@hembrow@todon.eu
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

hembrow

@hembrow@todon.eu

Writing about cycling and its place in a green future world since the 1990s. See my blog and other writings elsewhere.

I also run a webshop which provides parts which are sometimes hard to find for practical everyday bicycles. If you can find parts locally then support your local cycle shop. Otherwise perhaps I can provide you with parts that you can't find locally.

321 ppm. That was a long time ago.

#humanpower #cyclist #vegan #dutch #nederland #netherlands #bicycle #fiets #velomobile #climate #sustainability #cycling #infra #grandad

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hembrow, to random
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

It's traditional on the 6th of June to take some action against fascists so I just voted in the EU Parliament election.

I voted for Max van den Berg:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_van_den_Berg

Why this guy in particular ? He was one of the people behind the Verkeerscirculatieplan which came into force in Groningen in 1977 and which removed most cars from the city centre. It's possible that without that action happening and helping to set off a series of similar events in other cities we might never have decided to come and live in the Netherlands. That's worth honoring, IMO.

Later he did many other good things such as working for Oxfam/Novib.

That's my reason to vote for a 78 year old white guy who I know won't represent us this time around. I hope that he sees that people appreciate what he did for us all. My vote, like others for people lower in the list, are reallocated and help to send younger people higher in the list for the same party to Brussels.

(Someone else with the same name was in the news a couple of years ago for threatening a politician. I'd like to make it clear that this is not the same person).
#euelections2024 #euelection #groenlinkspvda #maxvandenberg #stemvooreuropa

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Today's delivery run by bike. All the parcels that I send begin their journey by bike, and are taken for a short journey on the cycling infrastructure which exists between my home and the post office.

In this example there's a single direction cycle-path which becomes bidirectional at the junction just ahead of my bike. The reason why this happens is to allow visitors to the shops behind the hedge on the right to make their journey without having to cross the road twice. Bidirectional cycle-paths substantially improve cyclist safety and convenience when they prevent road crossing in this way.

Read more about cycle-paths here:

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/search/label/cycle%20paths

Our webshop is here:
https://www.dutchbikebits.com

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

As today is "world bicycle day" I'd better post something so here are some photos from yesterday's bike ride with @jhembrow @twilwel and others.

We rode 75 km through Drenthe and Friesland with a stop for lunch in not quite the destination that we'd intended.

Riding along a very nice cycle-path and catching up with Judy, who decided she'd rather miss the rough path at the beginning.
Five velomobiles cruising on a Dutch cycle-path

DrTCombs, to random
@DrTCombs@transportation.social avatar

I just shifted my weight in my desk chair. Dog 1 twitches. Dog 2 notices twitch and looks up. Dog 1 notices Dog 2 looking up and jumps up. Dog 2 notices Dog 1 jumping up and also jumps up. Dog 1 notices Dog 2 also jump up and barks. Dog 2 notices Dog 1 bark and leaps off the sofa. Dog 1 notices Dog 2 leap off the sofa and starts sprinting to the door. Dog 2 notices Dog 1 sprint to the door and also sprints to the 2. Both dogs now jumping at the door barking their fool heads off.

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@DrTCombs Ha ha. That sounds very familiar.
All day, every day, all dogs. Completely bonkers.

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

I took a short ride for exercise this morning, covering 31 km in 54 minutes with the velomobile, including traffic lights, negotiating other road users etc.

The Mango is far from the quickest velomobile available nowadays, and mine is fitted with slower puncture proof "winter" tyres because I really don't like fixing punctures in the rain, but for the same expended effort it still consistently goes about 15-20% faster than my road/racing bike or my two wheeled recumbent, a touring model which is a little slower than the road bike.

Add in the low maintenance (leading to low running costs), the weather protection and three wheels making winter cycling much safer and there's so much to like. This is the most efficient transport mode in existence and it's also very practical. It's also fun, of course.

There's a calculator here which lets you work out approximately how fast you can cycle with a particular amount of effort on different types of bicycles, and how much energy is required to do that over distance:
https://hembrow.eu/personal/kreuzotter/espeed.htm

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@katgraph It's super comfortable. You sit in a relaxed fashion on a seat, not on a saddle (I personally don't suffer much from saddles, but others do). See photo.

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@Wen No, that's not a problem. There's plenty of airflow for the upper part of your body and foot holes (for reversing Flintstone style) allow plenty to come through and cool the bottom half. Also the bottom half of your body is in shade which helps a lot in summer.

For winter use there's a cover to restrict airflow. It's then warm enough that I only have to wear more than one t-shirt in the middle of winter.

The photo shows the winter cover on and also the small extra bit for parking which keeps the inside dry, and hides everything from curious people (there's no actual security, though).
@katgraph

rebeccawatson, to random
@rebeccawatson@mstdn.social avatar

Last week, I attempted to ride my bicycle 100 miles for the first time ever. That gave me a lot of time to think about willpower: what is it? Can we strengthen it or are we born with it? And what the hell was I thinking when I signed up for this? https://skepchick.org/2024/05/can-i-bike-100-miles-the-science-of-why-we-give-up/

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@rebeccawatson It's great to hear that you finished the 100 miles in one day, even finding the willpower to go out and do the extra 1 mile that was missing, but are you sure that willpower was actually the problem ?

It takes about 2000 kcal (extra over the usual daily consumption) in order to ride 100 miles. i.e. anyone would need to eat quite a lot on a ride of that length in order to feel good on a ride.

Low blood sugar makes you feel absolutely horrible. It's often referred to as the bonk or the wall, but there are also a whole load o other nasty expressions for this on the wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitting_the_wall ).

Low blood sugar will also cause you to slow down a lot because you just don't have the available energy to to continue at a normal speed.

Emma-Louise's food and sugary drinks were exactly the cure required for this problem.

I suggest that next time you make sure you have plenty of nutrition available. Cake is always good. I think most people can ride all day at a fairly reasonable speed, and also even enjoy the experience, if they make sure they eat and drink enough. But not eating enough makes it far more of a challenge than it would otherwise be.

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@rebeccawatson What an incredibly disappointing response. I'm only trying to help you Rebecca. We've all been there. I'm just passing on to you the advice that I received decades ago when I first had that experience.

What you describe is absolutely the classic outcome when someone who is not used to cycling long distances tries to do so and does not eat correctly.

There's a huge difference between 1000 miles spread across a whole year (which, btw, is not much at all and further suggests that you were not well prepared) and 100 miles in one day.

On shorter rides you don't get even near the point of running out of ready energy. But on longer rides it's impossible not to run out of energy unless you make sure you eat enough. That's just a fact.

But anyway, you do you. Riding 100 miles for the first time is an achievement. Well done.

hembrow, to random
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Every so often the benefit of wearing a bicycle helmet is so great that it can't be ignored. I really should have worn one this morning...

... not for cycling, of course, but when I climbed a ladder in the garage and bashed my head.

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Today's project, for which I spilt blood, is finally to get a log of the output from the garage mounted solar panels, using a 40 year old computer to do the logging just because, er, why not? An Arduino is calculating output in watts from the time between pulses which come from an energy meter in the garage, sending them by serial connection to the NEC PC8201a which does the logging.

It's powered by a very old and slightly crusty home made variable power supply.

The NEC is running a program written in Microsoft BASIC. Like most people of my age I started writing BASIC before this computer was made, but it's far from my favourite language so I've not written any BASIC in a very long time (except a loader for a spectrum program a few years ago). Because I had never used it before, and on this occasion I could, this program uses the ON COM GOSUB feature. This feature interrupts the flow of the main program whenever data arrives on the serial port, similar in concept to how hardware interrupts work on the processor itself. A bizarre thing for any BASIC dialect to include! As this is BASIC, all variables are global and there's no stack to save state on.

It has 16 K of RAM, shared by the program, file system, my logged data etc.
#basic #msbasic #goto #gosub #NECPC8201A #playingwithcomputers

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Very enjoyable ride today. 80 km around the Drents countryside, including the now completed (almost) half of the Groningen-Assen intercity cycling highway at the Assen end.
@twilwel

Another view of the cycling superhighway. 4 m wide, lit at night, and super smooth.
Another cycle-path out in the countryside somewhere and another recumbent rider going in the opposite direction. That style of three wheel recumbent with one wheel in the front, and often with a motor (like this one) is mostly used by people with a disability.
Country lane. Not much traffic.

hembrow, to Samsung
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

We're currently looking for a new refrigerator because we're renovating our kitchen. The existing built in fridge has been there for the 16 years that we've lived here, and who knows how long before. It's awful: The internal temperature fluctuates between freezing and 8 C and it guzzles electricity - measurement suggests ~500 kWh per year.

For some reason all new built in fridges still have high energy usage, so we're only looking at free-standing models.

Most fridge/freezer combi models are absurdly large. It's a stretch to reach the top shelf inside.

All the A-rated refrigerators are huge and have apps. Linking appliances to the internet is IMO stupid and in any case white goods ought to last longer than mobile phones.

Some of the B rated models are only just behind the 'A's in energy usage but they usually have apps as well.

Then there's the problem of avoiding boycotted brands (#siemens linked to Israel and Russia, #liebherr and #samsung to Russia, #Beko to Turkey).

I'm now remembering why I put off doing anything in the kitchen for so long...
#kitchen #refrigerator #enshittification #internetofshit #BoycottIsrael #boycottRussia #boycottTurkey

hembrow, to fuckcars
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Cars. They're fun for the entire family.

Buy a polluting gas guzzler today and we'll give you €500 to fly somewhere on holiday. Spread the joy of fossil fuels far and wide.

Fun for the kids as well: colour in this picture of a huge #wankpanzer of the kind that is particularly good at killing kids and if you're lucky you might win tickets to be driven to a adventure park.

(This dropped out of our local paper)
#fuckcars #cars #carsruineverything #motorism #advertising #subvertising

image/jpeg

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Today's bike ride included a stop at Groningen Airport Eelde to attend today's protest organised by @extinctionrebellionnl

While normal capitalist businesses are expected to turn a profit or they will go out of business, our local airport receives millions of euros in subsidy each year.

Not only do airlines benefit from not paying any tax at all on the huge quantities of fuel that they burn, but each passenger flying from the airport also benefits directly from this subsidy that we all pay. Fliers don't come even close to paying the full cost to society of their flights, let alone for the destruction that they're causing for future generations.

Why do we subsidize destructive behaviours ?

Noodlanding voor het klimaat Emergency landing for the climate
Welcome to extinction - one of many things written on the ground with chalk
On the way home I passed a roundabout which had been blocked by protestors. Well, not actually blocked: Cyclists were not impeded at all, but gas guzzling cars couldn't pass.

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Photos from recent delivery runs.

To the greatest extent possible I do my work by human power, but there are limits to how much I can control.

This morning I made a delivery to someone who lives in a village in Drenthe so that delivery was made 100% by human power as I rode there and back in my velomobile.

Parts ordered by people who live thousands of km away are a different story. I can then only control the first few km. So I go as far by bike as I can and then those parcels continue their journeys by commercial shipping companies.

All shipping companies make green claims these days, and they make rather more grand claims than I do. But none of those claims amount to anything close to traveling by human power alone.
https://www.dutchbikebits.com

Cycle-path vs. "road". We have asphalt.
My bike a few days ago transporting several parcels including a large one in the bike trailer which weighed just under 20 kg. Quite a cumbersome package to carry.

twilwel, to random Dutch
@twilwel@mastodon.nl avatar

De mini-Tulpentocht van Drenthe met de AssenLiggers @hembrow @jhembrow

image/png

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@jhembrow @twilwel I've also got a few photos from today's bike ride...

While we came to see the tulips, there were also lots of dandelions. I like dandelions. Unfortunately, a lot of poison is spread to grow those tulips.
Through the countryside on a recreational cycle-path
Heading back home on a main route cycle-path

largess, to climate
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists | Climate crisis | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/apr/09/tenth-consecutive-monthly-heat-record-alarms-confounds-climate-scientists

>But based on preliminary analyses, he said these factors were not sufficient to account for the 0.2C increase: “If the anomaly does not stabilise by August – a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events – then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated.”

>The core of the problem – fossil fuel emissions

I don't agree, the core of the problem is human behavior, still plenty of people in here flying, driving etc and clutching their pearls. A good perspective here from physicist Tom Murphy

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/04/distilled-disintegration/

Faster then the median perhaps but there's plenty of "hot models" saying it's to be expected and temps are looking like they're accelerating, yo'ud think the precautionary principal alone would motivate peoples voting and actions but alas...

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@pb_gamble It's far too easy to blame some anonymous group of others, even if they're extremely privileged others.

1% of the world's population is 80 M people. They don't all own coal mines or private jets. Most of "the 1%" are just slightly wealthier than average westerners. Almost all of the rest of us in wealthy nations make up the top 10%. the top 10% is around 800 M people, which is not much less than the combined populations of Europe and North America.

There are about 2000 billionaires on the planet. They're truly awful people and action should be taken against their excesses, but their numbers are so small that they couldn't screw the planet up completely on their own no matter how they tried. You mention mines and coal power stations, but no-one would run a coal mine if there was no market for the coal and no-one would run a power station if there was no market for electricity.

It's the hundreds of millions of us relatively well off westerners who drive cars, fly in non private aircraft, use electricity from fossil sources, who eat meat and who buy and throw away endless products, all of which adds up to our consuming far more than we actually need of everything.

That's how we enable billionaires and how we devastate the planet.

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2020/02/who-are-one-percent-super-polluters.html
@largess

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

Nice weather at last! I went out for a spin on my ancient road bike this morning.

30 km through town and countryside covered in 1:05. Not enough to set a record, but certainly enough for an old man to get a bit of exercise on an old bike.
#cycling #BikeTooter #Drenthe #bicycle

hembrow, to Netherlands
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

It's Easter weekend. The weather is expected to be a bit better than we've had through winter, and lots of people have holidays. So, is this a nice time to go cycling ?

Unfortunately not in the Netherlands.

Over the Easter weekend this country is held ransom by religious (and non-religious) lunatics who light absolutely enormous fires made up of assorted rubbish and these cause ridiculous levels of air pollution, especially of particulates, which blanket the entire country. The Germans also do this, so an easterly wind (which is predicted) doesn't blow the smoke away but just brings extra smoke from Germany.

As a result of this you basically don't want to breath outside on the Easter weekend, let alone do any exercise which would make you breath deeper.

There are fires planned for this evening, tomorrow evening and Monday evening. So there's no quick escape.

The selfish people make Easter in the Netherlands almost as much "fun" as New Year's Eve !

Completely unrelated story: There's also currently a well publicized national shortage of asthma medication, as if that's of any importance at all to the selfish smoke enthusiasts.

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@metin Indeed. We have that problem as well. Expensive gas has resulted in people installing wood burners into modern houses at an even higher rate than previous years. We've rarely been able to open our windows this winter because of the smoke.

I've been pointing out to any of our neighbours who will listen, as politely as possible of course, that our use of an air-air heat pump through the winter has resulted in us having absolutely no energy bill at all, while on the other hand they're paying for wood to burn in their wood stoves, and that those stoves more to install than did our heat pump. i.e. what they're doing is DEFINITELY not saving them money. Quite the reverse.

But how do we convince people to do the sensible things instead of the ridiculous ones ?
@edgeofeurope

hembrow, to cycling
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

I reached 70000 km with my Mango velomobile today. I have other bikes to ride, and other things to do, so it's taken me just over 12 years to cover that distance at only about 5800 km per year.

Anyway, short 12 year experience review:

It's fast, comfortable, safe, practical for everyday use, lots of fun, keeps you warm and dry in bad weather (e.g. today), let's you pretend headwinds don't exist, has needed hardly any maintenance beyond tyres and very occasional chains (the drive chain is entirely enclosed, as are the brakes), has plenty of storage space inside which is also out of the weather, uses no fuel beyond the food you were going to eat anyway, and it's an absolute bargain: total cost at this point is just a few cents per kilometre.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Get a velomobile. You will not regret it!" (The other part of the quote is funny but really makes no sense for such a safe vehicle).

Also it's probably time for me to update this review:
https://hembrow.eu/personal/sinnermango.html

Velomobile on a Dutch cycle path next to a canal with house boats on the other side

BrentToderian, to random
@BrentToderian@mastodon.online avatar

“Better” cars just isn’t enough. As I put it recently in my advice to Irish cities, “Your goal SHOULDN’T be to replace a million fossil fuel vehicles with a million electric vehicles. It should be to replace a million fossil fuel vehicles with 250K electric vehicles. The answer HAS to be FEWER cars."

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

@BrentToderian That's a good start, but it's not ambitious enough.

When I was born there were a tenth so many cars on Dutch streets as there are now. Society still functioned.

Society also functioned when my grandparents were born.

People think of cars as being "essential" now for all manner of tasks which for the majority of time that humans have been on the planet were done by other means, or not at all. If we want to remain living on this planet we need to stop pretending that cars are essential to use in the future. And also stop pretending that some of those nonessential journeys are essential.
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/search/label/dutchcarownership

hembrow, to random
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

We just received our "jaarafrekening". This is the final yearly invoice sent by our energy company. They are about to pay us €252, and we will continue to pay them €5 per month next year, just like last year. i.e. overall our energy company is paying us about €200 for last year's electricity. Everything in our home is powered by electricity. No gas connection. No wood burner.

Nothing that we've done to achieve a negative energy bill was especially expensive. In particular, our installation of a air-air heat pump and a couple of extra solar panels cost far less than several of our neighbours paid for the wood burning stoves they've installed, which stink up the neighbourhood all through winter.

We also don't have to buy wood to burn.

People concerned about the cost of heating with gas buy woodburners at a higher rate than heat pumps largely because they have no idea about the relative costs. If they knew, perhaps we could have clean air.

I'll write a comprehensive blog post at the end of March about energy consumption, costs & emissions due to the heatpump vs. gas this winter. I can tell you already that we using a lot less total energy now.

Read more:
https://davidhembrow.blogspot.com/search/label/house

hembrow,
@hembrow@todon.eu avatar

I promised a blog post about how much it cost to heat our home in winter with heat pump vs. gas. Also about the much improved insulation. Here it is:

http://davidhembrow.blogspot.com/2024/04/relative-cost-of-heating-with-heat-pump.html

To summarise: In the worst case, our CO2 emissions are reduced by 95% vs. burning gas, we have no heating bill at all any more, and our home was warmer than before.

#VanHetGasAf #HeatPump #Insulation #EnergyBill #Heating #EnergyCost #CO2Budget #ZeroCO2Emission #EnergyEfficiency

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