My men can eat their belts. Give me fuel for my tanks!
-- General Patton

In the second edition of Art of Urban Cycling (which was retitled Art of Cycling), I added a lengthy footnote about what I felt to be a troubling societal dilemma looming in our near future – a growing inability of global energy supply to meet global demand. (Page 37, for those playing along at home.) Anyway, I wanted to check in and see how we’re doing on the energy front one year later.

Road Rage! You know you do it. Don't give me that, I've seen you weaving all over I-25 with that angry scowl, and I can read a little bit of lips too. And your back window is shot out.

A recent survey, not to be taken with terrible seriousness, ranks 25 cities according to road rageousness:

https://www.autovantage.com/global/scripts/promo.asp?ref=avAUTVANonlgs01#methodology

"Prince Market Research, an independent marketing research company, was commissioned [by Autovantage, presumably] to conduct a nationally representative telephone study with consumers in 25 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. to learn more about consumer views on road rage. All telephone calls were conducted between Jan. 16 and March 23, 2007, during which period, a total of 2,521 interviews, lasting an average of six to eight minutes, were completed. No incentive was offered and the sponsor of the research was not revealed. The margin of error is +/- 2 percent."

Once again the Pac Northwest shows itself to be at the vanguard of civilized urban transport.

We started writing Scavenger Hike Adventures Rocky Mountain National Park about two years ago.  We spent a couple of weeks at Rocky in 2005 and met with rangers and experts and looked around.  What a wonderful hiking park.  Kat and I fell in love with Rocky.  We read every book available and last year Kat rented a house in Estes Park overlooking Twin Sisters pinnacles and hiked everyday with rangers, historians and experts and locals.   I was really quite jealous.  I used every piece of my available time and joined her.

 It gave us stomach aches when we left Estes Park and returned to the Smokies.  Now two years later from our first research visit and over a thousand  hours of research and hiking and the book will be released in just a few weeks!!!  Whew.  Kat is out of town up north and I am thinking I'll take my dog down to some isolated campsite and sleep and read some books on Shenandoah National Park; our next book project.  We have been researching Shenandoah and will head out there in a couple of weeks to begin the wonderful job of exploring and creating Scavenger Hike Adventures.  We will give provide a journal update on that new adventure right here.