Yes, all of them.

On the July 4 weekend, we plotted and executed a bike ride through all thirteen original colonies.  It seemed a patriotic thing to do!  (Yes, we mean the streets, not the actual, you know, states.)  We’d seen the WABA map showing 13 colonies in 15 miles and thought we could do better, and we did, managing it in just over 11 and a half miles.  Kudos to G for excellent planning.  See the map at right for the actual route.

The best part of the ride?  Stopping at Eastern Market for a pickle break.  A nice salty, crunchy snack is the perfect thing between North Carolina and New Jersey!

Coming up in August:  All 50 states in about 45 miles.  Y/Y?

A maple tree in our neighborhood has been marked with the orange dot of death by UFA, and even has the “don’t park within 150 feet” sign posted on it.  Looking at the foliage (or lack of it), it’s clear there’s blight at work, but it’s still sad to see what was once a beautiful street tree turned into mulch.

Several other maples on the block are showing similar signs.  Sadness.

However, I had two very similar experiences trying to get one of these at Sequoia in Georgetown (June 24) and Bar Louie at Gallery Place (July 2).  Here’s what happened:

1. Order the drink
2. Server takes order, then comes back and asks how to make the drink.  Recipe is recited.
3. Server delivers what seems to be either a gin-and-tonic or a gin-gimlet-with-soda
4. Recipe is reiterated, server disappears again
5. Server delivers what seems to be either a gin-gimlet-with-soda or a gin-and-tonic (whichever wasn’t served earlier)
6. Recipe is again reiterated
7. Rickey is delivered!

And this a drink with a long DC history.  It was named for Colonel Joe Rickey, an infamous lobbyist, and what is more DC than that?  Only a year ago, the DC Craft Bartender Guild declared July as Rickey Month.  They’re dead easy to make — three ingredients — and are on the cocktail wiki, which I somehow assumed that bartenders in DC knew about.  Do bartenders not have recipe books or web access? 

Or maybe I need to stop going to chain establishments, eh?

“In the aftermath of the crash on the Red Line between the Takoma and Fort Totten stations, Metro officials analyzed track circuit data and found that one circuit in the crash area intermittently lost its ability to detect a train. The circuit would report the presence of a train one moment, then a few seconds later the train would “disappear,” only to return again.”

It sounded to me like the same problems that have been encountered on the Space Shuttle, nuclear power plants, and various military systems. And that problem is tin whiskers.

The backstory:  When people first started building electric circuits, they used tin metal to solder the interconnections between the copper bits.  It wasn’t long before they noticed the tin would get “furry”, growing spiky whiskers as the part was used.  These spikes could grow long enough to short out the circuits, and then were so weak that they would break off right after doing so.  A smart metallurgist figured out that adding a small amount of lead to the tin alloy stopped this behavior.  And so the electronics industry grew, and electronic circuits got so small and fast and reliable that they ended up in nearly every control system – with a bit of solder in every one of them.

In the early 2000’s two things happened:  Europe passed legislation that prohibited lead in consumer products, and at the same time, the production of interconnection technologies went global.  So even though only European markets mandated this change, producers all over the world had to comply.  And that means that consumers all over the world were getting lead-free electronics, many times without knowing it.  Many times the same part number started showing up with lead-free solder, making this trend very hard to track.

So yesterday, I dropped a note to one of my expert friends, who agreed with me that the circuitry in the Metro replacement part, more likely than not, contained lead-free solder.  And then, he pointed out the likelihood that the latest Airbus crashes had lead-free solder components in their flight controls.

Hence the cold chills.

Yes, it’s a bad thing to have lead where kids might put it in their mouths (especially drinking water).  Yet the activists admit that the amount of lead in electronics isn’t at dangerous levels; they say their ultimate goal is to shut down lead production entirely.   (In the interest of full disclosure, I facilitated a study back in 2005 that predicted this, and only now is the military starting to address those findings.) 

Hey, guys, maybe technology might need to trump politics for once?

The show opens this Friday, May 29 and runs through July 5.   It couldn’t actually be more convenient; the building is right on top of the Navy Yard Metro and is just down the block from Nationals Park.  Despite the photo, things are actually mostly in place, and there is — as always — some breathtaking art interspersed with some of the craziest things you’ve ever seen.  But hey! There are four bars, four stages, and over a thousand visual artists and 600 performing artists.   And a Zombie Prom!  What could be more fun?  Artomatic will clearly be the place to see and be seen this June in DC.

Artomatic is a month-long art festival in DC that is free to the general public celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Monument Realty and the Capitol Riverfront BID have provided a brand-new 275,000 square foot building to host Artomatic, right next to the Nationals Stadium. The event features nine floors of visual and installation art, theater performances, dance and comedy, three music stages, street performances such as fire dancing and drum troupes, and a film screening theater. Workshops and seminars are held all month long and special events such as the Washington Post’s Peeps diorama finalists, Box Racing, body paint shows, and a no-holds-barred Art in Fashion Show.

Photo props to WABA

WABA again did an excellent job with Bike to Work Day in downtown DC on Friday, May 15.  For those of you who aren’t hardcore cyclists, I have to say I recommend this event highly even if you only bike to work one day a year!  A few highlights:

• Most importantly, the weather held out – perfect temperatures and no raindrops on Freedom Plaza!
• The food was excellent – bagels and schmears, apples and oranges all nicely quartered, hot coffee and cold tea – and plenty of  it.  Yay, sponsors!
• The Coast Guard contingent was particularly impressive, led by Admiral Thad Allen
• A surprise visit by the Secretary of Energy and Nobel Laureate, Stephen Chu, who clearly knows his way around a bike.    Here’s hoping he has reversed the insane disincentives to bike to work at the Forrestal Building.
• Excellent giveaways and raffles; the drawings are the only time during the event that everyone on the plaza pays strict attention.  Again, yay, sponsors!
• A lot of other speakers (of varying degrees of interest) allowing plenty of time to chat with friends. :)  Amazing who you run into at this thing.  I swear, every year it’s someone else.
• All kinds of kids, dogs, and bikes; a great opportunity to shop for new gear by talking to folks who already own it.
• The Tune Ups, always a treat at BtW, did a memorable rendition of Smart Bike Ditty, which I am still humming.  Where’s your website, kids?  I want youtube videos!
• I didn’t stick around to see Mayor Fenty (as I had to, you know, actually bike to work).  Just FYI, the festivities normally run from 8 to 9 am.

Thanks, NASA!

Of all the zillions of 86 Earth Day events in DC and zillions of 175 million helpful posts on Easy! Ways! To! Be! Green!… this one is FULL OF WIN.  (Also, the most irreverent. Just sayin’.)

props to Jonathan Hoff on flickr

The thing about air, you see, is that there is a lot of it.  And it’s free — there’s no “DC Department of Air” that delivers clean, tested stuff to your door.  Then again, a lot of things (that we don’t pay for) affect our air quality.  In the city, it’s mostly heavy and off-road vehicles — trucks, buses, earthmovers – and that coal-burning power plant on Capitol Hill.  But regular cars and light trucks, heating, ventilatilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, manufacturing, and even human and animal digestion — all affect the air we breathe, as well as do sun, wind, and heat.  Air is both chaotic and complex, two things that make a system very difficult to model using our limited tools of mathematics and computer science. 

The upshot is that we don’t understand it very well.  We mostly know there is a problem with the air and that the changing composition means the air is overall a titch warmer than it used to be.  And we mostly agree that this is a result of people using the air.  And we mostly think this warming trend is Not Good.  What nobody knows very well is what to do about it. 

In a situation like this, looking at history is always interesting to me; I like the example of the government’s well-meant efforts to make cars more efficient by regulating the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE).  Instead of resulting in more small cars on the road, the car industry figured out how to sell us trucks (ie, SUVs) that weren’t covered by the rule.  These larger vehicles will finally be regulated in 2011, more than 35 years after the law was enacted.  This is a great example of unintended consequences and the need to reckon with clever capitalists.  Well-meaning people regulated lead of out gasoline back then, too.  Lead is pretty awful stuff when it ends up in drinking water and the easiest way to keep kids safe is not to use it at all.  But recent speculation points to lower lead levels as a precursor to global warming (thanks to @2020science for the links!). 

Unfortunately, eliminating lead also means none of those kids can use their XBOX 360s, but those consequences, they just keep coming.  And now we mean well when we talk about limiting carbon emissions.  I fear the unintended consequences.  Who knows, we could be stuck with a lot of boring sunsets…

Blue Plains water treatment facility at twilight.

Wednesday April 22 is Earth Day, so let’s talk green this week.   Today’s topic:  Water. 

Those of us blessed with municipal water systems have been somewhat insulated from the massive water issues that many predict will dominate the next century.   Most people still believe that clean water is cheap and reliable — that water will come down from the sky, be filtered through the ground and return as it always has to provide fresh water to my kitchen sink.

But that’s less and less true.  As population and industry have grown, water moves through the system differently and “fresh water” is less fresh.  In our overbuilt environment, the water we pull out of the Potomac doesn’t flow back as it used to.  Treatment plants adds all sorts of things to the water to minimize health risks, but also to minimize risks to infrastructure (ie, lead leaching or other pipe corrosion).  And treatment doesn’t take out all sorts of other things, like anti-cholesterol or birth control drugs. And don’t even get me started on the vulnerabilities of aging SCADA systems.

The real point is that moving water around, even when it’s clean, costs energy.  Our water treatment and distribution systems are aging and not adequately funded as populations have grown; and many small municipalities have privatized their water systems, meaning that people are going to start paying the real cost of water, both here in the city and in the extended suburbs.  And we use a LOT of water.

Awareness is growing, but it will be a few years before we really start seeing the impact.  In the meantime, there are lots of ways to use less water.

Still to come: Earth, Air, and Fire.