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Are you a Radical Bastard?

Hide your children and if you are a parent stop judging!

Radical Bastard Challenge numero 2 is coming up in just a few weeks. Are you ready for this?

For the uninitiated, lazy, lame, or responsible who have more important things to keep up with the Radical Bastard Challenge is an event that I am pretty sure the authorities don’t need to know too much about:

The Radical Bastard Challenge is a bike/hike endurance challenge in the North Phoenix Mountain Park. If you are not up for all five (5) phases, that’s ok. Pick & choose your phases, or volunteer at the bike-check point. Although all levels of radicalbastard’s are welcome… the full challenge is pretty tough. Make sure you are ready for it. (From the Radical Bastard website)

Its not something for the light hearted or weak. If you have a decent mountain bike and can ride 20 miles in a day I suggest showing up on Nov 13th. Check out more at their Radical Bastard Facebook Page to RSVP. I signed up and think its gonna be pretty fun.

As a test I did the second half of the first leg of mountain biking after work today. From my house its a 7.5 mile warm up ride, then the trail begins and its a doozy. I walked a bit of the downhill cause it’s hard and it was dark. Memo to self, wear head lamp for mountain biking, handlebar lights dont necessarily show you where you want to go all the time. For the toughest section of the race on bikes anyway I put this at a 7 and recommend you practice it a bit and don’t feel bad about walking 40% of it(although I will give you shit).

I took a picture of North Phoenix from the back of Squaw:
Dusk in North Phoenix

Here is a map of my ride tonight starting and ending near my home. Total mileage 17.8 and it took 1 hour 40 minutes to complete.

Its good to get back on the dirt!

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Sierra Club Arizona Legislature 2010 Environmental Report Card – Make it happen.

Sierra Club Arizona Legislature 2010 Environment Report Card – PDF

Give this a read if you care about doing anything outside of a hermetically sealed room with filtered and chemically treated water. If you believe in science and care about what comes next these are the issues you need to keep at the forefront. This is long term planning for the place we live. If we dont have drinking water there is no point.

Here is how the officials in my area did on the Sierra Club Arizona Legislature 2010 Environmental Report Card:

Way to go Ken Cheuvront for most improved!

Senator Ken Cheuvront (D-15) improved from a “D” on the 2009 report card to an “A” on the 2010 report card. Senator Cheuvront helped point out the silliness of the light bulb bill and stood up for parks and clean water. His grade improved considerably this session, because he missed very few votes. We appreciate his support for environmental protection over the years as leaves the legislature after 16 years of service.

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Cateye’s Social Network – World Commute – Measure your Carbon Offset – Verdict: Bridge to Nowhere

by aloshbennett
by aloshbennett

So Cateye has a new product called Cateye Commute. Its a cyclometer that helps you measure your ‘Greenness’ and stuff and it sounds pretty cool. You can read the Wired review of the Cateye Commuter here. I am more interested in the social network that they built to go along with this device – WorldCommute.com.

The basic concept is not new, there are a number of excercise and carbon offset tracking websites out there. However this one seems to combine them both and acts like a Nike+ for bikes. Unfortunately it is not going anywhere.

There are a few basic reasons for this:

  • Publicity
  • Networking

Publicity – External and Internal

No one is talking about this site. How do I know this? Yahoo is currently showing 7,000 backlinks. That is sad. Whats worse is that the top result on Yahoo’s list is cateye.com. In voodoo SEO terms this means the strongest link Cateye is getting for their Social Network is from Cateye. Nice outreach. For a topic this hot there is no reason they shouldn’t have government and educational sites linking to them as a way to take resposibility for your energy use. Send Obama a computer and get him to blog about it on the Whitehouse blog or something…

How commited is Cateye to this project? From looking at the Cateye website and its lack of a mention or link to worldcommute.com I would say not very.  Currently a search for “site:cateye.com world commute” gives a total of 7 results, on a site with over 1400 pages. The product page for the Cateye Commuter has no link to worldcommute.com. (As a side note there is no link to a Youtube video of how to install the Cateye Commute Cyclometer, or how to use it.)

Networking – As in Social

Cateye knows about Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, but for some reason it doesn’t want to connect its own Social Network to them. This is perplexing to say the least. Considering the Privacy issues that they bring up during signup, I really don’t want to give you my birthdate, it makes sense to take advantage of the info that people have already given to their existing networks. Also its a pain in the ass to send an individual invite to each of my friends to get them to join me at WorldCommute.com. With all the latest stuff going on at Facebook and connecting sites together this is a major mistake.

Is there a way to sync the info from the Cateye Commute to my computer for upload to worldcommute.com? I assume no as there is no mention of this on the product page. This is a big miss as well considering the rise in various tracking methods on iPhones and Blackberries like Nike+ and AllSport GPS.

Conclusion

Cateye is taking a good direction here in terms of broadening their audience and message but in the end no one is going to use worldcommute.com as it is currently setup. There are 105 groups on the site but each one that I scanned over had less than 5 members. Cateye can make this a success if it can link their Cateye Commute Cyclometer to the site and connect worldcommute.com to the rest of the internet better. If you are running the show at Cateye I would love to talk further on this and help make it a success in exchange for some cash.

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Sonoran Solar Project – Public Comments now open – Speak UP!

Encourage the Bureau of Land Management to Ensure that this project is the best possible by limiting water use and the use of natural gas.

The Bureau of Land Management is seeking public comment on the proposed Sonoran Solar Energy Project.

This is the first big solar project on public land in Arizona. The proposal includes construction of a 375 MW electrical generating facility using concentrated solar thermal power on 3,700 acres.

Read more about the project online.

Comments can be submitted via this page or via email to sonoransolar@blm.gov or by mail to Joe Incardine, National Project Manager, BLM Phoenix District Office, Lower Sonoran Field Office, 21605 N. 7th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85027.

For more information, please contact Sandy Bahr at 602-253-8633 or sandy.bahr@sierraclub.org.