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Over the last few years trash, litter or garbage…..call it what you want, has been getting attention. Finally, people are waking up to this problem, this is not a new problem. I’ve been making trash runs, as I call them, on my fat bike for years, I find areas that are hard to reach and spend some time cleaning the area up. The mid Atlantic area is full of water ways that end up with trash along the shoreline, these areas are perfect for using a fat bike as a vehicle to transport the trash. Now, a small bag and a good pair of shoes or boots are all you need to get going, I find the bike is the ticket for transporting tires. I set my Salsa Mukluk up with a rack on the rear and some Anything cages on the forks. Two five gallon pails on either side of the rack hold the trash. A tire can be tired to the top of the rack or a bag of trash if you can’t find a tire. I carried half of a pool filter out of a watershed area on that bike. You’ll want low gearing if you work in hilly areas, I use a 28 tooth chainring up front and a 11×42 cassette in the rear. Bike Doctor in Fredrick, Maryland has been great in helping me with the bikes, they are currently building me a new rear wheel for the Mukluk. That bike is a 2014 and has hauled a lot of heavy trash loads, the rear hub gave out so they’ve got me a stronger wheel on the way.

The environmental folks complain about bikes on some of trails and rightfully so, some riders don’t possess much common sense. These riders are in the minority, the biking community is very receptive to taking care of the trail systems. Bikers are like herding cats, these folks do their own thing. What most won’t tell you is the good things they do for the environment, I know riders who take a Walmart bag and pick up a few cans on every ride. What’s disturbing to me is the do gooders that complain about the hikers, bikers and horseback riders and they themselves do absolutely nothing but run their mouths. My point is, when you’re out hiking or biking pick up a few pieces of trash, keep the areas you use clean, trash breeds more trash. If you see an idiot pedaling along the trail with an over loaded bike, it’s probably me.

Buy local, support a local small business, buy from a local vegetable farm, buy this and that local. Sounds good doesn’t it? Supporting your community is good, it’s nothing new however, for centuries people all over the world bought local. You see back then products were expensive to ship, food would spoil, bandits would rob the wagon trains, pirates would capture the ships. Today we can buy things from all over the world at a fairly reasonable cost, this has affected businesses all over, a company can produce more product than it can sell locally, it can export this product to another area with more demand for it, selling more of their goods. That could be a positive thing for the company. All of this back and forth costs money, but more importantly it causes unnecessary pollution from the engines used in the ships, trains and trucks. The local movement helps solve this, it also helps folks get produce quicker and fresher.

The problem with buying local food in particular, is how the farmer grows it, you see glyphosate is the same on the local produce as the stuff from two thousand miles away. Oh, but my farmer only uses the necessary chemicals to keep down the weeds, the bugs, blah,blah,blah. Did you ever hear of Organic farming, how about Permaculture farming? If your farmer looks you in the eye and says we do not use synthetic chemicals, we follow organic practices, and then shows you how they handle growing problems, you’ve got a good grower. You, as the consumer need to do your homework, a local CSA here has the people thinking they are raising safe vegetables, ironically early in the morning if you drive by the fields you can smell various pesticides. Now whose fault is that? The customer, because these well educated folks don’t know much about pesticides or growing food, but they bought the buy local thing hook,line and sinker.  So not only do they get local food with chemicals on it, they get the same chemicals drifting across the road as they drive to work.

The same people who don’t educate themselves on their food are the same ones who learn a lot about various diseases, they have to, that farm field they live next to, their lawn that’s treated, the bug man that sprays their house, their kids soccer field, the office building they work in, all of these places have the same basic pesticides as their local farmer is using. No wonder cancer, Parkinson’s, diabetes and so on is up.

How do I know this, I’ve watched it at the local level.

Every year in early March you see the lawn chemical trucks out making their rounds. The pest companies have been out all winter but you can sure they’ll be treating the same areas the lawn chemical companies have treated. You see, as a society we are controlled by fear, fear of bugs, weeds, mold, losing money, not being happy, this, that and the other. I find it ironic that we also fear sickness, why do I mention sickness? The lawn chemical trucks and the pest control companies bring sickness, don’t think so? Research the chemicals they use in and around your home, read the Material Safety Sheets, understand what you read, if you don’t understand it ask for help to understand it.

I chuckle at the people who think they can use this or that chemical to kill or control a weed or bug, don’t you understand that nature constantly adapts? Do you think you can beat nature? Really? Some say cancer is the body trying to adapt to the environment it’s in, yup, most folks live in a chemical environment.

What’s a person to do? Understand that people lived quite well long before all these chemical soulutions arrived on the scene, thousands of years in fact. It’s said today people live longer, that’s not entirely true. Okay, you want to argue about the length of live? How about quality length of live? Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, other cognitive decline has been directly implicated in chemical exposure, don’t believe it? Look it up. Back to the question of what to do? Understand what you are putting on your lawn, on your pets, on yourself, in your mouth and on your clothing. I’ll bet it’ll take you all summer to understand how much chemical load your body has to deal with on a daily basis. Oh by the way, the stuff you had applied to your lawn? You’ll be drinking that all summer also.