My Railbike So Far

Isn't she a beaut?

Yep, I've been toiling away on my latest endeavor: the rail bike. What's a rail bike, you may well ask? It's a bike that rides on rails. Railroad tracks, that is, preferably of the abandoned kind. Mine will be a Bentley railbike, which is a regular bike outfitted with outriggers in the front and side to keep it glued to the track.

I spent today at three different hardware stores gathering up all the nuts, bolts, screws, nails, steel conduit, iron rods, etc. necessary for this thing. I was under the impression that this would be a simple slap-it-together affair, but it looks like it's going to keep me busy for quite some time. Think of the most difficult thing you had to assemble for some small relative for Christmas, and then think of manufacturing all the parts yourself. That's what I'm talking about.

So, as you can see, I'm off to an excellent start. I decided that the fancy sheet metal asked for in Bentley's plans wasn't really necessary (ignoring the plea, "Do Not Modify!"), and opted for a can of crushed tomatoes instead. The cowcatcher is integral to the design, by the way, especially here in Montana. Although a naysayer suggested it might be small for the cows in these parts (actually it's to keep weeds out of the works).

One part down, 789 to go!

Ephemera-Inc loses golden opportunity

The other day the ol' Freelance Writing Jobs blog came through with what I felt was a fantastic opportunity: writing slogans for Ephemera-Inc, which makes buttons, bumper stickers and fridge magnets featuring snarky, off-color, irreverent and generally hilarious sayings, often featuring retro 1950s-era pictures of women and men.

I immediately went on a crazed slogan-writing jag, transforming myself into a woman, a pothead, a pervert, an atheist — whatever it took to make eyebrows rise and jaws drop. At 50 bucks a pop, I saw a bright future and an early retirement: I would be a professional sloganeer.

I wrote several dozen slogans over the course of the afternoon. But much to my dismay, it took only 24 hours for Ephemera to reject every single one of them, with nothing but a form e-mail by way of explanation. Why, why, why? Who knows. Who cares. The result is, I'm bequeathing them to the world. Specifically to you, my loyal readers (all six of you). Lucky dogs!

So here they are. Be warned: some are rude, some are lewd, some are nasty. They're not really me, of course.

Well, maybe they are. Okay, I can't lie. They're me. Every last one of them.

A "Sieg Hiel" a day keeps the Gestapo away

As a matter of fact, I did get laid this morning!

Dead pets make fantastic doorstops

Plumber: "I wear the Wonder-Butt for maximum butt cleavage enhancement!"

Casual Sex Fridays have really made the office more fun!

Soap - Try it, you hippie!

Tuesday is Go Down on Your Wife day!

(person in bathtub)
Save soap - make your own bubbles

Pubic hairs - the more convenient dental floss!

Marijuana – Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

Heroin – It’s one way to deal with having toddlers!

Never trust anyone under 13

The Rhythm Method – Another way to say, “Momma!”

Gretchen McCluskey, Woman of the Year: Figured out how to take the stick out of her husband’s ass and get it into his penis.

Oops, I think I sharted!

Sorry, my givashit’s broken

Cucumbers – Superior to men in so many ways

Sorry I’m a bitch – my vibrator’s on the fritz

Butt Plugs – the secret to my success

Let’s swap spit

I have a gold medal in tonsil hockey

I’m so hot, I smoke after sex

I wank because I can

Fellatio – Part of a complete breakfast!

Cunnilingus – Start your day off right!

The Clitoris – Confounding men since 10,000 B.C.!

I know where my G-spot is, and I give good directions

Tantric sex – seemingly semenless

I’m imagining you naked

Excuse me while I pull this rubber hand out of my ass

Babies – Your sex life, out the window!

(woman)
I never give head on the first date – but I don’t mind receiving it!

My girlfriends told me to keep my panties on. I assumed they were speaking of the floor.

No vacancy

Check your dipstick, you look like you’re a quart low

In another lifetime, I was someone who gave a shit.

Be the change you want to find in your sofa.

Babies: One small squirt for man, one giant pain in the ass for womankind.

As a matter of fact, I’d LOVE to have a wild hare up my ass!

Britney: Grow some pubes, please!

Jesus saves; Britney shaves

Jesus is coming – now we can REALLY get stoned!

I’m expensive – Don’t waste your time, Jethro

High Maintenance – Better bring a wrench, pretty boy

I got laid in under an hour using Craig’s List

(you know those fake oval Euro bumper stickers? They need to be mocked)
DA
(tiny print: Dumb Ass)

I found Jesús – He mowed my lawn

Craig’s List – Where even nerds can find a piece of ass

Phone Sex
- Set phone to “Vibrate”
- Insert phone
- Wait for boyfriend to call

All I really need to know I learned in band camp (or: on Jerry Springer; from "Deliverance"; from Abba)

Turkey Basters – The first step towards man’s obsolescence

(woman)
“I found Jesus, then he found my G-spot!”

After the Immaculate Conception, did Mary make God sleep in the wet spot?

After the birth of Christ, the manger was visited by the Three Kinks
(dudes dressed up in fetish outfits, bearing gifts)

“But honey, you know I’m only a bitch [or asshole, if it’s a man] to you!”

“Why are you so chipper today, Wanda?”
“I just started my own three-man harem!”

I actually enjoy having my panties in a twist

Wedgie survivor

“Betty, if you want someone to munch your muffin on a regular basis, you need to get yourself a nerd.”


And, last but not least...

I went to the polling booth but all I got was this lousy president.

And doggone it, people like me!

In regards to this morning's post (see below), I've decided to take the Stuart Smalley approach. Imagine me pulling up a mirror and saying:

"I want to be a professional freelance writer. I want to do this in Bozeman, Montana. I want to cover people and events I myself find interesting. I want to write for magazines and newspapers, based in print or on the Internet, that have an appreciation and respect for my talent, and that challenge me in ways that I find constructive. I want to be paid well for my efforts."

Okay, that was weird. It better work.

The most brilliant jingle song ever created

Perhaps you know me as a writer, outdoorsman, and bon vivant extraordinaire. Did you also know that I'm a musician? Yes! Here's a video featuring me singing an original composition during Susan and my recent road trip to Moab, Utah.

I figure it'll be featured on a major commercial soon. Keep your ears peeled during the Superbowl!

Cold? Sorry, I hadn't noticed

There's nothing like a little brisk weather to make you stand up and say, "Isn't it great to be alive?" Either that, or stay under the covers all day and never come out. One or the other.

But you can't stay under the covers forever. There's stuff to do out here! Last Thursday, for example, I went skiing. It was 16 degrees below zero, which is pretty cold, but there was fresh snow and barely anyone was out there messing it up. I was getting freshies left and right... of course, I was probably also developing frostbite on my left and right earlobes, but that's really beside the point.

Here in Montana cold weather is nothing new, and most people barely seem to notice it. It was probably about -20 when I went to a party on Friday night, but that didn't seem to keep people away... although I think it was close to -30 when I left, which could have prevented me from going home if my car didn't start.



But it did, and the next morning Craig and I set out for a nice sub-zero day of ice climbing. I imagine some readers may never have experienced such frigid temperatures. Basically, think of a seven-layer cake — that's about the right number of layers to be wearing. Generally I went with a thin Duofold Coolmax thermal top, turtleneck, light fleece, heavier fleece, heaviest fleece (bought in extra-large size specifically for such circumstances), then my North Face Gore-Tex jacket. Toasty as a bun in the oven! On the bottoms, thermal long-johns, knit acrylic long-johns, and ski pants seem to do the trick. The face is probably the most vulnerable to frostbite, and my thin balaclava head-covering was essential. That, plus my pull-over neck warmer and ski hat. I also brought ski goggles, but they proved unnecessary. It was only like 10-below, after all.

That evening I went to an art opening in Willow Creek, about 40 miles west of Bozeman. Again, the place was packed; nobody was deterred by the weather. The thick icy rime that had built up on the inside of my windshield was more stubborn, however — all the way there and all the way back with the defroster blowing on high, and it still refused to melt to the edges.

Hardy Bozemanites proved their mettle again on Sunday, showing up in force (well, 50 or so, anyway) for the Martin Luther Kind Day march along Main Street. Ya just dress warm, is all. It's no biggie.



On Monday my friend Sam and I almost met our match. We went skiing at Bridger Bowl, and along with the cold we had to deal with 45-mile-per-hour winds. The skiing itself wasn't bad, but the chairlift rides were brutal... especially when they stopped for the wind, leaving us to be buffeted about 50 feet in the air.

We only took a couple of runs, and rewarded ourselves afterwards with a trip to Chico Hot Springs in Paradise Valley, along with an entourage that included Sam's wife Heather, their 5-year-old twins Ari and Olivia (shown), Heather's sister Mikelle (shown toasting with me below), and friend Suzie, who took the photos. Cold weather, hot water, tasty drinks... if this isn't living, I don't know what is.

Sculptor Gary Bates takes his cues from the land

(This article was originally published in The Belgrade News)

By Ray Sikorski


“I don’t use mathematics on this stuff. I use physical weight, the actual weight,” said Amsterdam sculptor Gary Bates, explaining the process behind his large kinetic sculptures.

Bates said that to find the balance point of an object, he’ll pick it up with a punch on a big jack, or put it on a balance beam to find its actual center of gravity. He confessed that before building a piece, he has only an inkling of how it might act.

“The reason I build these pieces is to find out what they do. I don’t have the answer. I have the question,” he said. “I guess you could call it visual research, to see how these forms will react to nature.”

Is the soft-spoken artist an engineer? There’s no hesitation in his answer: “No.”
Then, after a pause: “Farmboy.”

Known locally for the giant wind-powered sculpture that twirls elegantly outside Montana State University’s Engineering building (it’s named the “Wind Arc,” but Bates doesn’t mind that most everybody refers to it as the “Noodle”), Bates was raised on the same wheat and barley farm that he currently resides. He spent a large part of his life tractoring that field, and it became the main inspiration for his work.

“Every afternoon it seemed the winds would come up, and that would kind of wreck the day for me when you’re out driving an open tractor,” he said. “So I would build sculptures that I put on the edges of the fields to entertain me while the wind was blowing. So that’s why the sculptures are big; so I could see them a mile away.”

Bates’ first sculptures used abandoned machinery that he found around the farm; one of his earliest works was an homage to the windmill water pumps that dotted the area in his youth. That same spirit inspired later works, such as “Will He Drill,” made from a potato auger and parts of a wrecked train, which spins outside the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings. And Bates gained notoriety in the early ‘90s for his “Lunar Ketcherschmitt,” which was in the running to grace Bozeman’s northern entrance on North Seventh Avenue. Two half cylinders made from a giant boiler, with the top one rotating on the axis of the bottom one, the sculpture was dubbed the “Soup Can” and Bates lost out on the commission.

“I never look back,” Bates said. “Everybody’s lost a public commission; it’s just the nature of the business. Public sculpture is always controversial, and you hope it is because that means someone saw it.”

Bates is optimistic about a proposal he’s made for the new Bozeman library: a 48-foot tall stainless steel kinetic structure for that uses the wind coming off the top of the building to do “somersaults and pirouettes.” He’ll receive news of whether it’s been accepted later this year.
Right now Bates is most enthusiastic about his current project, commissioned by Green River Community College in Auburn, Washington. Called “Rain Scale,” it’s comprised of a massive horizontal stainless steel ring sitting atop a steel-pipe arch. When it rains — as it often does in Auburn — the weight of just 3/8-inches of rainwater will tip the 2000-pound ring into a seesawing motion for 50 minutes, depositing the water into the pond below.

“I think of my pieces as receptors of information from the land, and then transmit it back in a visual way,” he said.
“These are built to heighten people’s awareness … of the world; that there’s something going on beyond the day-to-day stuff that we’re in. If you watch any of these pieces, you’ll get an appreciation for what’s going on on the surface of this planet.”

The trails, the trails they are a callin'

I'm almost embarrassed to go back and look at my last blog posting, based on the research I've done since then. It turns out that just about everything I proposed, and some things I didn't propose but were just thinking about, are already well underway.

The Key West to the Canadian Border hike/bike path? It's called the East Coast Greenway. They even liken it to a version of the Appalachian Trail, just like I did!

Aiming to connect all the major cities of the East Coast along a continuous, off-road path, the East Coast Greenway spans 3,000 miles from Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida. With the trail now 21 percent open for public use, individuals and communities all along the East Coast are already beginning to enjoy the Greenway's many health and economic benefits. But still, there's much to be done.

Frequently likened to an urban Appalachian Trail, this remarkable trail has the potential to enhance the lives of millions of Americans for generations to come.

I was really impressed by all the work that's been done on this trail so far. They've joined forces with Rails-to-Trails and a myriad of local groups to work out something truly impressive... not the least of which is the route that uses old US 1 along the Florida Keys (which I also suggested in the last blog!) That's the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail, and that's also already underway.

The Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail (FKOHT) is a multi-use bicycle and pedestrian facility currently under design and construction by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Greenways & Trails (OGT). Ultimately, the vision is of a scenic corridor extending from Key Largo to Key West that serves not only as a highway, but a recreational greenway that permits hiking, running, bicycling, in-line skating, sightseeing, fishing and kayaking. We envision an integrated system of educational kiosks, roadside picnic areas, scenic overlooks, fishing piers and cat walks, boat ramps, water access points, bicycle and jogging paths as well as a myriad of compatible small businesses and services in the nearby area that support these uses. The Old Keys Bridges serve as a central component of this vision, providing opportunities for fishing, sightseeing, recreation and historical reflection. The bridges will also allow safe opportunities for alternative transportation uses of the corridor by allowing people to get from island to island, linking the different communities and their complimentary character.

The trail will link unique ecological resources such as the Everglades National Park, Biscayne National Park, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, The Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge, Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge, Crocodile Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Key West National Marine Sanctuary, as well as 10 State Parks. When completed, the trail will provide alternative transportation for residents and visitors of the Keys, support facilities for recreation both on land and from the water, and will use public art to interpret the natural and cultural history of the Florida Keys. The trail runs parallel to US 1 and is an integral part of the Florida Keys Scenic Highway Project. The fishing bridges offer a significant and unique opportunity for a greenway/transit system.

One of the nicest surprises was the plan for a route around Manhattan Island in New York: The Manhattan Waterfront Greenway.



I grew up on Long Island with usually nothing more than a bicycle to get around, and I made several wildly dangerous trips into Manhattan. It was fun for the thrills (I wrote an unsuccessful college application essay on what it's like to ride across the Queensboro Bridge during rush hour), but I often envisioned bike paths around and leading into the city.

More research revealed trails all over the country, including the coast-to-coast American Discovery Trail. This trail travels over 5,000 non-motorized miles (6,800 if you count where the trail splits into two parallel trails between Colorado and Ohio), going through 15 states from Limantour Beach at Point Reyes National Seashore in California to Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware. The first through-hikers did the entire route (east to west) from Feb. 27, 2005 to October 15, 2005.



And last but not least was the humble state of Montana, which seems to have plenty of trail potential but not much has come to fruition as of yet. There is, of course, the , Continental Divide Trail which goes from Glacier National Park down to Mexico. However, only the faintest inklings of an east-west trail currently exist. Which is not to say they don't exist at all. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has been doing work along the old Milwaukee Road electric train line, which ran from Chicago to Puget Sound until the early '80s.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
In 1910, the railroad known as the “Milwaukee Road” stretched over 1,000 miles from Chicago to Seattle; yet by 1980, most of the corridor had become abandoned. Washington State purchased their portion of the corridor at the time of abandonment and today it is known as the John Wayne Pioneer Trail.
In 2002, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy began work to create a trail along the 500-mile corridor in Montana and Idaho celebrating the historical, natural and cultural richness of the Milwaukee Road. To date, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has performed historical research, conducted state legal reviews, and gathered funding information as part of extensive assessment and feasibility studies. We have also organized trail groups, conducted training sessions, and provided technical assistance which has catalyzed additional rail-trail projects in the state. This year, 35 new miles of trail will be opened to the public with other sections scheduled for completion in the near future.

They've completed the 145-mile long John Wayne Pioneer Trail in Washington State, and they've completed a good stretch through Northern Idaho. I've been on the Kim Williams Trail in Missoula, which is a segment of the project, and I'm told a new segment will open in Butte in the next few weeks. But there's still huge swaths of open prairie left to go.

But, get this! In my research I came across another trail: The North Country Trail, which begins at Lake Champlain on the New York/Vermont border and travels west to Lake Sakakawea State Park in Central North Dakota.

Hey, North Country people! Why stop in the middle of North Dakota? All you have to do is go a little farther west and you'll be in Montana, and then you can hook up with the Old Milwaukee people!

Then we can all get together and celebrate with a keg of good, cheap beer.

The Interstate Trail System

Another hare-brained scheme

Enough about cars. I don’t want to write about them, I don’t want to hear about them, I don’t want to see them, I don’t want to ride in them. I just want to ride my bike.

Okay, so Bozeman’s covered in snow and it’s not the easiest thing to do. Ah, well. A few years back I drilled machine screws into my tires, creating studded snow tires for my bike. They worked well on the ice, but they added a good deal of rolling resistance overall. Nowadays I just say winter is for cars, the rest of the year is for bikes.

Bozeman, with its university and masses of adrenaline-dripping outdoor recreationists, never seems to have a shortage of bicyclists plying its streets, even in winter. I’ve even seen a few extra-hardy souls panting their way sixteen miles up Bridger Canyon, a snowboard strapped to their backs. Clearly, some people are insane.

But it’s not like that in other parts of the country. Most notably California, where it’s warm and sunny much of the year (not to mention pancake flat in the places I’ve been). Despite ideal conditions, riders are hard to find. Well, not too hard. They’re all on the bike paths.

I suppose it’s not unreasonable that bicyclists are afraid of riding on streets. The streets are designed for cars, not bikes, and when faced with timed stop lights and turn lanes at every intersection, cyclists are clearly at a disadvantage. Would you want your small children riding around on busy streets? Probably not. Many kids grow up not knowing how to ride in traffic, so never do.

Despite given a great deal of lip service to how everybody ought to ride bikes to work and school and everywhere else, with modern traffic systems it’s highly impractical and unsafe. “Oh, take the bike path,” they say… but where does the bike path go? Quite possibly not where you want to go. Most bike paths seem to be almost exclusively for recreation, and not for commuting. Although there’s been heightened awareness in recent years, rarely do bike paths link communities.

So what’s my hare-brained scheme? An interstate trail system, just for bikes and hikers. It’s based on the idea that there are people who’d be perfectly happy not driving anywhere, if only they could do it safely and conveniently.

My original inspiration for this was the Appalachian Trail, a hiking trail extending from Georgia to Maine. While it’s certainly possible to hike bits and pieces of the trail, every year a few hundred hike the entire distance. I’ve been on parts of this trail, and it’s not easy. Brutal comes to mind, especially considering the size packs people carry with them.

So at first I was just thinking along the lines of an easier A-Trail, one that you could take a mountain bike on — following along the foothills, perhaps, and traveling through the middle of towns when appropriate. Naturally I wanted my trail, which I dubbed the “Bee-Line” (as an acknowledgement of the A-Trail’s superiority, as well as “B” for “Bikes”), to go all the way from Key West to the border of Maine and Canada. Someone suggested using old railroad right-of-ways… which totally makes sense, as the Rails-to-Trails program is already well underway across the nation.

There’s two keys to the Bee-Line: The first is tentatively mapping a desired route, but having a de facto route using existing roads that can be used immediately. It could take decades to obtain rights to the land and build trails, but as long as alternatives exist and people use them, it’ll provide impetus to carrying out the plan.

The second is that dirt is okay. In Calfornia every bike path I ever set wheels on was paved. Why is this necessary? Bozeman has a huge bike/hike trail system that’s completely unpaved, and there doesn’t seem to be any protest at all. Most bikes have tires fat enough to be right at home on dirt. The exceptions are the fancy pants skinny-tired road bikes, but those things go too fast for bike paths, anyway. They’re more at home on streets and highways. Plus, part of this concept is the natural experience, and asphalt takes away from that.

I chose Key West as a starting point specifically because there’s an old road that runs alongside the current highway, which goes the entire length from the mainland to Key West. Originally build as the part of the Flagler railroad, the rails were converted to a highway after hurricane damage. The current road replaced it in the early 80s, but it’s still there. And a lot of it is now used for a bike path, but the old bridges are in pieces — literally, chunks of them are missing.

It would be no small expense to repair these bridges to be adequate for bike and pedestrian travel. But when I think about the Interstate Highway System and the amount of money we put into our automobile roads and bridges, it strikes me as a double standard. Don’t we want people to get around in ways other than cars?

Right now I’m seeing a lot of interest in bike paths and trails covering short distances — which is great. But long distance bike/hike trails could spawn an industry unto itself, perhaps even revitalizing depressed small towns that are on the route. Along with the Bee-Line, there could be routes crisscrossing the nation, just like the Interstate Highway System. That was a bold, monumental idea for its time; I don’t see why this should be thought of any differently.

Chevy Volt needs an EEStor jolt

Hello, Chevy Volt! Yep, this is GM's offering to eco cadres of the world: a plug-in electric car with a three-cylinder gasoline engine that's not really an engine -- it's a generator to power the electric motor when it runs out of wall-socket juice. Kind of ironic since GM was accused of killing the electric car in the first place, but hey, it's a step in the right direction.

So it's not the most aesthetically pleasing car in the world. Some have suggested that they made it look mean so it wouldn't be associated with cutesy-wutesy bunny loving environmentalists. The fact is this car is just a prototype and won't be on the road for at least three years. The reason? The lithium-ion batteries around today just aren't good enough.

But is that really so? When I interviewed Eco Auto owner Ron Gompertz (see Smart Car article below), he tipped me off to EEStor, a company that patented a battery that's strong enough to power an SUV and can be charged in minutes rather than hours.

The company is contracted with a Canadian electric car company called Feel Good Cars (or Zenn Cars, at zenncars.com), which makes the golf-cart-like Zenn car (I drove one for the article; it's slow and tiny and if you turn on the heat the battery drains). But supposedly much grander things are in the works.

I tried doing a little research, but it wasn't easy because EEStor keeps a very low profile; they don't even have a website. But I did find out a few things.

From Business Week Online:

According to a May, 2004 edition of Utility Federal Technology Opportunities, an obscure trade newsletter, EEStor claims to make a battery at half the cost per kilowatt-hour and one-tenth the weight of lead-acid batteries. Specifically, the product weighs 400 pounds and delivers 52 kilowatt-hours. (For battery geeks: "The technology is basically a parallel plate capacitor with barium titanate as the dielectric," UFTO says.) No hazardous or dangerous materials are used in manufacturing the ceramic-based unit, which means it qualifies as what Silicon Valley types call "cleantech.

From Clean Break:

On top of this release, a reliable source familiar with EEStor had this to say about the company's technology:

* The batteries fully charge in minutes as opposed to hours.
* Whereas with lead acid batteries you might get lucky to have 500 to 700 recharge cycles, the EEStor technology has been tested up to a million cycles with no material degradation.
* EEStor's technology could be used in more than low-speed electric vehicles. The company envisions using it for full-speed pure electric vehicles, hybrid-electrics (including plug-ins), military applications, backup power and even large-scale utility storage for intermittent renewable power sources such as wind and solar.
* Because it's a solid state battery rather than a chemical battery, such being the case for lithium ion technology, there would be no overheating and thus safety concerns with using it in a vehicle.
* Finally, with volume manufacturing it's expected to be cost-competitive with lead-acid technology.

"It's the holy grail of battery technology," said my source. "It means you could do a highway-capable electric city car that would recharge in three or four minutes and drive you from Toronto to Montreal. Consumers wouldn't notice the difference from driving an electric car versus a gas-powered car."

Too good to be true? Who knows? I keep wanting GM to hook up with these folks and go, "Look! Look! There really is a battery good enough!"

If you know anyone who works for GM, please let them know.

The Urban Forest Initiative

Hare-brained scheme number one

Ah, the ideas that have been bandying about in my head — if only people would heed my advice! Of course, I haven’t told anyone my advice, so I can’t really blame people for being idiots. After this blog, they'll have no excuse.

First, a little background. I grew up on Long Island, in the suburbs of New York City. Within the years of my adolescence I saw the number of farms in Nassau County dwindle to zero. Yes, zero — a sobering thought now that I live in a place with a seemingless endless number of farms, but that number seems to be quickly dwindling, too.

I’ve lived in several places, including Sonoma, California, that never seem to have a shortage of pilgrims willing to set up stakes. And with these pilgrims come problems: We’re growing too fast! We’ve got rich outsiders coming in, and they’re changing things! Real estate values are skyrocketing!

Don’t get me wrong — these are all real issues that I often complain about myself. But there are parts of this country that would love to have these problems. Outsourcing and the global marketplace have shut down factories in the Midwest. In Montana, we’re all familiar with the played-out mining towns, of which Butte is the most notorious example. It always amazes me that the house Bob Dylan grew up in recently sold for the princely sum of $60,000. That’s in Hibbing, Minnesota, which was a mining town way back when, but isn’t much of anything now. And big agribusiness has shuttered small farm towns across the nation. Go to any rural area, from sea to shining sea, that doesn’t benefit from either tourism or a not-too-far metropolis, and you’ll see empty storefronts and empty houses. Those of us who live in places where too many people are moving in don’t have it so bad after all.

My co-worker Tim Omarzu was from Detroit, which is surely America’s most egregious example of a city gone south. Tim would share tales of Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, in which people would go around Detroit torching abandoned homes. Hundreds would burn each year. The city that once was the greatest testament to American manufacturing might now has abandoned neighborhoods with pheasants and packs of wild dogs roaming free.

Which is horrible in some ways, but full of potential in others. Growing up, I always took solace in that one lone patch of open space, the woods at the bottom of my street, that somehow had escaped the backhoe. It has since been developed, and I look at that with sadness, as if my special place is gone forever. But is it? Is any of it?

Civilizations come and civilizations go. Some cities have been around for thousands of years, but there are plenty of once-great cities that have diminished to near nothing. Wars, disease, famine, floods, progress, open markets, and bad juju all take their toll. A historian might say it’s part of the natural ebb and flow of civilization. The hardest part is the transition from urbane vibrancy to urban blight, suffering through mass unemployment and plunging real estate values, seeing people’s hopes and dreams take off in a moving van.

I know that most of the city fathers and mothers hope and pray that one day the city will return to its former glory. And in some cases they’re right. I know that Cleveland and Pittsburgh have undergone renaissances of sorts, rebuilding themselves from the shells of their former soot-covered selves. But in other places…

Is it really so bad that a place become as wild as it had been a hundred years earlier? That is the dream many of us hold for our new hometowns — that they retain open-space, trees, and maybe even wilderness. We don’t want the builders to come and ruin what we love. But what if they’ve already come, and they’re long gone? Can we get it back?

In the grand scheme of the earth’s history, homo sapiens are but a wink. We have come, and, most agree, we will go. The earth will carry on, with us or without us. All our cities will eventually succumb to the oceans or the forest or the dust. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it just is. And, as nationwide open-space initiatives suggest, we all could do with a little more wilderness in our lives. So why not help the inevitable along a little?

This is what I propose: the Urban Forests Initiative. Basically, cordoning off plots of land — or even entire neighborhoods — that have been abandoned, and planting native trees to make them into forest once again. Not preserving open space, but building it from the ground up. Trails could be built connecting the plots, using right-of-ways through private property of people who continue to live there.

I’ve got a vision for many of the details of this plan, but that’s the crux of it: just helping along what’s already going on. Detroit and other cities can still survive; it’s just a matter of rethinking them as smaller places. It’s time to rethink how we use land.

Eco-friendly transport

On Bozeman’s streets, it’s getting cool to be green

(The following was originally published in the January issue of Bozeman's Tributary magazine.)

by Ray Sikorski


“You have to be a little bit brave to own a Smart car,” said Ron Gompertz, owner of Bozeman’s Eco Auto car dealership.

True enough. With no established dealer network, third party warranties, and a price tag disproportionate to its diminutive length, the Mercedes-built microcompact may not be for everybody. Not to mention that other drivers will gawk at you as if the head of Jar Jar Binks has sprouted wheels and is rolling down the interstate.

And beyond owning a Smart car, you have to be more than a little bit brave to open a Smart car dealership, especially in the middle of Montana. And you have to be downright courageous to hand the keys to a reporter, and specifically ask him to seek out snow covered streets to test the car’s handling.

But such is Gompertz’s nature. A self-confessed “serial entrepreneur,” Gompertz’s businesses have included an indie record label, a mosaic art supply store, and he’s written two books about a winter holiday he refers to as “Chrismukkah.” He claims to have good instincts for new trends, and is convinced that small, eco-friendly modes of transportation are the next big thing. Hence his showroom on the corner of Grand and Main, which, along with plenty of Smart cars, features the Canadian-made electric Zenn car, and a sizeable showing of Dually Limited’s scooters.

“Al Gore catalyzed me,” Gompertz said, referring to the former V.P.’s global warming revelation flick “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“My goal is to show Montanans that there are other options.”

Hence the Smart car. More worldly Bozemanites may have seen the eight-foot-long runabouts on the streets of Europe or Canada, where they’ve been a fixture for several years. An intro to the U.S. market was balked at due to notions about Americans’ taste for asphalt-roaming grandiosity, but spiking gas prices and what appears to be an evolving national consciousness has scheduled an official debut on our shores in 2008. Until then, however, Gompertz and a handful of other pioneering souls have taken upon themselves the job of importing the cars, retrofitting them to U.S. specs, and presenting them to the public as the must-have item of the year.

The latter of the list may prove to be the most difficult objective. While the odd-looking vehicles garner no shortage of amused stares — Gompertz’s daughter refers to them as “Daddy’s silly cars” — getting people to take them seriously as a transportation choice is another story. Are they a toy? Made in China? Cheap? Dangerous? Gompertz asserts that they are none of the above, that they are real cars with two seats and room for groceries in the back, that are equipped with efficient 3-cylinder turbocharged gasoline engines that get 40-60 miles per gallon. He notes that they can travel 85 miles per hour, that they cost $25,000 (thanks to a strong Euro and the costs incurred bringing the cars up to U.S. specs), and that they can — in theory, anyway — be parked sideways because they are just that short in length.

Gompertz has sold a few of the rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive cars to out-of-staters through his ecoautoinc.com website, but no locals had yet been emboldened enough to make the move.

“They’re just awesome little cars,” Gompertz said, adding that they’re not only cute, but they’re safe and a joy to drive. He likened them to a cross between a VW Beetle and a Porsche Carrerra. And, Gompertz insisted, they handle well in the snow. This I had to see.

The Smart car I tested was already dressed for the part — the ski rack even had a pair of K2’s seemingly ready for action. After a short test run showing off the car’s acceleration and speed on I-90, Gompertz handed me the keys.
And, true to his word, the car really is fun to drive. It has a unique standard/automatic transmission, and after some turbo-induced hesitation between first and second gears, the car took off. You ride high and fast in its tall cockpit, and it can keep up with any car — although crosswinds can make it seem a bit unwieldy.

Gompertz directed me to the northeast neighborhood, and encouraged me to try to get the car to slide on the snowy sidestreets. This is the sort of thing I occasionally enjoy testing on my own vehicle, so being granted carte blanche to do the same on this brand-new, $25,000 weird-looking ecomobile… What’s that? Oh, just the tingling of my loins. Slide away!
It turns out a brave entrepreneurial spirit may be slightly removed from being brave while having an off-the-street reporter try out your baby. I sensed Gompertz’s hands reaching for the Hail Mary strap.

But despite my efforts to the contrary, the little bugger proved to be defiantly steady. Computer-assisted traction control, Gompertz explained.

Gompertz isn’t the only person in Bozeman determined to rattle the environmental status quo. Bozeman Streets Superintendent John Van Delinder has been quietly waging his own municipal eco-campaign for the past five years. Now, the 30 diesel vehicles of the city’s Forestry, Street and Signal, and Street Maintenance departments are running on a 20 percent biodiesel blend.

The city gets the seed-based fuel from Story Distributing, and Van Delinder says it’s a couple of cents per gallon cheaper than regular diesel. He added that despite the views of skeptics, the change hasn’t caused any damage to the vehicles’ engines.

“No problems,” Van Delinder said, explaining that his department regularly takes oil samples to check for aberrations. “None. Nothing.”

The only problem has been convincing old-timers, particularly in other departments, that the less polluting biodiesel is the way to go. Despite Van Delinder’s prodding, Bozeman’s Sanitation, Water, and Parks departments had yet to make the switch. Van Delinder suspected, however, that things would soon change, now that the city council unanimously adopted the Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement. The Agreement mandates that the city consider an eco-friendly attitude in all orders of business, and Van Delinder predicted that the city would be making some forward-thinking changes in the not-too-distant future.

“I love it,” he said. “I can’t imagine working in a city in which nothing was happening.”