Non-Polluting Racers Will Have to Recycle Strategy

--The race may go to the swiftest, but not necessarily to the cleanest. Boulder, Colo., annually holds “non-polluting commuting races” to promote the use of bicycles to commute to work, trying to show that bikes can get people to work faster than cars. In past years, the bikes have always won. But this year’s race embarrassed the college town’s officials because the bikes got beat twice. In one race over a three-mile course that includes two stops to buy a newspaper and doughnuts, the bicycle lost by five minutes. In the second race, a bicyclist lost by 1 minute, 20 seconds. Bicycle rider and Transportation Director Bob Whitson was philosophical about the loss: “There’s nothing sacred about speed, right? In both cases, the bicyclists clearly had more fun.”

--Britons concerned about press reports on Queen Elizabeth II’s health can take heart. The 60-year-old monarch climbed 152 steps to the top of the 114-foot Ardmurchan Lighthouse at Kilchoan, Scotland. “She managed it very quickly. She was very fit,” an aide said. Once at the top of the structure, which overlooks the Irish Sea, Elizabeth walked twice around the balcony and waved to those below. After Buckingham Palace said the queen underwent a routine examination last week at London’s National Heart Hospital, Britain’s national press had expressed fears that the queen was having heart problems. The palace said the queen is in good health.

--Joseph Mauri, the evicted New Yorker who was portrayed in a Soviet documentary as a victim of capitalism, is a newspaper union member who could make $35,000 a year if he wished, his union and newspaper said. Mauri, 57, appeared in “The Man From 5th Avenue” after reports on his eviction last year from a Manhattan apartment. The Soviet news agency Tass called him a man “who first lost his job and then also became homeless.” Mauri, who is on an expense-paid tour of the Soviet Union, said he seeks to publicize the plight of America’s homeless. However, he is not homeless himself and has moved to a $112-a-month room in a residential hotel. The New York Times said that Mauri is 10th on its list of 400 mail room substitutes and could work full time if he chose to, earning $680 a week. It said he earned $3,000 in 23 shifts this year. Mauri “didn’t want to work,” said Edward J. Burke, chief shop steward for New York Local 6 of the International Typographical Union. Mauri has said that chronic hepatitis prevents him from working regularly.