End Pavement

Commercials for Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel have been thick and furious for a while now, which is just fine thanks to the amazing footage and music. I’m fascinated already, and I’ve only seen commercials.

It’s an 11-part mini-series (though with 11 parts, it seems perilously close to a full-blown series ;) that starts tonight with the first three hour-long episodes.

• Planet Earth: Pole to Pole
• Planet Earth: Mountains
• Planet Earth: Deep Ocean

This is the best excuse for HD I’ve seen so far. :) Can’t wait!

More than five years in the making, PLANET EARTH redefines blue-chip natural history filmmaking and continues the Discovery Channel mission to provide the highest quality programming in the world. The 11-part series will amaze viewers with never-before-seen animal behaviors, startling views of locations captured by cameras for the first time, and unprecedented high-definition production techniques. Award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver is the series’ narrator.

PLANET EARTH airs on consecutive Sundays from March 25 through April 22, 2007, on Discovery Channel and in high definition on Discovery HD Theater.

When you think of a “cyclist,” probably the first thing that pops into your head is a particular kind of outfit: skin-tight, space-age fabric, and color combinations not found in nature. And that’s not counting the professionals.

It’s probably safe to say that most people on a bike in the world aren’t wearing spandex and lycra.

To that end, a new Flickr group has debuted recently that has some inspirational fashion ideas for the cycling set: Vélocouture.

Smart, stylish, functional outfits worn by transportational bicyclists.

Celebrate the creative re-purposing of “normal” clothes for use as a transportational cyclist. Help popularize the innovative, functional and fashionable garments that are (finally!) being created by pedal-powered fashion-forward folks around the world.

Margaret Atwood (attributed):

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

It was three months ago, on December 21st, that I wrote a post called “Winter Solstice”, the first post on the site, save one. It’s funny looking back, since the weather was quite similar to today’s, though we’ve had at least one heat wave since then.

The last paragraph talked about the importance of Winter to the other seasons:

Spring would not mean anything if there were no winter. No matter what your particular religious beliefs (or lack thereof), no matter what festivals or feasts or traditions you celebrate this time of year, don’t you think it’s also important to recognize this amazing astronomical event? To celebrate these short hours of light, because they are so precious?

As I write this, the Vernal Equinox is arriving officially, marking the boundary between Winter and Spring. That is exciting to me for a number of reasons, but perhaps most of all because what I was looking forward to in December is again what I’m yearning for:

While I’m looking forward longingly to a season or so from now — to warmer hiking, to baseball games, to the bike training — it’s a good thing to appreciate what’s here already.

I haven’t been on a bike since the accident, nor on a trail. My physical therapy is going well, though, with weight lifting that is slowly increasing. Last week I felt for the first time real progress — feeling stronger rather than just less weak, an important distinction. So those things I was (and am again) looking forward to are closer than ever.

I can’t wait.

Thanks to Commute by Bike for pointing to an article and new guide on the Guardian website.

“The world’s greatest invention” is a lovely article by Matt Seaton on one of the greatest gifts of the 19th Century to the 21st.

It seems a paradox in the age of consumer electronics and ever more gorgeously refined designer “black goods”, but it’s this sturdy piece of Victorian technology - the good old bike - that we love most. But why does the bicycle occupy this special place in our affections?

Writers such as Henry Miller and Iris Murdoch preach the joy of cycling, as much a symbol of freedom as a means of transportation.

This is just one introductory article in the Guardian’s impressive Cycling Guide, most of which is applicable outside the UK, and just got bookmarked by me for lots of later reading. That will be the limit of my cycling-related activities until my shoulder heals enough.

Thanks to the Blasphemous Bicycler for pointing to this BBC news story about an experiment to see if climbers back in 1924 could have made it up Everest clad only in the clothing of the time. I guess some folks have managed to convince themselves it was impossible because, God knows, people could barely walk upstairs before they invented artificial fabrics.

The findings are a step closer to proving the men could have reached the top, 29 years before Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary.

Over the past few weeks, climber Graham Hoyland has been putting the old-style clothing worn on the fateful Mallory expedition to the ultimate field test on the world’s highest mountain.

Wearing replica gear made from gabardine, wool, cotton and silk, he wanted to disprove the common myth that the 1920s climbers were ill-equipped to reach the summit.

Anyhow, the experiment was successful for protection purposes, but was actually better than the newer materials for comfort and (of course) style, the latter of which being of prime importance. If you’re going to be clambering around on freezing mountains unlike sane people, you might as well look good doing it. As the Blasphemous Bicycler says,

Surprise, Surprise, wool and silk work out just fine in outrageously cold conditions.

More importantly, a mountaineer decked out in stylish woollies, cuts quite the dashing figure, and is sure to be popular with any young ladies he encounters on his way up the mountain.

Nice goggles, too (also very important). I want that outfit now, or one like it, and I’m not the only one; according to Hoyland,

“All the other climbers thought the jacket was stylish and wanted to know where they could buy their own versions of the clothes!”

This story brought to mind another from a few days ago on the Commute By Bike blog, No sweat bike commute, in which Fritz writes about bicycle riding in clothing other than the latest high-tech fashions.

I spent 15 years of my life with a faster bike commute. Each year, I had a new personal best for the time trial home. I wore sport-specific gear — bike shoes, bike socks, bike shorts, bike jersey, bike gloves — to improve my performance and wick away the sweat and I carted my work clothes to and from the office every day.

A few years go I began a radical experiment: I wore my normal work clothes to the office. I discovered something that LeMond and Petersen didn’t know about: you can go slow on a bicycle! The secret to the no sweat bike commute is to take it easy.

Words to live by.