“For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people.” — Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed Here I'm welding a mast onto the Sun Pony solar tandem tricycle. This is Part Five of a five-part series about the Ithaca Generator to accompany the Generating Joy show at the Cherry Gallery from 1/23/26 to 3/8/26. I began my professional career as a mild-mannered web designer way back in 1996 when creat

by Laurence Clarkberg The Solar Hopper, an island-hopping day cruiser. I’m on a train with my wife Judy heading north from Miami to New York after having visited family in Puerto Rico. People always ask us why we choose to take the train instead of fly. Over and over again we have to explain that even though it adds a day to our travel each way we do it because trains emit less pollution than planes. We avoid flying because we value this planet we live on, and we don’t want t

We sleep in a 4-year old, 3-pound, 2-person MSR Hubba Hubba tent. The photo above is from when the tent was new, at the festival where we were married. At RAGBRAI 2025, there are at least four other Hubba Hubbas in the Out of State camp, so one of the last things we do as we set up is place our bins strategically — as much to keep people from tripping on the guy lines as to help us find the right tent again after a midnight trip to the portos. No one else has a slow moving

Ironically, going to Iowa to ride in a big mobile bike party takes a truck, a trailer, and eight tanks of gas. Before leaving home, you acknowledge your anxiety and ambition and you cram all the portables you think you’ll need — mostly food, housing and bedding — into a bike panier and a bin. You truck your gear and your big solar electric recumbent tandem bike to the starting line. Before you abandon the truck, you bequeath it the big sleeve of sardine tins, the extra batter