Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Moving to Denmark

Lindholm says 55 percent of Copenhagen residents commute to work or school by bike. The comparable number for Portland is six percent; and that’s tops among large U.S. cities.  In Copenhagen, the road system is also geared toward cyclists. Lasse Lindholm: “When it’s snowing, during January for example, the first thing that has to be cleaned, that’s the bike paths. They clean the bike paths before they clean the roads.” The city’s Lasse Lindholm also points out how the traffic lights on busy commuter routes are synchronized to generate a wave of green lights at 12 mph. You’ll note that’s bicycle — not car — speed. On major arterials, the bike lane has its own traffic light. Lasse Lindholm: “What we are doing is that we give cyclists a ëpre-green light.’ That means that you have from 5 to 12 seconds advantage as a cyclist so you can get into the intersection and thereby become visible for the car drivers.” Gasoline costs more than seven dollars per gallon in Denmark. High taxes also discourage car ownership.

I will start packing my bags tonight.  Denmark, here I come!

Click here to read the original article, “Bicycle Commuting Rising, But Still Pales Compared To Europe,” by Tom Banse for Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Oh, the people you’ll see

Observed on the bus:

A man eating sunflower seeds and throwing the shells on the floor of the bus.  Since when is that okay?

A woman looking very uncomfortable as the stranger next to her nodded off.  Ever so slowly, he slumped to the side in her direction, and she had nowhere to go.  The look on her face was priceless.  Trapped and terrified of the strange head about to touch her.  Unfortunately, I lacked a camera to capture the moment for you.

Winter, already?

Fall lasted for about a week, maybe a week-and-a-half tops, followed by two days of rain, followed by, eh? Not really fall, not quite winter. Much to my dismay, we ran the heat for a few hours on Sunday morning. I was hoping to make it to November without turning on the heat, but there we were, hovering just above 60 degrees in the apartment on October 11th. Ugh. Not only does running the heat use energy, in our apartment, it dramatically lowers the air quality.

Growing up, I always recognized the first heat of the late fall by that smell that gas furnaces make when running for the first time in several months. The key phrase in the previous sentence is, “for the first time.” See, after the first few cycles, the furnace burned up the dust or whatever was in there, and then, for the rest of the heating season, there was no scent.

However, in our apartment, that is not the case. Despite numerous furnace filter changes, we smelled that special furnace smell EVERY TIME the heat kicked on last winter. All winter long. Our landlord investigated and determined that there was nothing wrong with the furnace or the air ducts. Riiiiiiight. If we can smell something burning, our lungs are being exposed to less than stellar air.

So, with that in mind, here are some ways to run your heat less this winter. The planet and your wallet will thank you!

  • Set your thermostat lower: 68 degrees is a good upper limit.  At night, when you’re all snug in your bed, turn it down to the low 60s.  When you leave for the day, turn it down to 55 degrees.
  • Get cozy at night with flannel sheets and a good comforter or lots of blankets.  Our combination of flannel sheets plus a faux down comforter kept me overly warm the past two nights.
  • Wear slippers.  And a nice, snugly sweatshirt.  And pants.  Sadly enough, sans pants does not work for winter.
  • Check for any leaky spots around windows and doors.  Use weather stripping, caulk, etc. to fill in the gaps.
  • If you own your place, or can talk your landlord in to it, insulate, insulate, insulate.  There are many rebates available for this right now.

Couch potato confessions

Since the beginning of September, I have spent my Saturday afternoons engaged in an unusual pursuit: watching commercial television.  TV does not fit into my active lifestyle.  Or my green lifestyle, for that matter.  The [small, older] TV, DVD player, converter box (purchased begrudgingly, as the lesser of two evils — the greater being buying a new TV), and VCR are plugged into a power strip that spends most of its time in the “Off” position, to avoid vampire power draw.  But on Saturday afternoons, I flip the switch to “On” and settle in for a few hours to watch my team, the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

“Settle in” is actually misleading because I resemble a Mexican jumping bean much more than a couch potato.  Every commercial, I pop up to do one thing or another.  One game I chopped the tomatoes to make our canned tomato sauce.  Another game I prepared fresh basil for freezing.  I think I get as much exercise as the football players sometimes, minus the people running into me and throwing me to the ground.  I also have yet to develop turf toe or break my collarbone while working with tomatoes or basil, but you never know.

“Settle in” is also a misnomer for the games so far this season, which have been anything but relaxing.  Do we have to have dramatic, nail biter finishes every week?  All I have to say is, if I have a heart attack before the age of thirty, it’s all their fault.