The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

What is BEE Japan? It’s a group of volunteers who promote environmental awareness and green living in Japan through direct action and education. The photo above is from the 2008 group. Our main event is the two-month tour where we do activities such as presentations at schools or with international groups, participate in clean-up efforts, and raise money for green charities. All the while we try our best to lead by example – supporting local businesses, choosing organic and fair trade products when possible, avoiding chain and convenience stores, avoiding excessive waste from things like packaging and waribashi (disposable chopsticks), and eating vegetarian. Yeah, I know I love my bacon, but I’m willing to go veggie for two months for a good cause.

Throughout the spring and summer the BEE riders will also be doing various events in Japan for additional charity fundraising. We’ve got a number of things lined up for Earth Day in April and I think Bronwyn and I will try to arrange something in Tottori.

Sounds like fun, no? I think it’s a pretty awesome way to bid farewell to Japan and I am totally psyched on having something to work towards.

If you’d like to donate, here’s a handy-dandy Paypal button, and I’ve thrown one up on the sidebar as well. Any funds donated will go to the charities of BEE’s choosing. We pay our own way as far as food, shelter, and ferry costs. (But if you want to help me with that, too, I won’t say no. Just Paypal me at the@jokeisup.com. No fancy donation button for personal use.)

Their clothes, as expected, are pricey, but as they are currently winding down their business, they’re liquidating their inventory at a 50% discount across their entire site. In my mind, that makes their prices a steal and Bronwyn and I ordered several pieces on Monday – probably spending more than we should what with the wedding coming up, but this is one of those special circumstances. Apparently they’ve gotten a flood of orders and are expecting a delay of several weeks for shipping. Hopefully we’ll get ours before we leave for our Honeymoon in Greece.

It’s a shame that Nau wasn’t able to succeed as a business. Even with the growing trend in society of environmental consciousness that should have benefited their brand immensely, they explain that they were unable to secure enough investors to overcome their financial obstacles. Sadly, we’re all feeling the squeeze of an impending recesssion, and I can understand how $60 organic cotton t-shirts might not be the most appealing options on the market, I’ll even admit that their full retail price is more than I’d be willing to pay for a lot of their items. Still, I like their clothes and I like what they tried to do. I should hope that, given more favorable economic conditions, some other company can follow Nau’s example and make a similar business model feasible.

At any rate being a daily bicycle commuter already, riding my bike for one special month or week or day of the year isn’t really a big deal. Instead, I do have two fairly minor goals. The first is to actually ride my bike to work for the entire month. I don’t own a car, but I do have a Vespa that I ride into work maybe one or two days a month. So yeah, two days tops of changing my gas-sipping habits isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s something.

The bigger challenge, actually, is my second goal, which is to be more of a plain-clothes cyclist. I don’t wear lycra bike shorts and jerseys in to work. I don’t even own a pair of lycra shorts (though I do have one pair of wool bike shorts for any kind of special event). What I tend to wear is normal shorts or knickers from Swrve or REI with a wicking wool shirt. That actually look pretty non-bike geeky and would be fine in a bar. But at work, even though it’s jeans and t-shirt casual, the thought of wearing knickers or shorts doesn’t sit right with me. I normally pack a change of clothes in my messenger bag that I bring with me everyday. The irony is that the messenger bag ends up making my back and shirt extra sweaty. Even if it’s a nice looking, wicking, stink-free merino wool t-shirt, I’d rather not wear it around the office waiting for the sweat marks to evaporate. This week, I’ve been rediscovering riding around in normal old pants, be they khakis or even *gasp* jeans, which I had sworn off doing back when I started commuting because they were extremely uncomfortable. I’m finding now that jeans aren’t so bad – the difference being the underwear.

Sorry to speak so candidly of my undergarments, but wicking underwear is absolutely key! Cotton boxers simply will not do. Patagonia active briefs are pretty good, but even better are these Icebreaker merino wool boxer briefs. They are the ultimate shiznit. Kind of pricey, but so very, very worth it.

At any rate, now that I no longer need to pack an extra pair of pants, I’m able to use my saddle bag for my commute luggage, relieving my sweaty back and even allowing me to wear the same shirt I rode to work in around the office. Hurray for simplification!

I still wear dorky bike shoes, though. I can’t get over how much I like clipless pedals. However, I picked up a pair of Keen cycling sandals at REI recently with my member dividend, and they have been treating me very well – still dorky, but not as much as my Sidis.

Yes, it’s illegal to ride your bike on most freeways, including the stretches of the 405 and the 101 these folks are riding, but what a fine piece of subversion this is. And truth be told, when traffic is that thick, what they’re doing is safer than riding surface streets.. Intersections are where the vast majority of accidents occur with any vehicles. With bicycles, the most common collisions involve a car turning right or left into a rider’s path. Freeways remove that problem and, considering that traffic is at a virtual standstill, problems from differences in speed are also negated.

A bicycle “freeway” could be just the thing the city needs to make bike commuting a viable alternative for many – and I don’t mean bike paths and trails that meander through parks and beaches or hug the Los Angeles river with casual riders ambling along at 10 miles per hour, but something that actually moves commuters quickly and safely to useful destinations. Someone cycling from Santa Monica to downtown could probably shorten their ride by a good half hour if they rode on the 101 and didn’t have to contend with stop lights and intersections. In rush hour I can assure you they’d do it faster than a car making the same trip.

At the start of the 20th century, Los Angeles had the right idea with the beginnings of an elevated wooden bikeway from downtown to Pasadena. Unfortunately that was scrapped as the automobile rapidly gained in popularity, but imagine how things would have been different if cars had come along a bit later, and a bikeway infrastructure was already in place and proven to be a viable method of transportation. How many people would opt for the car then?

I’m not saying cars don’t have their place, but would we really still need to build 8-lane freeways? Just imagine how many thousands of acres of land could be used for things other than asphalt. This photo from Germany is a pretty good illustration of that. It shows the amount of space required to move the same number of people by car, bus, and bicycle.

Tomorrow is Earth Day, and in honor of that, a portion of Wilshire Boulevard between Western and Harvard is declaring itself car-free for the day. While that doesn’t affect my usual commute at all (I work on Wilshire but ride on Melrose), I’ll be swinging by during my lunch break to check it out and support the gesture as it’s a really great thing to see this kind of support coming from the city.

Let me just say this. Bush’s empty claims last week that the state of our union is strong only serve to underscore the delusional negligence our “leadership” has demonstrated in the last seven years. Our country is wounded and divided. This is not the America I want to live in. It is time for a change. And while many of the most important changes start from the grassroots, change needs a leader. I sincerely believe that Senator Barack Obama is that leader. I believe that he has the vision, the desire, and the will to bridge the rifts that Bush’s neo-conservative, divisive politics have carved. He can inspire hope and bring Americans together to reclaim our country and to effect change that will put us back on track. All the other candidates, even the Republicans, talk about being an “agent for change,” but Obama is the only one who my cynical self truly and deeply believes.

It all starts with us, so please go out and vote today. ˇSí, Se Puede!