The 5th annual Green Cruise will be in Ferndale this Saturday — the green alternative to the Woodward Dream Cruise. The Sierra Club organizes this event to celebrate human-powered transportation options.

The Green Cruise offers a few riding opportunities for cyclists at all levels and ages.

• 8 AM – 21 mile recreational ride
• 9 AM – 5 mile family ride
• 10:30 AM – half-mile parade to celebrate green forms of transit. Costumes and decorated bikes are encouraged. The parade starts at 11 AM.

All rides start and finish at the Green Alley at Nine Mile Road and Planavon, just west of Woodward in Ferndale.

Bring a helmet, and if you under 12, bring an adult too.

And, there’s more than biking at the event.

The Travel Channel’s show No Reservations was in Detroit earlier this year.

Chef Anthony Bourdain, the show’s punk-rock aficionado and proud New Yorker posted on his blog about his visit to Detroit and other rust belt cities.

I think that troubled cities often tragically misinterpret what’s coolest about themselves. They scramble for cure-alls, something that will “attract business”, always one convention center, one pedestrian mall or restaurant district away from revival. They miss their biggest, best and probably most marketable asset: their unique and slightly off-center character. Few people go to New Orleans because it’s a “normal” city — or a “perfect” or “safe” one. They go because it’s crazy, borderline dysfunctional, permissive, shabby, alcoholic and bat sh!t crazy — and because it looks like nowhere else.

From a cycling perspective, this is certainly true.

For instance, the super popular Tour de Troit bike ride doesn’t start in a Wallmart parking lot. It starts in front of a amazing yet decaying 1913 Beaux-Arts train station. The route doesn’t take you past a repeating background of national chain stores and restaurants. You won’t find a Heidelberg Project or a Hamtramck Disneyland or a Dequindre Cut in the suburbs, much less anywhere else in the world.

And you won’t find as many major streets with such minor traffic.

Biking in the city of Detroit is like nowhere else. As we mentioned before, we don’t just fit the bike-friendly mold that other cities are chasing and that’s just fine. Let’s celebrate and hone what we have while not trying so desparately to hide the blemishes that aren’t hurting anyone (like old Tiger Stadium.)

But off the soapbox and back to Bourdain’s blog, he does continue with a focus just on our fair city.

Detroit. Where just about everything cool originated. As angry as one gets looking at block after block of abandoned row houses in Baltimore and wondering how the hell that happened, it’s mind boggling to see how far Detroit has been allowed to fall. But what a truly magnificent breed of crazy-ass hardcase characters have dug in there. Of all three cities we visited, Detroit, oddly enough, even while looking the jaws of death straight in the face, remains closest to being a true culinary wonderland. This is due entirely to the successive waves of migration and immigration from all over the world, when people came to MAKE things in America — each group bringing their own food and traditions. Detroit IS the story of America, for better — and worse, and I think we’ve missed that, allowed ourselves to look away. Detroit, after all, made us who we are. Literally. A country of cars, highways, car culture, upward mobility, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and what were once, unlimited dreams. Whatever happens next, Motown, Eminem and the Stooges’ “Fun House”, at least, shall surely outlast the automobile.

So, how does one tie together a post on Detroit, the Michigan Central Station, Tiger stadium and biking?

Eminem’s Beatiful video seems to do just fine. (Not safe for work, so watch it at home if you have to.)

Detroit RiverWalk

The Free Press article, Detroit park to offer walk on the wilder side, provides a detailed update on the Tri-Centennial State Park Phase II expansion along the RiverWalk.

The planned 31-acre park will help plug a central gap in the city’s 3 1/2 -mile RiverWalk promenade on the east side.

Running about 1,000 feet along the waterfront, the new phase will feature walking paths winding through a created wetland planted with native grasses and other plants. Grasses will be left uncut to create a look similar to what the French found when they settled in Detroit in 1701.

Along with this much welcomed addition are additional details on the largest missing portion of the east RiverWalk: the Uniroyal site between the bridge to Belle Isle and Mt. Elliot park. According to Faye Nelson, Executive Director for the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, construction could begin as early as next year.

Extending the RiverWalk across the barren site known as Uniroyal will await an environmental cleanup there, Nelson said. But she said she was optimistic that a cleanup might begin next year.

Macomb County Trail Loop

WWJ is reporting $2 million dollar in funding has been allocated for the Macomb County Trail Loop. This money would be put towards the 17 miles that are not completed across the entire 70-mile loop, which includes the Macomb Orchard Trail and Metropolitan bike path.

The funding is attached to a jobs growth bill thanks to the work of Senator Debbie Stabenow. The Kettering Gateway Project in Flint also received $1.2 million through this same bill.

You may already know that Detroit is a leader in urban agriculture. This week you have the opportunity to witness it firsthand.

Wednesday evening, August 5th, is the 12th Annual Detroit Agriculture Network Tour of Urban Gardens and Farms.

From the press release:

This year’s tour will highlight a selection of prosperous, innovative, and visually stunning gardens and farms that are contributing to the new food system through bio‐intensive urban agriculture and commerce between local restaurants and farmer’s markets. The Garden Resource Program Collaborative (GRPC) works to support the emergence of a new, sustainable food system in Detroit through a network of more than 517 backyard gardens, 244 community gardens, and 46 school gardens. The GRPC facilitates resources, education, and training of urban gardeners, farmers, and community leaders through a variety of programming.

The bicycle tour will “weave through gardens located in the Cass Corridor, Woodbridge, and Greater Corktown.” At the end of the tour will be locally-grown food and refreshments created by local chefs!

There is also a bus tour option, but it is full as of today.

All tours start at the Catherine Ferguson Academy (2750 Selden in Detroit.) Sign in begins at 5pm and the tour starts sharply at 6pm.

There are still a few open spots on the bike tour.

Register ahead of time by contacting Ashley Atkinson at 313‐237‐8736 or via email at aatkinso@umich.edu. The tour fee is a sliding scale from $1 to $20 which offsets costs and helps “grow Detroit’s agricultural movement.”

And for those that can’t make it August 5th, there is a Garden Bike Tour on August 15th just south of the border. It’s part of Windsor’s 2nd Annual Summer Harvest Festival. (via Bike Windsor)

A Free Press article last week centered on a new report that exposes the high cost of obesity, which now makes up an estimated 9.1% of all medical spending.

Obesity’s not just dangerous, it’s expensive. New research shows medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for an obese person than for someone who’s normal weight.

Overall obesity-related health spending reaches $147 billion, double what it was nearly a decade ago, says the study published today by the journal Health Affairs.

RTI health economist Eric Finkelstein offers a blunt message for lawmakers trying to revamp the health care system: “Unless you address obesity, you’re never going to address rising health care costs.”

Earlier this week we covered a new report from the CDC that gave strategies on how to reduce America’s obesity rate. Those strategies included investing in our communities to make them more walkable and bikable.

More bike lanes, more sidewalks, etc.

So if obesity costs $147 billion annually, with roughly half financed by Medicare and Medicaid, how much does the federal transportation bill invest in bicycle and pedestrian facilities?

$541 million in 2008 or 0.7% of the obesity-related Medicare and Medicaid costs.

This is further justification to take a more holistic approach to transportation funding. It’s not just about mobility and concrete.

Wise investments in more livable, walkable, and bikeable communities can reduce obesity and the related federal medical spending — as well as everyones health insurance costs.