Another beautiful thing about all this relatively mild weather we are having (the graphic to the right is the two-week outlook from the WeatherNetwork... that white line in the middle is the normal daily high... -2 degrees) is that there is no doubt in my mind that Critical Mass Toronto will be alive and kicking this Friday (the 27th).Everyone meets at the south-east corner of Bloor & Spadina from 6:00 to 6:30, with departure usually shortly thereafter. Remember to dress for the weather (the current forecast for Friday is +6 degrees), and make sure your bikes have lights, since it gets dark early these days.
There's nothing quite like cruising through downtown with sometimes a couple hundred other cyclists... it's a great time, and gets people thinking about bikes and how they are a very reasonable alternative to car travel in the city. Nevermind the energy savings...
Speaking of energy (what a smoo-ooth segue)...
Bicycle Universe has a great page about energy consumption, with stats such as 100 bikes could be made with the energy it takes to produce the average car, and that "Bicycling actually uses fossil fuels, if you consider the fossil fuels that go into producing the food to fuel the cyclist."
If you've ever wondered how much energy you use biking around our great city, DarrenJ of Bike Refugee can probably tell you in terms of Apple Juice. In one of the most creative posts I've seen so far this year (which is still young, so I won't be crowning you just yet Darren... haha), Darren has figured out that the food energy he uses each time he bikes to or from work is about the equivalent of one litre of apple juice. Compare that to the 62 litres of juice energy that the same trip consumes when he has to drive his car to work, and you start seeing the huge difference between car and bike travel. Darren also compares things like burning a regular incandescent lightbulb for a day (7 litres of juice) versus a compact flourescent (1.8 litres of juice).
Personally, I think this energy analogy should be forwarded to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, because then we'd see a humourous story entitled "How Do You Like Them Apples? The Juicy Energy Waste of the Iraq War". That would be pretty cool. They could also promote cycling in North America. That would be okay too.
Discuss this topic and a lot more on the BikingToronto Forum
