Off-road motorcycle unit lets Colorado Springs Fire Department respond to any emergency

In a region where outdoor thrills are plentiful, ice rescues, lost hikers and injured rock climbers are a year-round reality for the Colorado Springs Fire Department. For some firefighters, mountain rescues are just as much a part of the job as house fires and car crashes. They have arsenal of tools for the job, including a half dozen off-road motorcycles.

“It’s just one of the tools in our toolbox in being an all-risk department,” said Colorado Springs Fire Department spokesman Capt. Steven Oswald. “Probably the majority of metro departments our size don’t have motorcycles.”

Firefighters are trained to ride the motorcycles through rocky ravines, up steep, gravelly trails and on winding mountain roads. The bikes are used when quick response to a remote location within city limits is required – often for fire spotting or locating a lost or injured hiker.

The program started in 2001, when the department received a few motorcycles from the Colorado Springs Police Department, which had scaled back its now defunct park police program.

The department typically has about eight trained riders available on any given day to man its four Yamaha XT250s and two Yamaha WR250s.

Firefighters receive several months of training for the program, said Fire Station 13 Capt. Don Hawley.

The training is what makes the department an “all-risk” unit. Firefighters are capable of responding to any type of fire, EMS, rescue, hazardous materials, or wildland fire call, and each station has its own specialty. Station 9 specializes in fighting wildland fires, Station 14 houses the HAZMAT team, and Station 17 specializes in heavy rescue.
The department’s motorcycle program runs out of stations 5 and 13, which both specialize in high-angle rescues. Station 5, located near Red Rock Canyon Open Space and Station 13, located near Garden of the Gods, are minutes away from two of the city’s most popular hiking destinations.

Firefighters at the stations often respond to calls from people who have suffered injuries from a fall, who are stuck a top one of the towering rocks in Garden of the Gods, trapped on the face of a cliff in Cheyenne Cañon or simply lost, often in bad weather or long after the sun has set.

Between May and October 2013 – peak hiking season – 12 rescues specifically called for the motorcycles, Oswald said. In one instance, firefighters jumped on the bikes to sweep the banks of Monument Creek for a possible drowning victim. 
”Instead of us walking, covering about 3 miles an hour, we can cover 10-12 miles an hour on a dirt bike,” firefighter, EMT Ralf Hoehne said.

The ability respond quickly is important because riders have a limited amount of gear they can carry – a pack of medical supplies secured around their waists and a backpack with personal survival equipment – and they cannot transport patients. The rest of the crew follows behind, often on foot, with ropes, technical rescue gear and additional supplies.

The bikes are an increasingly important tool for the department, especially as options for outdoor recreation continue to expand, Hawley said. The recent but brief opening of trails on Pikes Peak’s Southern Slope has the department evaluating how to prepare for the possibility of future rescues there, he said.

“As the amount of open spaces and trail systems increase within city limits, unless other provisions have been made, the Colorado Springs Fire Department will respond to those calls,” he said.

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Contact Lisa Walton: 476-1623

Twitter @LisaWaltonCO

Facebook: lisa.walton.92372

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Off-road motorcycle unit lets Colorado Springs Fire Department respond to any emergency

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Americas Fastest Growing Death Holiday Is From Mexico

Long regarded as a ‘narco-saint,’ Lady Death has deep roots in Latin America’s Catholic tradition as well as its acceptance that all people must die.

One night in 2001, as Halloween turned into All Saint’s Day, a woman named Enriqueta Romero put a life-size model of a skeleton in front of her home in Mexico City. That was 13 years ago. The skeleton was wearing a dress. In the annals of 21st-century Latin American religion, it was a historic moment.

For decades, maybe centuries (the details are murky), some people in Mexico had been venerating a kind of sanctified death figure. Part Grim Reaper, part angel, this deathly saint had few followers, and they mostly worshipped in private. Romero helped make that veneration public. You might think of her as a kind of postmodern Mexican Martin Luther: someone whose small public act puts a new spin of faith, all while pissing off the Catholic Church.

Martin Luther tacked up his Ninety-Five Theses, and gave us the Protestant Reformation.

Enriqueta Romero put a skeleton on the sidewalk, and helped give us Santa Muerte.

Santa Muerte: Saint Death. A grinning skeleton is a national symbol in Mexico. Santa Muerte is something different. She’s angelic. She receives offerings, and she’s thought to grant favors and miracles. Although rooted in medieval Catholic depictions of death (and, perhaps, ancient Mesoamerican death deities), she is not beloved of the church.

Before 2001, Santa Muerte was “unknown to 99 percent of Mexicans,” according to Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religion at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of Devoted to Death, an academic study of Santa Muerte. You can now find her hooded image on cars, necklaces, votive candles, tattoos, and altars across Mexico and the United States. Romero’s original shrine, in Mexico City’s lawless Tepito barrio, attracts crowds to monthly festivals. Today, on All Saint’s Day, thousands will gather in Tepito to worship the bony deity.

In total, Chesnut estimates that Santa Muerte may have as many as 10 million devotees, and counting. “This is the fastest growing new religious movement in the entire Americas,” he told The Daily Beast. Some of that growth has come among drug traffickers, as well as in prisons on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

But its growth is not just among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. When I spoke with Chesnut, he suggested that I might not have a hard time finding traces of Santa Muerte in my small North Carolina city. So I went searching.

Little did I realize how easy it would be. A block away from where I live, there’s a magick-and-tarot shop. It’s owned by an Anglo-American who goes by Magus. Magus doesn’t speak Spanish, but when lady death appeared to him in a vision a few years ago, he knew who she was. When I walked into Magus’ shop, just to ask around, there was Santa Muerte: on a little altar, with offerings of water and chocolate chip cookies—hooded, serene, and undeniably in all of our futures.

Most coverage of Santa Muerte has focused on her role as a narco-saint. She’s been portrayed as a satanic figure by everyone from Catholic bishops to FBI analysts.

“We believe in God. Our angel of death only receives orders from him.”

While some of that coverage is justified, it misses what might be the most extraordinary, and revealing, feature of the Santa Muerte cult: namely, its fundamental ordinariness. Santa Muerte’s followers tend to be regular people. Rather than an esoteric quirk, she fits into a much larger religious tradition of reckoning with death, and a much larger Latin American tradition of adapting official Catholic rituals for unofficial purposes. As Catholicism struggles to retain followers in Latin America, and Mexican religious movements grow in the United States, it’s worth realizing that Santa Muerte isn’t some weird death cult: It’s the not-so-new religious normal.

Earlier in October, I spent the better part of two days at the Templo de la Santa Muerte Internacional in Tultitlán, a working-class suburb of Mexico City. The temple was founded in 2007 by Jonathan Legaria Vargas. He was gunned down the next year, at the age of 26, under mysterious circumstances. The place now is run by his mother, Enriqueta Vargas. It’s known for a 72 foot-tall steel-and-fiberglass statue of Santa Muerte, her arms spread in a pose that resembles a certain Brazilian sculpture of Jesus (which, incidentally, is only 26 feet taller).

There are smaller statues of Santa Muerte nearby, each clothed in a different color—red for love, yellow for those seeking work, black for those looking for protection, and so on. Per Santa Muerte tradition, devotees offer apples, cigarettes, and bottles of tequila.

The vibe, though—and there’s really no other word for it—is almost cloyingly wholesome. People call Vargas madrina—godmother. She’s a hugger. Visitors leave pictures of their loved ones pinned to some of Santa Muerte’s outfits. In the first five minutes of our conversation, Vargas told me about a holiday miracle: A woman had no money or food for Christmas, and she came to Santa Muerte to ask for help. Shortly afterward, someone gave her some cash and “un combo de Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

Fast food and personified death: not exactly Hallmark material. But the spirit is there.

The temple hosts weddings. Its Sunday masses easily bring in 200 people. So many families come that Vargas has arranged for a clown to entertain the kids. On the Sunday I visited, someone brought four 12-inch-high statuettes of Santa Muerte to the mass, each dressed in its own snug, pink-and-white, hand-knit coat, like little tea cozies for the Grim Reaper. “We believe in God,” Vargas told me. “Our angel of death only receives orders from him.”

As Chesnut points out, most devotees of Santa Muerte still consider themselves Catholics, and many worship her alongside more conventional saints. Sunday mass in Tultitlán includes the Lord’s Prayer as well as invocations to La Santísima, “mi vida, mi muerte, mi total.” Another Santa Muerte church, in a whitewashed building near downtown Mexico City, has a massive cross out front, holds four masses daily—which include communion—and keeps a large statue of the Virgin Mary on its altar. (There’s also a skeleton in a frilly purple dress nearby; a black cat was sleeping on one of the kneelers the day I visited). Some Santa Muerte icons depict her holding Jesus after the crucifixion.

I don’t mean to overplay the wholesomeness. Tepito, the neighborhood that hosts the first, and still most significant, Santa Muerte shrine, is home to a sprawling black market and a thriving drug trade. In Devoted to Death, Chesnut describes a Mexican hitman who has an image of la Santa engraved on the butt of his pistol. People sometimes burn marijuana at her shrines.

Still, a cultural celebration of death is far from unusual, in Mexico or elsewhere in the world. I’m not the first to note the resemblance between Santa Muerte and Kali, a destructive Hindu deity worshipped in India for millennia. And when I told the custodian of a little Santa Muerte shrine in Colonia Guerrero, a gritty Mexico City neighborhood, that death worship could seem strange or scary to Anglo-Americans, she looked at me as if I were stupid. “Halloween,” she said. “Horror movies.”

Unlike films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though, you can’t miss the underlying Catholicism here—nor the underlying sadness. As Chesnut points out, Santa Muerte “has proliferated in a time of great death and dying in Mexico.” Many of her worshippers come from marginal communities. Santa Muerte shrines are generally in poorer neighborhoods. She’s especially popular among Mexico’s LGBTQ community, whose members tend to find a warm welcome at her shrines.

Meanwhile, Santa Muerte may seem blasphemous, but there’s also nothing unusual about Catholic-tinted worship that takes place outside the official purview of the Vatican. Santa Muerte is one of thousands of folk saints in the Catholic Americas, which range from venerated ex-criminals to minor local icons known for their dramatic deaths. This kind of folk worship can eclipse that of official Catholic saints. Santa Muerte is just a dramatic example of an easy-to-forget truth: Worldwide, religious worship is as much a funky, homegrown symbolic mashup as it is an exercise in official doctrine.

A couple hundred years ago, of course, the church or state could have just crushed such a heterodox movement. Today, Santa Muerte has Facebook pages and a degree of religious freedom. The 21st century isn’t a bad time, really, for deviant religions to thrive.

Americas Fastest Growing Death Holiday Is From Mexico

Movember moustaches may help find new prostate cancer tests

Money raised through past Movember men’s health campaigns is helping fund the search for alternatives to PSA screening for prostate cancer.

That search has taken on added importance now that an official task force has recommended not using PSA testing to screen for prostate cancer.

Prostate-specific antigen — or PSA — testing measures the amount of that protein enzyme in blood. Higher levels may indicate the presence of cancer or infection in the prostate. Or sometimes they may not.

The test costs an individual about $30. In B.C., the province covers the costs, and its billed about $11.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men (excluding the skin cancers) and ranks third in number of deaths, after lung and colorectal cancer.

While the recommendations by the Task Force on Preventive Health Care don’t mean the end of PSA testing — they are opposed by groups like Prostate Cancer Canada and the Canadian Cancer Survivor Network — efforts to develop other diagnostic tools are well underway.

For Stuart Edmonds of Prostate Cancer Canada, “PSA isn’t the bad actor in this, it’s actually decision-making along the process that’s part of the problem, how the PSA is being interpreted or how men are being pushed or choosing to have treatment when actually treatment may not be necessary.”

And Jackie Manthorne,  the Canadian Cancer Survivor Network’s president and CEO, says: “Don’t throw PSA tests out the window until we have something viable to replace it with.”

This year, Edmonds‘ organization has already directed Movember Foundation-funded grants worth $10 million toward research on alternative diagnostic tools for prostate cancer.  The Movember campaign, best known for the moustaches grown to raise awareness about men’s health issues, starts today. 

Spending on all prostate cancer research in Canada totalled more than $36 million in 2011, according to the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance.

Diagnosing prostate cancer with DREs and MRIs

At present, besides the PSA test, the only other widely used diagnostic technique is the digital rectal exam, or DRE. The DRE can only be done on the back of the prostate gland, although that’s the site of 85 per cent of prostate cancers.

During the DRE, the doctor is feeling for lumps or hardened areas, which, if caused by cancer, mean the disease is more advanced.

Stuart Edmonds of Prostate Cancer Canada says genetic testing “is one of the areas there are likely to be big breakthroughs in the future.” (Prostate Cancer Canada)

Edmonds says the DRE certainly has some value but notes there “have not been clinical trials on DREs alone and their effect on mortality.” Men have been diagnosed with prostate cancer solely by a DRE, he notes.

Testing is also underway to show how effective magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, can be for detecting prostate cancer, Edmonds says.

A research article published by the medical journal The Lancet in August says, “A promising approach lies in the development of multiparametric MRI imaging technology of the prostate, which at present claims to selectively diagnose aggressive prostate cancers and avoid the diagnosis of many non-significant cancers.”

If it happens, the price tag will likely be high. However, distinguishing between cancers that can kill and ones that men can live with is critically important when deciding treatment.

“Overdiagnosis occurs in roughly 40 per cent of cases detected by screening,” according to The Lancet article.

Cutting edge research 

One of those Movember grants gives $5 million to a cross-Canada team for research to better identify “men who do or do not need aggressive treatment by providing accurate information about risk at diagnosis,” and to “develop novel molecular diagnostic tests to predict which men are likely to develop aggressive cancer,” says Prostate Cancer Canada.

A surgeon performs a robot-assisted prostate tumorectomy using ultrasound imaging on April 10, 2014 at the Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon, France. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty)

The team is led by John Bartlett of the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research.

A smaller grant went to a team headed by Dr. John Lewis at the University of Alberta. Its goal is to develop tests that look at a particular protein to predict the outcome of a prostate cancer when it’s diagnosed. 

“These tests could tell us if the patient is at high risk for developing aggressive metastatic disease or if that patient’s disease is in a benign state,” Lewis says. 

Lewis says they hope to have an initial clinical test within three years and a blood test in less than 10 years.

New diagnostic tests

Two other Movember grants in Canada are going to research on biomarkers that may lead to a new test to diagnose prostate cancer.

Robert Day at the University of Sherbrooke is looking at developing a diagnostic test that Prostate Cancer Canada says could “complement or even replace PSA.”

Their research will focus on an enzyme Day’s team discovered, sPACE4, that shows up at abnormally high levels with prostate cancer and can be correlated with the severity of the tumour.

A team from the University Health Network in Toronto, under Bharati Bapat, has a grant to develop a DNA-based biomarker test that can predict if a patient has an agressive prostate cancer.

They are studying genes called microRNAs found in a patient’s urine, for example, and comparing them to the patient’s symptoms, etc.

They hope that could lead to a test that can predict if a man has prostate cancer and how aggressive it will be.

Edmonds says genetic testing “is one of the areas where there are likely to be big breakthroughs in the future.”

Meanwhile, Mats Daugaard at the Vancouver Prostate Centre is researching a sugar structure, CSA, that is found at high levels when prostate cancer is present. 

Daugaard says he is very optimistic his research will lead to “making diagnosis more accurate and making it, possibly, earlier.”

He says studying the sugar could also lead to better therapy to target the cancer. His research grant comes from funds donated at Safeway stores. 

Prostatic stones

A brand new area of research that has promise for detecting prostate cancer involves analyzing prostatic stones.

The red arrows show bacterial imprints on prostatic stones, seen with scanning electron microscopy. Infection-induced inflammation of the prostate may lead to cancer. (CNRS/PLOS One)

These poppy-seed-sized stones, mostly consisting of calcium phosphate, have been found in almost all surgically removed prostate glands. 

But now, scientists with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Tenon Hospital in France have found that with infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy, they can determine whether there is or has been an infection of the prostate, even asymptomatic infections.

This is potentially important because scientists have linked infection-related inflammation with cancer of the prostate, as well as other organs.

To apply this knowledge to diagnosis, Dominique Bazin, research director at the CNRC, says doctors could find the stones with a CT scan. If present, that should “trigger an investigation by doctors,” Bazin told CBC News.

Bazin said his team recently used the same techniques to examine small calcium deposits in breast tissue and says the initial findings, not yet released, are “quite exciting” for early detection of breast cancer.

Movember moustaches may help find new prostate cancer tests

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'Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show' Is a Man's World

This is the age of the “showrunner”, the person who oversees the writing, producing, and financing of a television series. The premise of Des Doyle’s documentary Showrunners is that most of us don’t know enough about what they do or fully appreciate it as a form of “art.” Observing showrunners in their natural habitat, the documentary extols the likes of J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon. However, the film also fails to challenge the industry’s self-promoting celebration of these new auteurs, as it replicates some very industry conventions.

Much is made of the centrality of writing for TV, with the delivery of “quality scripts on time” being the key responsibility. The film dips in and out of the writers’ rooms at various series and emphasizes that showrunning is a “collaborative art form”. It asks us to let go of the persistent Romantic notion of authorship, where a tortured, solitary, inspired individual conjures great work, and instead think about a team of writers and producers investing in the creative process.

But the many of meeting scenes are mundane. Busy whiteboards in the background of repeated shots suggest that heated debates must go on. But we don’t see these discussions, only groups gathered around tables, feeding on donuts and cupcakes. Showrunners use the rhetoric of “family” and describe their writing “partners,” but, on the whole, it’s clear that these are hierarchical, patriarchal families. The film itself undermines any sense of participatory culture through the many interview segments. Its primary structural focus is on individuals.

On the upside, some of these individuals are engaging, articulate and self-reflexive on the other side of the camera. Damon Lindelof observes that the “benchmarks of my life are measured” by where they occurred in the making of LOST. Ronald D. Moore reflects on the fact that in writing the death of Captain Kirk, he killed off his childhood hero. And the wickedly witty Chris Downey (Leverage) quips, “More serial killers have been captured on network television than ever existed.”

However, these are isolated instances. Part of the problem is that Doyle approaches his subject from the perspective of a fan. He tells Word & Film, “This is a film made by fans for fans.” Such a fan’s perspective could have been usefully interrogated, but here it functions to disable the film’s critical potential, leaving it full of unreflexive admiration for showrunners’ multitasking, as showcased in its day-in-the-life type thread following Matthew Carnahan and House of Lies from pre-production to launch party. Here and elsewhere, the movie is reverential in its interviews with preeminent showrunners, who tell us that their job is “exhausting” and “awesome.” They not only write episodes, they tell us, but also negotiate with network executives, direct, and respond to real-time online feedback. And so the life of the showrunner emerges, in the words of one participant, as a “feat of choreography”.

The documentary skirts any possible conflicts with network executives, so it offers little sense of how commercial constraints might affect creative decisions, or how they might inspire particular modes of invention. Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy) suggests that his “dark sensibility” needs “restraint,” but he’s not asked to elaborate on this seeming confession. Shawn Ryan (The Shield) posits that cable networks perpetuate the myth that they offer more freedom than broadcast TV, only for the documentary to move swiftly on to another topic. Most problematically, as the examples referenced so far suggest, Doyle’s subjects are overwhelmingly white males.

It’s true that female showrunners are a rare breed. A study by Boxed In estimates that women make up less than one third of American television writers and under 30% of series senior executives.  Of The Hollywood Reporter’s “50 Power Showrunners of 2013,” 12 are women, and four women of 10 are on the 2014 Showrunners to Watch list. While this hardly represents equality, it is significantly more than the three out of 25, or the 12%, that the documentary manages to interview. In the Spartacus writers’ room, Misha Green is the only woman present out of six workers. Similarly, we see a lone female on the House of Lies team.

The relative invisibility of women in Showrunners perpetuates, even extends, the gender biases of the industry itself. Along with Janet Tamaro, showrunner of TNT’s female buddy crime series Rizzoli & Isles, we meet Michelle King (who works with her husband Robert on The Good Wife) and Jane Espenson, who, unlike every other participant, is unnamed when she first appears. Female stars like Shonda Rhimes (Scandal) and Dee Johnson (Nashville) do not appear.

As Tamaro comments, “Some people—both male and female—have an easier time being told what to do by a man.” She adds that men fetishize the ratings and women need to move into directing like their male counterparts. But gender politics remain at the margins of the film’s agenda. In its examination of the art of TV authorship, the film misses the opportunity to explore why mastery of fictional worlds continues to be gendered as masculine in our cultural imaginary. The politics of race gets even shorter shift, with Ali LeRoi (Everybody Hates Chris) appearing as the token black showrunner.

The film’s limits of vision extend to its own form. While it promotes showrunners as artists, or at least creative craftsmen, its music score is predictable (when an interviewee remarks that the end of a series is “terribly sad”, we hear melancholy music) and its visual aesthetic is static. Talking heads and fly-on-the-wall observations of writers’ rooms are interspersed with shots of posters, stills, show logos, and overhead cityscapes (to remind us that LA and NYC are the homes of television). To explain terms, we’re granted definitions on screen, along with book pages that handily list the differences between “procedural” and “serialized” television, even as the film is divided into chapters for easy consumption in undergraduate media classes. But even we understand it as an extended infomercial, Showrunners’ primary lesson is that this remains a man’s world.

Splash image: Josh Whedon in Showrunners

"Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show" Is a Man"s World

Harley-Davidson woos affluent young Indians with bike culture

By Aman Shah

MUMBAI Thu Oct 30, 2014 10:20pm IST

1 of 4. Anoop Prakash, Managing Director of Harley-Davidson India, poses on a CVO Limited motorcycle at its launching ceremony in Mumbai October 30, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Harley-Davidson Inc, battling upstart competitors in its traditional markets, says it is betting on India’s young and affluent urbanites to help establish a “leisure riding” culture there and boost sales of its first new bike in over a decade.

With Lynyrd Skynyrd and Deep Purple playing in the background, the iconic United States motorcycle company on Thursday launched three new bikes in India, a country more associated with pot holes and traffic snarl-ups than open roads.

“I think there’s a lot of people (in India) who are enthusiastic, who are riders at heart, and are now seeing an opportunity to enter into this lifestyle. It is much more accessible,” India Managing Director Anoop Prakash told Reuters on the sidelines.

The bikes launched included the company’s costliest offering in India to date, a limited edition CVO Limited, priced at 4.9 million rupees. That is the equivalent of a BMW 5 Series sedan or almost seven decades of pay for many families in country where average income is closer to $1,200 a year.

But Prakash, a former U.S. Marine, said he was confident the brand — which Harley nourishes in India with rock music festivals and bike rallies — would prove attractive to aspirational young Indians, for whom a motorcycle is more than simply the cheapest form of motorised transport.

India is the world’s largest motorcycle market after China, but the roads are packed with cheaper models. Makers of high-end motorcycles, from Ducati to Yamaha Motor, are only just breaking into the market.

“We are reaching out to a lot of younger riders,” Prakash said.

Harley Davidson has suffered recalls that tarnished the roll-out of the “Street,” its first entirely new bike in more than a decade and its first Harley-badged lightweight motorcycle since the 1970s.

But in India, its stripped-down ‘Street’ series launched earlier this year at $7,000 has helped it more than double sales in the six months through September, according to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

“We’re looking at the establishment of a long-term leisure riding culture and doing it the Harley-Davidson way,” he said.

Harley, which entered India five years ago, has since set up its own assembly line in the country. Earlier this year it set up its first manufacturing facility outside its parent market in northern India.

(Reporting by Aman Shah in Mumbai; Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques)

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Harley-Davidson woos affluent young Indians with bike culture

Motorcyclists happier commuters and more productive, survey suggests

Research suggests motorcyclists enjoy the daily commute

If you regularly ride your bike to work, then the results of a survey by motorcycle insurance firm Bennetts, which revealed bikers are happier commuters than others, will come as little surprise.

There is no doubt that for most people the journey into to work is a battle that has to be endured, rather than a pleasant experience to be savoured.

Whatever mode of transport you take to get to your job – with the possible exception of walking – will probably include delays, disruption and stress as just part of the bargain.

Study highlights joy of riding

However, the survey shows that motorbike owners who travel to work on their beloved machines are, by contrast, a happy bunch.

According to the survey, some 87.9 per cent of motorcycle and scooter commuters believe they are happier than their fellow colleagues. Of course, this wasn’t a scientific study and didn’t compare endorphin levels of bikers versus non-bikers, but the confidence with which they declare their happiness is impressive none the less.

Some 1,000 people were questioned for the survey.

Are motorbike owners’ better employees?

Not content with suggesting bikers have a better journey to work, the survey also hinted that they may make more productive employees.

The majority of those who took part (67.8 per cent) said they believed commuting to work had a positive effect on their enthusiasm and ability to tackle work.

Sue Brown, a PhD student at the University of Bolton, said: “I have been intrigued by some of the lifestyle choices made by men who motorcycle and encountered several commuters among my case studies. Bennetts’ findings echo what the majority of them concluded; that motorcycling to work makes people feel calmer and therefore more productive.”

Ms Brown said that the principle benefit noted by participants was that biking made them happier, “which in turn had a beneficial effect on their general well-being”.

Why the high?

Bennetts quoted surgeon Dr Daniel van Gijn who owns and regularly commutes to work on his BMW 1200GS, who explained the reason why motorcycling is so addictive, particularly for the stressed commuter.

“Motorcycling gives you a freedom which you simply can’t enjoy with any other transport. It’s usually the highlight of your day being able to skip past the stagnant traffic and acknowledge fellow riders on the road,” he said.

No doubt the knowledge that you’re saving money in comparison to your train or car travelling counterparts helps put a smile on your face too.

ONS study backs up Bennetts survey

A report published in February this year by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) backed up the findings revealed by Bennetts.

It revealed that commuters do – perhaps unsurprisingly – have lower levels of happiness and higher levels of anxiety than their non-commuting counterparts.

People who travelled to work by bus or coach were less satisfied with their lot than those who travelled in a private vehicle.

The study also found those who took the train to work displayed higher anxiety levels than people who had their own mode of transport.

Perhaps surprisingly, commuters who walked to work reported having lower life satisfaction than those who went in their own vehicle.

So, it’s arguably not just the fact that you can navigate traffic, but that you are in charge of your journey in a way that perhaps you are not when you are at the whim of external forces. For instance, leaves on the line are not going to stop a motorbike, but they are notorious for throwing train timetables into complete disarray.

Don’t forget the open road

While these studies concentrate on the relative calm of a motorbike commute, the ONS research highlights the very real stress that every commuter has to contend with. So, it’s worth remembering that that sense of freedom is magnified when you get to take your beloved bike out on the open road. So don’t forget to take it out of the garage at the weekend or dust it down for holiday and get the real sense of freedom that two wheels affords. 

Motorcyclists happier commuters and more productive, survey suggests

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Ford considers plug-in hybrids for Europe

Ford may introduce plug-in hybrid versions of both the Mondeo and the C-Max as part of an expansion of its electric vehicle lineups in Europe. The American car maker already sells plug-in versions of the Fusion (nee Mondeo) and C-Max under the Energi sub-brand in the US.

The European versions of both cars are built in the same factory in Valencia, Spain, which would make the investment needed to bring them to Europe that much lower. For the moment, Ford has only committed to bring the conventional hybrid version of the new Mondeo to Europe.

While the European model Mondeo hybrid, without a plug-in capability, scores a 99g/km CO2 rating, the American market Fusion Energi has a claimed 32km battery-only range, a 23g/km CO2 figure and a 2.7-litres per 100km fuel economy rating. There is some controversy around that figure though. Ford was forced into an embarrassing climbdown from the car’s original 100mpg (2.4 litres per 100km) figure after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received angry complaints from buyers that their cars could get nowhere near the official figures.

There are only four plug-in hybrids on sale in Europe – the BMW i3 REX, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, the Volvo S60 plug-in and the Toyota Prius plug-in. Even combined, their sales figures don’t currently break the 20,000 units-a-year barrier, but Ford is obviously keeping an eye on the future.

Ford considers plug-in hybrids for Europe

Men's Health's 'Amazing' Noah Galloway Guests on 'Ellen'

Steve Cohn

It has been an incredible autumn for Noah Galloway. Nine years ago, the enlisted U.S. Army officer lost his left arm and left leg in a Humvee accident in Iraq, and it wasn’t until 2010 that he got the determination to rebuild his life mentally and physically.

Galloway’s hard work paid off with his selection as the first Ultimate Men’s Health Guy, and his November MH cover endeared himself to the nation.

Included was talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, who invited Galloway to guest on Ellen on Oct. 22. Although she called him an “amazing” human being,” Galloway had to earn his keep by doing 20 right-handed pushups in 20 seconds.

He did, and Ellen sponsor Shutterfly presented Galloway’s No Excuses Foundation a check for $10,000.  His next goal is to complete an “ironman triathlon” of swimming, cycling and a full 26-mile-plus marathon.

To watch the Galloway segment on Ellen, click here.

——————–

Galloway will likely compete in a future MH Urbanathlon of running literally over (taxicabs, etc.) and under (police barricades, etc.) for 10-plus miles while getting psyched for the finale of climbing and descending the steps of a sports stadium. The Oct. 25 New York “Urb” was the second of three races (Chicago before on Oct. 18 and San Francisco after on Nov. 23), and participants included Ultimate Men’s Health Guy runner-up  Finny Akers, who is pictured (right) with MH publisher Ronan Gardiner. The “summit” for both was the New York Mets’ Citi Field.

Akers’ story, too, is inspiring, because he had to care for two younger siblings after their lawyer father killed their mother and himself.
 

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No longer a man's hunting world

CASPER, Wyo. — Betsy Peterson shot her first mule deer outside of Casper with her husband and 5-month old daughter. It didn’t seem strange, bringing the infant into the field. Peterson had a mule deer tag and mouths to feed.

“She was quiet. I think it was chilly, and we had her bundled up and she slept,” she said. “My husband covered her ears when I shot.”

Some other hunters drove by on the family’s way back to their car and commented on the baby in tow.

“That’s the way to do it,” they said.

Hunting was natural for Peterson, 37. She grew up chasing pheasants in Minnesota with her dad, uncle, brothers, sister and cousins. The family hunted deer every year, but Peterson didn’t find one until 2005, shortly after she moved to Wyoming.

Like most women, she’d generally hunted with other men. That was until this fall. Peterson and four other Casper women went on an all-ladies hunt into the Snowy Range with two bull elk tags and a cow moose license between them.

The female trip was so remarkable to an elderly mutual friend, the 85-year-old woman insisted the ladies receive some publicity.

While women are certainly still the minority carrying guns in the field, their numbers are climbing, according to recent statistics.

Women applying for hunting licenses in Wyoming increased 12.65 percent between 2008 and 2013, from 11,202 to 12,620. The number of male hunters actually decreased by 2.46 percent during the same time period from 64,750 to 63,157.

“Across the state we are seeing more women take hunter education to become eligible to get a hunting license,” said Tristanna Bickford, conservation education coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “What we hear is that women feel that hunting is a great way to spend time as a family and an important means to feed their families.”

Peterson and her friends did field some questions from men and women skeptical of their hunt. Some wondered about the women alone in the woods, others worried about how they would handle an elk or moose once it was killed. She also thought considered the difficulty in heaving one of the animals onto a truck trailer.

Even though she’s hunted for years, her family still sees it as unique.

“When I talk to my dad and uncle, they look forward to hearing about when I get something and they are more impressed if I get something than my husband,” Peterson said.

She likes to be able to put meat in the freezer to help feed their four kids, and enjoys any chance to be outside, she said.

Cindy Phegley agrees. The 58-year-old runs a day care in Casper and has hunted for the last 18 years. She went to Jackson earlier on a hunt, but didn’t look for anything herself. Her late husband then reintroduced her to the sport.

Since then, she’s shot two moose and pronghorn.

She thinks more women would hunt if they had the confidence to start.

Programs are popping up around the state to help women begin hunting who may not have a husband, father or uncle to guide them. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has a program called Forever Wild Families that encourages and enables families to hunt together.

“A significant aspect of our work is to offer social support for women and families that are interested in outdoor activities like hunting and fishing. We hope by building this community folks will see others like them doing these activities and feel comfortable engaging at various levels,” said Tasha Sorensen, hunter and angler recruitment, retention and reactivation coordinator.

The Wyoming Women’s Foundation, a part of the Wyoming Community Foundation, runs an antelope hunt each year near Ucross in northern Wyoming only for women. It started in 2013, and continues to draw first-time hunters.

Riverton hunter Christie Wildcat, 16, was the youngest participant at the women’s hunt this year. She killed her buck pronghorn with one shot on the first day.

Her whole family hunts, even her mom, she said. Most of her friends also hunt.

“I was one of the only ones who never really hunted,” she said. “They said try it at least once and tell us if you like it.”

She does. And hopes to try for a mule deer this year before the season closes.

It’s just not that strange for women to hunt anymore, she said.

“The doors are opening a lot more and a lot more women are getting in there and participating in hunting,” Wildcat said. “The Wyoming Women’s Antelope Hunt is a good way to start out.”

No longer a man"s hunting world

Describing your Car at its Best

Everybody loves cars. Probably the most memorable moment of your whole working occupation, apart from possessing a property, is having your very own vehicle. You would be much more amazed if your vehicle feels and look finest. Nevertheless, there are particular modifications that you need to perform in order to preserve the perspective of the auto. In due time, your automobile must be refinished to seem that it’s been bought out of its supplier.

It has to be subjected to a bunch of refurnishing as a result of encounters with outdoors components like smoke, scrapes, dirt, heat, and all of those aspects that significantly has an effect on a vehicle’s completeness. To do away with these, you need to generate your automobile to a vehicle detailing station and also provide it conditioning.

In auto describing, there are a bunch of alternatives that can be finished with your auto based upon your preference. When the specifying is via, you need to preserve your automobile’s integrity in order to have a more enjoyable sight of its interior and exterior. Now, to do that, right here are some means of keeping your auto from any type of type of unpleasant markings or problems.

1. Scrapes away!

A scrape on your auto is such a frustrating sight! This merely makes you intend to hunt the individual that made that tiny scratch. Scratches are considered as your automobile’s primary adversary above all the remainder. You have, at any cost, stay clear of scratches. You need to realize that crud and also gunk, when rubbed to your auto’s paint, can leave marks as well as it will be visible when attacked by light. These elements functions as sandpaper to your automobile as well as dulls it up. You need to remember that anything that will come in contact with your vehicle’s paint should be soft and also without tiny deposits.

2. Safeguard from elements

The outdoors setting and also the temperature that encounters your automobile are simply several of the aspects that can do specific major and small problems. Each time you’re done utilizing your car, you need to store it inside your garage area to decrease any type of contact with any sort of element. Auto cover is also recommended. Sunshine can aid with the damage of your auto and also for that reason cause value on an indispensible amount of maintenance.

3. Wax it

Supplying depth as well as gloss is inadequate. You have to use wax as a part of your specifying obligations to shield your auto from elements which have actually currently been pointed out. These scenarios can be rid of if you would simply be much more spiritual in looking after your car’s within and outdoors. After wax application, you could cover your automobile and also be surprised on how shiny it will certainly be the following morning. See to it to make assessments to your automobile’s surface. This will certainly assist you see specific problems which will help you anticipate exactly what will certainly happen.

4. Specific constantly

It is not a sin to detail your car. Much more so, it will amount to people’s impression regarding how you take care of points and just how they imply to you. If you’re that sort of individual that can’t wash his vehicle each month, do not take your vehicle’s disorder for granted. Let somebody else do it for you. As much as possible, you have to information your car when every month.

You can go on washing and also detailing your vehicle as typically as possible and that would be excellent. This is also advisable when there are harsh problems where your automobile constantly experiences.

Describing your Car at its Best

FG to Ban “Okada” (Commercial Motorcycles) Nationwide?

The use of commercial motorcycles, popularly known as “Okada” may soon be banned nationwide, if the federal government approves a proposal made by the National Council on Transport.

The proposal for the ban was introduced at the council’s annual conference in Enugu State, and has been endorsed by the Minister of Transport, Idris Umar, Punch reports.

According to a statement released by the ministry, the ban was one of the measures being proposed to ensure adequate provision of safe and secure means of transportation in the country.

All the state commissioners of transport as well as directors and officials in the federal and state ministries of transport across the country attended the conference. They were all advised by the council to discourage the use of commercial motorcycles in their respective states, and to adopt safer and more efficient transport systems.

Here’s an excerpt from the statement read at the conference:

All states and the Federal Capital Territory have therefore been advised to establish a public transport system that ensure strict regulation of the operation of public passenger transportation system through a well-articulated management system for enhanced safety, security, effective and efficient service delivery

The states are to also develop master plans for the development of intelligent transport system to facilitate the development and management of their transport operations in line with emerging trends and global best practices.

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FG to Ban “Okada” (Commercial Motorcycles) Nationwide?

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