For the month of September, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, or BTA, hosts a Bike Commute Challange in Oregon to promote bicycle commuting. The goal is to introduce new riders by getting local businesses and veteran riders involved. To encourage first time bike commuters, the BTA counts partial commutes. Other BTA events during the year include the popular Bridge Pedal when bridges over the Willamette River in Portland close for the bike tour. On the first day, challenge participants logged over 24,500 cumulative miles (source: BTA).

Portland is very accessible for bike commuting due to a mild climate, bike lanes connecting suburbs, and protected bike parking offered by the city and private enterprise. The local buses have bike carriers for riders wishing to reduce their pedal distance. Many bike riders commute all year, including the wet winter months, but the numbers rise during the summer. Getting around by bike in the downtown area bests a car any day due to low speed limits and congestion. Here are some Portland bike statistics from Portland Office of Transportion:

• 13% of daily vehicle trips across bridges are bicycles
• Over 5,000 bikes cross Hawthorne Bridge each weekday
• Annual bike trip increase in 2006 was 18% over 2005
• About 5% use a bike as their primary mode of commuting

I commute to work by bicycle because it is faster and cheaper. Riding wakes me up in the morning, and the moderate exercise is a nice break from working at a computer all day. Skeptics claim that most bike commuters ride for the environment or fashion, that bike riding is too hard or inconvenient. I believe most of the regular bike commuters agree that the primary goal is saving money. Some save time. Living twelve miles from work, my average bike commute time is 42 minutes door to office while my average car trip is 44 minutes. If I leave earlier in the morning, the car trip time shrinks to 35 minutes, but heavy traffic can increase the drive time to over an hour. Bicycles dodge traffic jams with ease and bypass accidents leaving weather as the primary factor in time. The best part: I don’t need to stop at the gym after work; I sprint hard for home cutting my time by another 10 minutes. Parking a bicycle is cheaper downtown, in the office or in an enclosed bike locker. Savings include gasoline, parking price, and gym membership. For single commuters to an office with small cargo, bike commuting makes sense.

Thanks to efforts by the BTA and encouragement from veteran bike commuters, bicycle commuting has exploded in Portland over the last few years. A decade ago, I was among a very small group of regular riders, but today the major bike routes into downtown receive a near constant stream during commute times. In addition to calling my passes, I installed a bell to ring if my speed is higher. On the hill before the Hawthorne Bridge, the city widened the bike lane since packs of bikes sometimes spilled over into the car lane. Second to a surge in gasoline prices last year, the biggest factor I hear in the increase in bike commuting is the realization that biking to work is not as hard as it seems especially with the help of private enterprise providing parking, support, and showers. Look for the Bike Central network.

My advice to new bike commuters:

• Follow the rules of the road (Stop signs!)
• Plan your trip: look for quiet streets or bike paths. Longer might be safer.
• Maintain a line, checking shoulder before swerving or passing.
• Maintain visibility: clothing, lights, and road position.
• If a driver yells obscenities, try to keep calm and follow the rules.
• Some drivers break the rules. Avoid antagonizing them by being a traffic nanny. A few enraged drivers may unleash their frustration on the next bicyclist.
• Don’t wear headphones. It’s against the law, and you can’t hear my bell.

Halfway into the Bike Commute Challenge, my office of four is at 65% bike commute rate with 380 cumulative miles. Does it mean anything? I ride for my own reasons. My co-workers may choose to ride or not. The challenge is a fun event that may introduce a few new bicycle commuters that were uncertain before. Maybe some want to save money on parking, avoid heavy traffic, enjoy a nice day once a week, or ride for the environment. Everyone has their own reasons.

Ride, drive, share the road, enjoy the day.

I began writing micro-fiction earlier this year without any experience in flash fiction after a review of other authors as noted in my previous post. There are many Twitter stories from writers, veterans and beginners, told in their own streams or in Twitter publications. Some stories I don’t understand, and others I might find amusing for subject matter over quality. And a tiny few hit the sweet spot: well written lasting impressions with broad appeal, the rare gem. I continue to hone my skill at conciseness.

The editor of @Nanoism, Ben White, searches for the story with “staying power.”

This week two of my stories appear in publications: “Lunch Swap” in @Picfic and another school related story posted by Seedpod Publishing:

Chalk dancing across the board, an easier equation replaces the first. Ms. Jay turns around. “Susan, no magic during math.” @dracotorre

A selection of my recent attempts from my Twitter feed on the path to the rare gem:

After erasing the board, Jon took chalk from the mechanical hand. He wrote, “I will not build robots to do my punishment.” #vss

Hearing Jill’s vacation story, Bill crumples his paper. He writes a new story, none of it true. Ms. May has strict rules about plagiarism.

Quiet, cat-like, ballerinas surround Gary. Poised like poison, their eyes cut into him. Tossing his wallet, Gary runs.

Beauty rests in a glass casket. Silence is bliss. Yearning to hold her, he opens the casket. She rises. The chatter never ends.

Gracefully, the ballerinas twirl at him. Ducking and weaving, he dodges until they surround him. The slashing blades cut like a blender.

She tells me her name is Draco Torre. I ask her about the masculinity, and she says it’s backward, given name last. Draco, taken later in life, she likes to think of it as more of a title. Names are titles we earn, often early in life, but sometimes later. Torre is her name, Draco her position.

Imprisoned in darkness, chased by a nightmare, lost to time, her story is cold and dark. She is the last of her kind. Nulan, the moon, is her eternal companion. The stars, her enemy, slip across the sky leaving holes in her memory. She tells me her tale is old, some of it recorded in a lost language within the pages of a withering journal she gave away. Much of the rest might be lost with her memory struggling to find the light. She does not want her story told, she tells me. It needs to be told. Somewhere buried within her struggle, among the ghosts, resides the meaning of time itself.

I ask her about time.

“I had to die,” Torre says, “more than once, it seems. To realize. Time is a myth, an ever changing beast.”

Within Torre’s tale resides the history of her lost people, the sacrifices, the struggles, the knowledge. Pulling me in, she shows me her world, memories imprinted on the fabric of the universe. And I recognize it, familiarity growing with each visit. She never found me. In my search for time, I found her within the twisting of her world and mine. Apparently I was there all along, caught in the myth of time.

I write for Torre.

The above chess picture is a left/right merging for magenta/green 3D glasses. Below is a bike for red/cyan glasses.

Use Magenta/Green 3D glasses to view the chess photograph or Red/Cyan 3D glasses to view the bike photograph. Click on an image for a larger view. 3D quality depends on your monitor’s color settings. The chess photo ghosts a little on my Macbook screen, but appears perfect on an external LCD.

Items list

1. Digital camera
2. Tripod for digital camera
3. Photo software supporting layers such as Photoshop or Gimp
4. An interesting subject for 3D
5. Red/Cyan or Green/Magenta 3D glasses.

You can find 3D glasses with home movies such as Coraline, with activity books for children, or make your own by purchasing supplies at an art store. Gimp is available for free, which the instructions here will follow. Software that tries to do the modifications for you exist, but doing it yourself allows greater control over the results.

The Science: How do 3D glasses work?

Each lens has different complimentary colors acting as a filter for each eye. Colors are complimentary when the combined color is neutral such as red and cyan. Two photos taken from slightly different vantage points (like your eyes) aimed at the same point are colorized opposite of the respective colored lens. For example, my green/magenta glasses has green over the left eye so the photo taken on the right side needs to be colorized green. The green lens filters out the green portions of the image so the left eye does not see the right vantage point. You could also put the two photos side-by-side, left image on the right, and cross your eyes. The 3D glasses make it easier looking at a single combined image. Other 3D glasses technology includes shutter glasses viewing flashing images and scanning glasses for viewing images stacked in narrow lines. All work on the same principle, one lens blocks what the other eye should see. The rest is depth perception.

In “Remember the Volcano,” I share the story of my first Mt. St. Helens blast area visit. Here are a pair of the photo comparisons of the same locations. The older photos were taken in 1983 and the recent photos in 2009, all by Jerry Shrock. Notice the growth after 26 years.

The above photos look eastward at Mt. Adams where the 2009 photo is from a lower vantage point. In 1983, there was a stand serving hot-dogs and cool drinks for those hiking up the unfinished road to view the volcano. Now there is a paved parking area. Bring your own hot-dogs.

These photos were taken along Road 99 seen as a black ribbon in the above photos. The road continues to the left passing this viewpoint on the way to Windy Ridge.

I recall my mother stating it would take twenty years for the land to recover. That seems like a very long time to a ten year-old. Looking back, the passing years seem like a brief moment. The forest agrees. Nearly thirty years after the blast, new growth follows the creeks, while the ridges appear much the same. Loggers cleared many areas, but left some sections untouched for nature to take care of all on her own.

When visiting Mt. St. Helens bring hiking gear, camera, and curiosity. And hot-dogs. Please visit Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument website for more information.