’re safe, but they’re stressful and that level of stress and lack of comfort is what will keep the average American from feeling like they can ride.’ ”

Image: Nick Falbo
Nick Falbo designed a type of bike lane that addresses dangerous intersections.

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Late Sunday night, Kevin, a colleague who is a bicyclist, completed the Midnight Ride.

It’s an event that started a few years ago when one guy suggested to some fellow bikers that they bike the Boston Marathon route the night before the big event.

Stacey Leasca of the Los Angeles Times has the story.

“For the last six years, the Midnight Marathon Bike Ride has covered the Boston Marathon course the night before the race, as a way for more Bostonians to take part.

” ‘It was a way for me, who is not a runner, to connect with Boston, to connect with all this marathon energy,’ said Greg Hum, the ride’s originator.

“Although the Boston Athletic Assn., which oversees the Boston Marathon, has never officially sanctioned the ride, it has become a celebrated tradition to help kick off Marathon Monday.

“The night before the 2013 race, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Assn. even provided riders with a special commuter train to get them to the start of the route.

“This year, however, race officials and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency asked that the ride be canceled, and the MBTA did not offer its Midnight Marathon train. …

“But the Midnight Marathon had momentum that he and the agencies could not derail.

“Once word spread that there would be no train from downtown Boston to the starting line, riders began organizing carpools, vans, trucks and even a few buses via social media to help get them to the start.”

Kevin said Hum really wasn’t an organizer, just a guy whose idea grew, and he didn’t know any way to call it off. So it happened. There were people cheering along the route, even that late. Kevin got home at 2 a.m., exhilarated. His toddler woke him bright and early on Patriots Day, the day closely associated with another midnight ride.

More here.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Here’s an idea: music made with a bicycle.

Mario Aguilar writes at Gizmodo, “Riding a bike is a musical experience in more than a metaphorical way: Brakes squeal, spokes click, derailleurs clang. Composer Johnnyrandom sampled himself ‘playing’ his bicycle and the results are positively gorgeous. …

“It’s hard to believe that all of [the] sounds are made by a bicycle. Some of them are strictly the byproduct of the bike’s mechanical operation, like the sound it makes when you release a brake lever. Others are created when you play different parts of the bike with a musical accessory.

“For example, Johnnyrandom records the low-pitched flutter of a pick scratching on a spinning wheel, and tunes the bicycle’s spokes so he could play them with a bow like a string instrument. After capturing the sounds with a portable recorder, the different sounds were arranged and sequenced using software. This two-minute mix gives you a feel for the wide sonic that he was able to create.”

In typical bloggy fashion, I got this from Andrew Sullivan, who got it from Gizmodo (which also has a kinoscope of Frank Zappa, on the old Steve Allen tv show playing a bicycle, and a video of how Johnny Random works), who got it from This Is Colossal. Where will this message in a bottle land next?

(Be sure to check my post on composer Kenneth Kirschner, here, for more contemporary music using unusual instruments.)

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Here’s another good one from WBUR’s “Only a Game.”

Bill Littlefield interviewed author Tim Lewis, who has written a book called Land of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda’s Cycling Team.

Littlefield starts out by discussing Rwanda’s history before moving on to the subject of bikes.

Bill: “Tell us about the country’s wooden bikes.”

Tim Lewis: “If you go to Rwanda today, you still see the wooden bikes. You don’t see them on the main road anymore because they’ve been banned by the president because he feels … it isn’t the message that he wants a modern, progressive country like Rwanda to convey. But on any roads off the main roads you see people using these wooden bikes. They’re hacked out of eucalyptus trees.

“People there love using them. … They’re like the mule of Rwanda. People use them to carry bananas or goats on the back or live chickens. … Part of the reason they’ve been banned from the main roads is that they’re so horribly dangerous. They have two speeds. One of them is not moving at all or kind of very slowly going up these hills. And the other of which is going downhill, and they’re so out of control that anyone in their path gets knocked over.”

Bill: “In the chapter titled ‘The Dot Connector,’ you mention Project Rwanda, the brainchild of Tom Ritchey. What was Mr. Ritchey’s goal?”

Tim: “Tom Ritchey is a real pioneer of bicycle design, in particular, mountain bikes. In 2005 Tom Ritchey visited Rwanda. And one of the things that really affected Tom was how much people in Rwanda loved riding bicycles. And so Tom thought, ‘Can I design a bike that would be affordable for Rwandans to buy?’ and that could really change people’s lives there — in terms of coffee farmers being able to pick coffee in the morning and get them to a washing station to get it processed, which can make a big difference … At the same time an idea popped into his head which is, ‘You know, these guys look like amazing athletes. What about starting a bicycle team?’ ”

Eventually, Rwanda did get a team. It’s a great story. Read more and listen to the broadcast here.

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Aren’t inventors great? There certainly seem to be a lot around these days.

Of course, I am still a bit high on the Mass Challenge Awards last night, thrilled about Erik and the other deserving winners, like the nonprofit GRIT (Global Research Innovation and Technology), which makes an inexpensive wheelchair for use in the Third World.

Here’s another cool invention, from Israel: a cardboard bicycle.

Ori Lewis and Lianne Gross write at Reuters, “A bicycle made almost entirely of cardboard has the potential to change transportation habits from the world’s most congested cities to the poorest reaches of Africa, its Israeli inventor says.

“Izhar Gafni, 50, is an expert in designing automated mass-production lines. He is an amateur cycling enthusiast who for years toyed with an idea of making a bicycle from cardboard. …

“Cardboard, made of wood pulp, was invented in the 19th century as sturdy packaging for carrying other more valuable objects, but it has rarely been considered as raw material for things usually made of much stronger materials, such as metal.

“Once the shape [of Gafni’s bicycle] has been formed and cut, the cardboard is treated with a secret concoction made of organic materials to give it its waterproof and fireproof qualities. In the final stage, it is coated with lacquer paint for appearance.

“In testing the durability of the treated cardboard, Gafni said he immersed a cross-section in a water tank for several months and it retained all its hardened characteristics.

“Once ready for production, the bicycle will include no metal parts, even the brake mechanism and the wheel and pedal bearings will be made of recycled substances, although Gafni said he could not yet reveal those details due to pending patent issues.” Read more from Reuters, here.

Check this video posted by Gadizmo.

Baz Ratner /Reuters /Landov

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An Associated Press story on an “innovative program that allows inmates to reduce their sentences in exchange for generating power” caught the attention of NPR today. It seems that prisoners may volunteer to help “illuminate the town of Santa Rita do Sapucai [Brazil] at night.

“By pedaling, the inmates charge a battery that powers 10 street lamps along a riverside promenade. For every three eight-hour days they spend on the bikes, [the volunteers] get one day shaved off their sentences.

“The project in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais is one of several across Brazil meant to cut recidivism by helping restore an inmate’s sense of self-worth. Prisoners elsewhere can trim their sentences by reading sentences — in books — or taking classes.

“Officials say they’ve heard a few complaints the initiatives are soft on criminals, but there’s been little criticism in the country’s press or in other public forums.” Read more at National Public Radio.

Here is what such a bike might look like.

Photograph: Eric Luse, The Chronicle / San Francisco

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