This transition period towards integral economy and free currencies triggers many ideas about how my life will need to be reorganized. One of the radical shift is definitely transportation.
I want transportation to be as clean, as flexible, as autonomous, and as fun as possible. There is a word for this: the bike.
In my case, as for many others in the future I am sure, bicycle has to be brought to the next stage, that is radical nomadism. The question is: is there a bicycle that we can carry everywhere in our luggage, and is there a luggage that we can carry everywhere with your bike inside? Typical scenario is a 10 km ride to the train station, carrying our luggage behind. At the train station we fold the bike and put it in our luggage. From there we walk, get in the train. When we get off the train, we unpack and unfold the bike, attach our luggage to the back, and freedom is mine!
So far the lightest and apparently most convenient bike I have found on the Net is the Strida. This bike weights about 10kg, it seems extremely simple to fold, it’s built with a very robust technology, a more advanced one than what I have seen with other flexible bikes. Its kevlar transmission keeps it clean and simple. Drawbacks are certainly the small wheels that can’t provide a balance as good as conventional bikes. I saw that the latest Strida versions came with 2 speeds, which might make it a little more efficient to use on longer distances.
The next question is: what kind of luggage could be attached to it, so it can easily be carried everywhere? Although the Strida seems very compact, how easily can you put it in a conventional luggage?
As Strida doens’t seem to have developed a set of luggage, I looked in other directions. I then found the Carry Freedom City. Not sure they can pair together. And the Strida seems too big to fit in this luggage. But maybe there are some possibilities to explore…
The ideal would be that both the bike and the luggage should be complementary to one another. They should be usable for any kind of context, from urban to country side, anywhere on the planet. The rider should be able to easily cover short-medium 1-20 miles distances.
I am going to get in touch with Strida, and check with them how we could use our synergies to explore this new idea of radical nomadism. I do think there is a market and a media opportunity for them here.
Other links:
This post triggered some connections for me.
As you know, I have been talking about the importance of the work of Jim Corbett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Corbett, http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/corbett/jim-corbett.html) (Goat Walking & Sanctuary for All Life) to what we are up to, and your post brings him to the fore once again. Jim talks about the notion of the Cimarron which is a spanish word that means a domesticated animal or slave that goes free. Here is a quote from Goatwalking, from the chapter called “The Cimarron Alternative:”
Art Brock & I have been talking a lot lately about the evolution of economies from the Natural -> Agricultural -> Industrial -> Information/Process (See Art’s excellent depiction of this for details). Yesterday I realized that the Agricultural revolution, really isn’t as much about the technology of farming, i.e “Agriculture” but rather it’s more deeply about domestication. Land, plants, and animals, and even people, are all domesticated in that revolution, which is the pulling of humanity out of being at home in nature, into it’s own constructed home, the domicile, which is a home outside of nature.
What hit me when I read your post JF, is that what we are up to, and what your vow is making you figure out as a matter of practice, is the great undomestication, the going feral, the Cimarron Alternative. And the central powerful lesson in Goatwalking is hidden in “only in symbiotic relationship with herbivores have subjugated human communities escaped.” The key to me there is the necessary symbiosis with the non-human. [BTW, this is also a theme of the Spell of the Sensuous]. Of course at the bottom of symbiosis, is the information flows that make it possible and thus the metacurrency work. Perhaps the story of liberation, of going feral, of entering into jubilee & Sabbath, where we don’t change the land for our purposes (domestication) but instead integrate into it for it and our common weal (symbiosis), can be one that can give depth and resonance to the more technical story of figuring out the currency systems…
-Eric