On Wednesday I went to the Fall Harvest Farmers' Market at the Union. I found out about it from a listserv I'm on about food studies.
The flyer got my attention because of those two beautiful little words... "free" and "affordable".
So I walked there with Sarah on my break and was impressed with the set up.
I'm sure many of you are in the same situation as me; I want to support local farmers and purchase fresh and organic produce, but I can't afford to shop at the Farmers' Market consistently. But this event was for the student population, so everything was discounted! From the fresh apples, pumpkins, cauliflower and other vegetables to the canned pickles, preserves, spreads and sauces - nothing was over $5! It was a steal and I wish I had brought a bag to take things home with, although I did manage to walk away with a can of pickles and raspberry preserves.
The cider and flatbread was delicious, too! It showcased how to use fresh veggies in a way that everyone loves - pizza.
Sarah and I were talking about how we would come to this every week if they had it. I'd like to know which farms these items came from. The canned goods came from Dillman Farms, but it doesn't look like they sell produce as I had originally thought. If IU could partner with local farmers and get them to provide discounted produce (perhaps what doesn't sell at market or if IU provides subsidies) I think it could raise awareness for local farmers and get people interested in understanding where their food comes from. Eating habits are formed in our childhood and are hard to break, but college is a very formative time for young adults and this forum could be very helpful in teaching healthy and conscious habits.
Rewiring the moped was the most difficult part of the rebuild and is actually what is still wrong with it right now. To begin to understand the wiring, I looked at several wiring diagrams. The moped is such a small bike that there actually aren't that many wires and connections to account for. What was difficult was tracing the wires to be certain full circuits were connected and dealing with the stater (I'll explain later).
This is what a wiring diagram should look like on a '86 Tomos.
When I purchased the bike the ignition switch was hardwired to "on", meaning the purple and yellow wires, on the left where it says "switch", were soldered together. This isn't a problem, it just means I need to lock it up with a bike lock because it doesn't require a key to start. What is a problem is that the speedometer didn't work. And the thing about electronics is that everything has to be on a complete circuit, so if one thing isn't working, the bike won't create electricity to start a spark to get the bike started.
So, I found a wiring diagram that more closely resembled the state of my moped and went from there.
This new diagram excluded the pilot bulb (speedometer) which was great, but it also excluded turn signals and the horn. My turn signals already didn't work but my horn was hooked up. So, I went through everything and corrected it to fit this diagram.
After getting that sorted, it still wasn't sparking. So now I had to look at the stater. The stater (called magneto in the images above) contains the points that create the initial spark.
This is the stater, and as you can see on the left where the yellow wire connects, it has been soldered by the previous owner. This was concerning, but as it turns out what was wrong was the points weren't adjusted correctly. Now, what happens next was the excruciating process of adjusting the points. I will not bore you with the details, but if you are interested, the video below is a step-by-step guide of how I did it on my bike.
After I finished that, it sparked! A few hours of tweaking later, it was running! I had officially rebuilt the Tomos by hand. This was a very proud moment for me.
...and then two days later it broke down. So it is now at the local moped shop, Wick's Wheels, and it should be finished next week. I am looking forward to posting about how life is riding it very soon!
These readings on climate change come just a couple of weeks after the 2014 UN Climate Summit. The event brought together global leaders to announce commitments to prevent global temperatures from increases more than two degrees Celsius. There are eight areas of action in which leaders chose to work on, including agriculture, cities, energy, financing, forests, industry, resilience, and transportation (un.org). The two-degree benchmark likely comes from the fact that a four degree Celsius increase in global temperatures will result in ecosystems drying up, extreme heat and weather events, sea-level rises, changes in weather patterns and food production (Roseland, 232).
This is the 2014 UN Climate Summit's (awesome) promotional video.
These commitments include adopting absolute greenhouse gas reduction targets in cities, cutting natural forest loss in half by 2020, declarations to invest in renewable energy, among many others. You can read all about these commitments on their website.
Leonardo DiCaprio gave a speech at the event to rally policy makers.
The message I'm getting from the Summit is that we are past the point of change at the individual level having a significant impact on GHG emissions. We are in a place where only wide-scale, institutional policy change can neutralize the effect we have had on our environment. Yes, their promotional video is a call to action, but it is a little unclear who exactly needs to act.
Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow discuss their solution to climate change - stabilization wedges that show how society can stabilize GHG emissions over the next 50 years (Wheeler, 173). Each wedge has a recommendation on how to stabilize that topic, and most of them suggest benchmarks that a governmental agency needs to set in place for automotive and other mechanical industries.
Roseland points out that most of the GHG emissions come from our manufacturing industries (Roseland, 230). The graph below shows the changes in each GHG since the Industrial revolution. To me, this is reinforcing the idea that big manufacturing causes the bulk of GHG and therefore big changes must happen at a policy level to get the manufacturing companies to change their big ways.
Taken from Roseland, 231.
Now, I firmly believe that individuals need to do their part to reduce their carbon footprint. But just to play devil's advocate... If everything is pointing towards policy-makers being the deciding factor in our ability to reduce climate change, why should individuals even try?
The People's Climate March recently took place in NYC where thousands of individuals came together to protest and raise awareness for climate change. This was one of the largest gathering of individuals on this topic to date. Jon Stewart covers the march on The Daily Show here. He wonders why people still need to raise awareness for a commonly accepted phenomenon, then shows clips from The United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology where U.S. representatives essentially try to debunk climate change.
Suddenly, it becomes very clear why individuals matter in policy change. If our decision-makers still don't believe climate change even exists, then the public voice and vote is essential in finding leaders that do believe and will act.
What do you guys think? Can individuals actually make a difference in stopping the increase of GHG emissions, whether through personal behaviors or advocacy? Or does it need to come from policy makers?
Just to end on a positive note, here is Jill Sobule singing global warming's theme song.
You may or may not know this, but mopeds only go around 25 mph. And since I want to make this my primary mode of transportation, I need it to go a little faster. There are things you can do to increase the speed, such as buy and install a new engine, which is what I did.
They are called bore kits and look like this.
You may remember this is what the engine used to look like:
That black part on the far left is what I replaced. This old engine is 49cc and the new one is 70cc. Basically what this means is that more air is able to get into the engine, making the explosion larger, making it go faster. Yeah, science!
I'm guessing the moped can now go around 35-40 mph now, but since the speedometer is broken, I won't actually know. Maybe later I'll do some tests to try and figure out the exact speed...
It took a whole evening to put the new engine on. There are these tiny little pieces - see those G shaped wires? - on that thing that have to be stretched and pulled in the just the right way to attach. I kept thinking, how in the hell do mechanics do this?? I clearly didn't have the right took for the job (a pair of pliers) but after many frustrating hours, I got them attached and was able to put everything together!
The only problem was that because new engine is larger than the old one, it didn't quite fit. There was a piece of metal on the side of the bike that needed to be removed. So, what does one do at 11 o'clock at night when you're so close to finishing a project and there's just one thing in your way? Grind it off on your front stoop, of course!
Yes, Paxton is shirtless. But never mind that. I actually did the grinding to get it to fit, Paxton just came in as clean up crew to get rid of the sharp edges and make it pretty (I totally could've done that, just sayin').
So what I ended up with was this transformation:
Ok, so I forgot to take a before photo.. but that's what it used to look like, the photo shown is just the piece on the other side.
Alright, now its time to put it on!
My engine selfie, and what it looked like post installation. By the way, headlights were a must for this project.
PARTS
Moped
$200.00
PAINT
Primer x3
$15.00
Yellow Pint x2
$20.00
Yellow Spray Paint x2
$10.00
Paint Thinner x2
$14.00
Sand Paper
$8.00
ENGINE
$200.00
TOTAL
$467.00
Here's the up to date cost. I didn't actually need to add on a new engine, I just wanted it for safety and travel reasons. I could have gotten around just fine on the old engine.
That's that! Next I'll post about electrical, and after that I'll get into life on the moped. It's still not working, but I think I know the problem now, and will get to work on it soon, just as soon as I have the time...
This week I went to see Jonathan Bloom talk about his book American Wasteland. His lecture was full of powerful statistics about industrial and residential food waste, such as the fact that there are 49 million food-insecure Americans presently and how 40% of food produced in America never makes it to American stomachs. In this post I'll highlight what I found most interesting.
Bloom starts by talking about the different ways food is lost in the production process. Production losses start with farmers, where food is left in the fields to rot. Produce gets left because its too ugly for consumer markets or because industrial machinery doesn't capture everything. Here is an npr story about gleaning, which is a way for that food to be reclaimed. Gleaning is when people gather up the left-behind produce at a farm site. Bloom shared personal photos from when he gleaned a ton of sweet potatoes with a group in his hometown. Numbers on food lost as this state is difficult because the USDA doesn't begin tracking food until it has left the farm.
After the food leaves the farms and goes to the packing plants, it is lost frequently to culling. This is when food is thrown out due to its appearance. It is deemed too ugly to be purchasable by consumers. Can we talk about how ridiculous a concept this is for a minute? The food we buy is THROWN AWAY if it is deemed ugly! I don't know about you, but my produce doesn't get framed and put in an art exhibit when I get home from the store, instead I devour it by crushing it with my teeth before digesting it for its nutrition. There's a movement in France called Intermarche where they are trying to decrease food waste by selling the "ugly" produce at a discount. Here is a video about it below.
I know this is ridiculous but you can tell that sometimes the ugly produce gets passed on by consumers. I would encourage all of you to buy that food! Its still delicious and nutritious, even if it is a little ugly.
Next food is lost in processing, when it is cut to edible portions. For example, when those adorable baby carrots get chopped down to size, there is a significant amount of carrot that gets cut off too.
There are other losses, through distribution, retail stores and arbitrary expiration dates (Bloom says only infant formula is required to have a label) and food service. A graphic below shows food consumed versus food loss.
He goes on to discuss why we waste so much. Here he describes the usual suspects... over abundance increases waste at industrial and residential level... beauty - we value appearance over taste (which is funny, because I got my boyfriend who thinks he hates apples to eat a small Farmers' Market apple and he loved it)... and cost. Food is cheap. We spend less money on food than any other developed nation, due to subsidies artificially lowering the cost of produce.
One of the most interesting comparisons I think he did was show a Depression-era photo of people lining up to get food. He talks about how when society thinks about Americans being hungry, we think about the depression, and conjure up some image of city-dwellers eating bread and potatoes, etc. Something like this image:
But what we don't realize, is that people are still starving in America today. Like I said earlier, there are 49 million food-insecure people in America. We should start thinking of images like this when we think of hunger in America:
If you want to learn more about this topic, he has a blog with lots of great resources.
