Living Well With Diabetes

The air quality in the Salt Lake City area has been very bad recently. If you happened to look at the AirNow.gov web site yesterday, the five cities with the worst air quality in the nation were all in Utah. Today? Utah is doing better. Just one city in the “Worst Five” list today, but of the six cities with “Air Action” alerts in the nation, four of them are in Utah. Local air quality monitoring agencies announce an “Air Action” day when air quality index gets into unhealthy ranges.

In Salt Lake City, just like many other urban areas in the United States, the major component of air pollution is particulate matter, especially fine particulates or PM2.5 which are particulates measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. The sources of particulate matter are numerous, natural and man-made, but the major source is the combustion of fuels. For example, cars, trucks, factories, wood-burning stoves and fireplaces. Most urban areas in Utah (I’m thinking of Provo, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Logan here) have an unusual geographic feature which helps accumulate pollutants and keeps them on the “Worst Five” air quality list during the winter: they’re surrounded by mountains. This allows for a meteorological condition called a temperature inversion.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started commuting by bicycle and air quality is one of reasons — driving less is the top suggestion for how citizens can help improve the air quality wherever they live. But, until last year, I wouldn’t ride my bicycle outside when Salt Lake City experienced a temperature inversion and the air quality dropped. Then, a friend introduced me to the idea of riding with a NIOSH-approved N95 mask like this one. Worn properly, it filters out 100% of particulates down to about 1 micrometer. It provides no protection against other contaminants like ozone, sulfur oxides, and carbon monoxide, but these are generally well within national air quality standards during winter months in Salt Lake City. So I bought myself a handful of these masks to wear when the air quality drops and I have been able to commute regardless of the PM2.5 levels.

It took an adjustment in my riding though. I quickly learned to ride moderately — no sprint work — when wearing one of these things because they do restrict breathing a bit. If I go too hard, I’m rewarded by about 20 seconds of feeling like I’m going to suffocate. Not very fun.

With the inconvenience of a mask (and studded snow tires and winter-weight clothing), I sometimes ask myself why do I continue to commute by bicycle when the air quality is dropping into unhealthy regions? Then I remember I’m not riding despite the dirty air, I’m riding because of it.

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I heard a rumor a while ago that AAA (the American Automobile Association) has started offering roadside assistance to bicyclists. Provided the bicyclist is a AAA member, of course. This morning, I finally remembered to do a search to see if there was any truth to this rumor.

There is, actually. (Why would I be writing if there wasn’t?) The AAA club for Oregon and southern Idaho now includes “Bicycle Service” which provides transportation of the AAA member (and the member’s disabled bicycle) to any point of safety within a 25 mile radius of the bicycle breakdown. There are a couple important limitations, however. The service is only available in Oregon and Idaho and then only if you have a “Plus” AAA membership or better and also anybody riding with the AAA Plus member is out of luck.

Here’s a description of the service:

AAA Oregon/Idaho Bicycle Service

While I was searching for information about this new AAA service, I came across the Better World Club. Like AAA, they provide nationwide automobile roadside assistance to its members. Their website claims they are the nation’s only environmentally friendly auto club and they donate 1% of their annual revenues toward environmental cleanup and advocacy. A basic Better World Club membership costs $53.95 annually (plus a one-time $12 sign-up fee for new members) and includes:

eco-travel services, Discounts on hybrid cars, insurance Services, Free Maps, Auto Maintenance discounts and bicycle roadside assistance.

Wow. I like the sounds of all that! Better World Club started providing roadside assistance to its bicycling members six years ago. And, their service is available nationwide! They even offer a bicycle-only membership ($39.95 per year). Here’s a page describing the details on their bicycle assistance plan:

Better World Club Bicycle Roadside Assistance

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Hi! It has been so long since I’ve written anything here, I’m embarrassed to post this. And this is my very own website! My apologies for being quiet for so long. It has been a very busy time since my last post in June.

For one thing, Pat and I went on a two-week bike tour in the Pacific Northwest. We started in Olympia, Washington and rode north to Anacortes where we caught a ferry to the San Juan Islands. We spent six days there, three of which were on Orcas Island. There were two highlights on that trip. First, on July 10, we rode to the top of Mount Constitution (elevation 2409 feet) from the village of Olga (elevation 10 feet).

The other highlight from the bike tour occurred after we were done cycling and back in Olympia where we spent a couple of days before driving back to Salt Lake City. We met our neighbor Paul there and he took us sailing on his 30-foot Freedom class sailboat. It had been a long time since I had been sailing (my last memory of sailing is on my father’s 15-foot Chrysler Man-O-War when I was in high school) or even on the water in a boat, so it was quite a thrill even though, technically, we didn’t sail. It was quite calm that day so we only motored a couple miles north from the Swantown Marina where he keeps his boat.

Speaking of sailing, another thing I’ve been busy doing is building a boat. This is my first attempt to build a boat or anything more complicated than a bird feeder. So, I decided to keep it small and build an Eastport Pram from a kit. I started the project in late August and it is now assembled and epoxied. I still have several coats of varnish to apply, but I can’t do that until the weather warms up.

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