February/March 1982 RAIN Page 21 ACCESS BICYCLING “Bicycling: A New Beginning" (slide show), $85.00 ($75.00 for bicycle organizations) plus $4.00 for p & h, from: Public Communications 1346 Connecticut Ave. NW Washington, DC 20036 When bicyclists dream, they probably have visions of bike lanes, public transit that accommodates bicycles, and auto-free sections of cities dancing in their heads. The new audio-visual package by Peter Harnik-— "Bicycling: A New Beginning" demonstrates that your eyes don't have to be closed to enjoy these amenities. This 11-minute narrated slide show gives you an overview of innovations in bicycle planning in both Europe and the United States. Examples from bicycle-oriented communities like Davis, California and Eugene, Oregon illustrate route signs that work, secure parking, creative auto restrictions and more. Folks with an interest in creating or improving their own bicycle use plan should arrange a showing for city officials, planners, community residents and cyclists. It promises to raise fruitful discussions for local implementation of the outlined programs. "Bicycling: A New Beginning" is suitable for manual play on a Carousel projector with a cassette recorder or an automatic slide/tape machine. —Susan Hyatt A long-time friend of RAIN, Susan was formerly on the staff of the Neighborhood Information Sharing Exchange, Washington, D.C. The Complete Book ofBicycle Commuting, by John S. Allen, 1981,305 pp., $9.95 from: Rodale Press 33 E. Minor Street Emmaus, PA 18049 Sure, you'd like to bicycle to and from work. What else can you do which is so thrifty, healthy, environmentally sound, and politically correct all at the same time? Still, the prospect of such intimate daily contact with the wet, cold, hot and slippery aspects of your community's microclimate does not entirely thrill you. Nor do you relish the thought of being bashed by a bus on a busy thoroughfare. And you can't help but wonder how you could comfortably carry a change of clothing and the bag of groceries you might have to pick upon the way home. No matter what your reservation. The Complete Book of Bicycle Commuting has the resolution. It shows how to prepare your bike and your body to cope with any kind of weather. It describes how to use your bike to carry an amazing variety of cargo. It discusses the best ways to protect yourself from bike theft. And best of all, it demonstrates, in words and pictures, how you can safety- proof yourself in commuter traffic by trading your unreasonable fears for reasonble cautions. Reading this book will make you wonder how you ever got the idea that your car was desirable for commuting. It may even make you wonder why you still own the blasted thing. —JF Bicycling Magazine, $11.77 year (9 issues) from: Bicycling 33 E. Minor Street Emmaus, FA 18049 If you're already an avid cyclist, this excellent Rodale publication is probably quite familiar to you. If you're just getting started, look for a copy at your local bike shop. Like the currently popular running magazines. Bicycling is loaded with ads and articles describing more kinds of expensive, specialized clothing and equipment than you ever knew (or probably cared) existed, but it's also a great source of ideas and inspiration for anyone involved in bike commuting, racing or touring. —JF GARDENING Successful Cold-Climate Gardening, by Lewis Hill, 1981,308 pp., $9.95, from: The Stephen Greene Press Fessenden Road Brattleboro, VT 05301 For most of you, spring is arriving. Time to watch the days lengthen, the light grow more intense. Time to spot, even as the snow melts, the first bright green tops of spring bulbs emerging. Soon the most perfect white bloodroots will be opening their blossoms and lilac branches will be brought in from the cold to be fooled into blooming early. Here in Oregon we'll likely get our usual false spring in February-—easily as cruel a month as any April. Winter was New Year's Eve and a week. I don't know what to call the rest of the time. I'm from Minnesota, I know what winter is! When I lived there I spent part of nearly every January and February looking over the gardening zone maps that promised apricots and artichokes—if you were someplace else. Stuck in the cold, Td push and prod the seasons, stretching the most possible growth out of them. The year before I moved I had a great garden. I had tilled my whole yard. Td created little microenvironments with interplantings of herbs, vegetables and flowers. I had, alter years of experimenting, figured out how to make the most of the challenge of an extremely cold climate. To save you those years of potential frustration, Tm recommending Lewis Hill's book. Not many garden books can help you cope with sub-zero weather as well as this one can. This book made me homesick. Hill takes the stand that, in general, the mystiques of composting science, bio-dynamics, and solar assisted season extenders just put people off. So, he simplifies things, writes in a friendly prose style and proves the assumption that although cold-climate gardening may take a lot of attention to detail, it'll be at least as rewarding as gardening in any other climate. The book is divided into three sections: "Gardening in the North," a general overview; "Growing Food in the North," with an especially useful chapter on perennial foods; and "Landscaping in the North," a chapter that, unfortunately, doesn't even mention the use of edible plants in the landscape plan. The accompanying appendices are useful, but not extensive. You'll still need a good, fat general guide to organic gardening on your reference shelf, but read Hill's book. It's a charmer. —CC
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