pattiebaker

Scooting along

I’ve been working on my scooter article for like a month now*, with advice from the British environmental journalism mentor assigned to me through the program for which I was accepted at Ensia. I have just another week or two to go before I submit it. Whatever happens next, I have to say that this…

Serviceberry cobbler, and a tip

You know those serviceberries I’ve been picking? They worked their way into a cobbler so I could freeze and share them with my daughters when they are here in July. If interested, see my book, Traveling at the Speed of Bike, for a whole section about free public fruit. If the time is ripe for…

Athlete

The heat has rolled into town and the call of the hammock (and Netflix) is great, and yet, each day, I say to myself, “You either are an athlete, or you’re not.” And then I ride. For me, as short as fifteen minutes counts (although I usually keep going, and it ends up being four…

Change is afoot

I don’t know whether I’m about to start something or finish something, but change is afoot. I feel it in the air.

Plastic places

So I have discovered enough of a pattern happening to start a new photo essay. I call this one Plastic Places, and it features both private and public spaces covered with artificial turf. It joins A Streetcar Named Aspire, the Art of Bike Riding, the View from the Handlebars, At the End of Holderness Street,…

Peering into the future

“No lemon, no straw,” Holly Elmore and I both said habitually to the waiter at lunch after we toured Mercedes Benz Stadium and the Georgia World Congress Center last week. The final straw for Holly (seen here taking a photo of Mercedes Benz Stadium’s compostable food scraps that will one day grow food again), was…

Praying with turtles

So much bad is happening in the news, and I needed a few hours in prayer. My church is nature, and so I headed to the river, where I stopped mid-bridge while Traveling at the Speed of Bike on a path often flooded lately (but not today) to watch a bunch of turtles sunning on…

Been there. Done that.

Turns out a whole pile of Atlanta leaders are visiting Pittsburgh this week to get ideas. Since my older daughter went to university there (and since my hubby and I are even talking about moving there someday), all I can say is . . . been there, done that (often while Traveling at the Speed…