With the temperatures falling outside you may not be getting on your bike as much as you’d like, especially if you haven’t stocked up on your wool clothing. So it’s the perfect time to catch up on your reading. As bike popularity is exploding, so are the number of books written about the love and care of a bicycle. Whether you embrace bike riding as a fun way to spend an afternoon, a sport, or a way of life, reading about the bike will quench your thirst when you’re not in the saddle. So what’s the best book written about bicycles? We offer up our picks for the most enjoyable reading journeys. Is there a bike enthusiast on your Christmas list this year? Any of these books would make great gifts.

Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling

Bike Snob NYC

After maintaining his popular and anonymously written Bike Snob NYC blog for many years, Eben Weiss came out of the cycling blog closet this past spring when he released his first book, Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling. If you’re a fan of the blog, you may be surprised to find that the book is quite different and doesn’t contain the high amount of snark found on the Bike Snob NYC. It’s been criticized because of this by his most loyal of fans, yet I found the book to be much more accessible to the masses. He covers a multitude of topics, from a short and entertaining history of the bicycle, to the breakdown of cyclist subsets (are you a roadie, an urban cyclist, or a retro grouch?) to a condense, yet thorough guide for basic maintenance and safety tips, including the frequently blundered How to Lock Your Bike.

Not to worry though, there’s still plenty of the Bike Snob humor as everyone, including himself, is a subject for mockery. Perhaps the best chapter is the one titled, Why Is Everybody Trying to Kill Me?, in which Weiss rants poetic about the perils and annoyances of riding on the road. As an ex-bike messenger himself, he implores us to never be afraid to ride our bikes, that cyclists have every right to be on the road, and that “telling a cyclist to ride on the sidewalk is like telling a driver to drive through a shopping mall”. Editor of Bicycling magazine, Bill Strickland said “Bike Snob should be lovingly gifted to all new cyclers- and forcefully smacked against the heads of all the jaded know-it-alls who take the sport way too seriously”. Overall, as opinionated as the Bike Snob may be, his love for the bike is apparent when he says that “the most important thing for the advancement of cycling is for people to be seen on bikes”. So whether you ride a Trek Madone or a fixer upper you got off Craigslist, all that’s important is that you ride.

You can purchase the Bike Snob book on Amazon in hardcover or Kindle edition.

Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance

Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance

Long considered one of the best books on bike maintenance, Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance was revised for the 3rd edition in 2009. Lennard Zinn, bike racer and designer, is a big name in the bicycle industry. Winter is the perfect time to catch up on routine bike maintenance and what’s great about Zinn’s book is that it’s written for both the beginner and experienced bike owner, dividing repairs into 3 levels of difficulty with a description of the tools you’ll need for each. He starts with the basics, including pre-ride inspections and emergency repairs, to the most advanced of upgrades, including hub and cassette overhaul. For this latest addition he’s added info on the newest components as well as expanded coverage of cyclocross. Includes a troubleshooting index, gear chart, glossary, and over 350 illustrations.

You can get Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance on Amazon. Or you can get the version for mountain bike maintenance.

Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities

Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities

Jeff Mapes is a political reporter for the Oregonian and an outspoken cycling advocate. His book is a treatise on the efforts of urban cyclists to “seize at least a part of the street back from motorists.” Though this book at times borders on tedious and may only appeal to bike advocates themselves, it’s an important commentary on how other bike friendly cities have succeeded. Reporting on the overall benefits to public health and the environment, he also gives important statistics for those bike commuters who sometimes find the need to defend themselves against car lovers. Mapes also covers the need to get kids riding bikes again and the important role women will play in a true cycling revolution. If you bike to work or would like to someday, Pedaling Revolution will get you inspired.

Sold in paperback on Amazon.

The Bicycle Book: Wit, Wisdom & Wanderings

The Bicycle Book: Wit, Wisdom & Wanderings

The Bicycle Book: Wit, Wisdom & Wanderings is a collection of stories, essays, and cartoons to honor one of the most efficient inventions in history. The book starts off with an editorial by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Thomas Hylton on bike-friendly cities. Other highlights include an interview with Chris Carmichael, long-time coach to Lance Armstrong, predictions on the future of the bike from Dirt Rag publisher Maurice Tierney and Richard Fries, publisher of Bike Culture, several essays by Pulitzer-Prize nominee Gianno Bellofatto, and  Bits and Bolts from Ask the Mechanic, all interspersed with hilarious cartoons. Editor Jim Joyce, founder of The Bicycle Exchange, donates 15% of the profits from this book to the League of American Bicyclists, SoldierRide, and the United States Association of Blind Athletes’ tandem cycling program. This is a book you can leave on your coffee table and randomly read sections over and over.

Sells on Amazon in paperback or Kindle edition.

A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer’s Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium

A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium

Joe Parkin left the states in 1987 as an amateur bike racer and headed for Belgium on the advice of Team 7-Eleven Racer Bob Roll who said that if he really wanted to be a serious cyclist, Belgium was the only place to do it. This isn’t the story of the Tour de France winner. This is the story of the underdog and one man’s quest to race with integrity in the cutthroat world of pro cycling. Many cycling enthusiasts have praised this book as the best book on bike racing ever, mostly for its’ authenticity. Sports writing can have the tendency to be dry, but Joe Parkin turns out to be an excellent writer and this page-turner of a book would be interesting even to those who don’t know much about bike racing. The quirky title is a Belgian expression meaning something out of the ordinary. Joe Parkin is truly a unique individual and you won’t soon forget his story.

A Dog in a Hat can be purchased on Amazon.

Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100

Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100

This book is great because it not only provides an extensive guide for fitness techniques in and out of the saddle, but it is interspersed with history, mini-biographies, and interviews with famous cyclists such as Gary Fisher and Missy Giove. Cycling and fitness writers Roy M. Wallack and Bill Katovsky cover the gamut on bike riding from protecting your knees and back to how cycling can sharpen your mental focus and stave off depression to bicycle sex and the impotence connection: myths and solutions. Includes a 10-step cycling specific yoga routine, nutrition tips, safety advice, and a list of must-do hill climbs, mass city rides, and cross state events.

You can get Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100 on Amazon.

I’m very glad to see the publication of a book called Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. Don’t be fooled by the cover — this is book is a lively look at sustainable energy.

I liked the way reviewer Cory Doctorow describes the book on Boing Boing: “This is to energy and climate what Freakonomics is to economics: an accessible, meaty, by-the-numbers look at the physics and practicalities of energy. MacKay, a Cambridge Physics prof, approaches the subject of carbon and sustainability with a scientific, numeric eye.”

This book is full of information — lots of numbers to digest and many colorful graphs. Best of all, the entire book is available as a free 10MB PDF download so you can start reading immediately.

I liked the MacKay’s summary of the second part of the book “Making A Difference”:

First, we electrify transport. Electrification both gets transport off fossil fuels, and makes transport more energy-efficient. (Of course, electrification increases our demand for green electricity.) Second, to supplement solar-thermal heating, we electrify most heating  of air and water in buildings using heat pumps, which are four times more efficient than ordinary electrical heaters. This electrification of heating further increases the amount of green electricity required. Third, we get all the green electricity from a mix of four sources: from our own renewables; perhaps from “clean coal;” perhaps from nuclear; and finally, and with great politeness, from other countries’ renewables. Among other countries’ renewables, solar power in deserts is the most plentiful option. As long as we can build peaceful international collaborations, solar power in other people’s deserts certainly has the technical potential to provide us, them, and everyone with 125 kWh per day per  person.
Questions? Read on.

Home page for the book: WithoutHotAir.Com

Amazon link: Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air

Via: Boing Boing

I’ve been doing a lot of work in the MetaEfficient lab. I thought I would post an update on my experiments and research:

Ultra-Efficient Laundry System

I’ve been assembling an ultra-efficient laundry system. The system makes use of the following elements: a front-loading washer from LG, a centrifugal dryer by Laundry Alternative, a liquid detergent derived from soap nuts, and an indoor drying rack and clothes line.

As you may have read in my washing machine review last month, the LG washer (WM2016C ) is one of the highest rated washers by EnergyStar — it consumes 152 kWh / year, and 4323 gallons of water per year on average. I bought it for about $600. This washer is quiet and has been cleaning my clothes very well. I use cold water, since heating water is the most energy consuming factor in clothes washing (90% of the power consumed).

In place of laundry detergent, I use soap nut liquid concentrate. Soap nuts are the sun-dried fruit of Sapindus Trifoliatus trees in south eastern India. I buy my soap nuts on eBay, they cost about $12 a pound. To make a soap nut concentrate, I boil the nuts on the stove top for about 10 minutes, and put the resulting liquid in a bottle. You can add essential oils at this point for fragrance.

When I’m done washing clothes, I use a centrifugal spin-dryer to dry my clothes further. I bought this dryer for $130. It spins your clothes at 3000 revolutions per minute (RPM). For comparison, my LG washer spins at about 1000 RPM. You have to split your laundry load into a couple of batches to fit them into the dryer. You also have to make sure you balance the clothes inside the machine. When you’ve done this, you turn on the dryer, and it takes about 30 seconds to a minute to extract about 1/2 a cup of water. An electric dryer would take about 30 minutes to do the same thing, and it uses a lot more electricity. The clothes come out almost completely dry. You can hang dry them or put them in a tumble dryer for a few minutes.

I hang my clothes inside on a wooden drying rack and clothes line.

Hyper-Minimalist Electricity

I running a experiment to see how much I can reduce the electric consumption in my home. So far, I’ve reduced it to an average of 20 kilowatt hours per day.

Here are some of things I’ve done:

• Reduced the temperature on my water heater’s thermostat (it’s at 110 degrees)
• Set up the ultra-efficient laundry system
• Finished installing compact fluorescent bulbs
• Installed low-flow faucets and showerheads, reducing hot water use
• Replaced my old TV and computer monitor with LCD displays
• Switched to a laptop as my main computer (with LCD as a external monitor)
• Replaced my old refrigerator with EneryStar model
• Bought an energy efficient stereo system, the Vers Wood iPod Speaker Doc
• Started using power-strips to turn appliances completely off
• Started wearing warm clothes increase, reducing the need for heating
• Used the toaster oven instead of the larger oven where possible

I’ve just ordered these devices:

First Alert Motion Sensing Light Socket

I’m going to use an LED light or Cold Cathode Compact Fluorescent in the these sockets because they can be turned off and on quickly.

Maxxima MLS-10 2 LED AC/DC Occupancy Sensor Light

Order another one of these motion sensor lights. I’m using one of these in the bathroom, so that I don’t have to turn the light on during visits at night – works well.

Turbo-Aire Aerodynamic Fan with Stand

This is a highly efficient fan.

Harvesting Urban Rainwater

I’ve been researching how to harvest rainwater in urban areas. I want to drink rainwater, use it to water my garden, and possibly use it to supplement my household water supply. I’m going to start with a rain barrel, and then probably install a compact rain tank. Here the books I’m currently reading on rainwater:

The Drinking Water Book: How to Eliminate the Most Harmful Toxins from Your Water

Rainwater Collection for the Mechanically Challenged

Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers, and Ponds for Domestic Supply, Fire and Emergency Use

Design for Water: Rainwater Harvesting, Stormwater Catchment, and Alternate Water Reuse

The New Create an Oasis With Greywater: Choosing, Building and Using Greywater Systems

Ultra-Efficient Toilet

I’m planning on constructing an innovative green toilet. Flushing toilets, sewer systems and water treatment plants are very inefficient method of disposing of human manure. After much research on this topic, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will have to build my own toilet. It will be a compositing device plus a bidet. The bidet aspect will eliminate toilet paper (air drying will be used instead), and will be more hygienic overall. Because it will be composting, there will be no water involved. I’ll post an update on the project when I’ve progressed further. These are the books I’ve been reading:

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure

Composting Toilet System Book

Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants

The Bidet: Everything There Is to Know from the First and Only Book on the Bidet

This book has misplaced pages and typos, but it’s full of information on bidets.

Here’s the Bidet 200 from BioBidet, which I’m currently using with my flush toilet:

Public Transportation

I’m been poring over the bus routes, subway maps, and train routes of my local area. I’ve found it to be a time-consuming process to the learn all the different routes and timetables. Unfortunately, DC is not one of the cities covered by Google Transit, that would make things a lot easier.

(You may want to skip this paragraph if you don’t live in the DC area). I found out that there’s a shuttle bus that goes from Rosslyn to Georgetown, and there’s now a free “trolley” service that goes from the Alexandria Metro to the Alexandria waterfront. The trolley was actually a bus made to look like old-fashioned trolley. I then used the recently introduced ferry service to travel to the new National Harbor (their website is currently down). I also discovered that Washington DC has a new bike sharing program called SmartBike DC. Another service I heard about but haven’t tried is Arlington’s EnviroCab fleet. They make use of hybrid vehicles, and serve the DC metro area.

I also want avoid air travel. I don’t enjoy flying, and it’s not a sustainable method of travel. My plan is to take trains and buses instead, and when possible, do some long-distance biking. To help in this endeavor, I’ve ordered these books:

This book, All Aboard!: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide, sounds like it will give me an good overview of train travel in U.S. and Canada.

I hope this guide will give me some tips on long-distance biking: The Essential Touring Cyclist: A Complete Guide for the Bicycle Traveler.

Biking and Walking

For urban biking, I purchased the E-Zip 2008 Trailz Hybrid Electric Bike from Wal-Mart for $348, which is about half the price of any other electric bike out there. It will be delivered to my local Wal-Mart for free. I could have bought it from another vendor but it would have been $399 + shipping. I will test this bike and see if it increases my biking range. The specs on the bike say the range is 15 miles in electric assist mode. Obviously the range could be better (the electric bike I’d like to get is an eZee bike), but I hope to be able to travel to Washington DC using this bike (about 25 miles away). I will be attaching my Burley d’lite trailer to the bike, for the purposes of transporting my daughter and other things like groceries. It’s available here.

^{Photo of a Burley d’lite trailer.}

I’ve amassed a collection of bike maps for the DC area, including this map by ADC that shows all the bike trails of the DC area:

I requested some maps from the Virginia and Maryland Departments of Transportation — most states have free bike trail maps available.

I’ve also been attempting to walk long distances to my destinations, but I discovered that many neighborhoods here are not conducive to walking.

Efficient Food

I am experimenting with growing vegetables in self-watering containers. Apparently, the self-watering planters are very helpful when growing vegetables on balconies. Herbs, however, like to dry out between waterings, they like regular pots. I bought my self-watering containers from Gardener’s Supply Company.

I’m also joined a local food co-operative that supplies my family with raw, pasture-fed milk, eggs and other dairy products. The food comes from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania. I’m planning on visiting the local farmer’s market when it opens next month, using my electric bike and trailer.

I’m also growing some vegetables from seed. Here are some self-watering devices I’ve been using:

Some micro-greens starting to sprout in glass self-watering containers.

These seed starters are from Veseys:

^{Compact Plant Trainer from Veseys.}

^{40 Cell Self Watering Seed Propagator from Veseys}

Here are some of the books I’ve been reading in relation to food and growing:

Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers

How-To Hydroponics

Weed ‘Em and Reap: A Weed Eater Reader

The Untold Story of Milk: Green Pastures, Contented Cows and Raw Dairy Products

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Here’s my newly installed vermicomposting bin, conventional composting bin and rain barrel:

Junk Mail

I’ve been eliminating the junk mail that gets delivered to my house. Using the web site OptOutPreScreen, I printed and sent opt-out letters to various bulk-mailing companies (see the all the letters above).

To remove my name from catalog lists, I used Catalog Choice.

I’ve got a few other long-term building projects in the works, you’ll probably hear about them soon on this site.

In his book, How To Live Well Without Owning A Car author Chris Balish exposes the true costs of car ownership, and shows how car-free living can put anyone on the path to financial freedom. Take a look at the book’s car cost worksheet, and see how much owning a car really costs — you’ll be surprised. Then, see how easy it is to transition to a car-free or car-lite lifestyle using Chris’s strategies for commuting, running errands, taking trips, dating, socializing, and more. Without car payments, rising gas prices, and traffic jams to worry about, you’ll have more money and leisure time to spend as you choose.

See also our review of the Carfree Cities book.

Available from Amazon.

This book, Human Wildlife, is an interesting survey of the fungi, yeasts, bacteria, worms and other creatures that inhabit the human body. Though sometimes hard to read, it’s certainly illuminating to know about the symbiotic relationships that the human body entertains, and well as the more parasitic ones.

The book features many color photos of the denizens themselves (some of the photos are not for the faint-of-heart). The author, Robert Buckman, approaches his enthusiastically and humorously. I like this review by Effi Ofer:

The human body contains about 100 trillion cells, but only 10 trillions of them are human. The rest belong to the entities that call our body home. In Human Wildlife Robert Buckman takes us through a tour of the lives of the worms, bacteria, viruses and other creatures that live on and in us.

I picked up this book after listening to an interview with Dr Buckman. I was fascinated by the details Buckman provided on the origins of pheromones (produced by bacteria in our armpits), mouth breath (bacteria at the back of the tongue), and the cause of fart smell (colon bacteria breaking down proteins). What finally sold me on the book was the discussion on feces, a topic on which I know very little.

Now that I have finished reading the book I can say that I have not been disappointed. Buckman is informative while entertaining at the same time. His story about the fart-in-the-library problem made me laugh out loud I wish Buckman went into a little more details on some topics, but that can only be expected from an introductory text geared toward the general public.

Last but not least, the pictures and illustrations in this book are outstanding. I will never look at an eyebrow again without expecting to see a little Demodex, an eyebrow mite that two thirds of us carry, wiggling its tail back at me.

The book can be found at Amazon.

As the Small House Society points out, compact homes are efficient in many ways: they require less power, they require less maintenance, they require less materials to build, and they have smaller environmental footprint. Another advantage is that you can invest in land, rather than spend money building a huge home.

In the book 25 Houses Under 3000 Square Feet, author James Grayson Trulove presents a range of modern homes that offer comfortable living in less than three thousand square feet.

The 25 houses are featured with photos, architectural drawings and site plans. It’s a nice cross-section of modern homes: the houses are varied to fit the sites and to match the personalities of the owners.

The book is available from Amazon.

In Off the Grid Homes, architect Lori Ryker, examines a number of modern homes that are “off grid” — meaning they are self-sustaining in regards to electrical power and water use. Looking at each home, she highlights the techniques that were used to generate power and conserve it.

Passive solar techniques are prominent in many homes, as well as intelligent designs, such as the indoor garden that transitions smoothly into a kitchen — tomatoes are growing right next to the kitchen counter. The book is available from Amazon.

Solar Water Heating is the first book I’ve seen that focuses solely on solar water heating. It’s a technique that’s been practiced since ancient times, but until now there’s been strangely few resources on the topic for a North American audience. The author, Bob Ramlow, examines state-of-the-art solar heating systems. He covers not only solar water heaters, but also solar water and space house heating systems and solar pool heating systems, including their advantages and disadvantages. Since people often get turned off by the up-front cost, the book focuses especially on the financial aspects of solar water or space heating systems, and shows that such systems can save significant costs in the long run.

It’s available from Amazon for $16.47.

This new book by Jennifer Roberts is a detailed and well-photographed guide to remodeling your kitchen using green techniques. Roberts examines green kitchen building materials in depth, and brief surveys water and energy efficiency in the kitchen. The book has over 150 color photographs, and includes case studies of some great looking green kitchens. The strength of this book is attention the author pays to weighing up the materials that go into a kitchen renovation. Each countertop material, for example, gets a full page discussion on it’s composition, manufacture and durability. I haven’t come across a more through examination of materials, with especially with an eye to their green attributes.

Available from Amazon for $19.77

Interested in knowing where you can find places free of cars? There’s an extensive list of carfree places around the world, available now on the Wikipedia. There’s also a book about Carfree Citites available. Here’s our review:

Imagine life in a city free from the noise, stench, and danger of cars, trucks, and buses. Imagine that all basic needs, from groceries to child care, lie within a five-minute walk of every doorstep. Imagine that no commute takes more than 35 minutes from door to door, and that service is provided by a fast, cheap, safe, comfortable public transport system. This is the future that J.H. Crawford envisions in Carfree Cities.

Crawford argues unapologetically that the car is a technology that has run wild, and that the time has come to reclaim city streets for human activities.

He proposes a city planned to maximize the quality of life for individuals and communities, and gives practical suggestions for implementing this basic design in both new and existing cities. He examines Venice as an example of a modern city that runs quite well with very few cars.

By rejecting the assumption that continued car use in cities is inevitable, Crawford takes us a step closer to the tantalizing possibility of a return to the pattern of lively, attractive streets that we had enjoyed for thousands of years, until the advent of automobiles.

The book is available from Amazon.

Website: Carfree Cities.