Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

• Regular exercise in the form of walking has even been effective in the treatment of depression.

And if walking is good for your spirit, hiking is great. Rachelle and I both like to hike. I really enjoy the quiet time, the fresh air, the beautiful views. Hiking is a wonderful way to explore nature and appreciate the beauty of your environment, whether you hike up a mountain path, along a river, or through the woods.

                  Yeah, and Ed’s really fun to hike with, too. He hikes like it’s some kind of army training-camp drill. He’s totally oblivious, just marching up some steep hill, and I’ll be left behind. It’s like, “Nice hikin’ with ya.” Oh, and he says fun stuff too, like “Downhill is double time.”

It’s not like I’m out of shape. I’m a Pilates instructor. I’m in great cardiovascular condition. But Ed really likes to take things to the extreme.

I also like to leave the trail in better condition than I found it. It goes without saying that you should never leave any trash behind, but Rachelle and I take it to the next level and pick up any trash we find along the way.

Riding a Bike

After walking, if my destination is more than a mile from home but not so far away that I need to take the car, I’ll ride my bike. It’s very nearly as pollution free as walking.

I ride for fitness and just for pleasure. My daughter, Hayden, and I go for bike rides all the time, and Rachelle sometimes joins us.

I also like to ride my bike for errands—for the economy, in every way. It’s very inexpensive. You don’t have to buy an insurance policy to ride your bike or gas to run it. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to buy a bicycle, either. And bikes don’t wear out. With minimal maintenance, you can keep one in good working condition for decades. I have a nice bike from the ’80s that I still use, and my neighbor Bill Nye, the Science Guy, still rides a bike from 1975!

Also, you can move really quickly around the city on a bicycle—in many cases, more quickly than you can in your car. When there’s traffic, you just pedal right past those stopped vehicles. If you bike to work, you can vary your route, often more easily than you can commuting in a car. And with biking there’s no problem with parking. Of course, it’s good for the city too, because you’re putting one less vehicle into traffic lanes.

Biking is great exercise, and I love being able to pedal right past stopped traffic.

So biking is good for all of us environmentally. But biking is also good for you. It’s good for your health and has all the same benefits as walking—it’s a low-impact form of exercise that reduces stress and is good for your mind and spirit. I can go much farther on a bike than I can on foot. I’ve biked 80 miles in a day. I don’t have the time anymore to do those long bike rides, but I will bike somewhere that is 15 miles away, and biking over the hill into Hollywood or Beverly Hills is no big deal to me. It’s not like, “Ooh, I can’t do it. Am I going to be okay?” It’s no problem. I don’t think twice about making a 30-mile round-trip bike ride.

                  For many years, people would say, “There goes Ed, riding his bike to the Vanity Fair party.” And I would be thinking, “I can’t believe he rode his bike here.” But then all the paparazzi would be all over him, and I would think, “Well, that’s pretty cool.” People thought he was a bit nuts, and they didn’t take him seriously. And that was sorta hard.

Now, being green is so cool! You’ve gotta get a gimmick if you’re gonna get ahead in Hollywood, and a lot of people seem to be choosing the green gimmick. Only with Ed, it’s no gimmick. He’s been doing it for years. And no one is laughing now!

One reason I love bicycles so much is because they’re the most energy-efficient machines for ground transport that man has ever invented. Maybe you could say a sailboat is more energy efficient, since you can use the wind to take you around the globe. But as far as ground transportation, there’s nothing better than a bike. You can literally go 30 miles being fueled only by a bowl of rice or a cup of beans. I’d say that’s pretty good mileage.

If you need to go longer distances, there’s another option now: a hybrid bicycle. Unlike a hybrid car, which runs partly on an electric engine and partly on a gasoline internal-combustion engine, a hybrid bike runs partly on an electric engine and partly on human energy. Rachelle got me an iZip hybrid electric bike for my birthday in 2006, and I love it. I’ll let Larry Pizzi from Currie Technologies, which makes the iZip, explain more.

Ed’s Green Friend: iZip

Electric bicycles come in many shapes, sizes, and capabilities, but they all share the ability to power the bike solely by human power—pedaling—or with electric power, either to supplement the rider or as the sole motive energy. This category of bike is also called pedalec, a term used primarily in European countries to classify pedal-assist vehicles.

Here’s how it works. Stored energy, in the form of a battery, feeds an electric motor, which then propels the unit. Endurance, speed, and distance are limited by the amount of energy stored and by the rate of discharge to the motor.

Great strides in improving performance have been made in recent years, thanks to innovative technologies that have created batteries with higher energy densities that charge faster and weigh less. The best systems may incorporate sophisticated battery management computer chips that