TerraCab: Free Rides for Planet Earth

What could be better than getting around town for free – in a comfortable ride that’s entirely emissions-free? TerraCab offers pedal-powered rides around select cities, sponsored by companies so it’s entirely free to the riders. Seattle is TerraCab’s flagship location and headquarters, and more markets will be available soon.

TerraCab’s vehicles are compact and pedal-powered, with a rechargeable battery that powers the front headlights, back signal lights and helps get the vehicle up hills. They don’t need fossil fuels, and you’ll never see a cloud of nasty smoke coming out of them.

They’re also hiring right now in Seattle, so if you’ve got strong calf muscles and an urge to work outdoors – and chat with people all day – this could be a really fun job. Email jobs@terracab.com if you’re interested.

Hopefully this idea will catch on! It would be a great addition to so many cities. It would help lighten traffic and reduce air pollution – two things that most cities desperately need help with. TerraCabs is currently seeking sponsors for Portland, LA, NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and Atlanta – so it may be available near you before you know it.

Link [TerraCab]

Tough Old Lady Wouldn’t Move Despite Encroaching Development

All Edith Macefield wanted was to live – and die – in peace in her tiny cottage in Ballard, just outside Seattle, Washington. Edith saw her residential neighborhood turn into an industrial area around her over the decades, and refused to move when developers tried to buy her out. She had been offered nearly a million dollars to move and allow her home to be bulldozed, but she didn’t want it. In her mid-eighties, Edith didn’t want to be forced out of her home to live out her remaining days in a foreign place.

When an area reporter wrote about her story in the paper in 2006, Edith received letters and flowers from all over the world.

From The Seattle Times:

“I’m no hero,” she said. “I meant it. I just want to be left alone.”

Edith died Sunday, at 86. She died in the tiny cottage she had refused to leave, not for a million bucks.

“She got what she wanted,” said Charlie Peck, a longtime friend. “She wanted to die at home, in the same house, on the same couch, where her mother had died. That’s what she was so stubborn about.”

He said she was never trying to stick it to The Man. Or to make any larger statement against development or money or anything else.

Yet to look at her house today, it’s hard not to be impressed by her iron will, no matter her motivation.

Today it sits walled in on three sides by what will be a five-story health club and a Trader Joe’s.

Edith has no known relatives, and it’s believed that she left the property to the senior construction superintendent for Ledcor, the company that’s been building up around her house. He had been taking care of her. It’s unknown what will happen to the house now – friends would like to see it preserved as a reminder of Edith and ‘Old Ballard’, the way it was when the home was surrounded by other homes and not 5-story concrete complexes.

What a cool story. That is definitely some iron will – to stay in the house despite construction going on literally right outside your windows.

Link [The Seattle Times]
Photo credit: ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES