Do you know how to properly fit a life vest?

We hope that you get outside and run and play this weekend, and if you are riding your bike or boating that you wear a properly fitted helmet or life jacket. The US Coast Guard has a lot of information on safety rules and how to select the correct life jacket, and here in Seattle there are a lot of resources available for bicycle safety.

The Newseum, site of the 2013 Green Inaugural Ball, is centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue in the heart of D.C. and all of the inaugural action. Choosing the Newseum as our green venue provides attendees with access to multiple green transportation options.

The 2013 Green Inaugural Ball Greening Committee encourages attendees to evaluate their options and choose the greenest mode possible for travel to the event. Transportation pollution is one of the environmental concerns where attendees can make a tangible difference. Small behavioral changes, such as riding public transportation or carpooling, can have a huge impact.

Washinton’s Metro system is one of the best options for getting around during Inaugural festivities. Flickr photo by Paulo Ordoveza.

• METRO: The Newseum is located near three metro stations. The has a Washington Metro Area Transit Authority website can help travelers plan their trip.
  • Archives/Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter Station (Green and Yellow Line)
  • Judiciary Square Station (Red Line)
  • Gallery Place-Chinatown Station (Green Line, Yellow Line and Red Line)
• BUS: There are multiple bus lines that travel within walking distance of the Newseum.  Attendees can view schedules and plan their trip by visiting the WMATA website.
• BIKE RENTAL: New to the D.C. area are bike-share kiosks. You can borrow a bike almost anywhere in the city and return it to an alternate location. To engage this service, a traveler must purchase a membership, which provides access to hundreds of bikes across the city. Find bike and kiosk locations by visiting Capital Bikeshare.
• EFFICIENT WHEELS: Secure facilities will be available for eco-friendly transportation devices, such as bicycles and scooters, to be stored during the event.
• WALK: The venue is conveniently located in downtown D.C. and is walkable from many hotels, restaurants, and metro stations
• DRIVE: If you must drive a car, consider carpooling or driving a hybrid or plug-in vehicle to reduce carbon emissions and traffic congestion.

The 2013 Green Inaugural Ball is also investigating options to offset emissions for attendee transportation to the event. More details about carbon offsets will be detailed in future posts.

If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, we strongly urge you not to wait till the last minute! General admission tickets can be purchased here.

Let us know how you plan to head to the 2013 Green Inaugural Ball. Tweet your answer to #GreenBall2013 or leave a comment below.

Shelley Cohen is Chair of the Greening Committee for the 2013 Green Inaugural Ball. Ms. Cohen is an urban eco-mom with eighteen years of experience in environment and energy-related fields. She currently serves as a Senior Project Developer for Ameresco where she specializes in developing renewable energy and energy conservation projects, and is responsible for developing over 15MWs of renewable energy. Prior employment included jobs with EPA, the White House, and the office of Senator Joseph Lieberman (CT). Ms. Cohen’s green home includes eco-friendly materials, 12kw of solar PV, a cool roof, rain barrel, organic garden, and has been featured in local and national media. Ms. Cohen serves on the board of the National Wildlife Federation, and in 2012 was trained as a Climate Leader through the Climate Reality Project.

Danielle Korpalski 2011.

In honor of May bike month Danielle Korpalski and I tuned up our bikes to partake in a “blue hour” of epic proportions.

We participated in the Zoo-de-Mackinac bike ride, a ride that starts near Petoskey Michigan and follows Lakes Michigan and Huron to Mackinac City. Over 3,000 people did the same.

For us this ride serves as a 51- mile reminder of the serene yet threatened Great Lakes ecosystems we seek to protect.

This ride covers only a small piece of a very large and important coastline ecosystem, however. The Great Lakes coastline habitat spans about 10,000 miles. At the rate Danielle and I traveled, 51 miles a day, it would take us about 6 and a half months to bike its entirety!

Danielle Korpalski 2011.

Our route followed one of the most scenic roads in the United States. One could also travel this route by car but at the expense of missing sounds of bird chirps, wildlife scattering in the grass and wind howling, smells of fresh pine and budding flowers and visual images of true greens and intense blues of nature. …not to mention the expense of increasing carbon emissions.

This ride inspired many to venture out-of-car-doors including Ronald whom I met on the tour:

I started biking last August and am continuing to bike as much as possible. The experience is so much more complete on a bike than in a car. – Ronald K., Kalamazoo, Michigan

Danielle Korpalski 2011.

To connect with nature you don’t have to ride 51 miles on a bike. There are many ways to enjoy your green or “blue” hour that include walking, fishing, gardening or reading underneath a tree. May is also Garden for Wildlife month.

See National Wildlife Federation’s Get Outside page for more information and share your nature stories with friends.

Also take an opportunity to support the wildlife of the Great Lakes coasts. Perhaps you may someday experience a “blue hour” yourself!

Susan Handy is the type of bicyclist that environmentalists and policymakers would like to see more of on American roadways. She commutes to work by bike, rides to the store for groceries and pedals her children to soccer practice. “Bicycling is my favorite mode of transportation,” says Handy, director of the Sustainable Transportation Center at the University of California at Davis. “I can’t imagine living without it.” And it’s worthwhile for more quantitative reasons: according to the EPA, bicycling instead of driving for five miles a day reduces individual CO₂ emissions by 1,287 pounds annually, 6% of the average U.S. individual’s total emissions.Handy is one of the leading university researchers on the subject of American attitudes toward bicycling for transportation, and she has a simple goal: “We want to understand why people do or do not bicycle.” Bicycling is an affordable, healthy and climate-friendly transportation solution, and increasing the number of bike trips is a public policy goal of federal, state and local governments, but getting more Americans to hop on bikes instead of into cars has proven difficult. Just one percent of vehicle trips in the United States are by bike. In some European countries, by contrast, nearly 30 percent of trips are on bicycles.

Progress is being made, however. Census data show a 43 percent increase in bicycle commuting between 2000 and 2008. Growing that number will require both better infrastructure (bike paths, bike lanes and friendlier roadways) and changes in Americans’ attitudes about bicycling, according to Handy and other researchers. Handy and cohorts have surveyed residents in some of the nation’s most bike-friendly communities–Davis, Boulder, Colo., Eugene, Ore., and others–to determine the factors associated with bicycle commuting. Surprisingly, access to a bike path is not the key determinant of whether people bike. Concerns about safety, workplace acceptance of bike commuting and other social factors are just as important.

Kevin Krizek, a professor of urban planning at the University of Colorado, has studied the impact of bike lanes, paths, racks and workplace showers on rates of bicycling and says such infrastructure makes it more likely that people will get on bikes. However, these facilities must be convenient and easy to reach. People are willing to go 16 minutes out of their way on an average commute to access a bike lane, according to Krizek’s research, and they are willing to ride 67 percent further, roughly 2.6 miles, to access dedicated bike lanes or paths.

Safety is another concern, even though American roads appear to be getting safer. According to federal statistics, the 716 bicyclist deaths in 2008 represented a six percent decline from 1998, and a paltry percentage of the 37,261 auto accident deaths in the same year. But many riders are unwilling to get into the flow of traffic if bike lanes are absent. Whether bike lanes improve safety is an open question: a study by England’s University of Leeds Institute for Transport Studies found that motorists gave bicycles more space when passing them on roads without bike lanes.

Determining just what types of cycling infrastructure to build is the focus of research by Portland State University professor Jennifer Dill and Rutgers professor John Pucher. American urban planners and road engineers still have a knowledge gap when it comes to building infrastructure for bikes. In Europe, bicyclists enjoy cycling lanes separated from traffic by boundaries. Traffic calming devices and bicycle-specific traffic lights also add to the perception of safety, and European bicyclists can travel long distances without ever coming into close contact with a car. The advocacy group Bikes Belong is now undertaking a project to identify European best-practices and import them. “We are looking at what European nations do to make bicycling safe and convenient,” says project leader Zach Vanderkooy, who graduated in the spring from Harvard’s master’s program in urban planning. “We want to figure out what bicycle-friendly means in terms of infrastructure.”

The opportunity to boost American bicycling has never been greater. A record amount of federal funding-nearly $1.5 billion, double the amount of 2008–was allocated in 2009 to build infrastructure and promote riding. Whether that money is being allocated most effectively is the focus of a recent study by Handy. Published in August, the study examines federal funding mechanisms for bicycle projects. The study shows that big-spending metro areas allocated an average of $1.54 annually per resident for bike and pedestrian infrastructure, while low-spending metro areas spent 21 cents per resident.

Handy says federal policymakers should consider sending more funding directly to regional planning organizations rather than routing money through state transportation departments, which can be highway-focused. The federal government should also look at California’s method of allocating cash for bicycle infrastructure, potentially making it a model for the nation. When possible, money should be directed to specific programs such as the popular Safe Routes to Schools initiative, Handy says. “Federal funding has clearly led to increased bike facilities. The degree to which different regions took advantage of this money varies greatly.”

Even so, interest in promoting bicycling has never been greater. “We’re seeing a real transformation of political will in the past few years,” Vanderkooy says. In Congress, legislation has been introduced to expand the federal Safe Routes to Schools program to $600 million annually. At the state level, five states approved new Complete Streets policies in 2009 to make streets more bike-friendly. Colorado passed a Bicycle Safety Act that requires cars to give bicyclists three feet of space when passing. Bicycling advocates in West Virginia, once considered the least bike-friendly state, have formed a lobbying effort, and Bikes Belong cites advances in Indiana, Arizona, Mississippi, Wisconsin and Louisiana that could lead to better bicycling policies.

To improve local advocacy, the nonprofit Alliance for Biking and Walking has initiated a grant program to launch and support bike-friendly campaigns. Interest in bicycling is booming locally: this year, 43 new communities applied for the Bicycle Friendly Community designation awarded by the League of American Bicyclists. Los Angeles is taking public comments on its draft bicycle plan, which lays out the city’s strategy for promoting cycling through infrastructure and policies. Portland, widely recognized as one of the most bike-friendly cities in the United States, has built a floating multi-use path for bikes and pedestrians along the Willamette River. New York City has made changes to its street design manual and built so-called cycle tracks that separate cars from bikes with a barrier. Other low-cost measures gaining acceptance in the United States include “sharrows,” bicycling arrows painted on roads to signify that the roads are for sharing. Sharrows also indicate where cyclists should ride to stay out of the door zone of parked cars.

Handy says U.S. policies and strategies must improve bicycling infrastructure and land-use patterns, but must also work on Americans’ perceptions and attitudes about riding. “We will never be the Netherlands, but more places in the U.S. can be like Davis,” Handy says. “That’s what we’re striving for.”

Walking or biking to school is a wonderful way to have outside time before school. Just bundle up with a warm jacket and gloves; don’t forget to adjust your helmet to fit a hat underneath, and you’re ready for some exercise on your way to and from school.

If walking or biking isn’t possible, consider letting the kids eat breakfast outside and have at least 15 minutes to play when they get ready quickly. Sometimes the promise of outside play time is all the motivation my kindergartener and second grader need to dress, make lunch, and ensure their bag is ready to go in a flash.

Watch this video >>

Of course there is after-school time as well, which can be hard, depending on how much homework and after school activities kids have, or how dark it is when you get home. Keep a blanket in the car for spontaneous picnic dinners; drive by the park on the way home; let the kids do their homework outside. I even invite a friend or two over for homework time – it actually helps my kids fuss less about doing their work, and then they have more time to play outside.

A nighttime walk can take more motivation for all of us at times, but with a dog in the family, I make sure everyone comes with me when we walk him. And with flashlights and glowsticks in hand, we have fun watching the creatures that come out at night. Together, we see more starry skies too.

With our kids, let’s continue to think creatively about the things we do every day, and ask ourselves if some of our routine can be done outside.

Rebecca P. Cohen is Founder and President of Rebecca Plants LLC, is a gardening and outdoor lifestyle company that inspires families to be outside and improve their well being. For her weekly online video series, “Get Out of the House” as well as Starla J. King’s guest blog series “Savoring Summer,” visit http://www.rebeccaplants.com.

This weekend, my family and I enjoyed our outdoor landscape in many ways.

Watch this video >>

First, my friend, garden designer and writer, Starla J. King reminisced on my blog about a pot painting party with her niece, and I decided to give it a go. I gathered all of the paints and brushes for our “study/craft/kids everything room” with some newspaper, paper towels, a small bucket of water, and a trash bag, and we started painting on plastic pots we had in the closet.

The weather was great all weekend, so we had a weekend outdoor art studio, painting four or five pots, and even painting a friendship pot for my boys’ friend who is moving in a month, with each of their hand prints and signatures.

Sunday morning, my husband and the boys’ grandfather played touch football in the cool morning air while I weeded. I went on a bike ride with my older son, and then a walk with the dog, and the kids were playing soccer with their dad.

Then my five-year-old and I planted some “cool-season” vegetables in pots: scallions, radishes, and spinach and then we checked on the seedlings popping up from the pea, mescelun, and swiss chard seeds that we planted two weeks earlier in the raised garden beds on the side of the house.

Next, I offered for my five year-old to decide what to do. “Let’s play ‘I spy’,” he said. We sat in Adirondack chairs that I have in the front perennial garden bed, and watched the three purple aster plants bursting with color and countless butterflies, in all sizes and colors.

One of the reasons I love aster, native to North America, is how it fills up your garden bed with green in the spring and summer, and then bursts into show in fall. In late May or early June, you cut back the foliage by as much as two thirds (mums too, by the way), to have a fuller, sturdier base for the blooms. For the last three days, we’ve even had three orange monarchs enjoying the aster.

Just as catmint (nepeta) and salvia are butterfly-loving staples for the full sun and part sun spring and summer garden, aster is a butterfly-loving staple for the fall garden. All can be planted now. Have your kids design their spot (meaning, just put them in charge and let them create).

On occasion, I love going to the garden center with my kids after I pick them up from school. During the week, the garden center is not crowded, there is someone to help you, and you could even have a picnic dinner back at home while you create their garden. Low on time? You could even go buy the plants for your kids during a lunch hour and they can get started right away at home. If you want to influence where they dig, you can even pick together a ‘secret garden’ spot where you feel more comfortable giving them creative control and it has a cool name. That’s what I did!

I taught my kids how to prune the aster. Pull off the faded blooms (the ones that are shriveled up and brown); it helps new flowers grow.

As a family, we’ve seen so many cool things year-round in our yard like skinks (a lizard with a black upper body and electric blue tail), praying mantis, grasshoppers, and frogs. Why? Because we have done simple things in our yard that attract these beneficial creatures, giving them food, water, shelter, and places to raise their young. For example, a small water feature and native plants: perennials like aster, trees like evergreen foster holly, and shrubs like deciduous Virginia sweetspire that has beautiful fall color.

Rebecca P. Cohen is Founder and President of Rebecca Plants LLC, is a gardening and outdoor lifestyle company that inspires families to be outside and improve their well being. For her weekly online video series, “Get Out of the House” as well as Starla J. King’s guest blog series “Savoring Summer,” visit http://www.rebeccaplants.com.

One day, I took my bike to a nearby bike trail and went for a ride while my parents went to the playground with my son. The paved bike path ran parallel to the highway and at first, I didn’t think the scenery was that beautiful. But, then I looked closer.

Watch this video >>

I passed two rabbits grazing in the grass, and a wildflower meadow. I saw a father and his young daughter walking and exploring. I saw friends power walking and chatting. And I stopped to read a park service sign that explained amazing facts about the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, including that 5 million people live near the watershed and within a 15-minute walk to a creek or stream.

This past weekend, my friends and I made it to a girls’ weekend that we had planned six months ago. In addition to enjoying time together, we rode bikes, and found ourselves fascinated with the nature around us. A resident golden silk spider led the way to discovering many, many more, just by looking up. And butterflies were everywhere; we had fun trying to follow them.

If I allow myself to pause for a second outside, I notice that I have just as much curiosity about nature as my children do. And I appreciate the stress-relief that comes for me when I step outside and look at the sky or look closer at the trees. Time with my kids outside becomes time for me too, and while finding our routine in the hectic pace of school year, I’ll be sure to fit in time outside every day, for us all.

Rebecca P. Cohen is Founder and President of Rebecca Plants LLC, is a gardening and outdoor lifestyle company that inspires families to be outside and improve their well being. For her weekly online video series, “Get Out of the House” as well as Starla J. King’s guest blog series “Savoring Summer,” visit http://www.rebeccaplants.com.

We can use the longer days to work around the oppressive heat and spend time together. For example, start and end the day with a family walk or bike ride. Throw a Frisbee or play ball on days when everyone is ready just a few minutes early in the morning. With a blanket on hand, have a spontaneous morning or evening picnic.

Watch our video >>

Recently, I’ve noticed that since it is harder to bear the summer daytime heat, I cherish the cooler parts of the day and the special moments that unfold. Last Sunday morning, my two boys, who are new to fishing (along with their parents!) and loving it, taught their grandfather how to cast a fishing line for the first time. And the Friday evening before, the boys and I had a spontaneous picnic with my mom, who shared stories about how her grandmother loved to fish.

I wish that I could say that my children always want to get outside whenever I want them to. Sometimes one son wants to go outside and the other does not; sometimes I really have to earn my stripes when neither wants to go out. But, I can say with certainty that once they know (lovingly) they have no choice and with me by their side, they forget all about being contrarians. They notice with excitement the plants and animals around us.

As summer nears a close, make a list of your favorite things you like about spending time outside with your family. With every passing day, ensure you are doing at least one of them. Perhaps the kids can help you make the list too, and as the days pass by, you can add to the list what you are looking forward to about fall. The ideas will flow effortlessly and each of you will be making the most of your family time together.

Rebecca P. Cohen is Founder and President of Rebecca Plants LLC, is a gardening and outdoor lifestyle company that inspires families to be outside and improve their well being. For her weekly online video series, “Get Out of the House” as well as Starla J. King’s guest blog series “Savoring Summer,” visit http://www.rebeccaplants.com.

Along with encouraging NWF staff participation, I wanted to spread the word that Carfree Day is the perfect day to ditch the car and find alternative transportation. And being “carfree” doesn’t have to stop after Sept. 22nd. Hopefully, it will make us realize there are many options for getting to work.

On World Carfree Day “people from around the world get together in the streets, intersections, and neighborhood blocks to remind the world that we don’t have to accept our car-dominated society.” – WCFD site

Carfree Day hopes to take the heat off the planet as we work together to curb our commuter pollution. We can do this if we work together, so grab a friend and travel “car-light” (*carpool) or carfree that day and see what it’s like to ditch the vehicle for other options.

Also, feel free to let us know if you have plans to celebrate Carfree Day! Any tips to cut back on commuting pollution? Share them with us!

Saturday was our last day of riding, 56 miles from Dyersville to Bellevue, on the Mississippi River. We ran into the 3 Romney brothers, sons of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. They rode the last day with matching t-shirts with their names and ’08 on the back.

I saw Josh and Craig Romney on the road and passed them, yelling out the biking etiquette “On your left!” as I went by Later, they caught up with me at a roadside stand selling fresh watermelon. I said hello and got Josh talking about global warming. He said his father accepts that global warming is real, though thinks the jury is still out on how much human activity is to blame. Regardless, however, he said Mitt believes there needs to be a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. When I asked him why his dad pulled Massachusetts out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) at the 11th hour (despite his administration having been a big part of creating it) he didn’t have an answer and launched into the need for other countries like China to be mandated to cut emissions.

He did say the US needs to do it’s part in reducing emissions, but that his father wants to be sure we use all available technologies, including nuclear power. I asked him if we had time to build the number of plants it would take to really address the problem and he acknowledged that nuclear is not the silver bullet and that other technologies like wind and solar need to be part of the mix.

Bottom line – He had many stock answers we hear from politicians and didn’t have detailed responses, not that I would have expected that from the son of the candidate in the middle of a bike ride across Iowa. I urged him to ask his father to make global warming a priority, and he claimed that Mitt talks about it “in every speech.” Really?

So, our wee has come to an end. I’m in the Dubuque airport on my way to Chicago, then Albany, NY and then Burlington, VT. Our team is all on our way to our perspective homes to rest up. It’s been an incredible week. We’ve spoken personally to at least 1,000 people, most of whom live (and vote) in Iowa. Our global warming message was seen via our jerseys by thousands of others. We signed up about 250 new activists and have a minimum of 100 people eager to buy a “Cycling Against Global Warming” jersey (if we ever decide to sell them!).

Mission accomplished! Thanks for reading, and stay connected to NWF as we mobilize our networks to bring meaningful global warming legislation passed and signed by a president who will make confronting global warming a priority.

As they say along the bike route when a cyclist leaves the road: Rider Off!