Click photo for larger version. Image courtesy of Kennecott Utah Copper.

The Colorado River spent 6 million years carving the Grand Canyon. It’s taken Utahans only a century to dig Kennecott’s Bingham Canyon Mine. Ok, so the Grand Canyon gets as deep as 6,000 feet and Bingham only reaches a bit past three-quarters of a mile. But consider this: The pit you see here used to be a mountain, which tacks on at least an extra 1,000 feet. We’re gaining on nature, and quickly.

In the latest issue of VIA magazine I’ve got a story on the open pit copper mine, which is the largest man-made excavation on Earth. Everything is oversize here, from the fleet of 80 haulage trucks taller than two-story houses and costing $2.8 million a piece to the 82 million gallons of water sprayed annually for dust control. And the mine runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Sound like a monumental waste? Take a look around you before you wish it closed—everything from fridge to phone works thanks to copper. Come to think of it, the story of copper mining, accelerating from the first urban electrification projects to today’s massive resource extractions, is the story of modern America. Perhaps that’s why this hole is a National Historic Landmark.

For more crazy details on just how big this operation is and to learn how it is we can turn a ton of rock into 13 pounds of copper sheeting, watch this video. Spoiler alert: it involves a five-mile conveyor belt.

I’m spending most of my time working as a contract editor at VIA these days, so my freelance writing has slowed down a bit and I haven’t had as much to report here. I’m enjoying seeing the other side of the writing game, though, and it’s giving me the opportunity to go after breathtaking travel destinations like this one.

I mentioned in my last post that I was rebuilding a bike in the San Francisco Bike Kitchen, and here it is, about a month after I finished it. A Raleigh Record from the ’80s that I got at a garage sale around the corner. It’s got 14 speeds now, and new wheels, derailers, and chain. I cleaned and greased everything else, starting with the bottom bracket. Not exactly a restoration that’s true to the 10-speed tradition, but those extra gears should come in handy on the hills of the bay area. Not that I’ll be riding it; it’s too big for me. But now that it’s out of the basement I have room for a project that’s my size.

Photo by Phil Yip.

In the three weeks it’s been online, my latest story for GOOD magazine, a primer on the best burgeoning bike scenes in North America, has earned a lot of comments. Many readers wrote in other cities as candidates and it would have been nice to include them all. While reporting the story I learned, as at least one commenter noted, that you can go to any city in the U.S. and find a burgeoning bike scene. That’s a wonderful thing.

Everywhere I looked I found community repair shops where people could build and fix bikes at little cost. Every town has formal and informal clubs that organize fun rides and races. And, thanks to rider activism, many cities are planning to expand their networks of bike paths and are considering bike-rental systems like the Velib program in Paris. Or at least they were at the end of last year, before the economy pooped out on us.

I’d guess that the strong showing from these communities is the result of the fairly small number of bikers relative to drivers on the road. When you’re part of just a tiny percentage of all commuters, you feel a sense of camaraderie with your fellow cyclists. At least I always do.

One last thing to say: All that thinking and talking about bikes inspired me to haul one of my old, broken-down bikes out of the basement and into the San Francisco Bike Kitchen, which is full of friendly geniuses who have helped me fix it up from the bottom up.

See the red stuff on that rock? That’s a swarm of ladybugs. A few weekends ago some friends and I paid a visit to their winter home on Mount Diablo, near Clayton, California. It was almost scary how many there were. Here’s a closeup.

It seems they live down by the coast in the warm months, then move inland into the mountains when it gets cold. They can’t fly unless it’s warmer than 55 degrees! They also have a life cycle of only four to six weeks, so how do they know to go back to the same place every year? We found them along the Falls Trail loop and it looks like they go to Redwood Regional Park too. One more fun fact: It takes 24 hours for an adult to get its spots.

And for the land-use lovers out there:

A nice shot of the Clayton Quarry, a source of diabase, a hard rock destined by law for local construction uses that have included the rail beds of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and Interstates 580 and 680. Here’s more info on its use and history.

I like to collect crap, and the best crap is free. Especially when it comes to you by chance and bears the marks of age and use. It’s this extra character that makes the objects heaped up at flea markets and on garbage days so intriguing. Assemblage artist Susan Danis told me that the local junkyard was one of her favorite places on Earth. I can see where she’s coming from. Over my desk I keep the scrap of fabric in this photo, which I cut from a broken lawn chair in the trash outside my building when I lived in Slovakia. Sentimental? Perhaps, but I also like to look at it and wonder what it’s been through. How many bottoms did it endure, and how many spilled bottles of kofola?

The beach is at the top of the list of places to make strange discoveries, and I had the fun of writing a mini-guide to great beachcombing spots on the northern Pacific coast for VIA magazine. It ran with Michael McRae’s story on turning up everything from 17th-century Spanish beeswax to thousands of lost Nike sneakers on the shores of Oregon.

State and national parks tend to have the nicest and most accessible beaches, but you can’t take home much of what you find on them since shells, rocks, and wood are all protected. I think the man-made objects are more interesting anyways: busted fishing tackle, random bottles, stray pieces of scuba gear. On the north coast, it’s popular to look for the glass floats that break free from Japanese fishing nets. They’re tough to snag in Oregon, but from this video it looks like they’re all over Alaska, if you have a plane to get out to remote spots.

The video is slow moving but beautiful. Eagles hang out on the beach, bear prints appear, a dog chases a seal and a fox, and a redhead blushes.