Valley Futures

Mad Bikes has been re-born as the Mad Bikes of Waitsfield, under the auspices of the town of Waitsfield.  The following is the minutes from the first official meeting of this newly formed committee.  We will publish then on this blog.

Valley moves is turning its attention toward the launching of VTrans’ Go Vermont and commuter and other transportation needs in the Valley. Please watch the site for more updates.  Join us!

Mad Bikes of Waitsfield Steering Committee
Meeting  Minutes, August 26, 2008, 7 a.m. @ Three Mtn. Café
Present:  Laura Brines, Liz Weller, Troy Kingsbury, Peter Lazorchak
Absent:  Bobbi Rood, Sue Frechette, Kari Dolan
1.    Progress Report:  6 Mad Bikes are “out there.”
a.    Special thanks to the volunteer bike maintenance by Dave at Stark Mtn. and David Cain.  We are so grateful to both of them for their willingness to continue to help repair and maintain the bikes.
b.    Bike baskets have been put on most of the bikes. Thanks to Peter!
c.    Clip on bike flags seem to have been removed/broken on most of the bikes.
d.    Bike stickers are on all the bikes.
e.    Bike Guidelines have been attached to all of the racks with green flags in the Irasville district.
f.    Troy, with the help of his son, plans to paint 4 or 5 recently donated bikes.  Once the bikes have been tuned up, stickers & baskets add- ten bikes will be actively in the fleet.
g.    Peter has numbered the bikes, and is keeping a log of all the bike expenses, where bikes have been found, etc.
h.    We agreed to try to sell one of the used bikes that is in very good condition on Craig’s List  and the money from the sale will go towards future bike maintenance costs.  We hope Dave Cain will put the ad on Craig’s List.  Thanks, Dave.
i.    Need more helpers:  We hope to brainstorm a list of local bike enthusiasts who we can invite to help tune up bikes.  Next summer we hope to have Mad Bike volunteers sign on for a week, during which they patrol Irasville and “tune up” bikes in need.  This will be organized similar to the system the Valley Garden Club has in place to take care of community gardens in the summer.
2.    Bike Storage:  Liz is pursuing “in town” storage for the bikes, so far no luck.  We hope winter storage for the bikes and racks can be in Dave ? barn in Duxbury.
3.    Who is riding the bikes?  We hope to take photos of users enjoying the Mad Bikes, and perhaps interview them to see how they are being used.
4.    Presence at the last Farmers’ Mkt:  Liz will look into this.  We had a table at the beginning of the summer, so it seems appropriate to have one at the end of the summer.  Our hope is to get folks to sign up: to help tune bikes, to participate in a “bike tuning clinic” to be held during Valley Walk & Roll Week ‘09, to raise awareness about the bikes, to sign up for bike riding classes, etc.  Ring a bell and give treats to folks that ride a bike to the Mkt that day… other ideas?
5.    Research the Putney Community Bike Program:  Mike Ketchel says they have a similar program, with green milk crates on the bikes instead of baskets.
6.    Forward any Mad Bike stories, photos, questions or ideas to lbbrines@gmavt.net.
7.    Next meeting date?  To be determined.
Adjourned:  7:45 a.m.  Minutes by Laura Brines

Tags: Transportation by Bobbi Rood
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Read and view this book at Amazon.com.

Like many other professional disciplines, architects and building designers have their own sometimes-indecipherable jargon. I still remember my student architect colleagues during college casually throwing around terms that went right over my head. How wonderful, then, that our Valley’s own Bob Ferris, executive director of Yestermorrow Design and Build School, has just published a new book entitled Natural Building: Creating Communities Through Cooperation, printed by Schiffer Publishing and available locally, as well as through online book stores.

Here’s the back story. During summer 2007, eight Yestermorrow students and ten instructors gathered in Warren to build a single structure over the course of eleven weeks. They settled on designing a garden shed called the Folly, comprised of hand-hewn timbers, earth, straw and other natural materials – you can witness the structure just a few feet from the covered bridge in the center of Warren village.

Ferris and his colleagues decided to provide a written account of the process, as well. “Our book is one part how-to primer on natural building, one part commentary on group dynamics, and one part soul-enriching eye candy,” explains co-editor Ferris. “Natural building is an oeuvre that needs to be examined thoughtfully in these challenging times. While maybe not the whole answer, its message of using local materials and living more simply is certainly part of the answer.”

Their book boasts a number of wonderful features. The photographs – rich, colorful, and, in many instances, sized as a full page - convey a vivid sense of the process of making the Folly. The book, in this sense, functions almost as a coffee table text, though the images are very much about technique, as well – close ups of chisel and mallet cuts, for example, balance out wide-angle establishing shots of the group at work. And the collection of images covers the whole process from start to finish, from “laying a good foundation – the boots of a building,” through the niftily titled “mental and philosophical punchlist.” Even the photo captions are intriguing, from simple one word tags like “stone,” to detailed descriptions of the construction process. Mini-bibliographies entitled “On The Bookshelf” list texts for further exploration, so interested builders can do more research into various aspects of the work. Rounding out the book are mini-biographies of each student, and a reflective afterward by Ferris, in which he summarizes the problems and rewards of the process, and the inherent challenges that come with building as a team. As Page Houser eloquently states: “You start a-stompin’ cob, you soon realize it’s the cob a-stomping you.”

Ultimately, the text is an inspirational tribute to natural building techniques, which Yestermorrow explains as “a philosophy and practice emphasizes socially,culturally, and environmentally responsible building. This is typically realized in the use of basic, elemental materials (e.g., earth, wood, stone and straw) that require little or no processing and are found on-site or locally sourced. The methods of natural building are often labor intensive but not capital intensive. Because natural building espouses an approach that preferentially uses materials that are processed less and travel fewer miles, they tend to contribute less greenhouse gases than their conventionally-built counterparts. In addition, naturally-built structures tend to be smaller, better sited to take advantage of the interplay between solar radiation and thermal mass, and occupied by folks who have the inclination to examine and minimize their carbon footprints.”

Veterans of natural building who might dismiss this book as little more than a primer would do well to remember that every structure has a story, and, as the age of cookie-cutter corporate industrial housing wanes, all of us will find much to learn in this engaging, visually attractive and hopeful book. May the community-building continue.

Tags: Arts and Media by Rob Williams
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