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Local Advocacy

Our town is really lucky to have some passionate bicycle advocates. Aside from making a huge push for great, and ever improving, infrastructure, they have also formed the Ventura Bike HUB. The HUB is a pure community organization, mechanics and advocates that come together to help the community fix and learn to fix their bikes. The mission has been growing and their work is the fuel for our local transporational cycling scene. One of their bigger challenges has been finding a steady storage and working location. In the past few months they were able to secure a space with the City Housing Authority that will serve them and the community well. This past Sunday I was lucky to help them with their move from the temporary location to the new space.

A fully bike powered and volunteer driven event. There new space is awesome and will get them the exposure they need to grow.

The next steps in local advocacy have been a move up to organizing at a County level. The City of Ventura has been doing pretty darn good, as have some of the other 10 cities in our county. The trick will be learning from each other and developing tools that can be used to improve not just all 10 cities but the unincorporated portions of the county as well. There is no reason why Ventura County as a whole should not be setting the standard for human-powered transport. We have tight-knit communities, industry and year round awesome weather.

As a Coalition there has been one official meeting. We all came away inspired, and with a few questions to answer as we define our path. The first is if we should be Bicycle only or “Active Transportation”? After that comes the volunteer based efforts of setting up Web Pages, Mission statements, by-laws, organizational structures, and pushing on to things like County wide maps and governmental activism. All of this would never have made it this far if not for that hard work of Rachel at VCCool, Thank You.

I am reaching out to all of you that have ridden this path before. Any advice or experiences you would like to share are welcome. We will need lots of help, everything from the above mentioned web designers to fundraising, shops and people who work within the city and county infrastructure. The next meeting will be Thursday September 26 6:30 P.M. at the Fillmore High school. I hope to see some of you there.

Daddy Days

Friday is still daddy day for the moment, there is plenty going on, and things have always been busy, but never like this. That said, we took some time this morning to squeeze in a ride before she gets too big for her current seat.

Say Cheese! Loaded with everything from the pocket kite, to the strider camera gear, supplies and her toy lap top in case she needed to do so work, we cut out across town to the favorite playground.

Met some friends, turns out there are more dads then you would think hanging out at the playgrounds these days. Just when I thought she was worn out, it was time to pull out the Strider and jam on the little hill.

Super stoked that she is rocking it with her feet up. That is a new development in the last week or two, and today was the first day covering significant distance. I am pretty sure she was showing off for Toby and Maverick over by the swings in the background. A perfect morning, and catching up while she is completely crashed out.

Coffee Gear

The most frequent question I get regarding the coffee outside routine is “what gear are your using?”. While getting my kit ready for tomorrow I took a few minutes to make some pictures and prepare some notes.

The contents of the kit reflect my preference for pour over style of brewing. I have tried everything from cowboy coffee to a small french press, and for me, the best results have been pour over. My usual stove and cook pot for boiling water has been the Caldera Keg Kit. The kit is super light, compact and has everything I need to boil water quickly. I brew the coffee into a 600ml titanium mug that replaces one end of the keg kit’s container. I support the paper coffee filters with a William Bounds Sili coffee cone. after testing out a few options I find it hits a sweet spot for function, weight and portability. The kit is rounded out with a bandanna, lighter, grinder and occasional breakfast snack

The latest addition to my kit has been the Porlex portable grinder. It adds a bit of weight to the whole package, but the quality of the brew jumps way up with beans ground at the time of brew.

This was an awesome birthday gift this year from my wife and her parents, and has seen daily use for a few weeks now. The bur grinding mechanism is robust, easily adjustable, and provides an incredibly uniform grind. It holds the perfect amount of beans for my large mug. Thus the increase in brew quality and ability to carry the fresh beans justify the added load.

All spread out it looks like a bunch of gear

but most of the components nest into the stove caddy and it is travels quite compact in the handlebar bag. I was pleasantly suppressed to even fit the grinder on the inside of the kit.

Over all weight is still respectable as well considering how much utility is crammed into that little space.

It is that simple, under two pounds and you have all the tools needed to brew a better cup of coffee than most people will at home, and you can do it just about any where you would like. True coffee/bike nerd stuff.

Creative Timeout

Keeping all the plates spinning in a small business can be exhausting some times, all in a good way of course. Being creative, hands on and analytical often feels like a pack of trapped squirrels trapped in my head all fighting for time and space. This morning I took pen(s) to paper, dusted off an old creative project and restarted the art for T-shirts that need to happen soon.

And yes, it is amazing how much you can cram into a two car garage to get a business going. Time to pack some boxes and ship some of it off to other folks garages.

Riding Errands

Back when the OAC blog started the whole thing was about getting out on the bike every day, and how easy that was if you use the bike as your basic mode of transport when you leave the house. While a few things have changed here over the years and we have grown, the bike, Rambler, is still the main way I get around town. Hundreds of pictures of myself riding around, and the pictures of me have tapered off a bit this year. Today I made the time to shoot some while I was out. Same loop around town and same basic errands, life is that way sometimes. None the less, it is a hell of a lot more fun picking up odds and ends at Target and the food stores by bike.