Two Cities Two Wheels

Note to Saint Paul Bicyclists: Your Lights Suck

2010-11-10T16:57:00.004-06:00

The last few months on the second Tuesday I have been bicycle counting as part of the Transit for Livable Communities' monthly bike counts. Several of us from the Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition have been doing counts along University Avenue. I took University just west of Raymond Avenue where I can conveniently sit in the front window of The Edge Coffeesop and do my counting. In the summer, this was nicely air-conditioned. They play fun music, Edith Piaf yesterday for a while, I settle in with my coffee, and for two hours am on high alert, counting bicyclists and bikes on bus racks (my own addition). It's kind of nice to quietly observe the neighborhood traffic for two hours once a month, you notice things.

Anyway, with the end of Daylight Savings Time, sunset now happens in the middle of the 4:00 to 6:00PM counting period. The sun disappeared behind the horizon at 4:50 and at 5:00 I went outside to be able to see better, since we classify cyclists by helmet/no helmet, gender, road or sidewalk and 15-minute period.

I had to be extra vigilant. There were 28 cyclists in the 5:00 to 6:00 hour, lower volume now than in the lighter/warmer months even though it was unseasonably warm, and I think maybe 6 or 8 had adequate lights. I didn't formally count light quality, but maybe half the people showed no lights at all and most of the remainder had dim tailights.

People, this is a busy four-lane street with lots of truck traffic. There is a left turn lane for people wanting to get on Highway 280/I-94, with brake lights and turn signals. There is a utility truck parked along the side of the roads with blinking strobe lights and a big yellow arrow telling traffic to move over. There's traffic lights and a big flamboyant neon sign on the liquor store. Throw into this mix an old, dim, mis-aimed blinkie and you are just about invisible.

Look, I know you can see fine. That's because you're 25 and your eyes are young. The people driving these motor vehicles are 40 and 60 and 80 years old and I can tell you that night vision doesn't improve with age. Don't rely just on reflectors or your own mad cycling skillz, get a damn light! If your blinky is more than about 2 years old, get a new one, the LEDs have been improving tremendously in brightness.

About 750 cyclists are killed by motor vehicles each year in the U.S. Stats aren't kept on the fault in these accidents, but reading daily accounts for a while leads me to believe that in about half the cases, the cyclist is heavily complicit through some sort of bad behaviour. It's easy to fix; don't run Stop signs and red lights, don't ride drunk, ride with traffic and not against it and put on some damn lights.

Trying to count the stealth cyclists riding by lightless makes this obvious. I was absolutely alert and looking to see you and it was a challenge. Think about the motorists driving home from work, going to the grocery store, fiddling with the radio, looking to see if they can change lanes left. They're worried about all sorts of things besides trying to acquire visual contact with unlit cyclists.

I don't know all the lights the lit people were showing but the Planet Bike SuperFlash has a pretty distinctive flash pattern (we have 4 or 5 of these lying around the house for use in the fleet) and the most visible cyclist was a young lady showing two SuperFlashes, one low on the bike (rack or seatpost?), and one high (on a backpack or helmet). I could see her for several blocks after she went by even amongst the cavalcade of lights on University. She is a model to us all.

I personally like to run two taillights, one blinking (a SuperFlash) and one steady (Busch & Müller 4D Toplight). A lot of people don't seem to care and run nothing at all. If you're one of them and get hit, I will feel the same lack of sympathy for you as I do for drivers who text while driving and run off the road and get killed. Remember, stupidity has a way of catching up with people.

Don't be stupid.

My Indirect Commute

2010-07-13T16:03:00.003-05:00

So I went to the dentist yesterday. My dentist is in downtown Minneapolis, a holdover from when I worked down there 15 years ago, but twice a year I go down and get my choppers looked at. Unbeknownst to me, yesterday whilst sitting at the desk after the appointment, I dropped my cell phone. It's not really mine; my iPhone 3G took an untimely plunge into the Des Moines River last week while I was leaning over a bridge railing taking a photo of the floodwaters (they've had a lot of rain down there). I have an iPhone 4 on order but it hasn't come yet so I have a temporary SIM in my daughter's old Pantech.

Anyway, I didn't notice this until yesterday afternoon, when I called the dentist and sure enough, they had my phone. I said I'd pop in and get it. So this morning I rolled out a little after 7:00 and, rather than the usual 4.9-mile run directly north to work, headed downtown, about an 8-mile ride.

This is kind of fun. I see a limited number of other cyclists on my simple commute and it hardly feels like an urban commute at all. Nobody is ever going to film riding through Roseville to Arden Hills and then set it to "Welcome to the Jungle". Going to downtown Minneapolis is different, lots more cyclists of all ages and bike types, much more traffic, buses, light rail, the Missisippi River. I rode through the Fairgrounds and the Saint Paul University of Minnesota campus, down Como, across the Stone Arch Bridge and to the dentist's at Fifth and Marquette, then rode back across the Stone Arch Bridge, a little ways up Como Avenue, then cut off to catch the Minneapolis Diagonal Trail. I hardly ever ride this (usually going to work from the dentist's or to Home Depot from work). It's pretty pastoral and there wasn't much traffic on in this morning. I went along County C, up Cleveland, over to and around Lake Johanna and then to work.

My Atlantis doesn't have a computer on it at the moment (I'm about to do a bunch of work on it, including reinstalling the computer) but Google Maps tells me I rode about 19 or 20 miles. I rolled in at 8:45 or so, showered and went to work.

When I ride to work, which is not all the time by any means, I usually ride directly there and directly home. Sometimes I pop into a store or go to a meeting afterwards, but I have never incorporated a longer recreational ride into the commute. I might think about it. It requires an earlier departure but it's kind of fun to get out and about in the cycling ecosystem in areas I hardly ever travel during the work week.

I'll be riding home, and then to a meeting this evening for the Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition. On the off-chance somebody reads this before then, we're meeting at the Jimmy Lee/Oxford Rec Center at Lexington and Marshall in Saint Paul at 7:00 to 8:30. We are an outgrowth of the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board, which is now on hiatus, but independent of the City and looking to become an advocacy organization. Come and join us if you have an interest, we're there every second Tuesday. You can check out our website which is pretty lame at the moment (I did it) but which we expect to improve quite a lot in the near future.

The Perfect Computer for the Cyclist?

2010-06-11T12:18:00.003-05:00

I got an iPad 3G the day they came out and have been using it a lot in the subsequent few weeks. I think it could be the ideal computer for the cyclist (though not a cycling computer!). I have a MacBook Pro which I occasionally have taken with me to meetings and work and stuff and I worry about it because it's got a 500 Gig hard drive in it which is getting bumped and jostled. Sure, you can buy big solid state hard drives, but they cost a fortune. Sure, the odd ride here and there isn't going to hurt it, but a day-in, day-out commute can't be healthy for the hard drive. Also, it weights like 5 pounds.

You could do a MacBook Air (with SSD if you're worried about the hard drive) but those are even more expensive and still weigh three pounds.

Or you can do an iPad. It weighs 1.6 pounds and the separate BlueTooth keyboard I have must take it over 2, although you can at least leave the keyboard behind if you don't need it on a given day. The battery life is nice and long, the screen is lovely and big, the Maps feature is superb when mated with the 3G's GPS, and there's no moving parts. Worried about dampness? Get an Orltieb document case for it, basically a heavy-duty roll top ZipLoc baggie. I know, I know, it's not a real computer, you can't run the heavy-duty spreadsheets on it that I routinely work with, the Pages word processor has it's limitations and it's not possible to print at the moment (there are third-party software packages for this, but I haven't tried them), but for note taking and email and web reading and writing this blog entry, the device works great.

I still use the MacBook for the serious work in life, long documents and big Excel spreadsheets (run in Windows on the Mac) at home, photo editing and all that sort of thing, but the iPad makes a smaller, lighter and surprisingly useful device for the cycling geek.

Snow Clearing on Marshall Avenue: A Meeting

2010-04-26T07:51:00.000-05:00

No, our snow is all gone. Rather, this entry is about the snow clearing project on Marshall Avenue this past winter. There is a meeting this evening regarding the project, at:

Concordia University
Buenger Education Center
275 Syndicate St N
Saint Paul, MN 55104

Monday April 26, 7:00PM

The topic is the pilot to keep Marshall Avenue clear of snow from the Lake/Marshall bridge up to Cretin or Cleveland (I forget how far exactly). The bridge is one of the few Mississippi River crossings in the Cities, and Marshall Avenue is the street on the Saint Paul side. Heading into Saint Paul, the street climbs a hundred feet or so, meaning eastbound bicycles are slogging uphill.

The problem is that in the winter, snow is scraped off to the side of the road. As happens, the angle of repose is such that it tumbles back in. Cars park out so they can open their passenger-side doors and bicycles get shifted farther and farther out into traffic, annoying to motor vehicles and less safe for cyclists. The plan was to have No Parking on the street during snow emergencies so that the street could be plowed full width, allowing room for the parked cars and for bicycle traffic as well.

This didn't work out.

Part of the reason was that on Christmas, when we had a decent snowfall followed by drizzly rain, the City decided not to be Scrooge-like on Christmas and declare a snow emergency. This holiday gift meant that the piles of snow, then soaked with rain, subsequently froze into immovable ice castles. It certainly happened at our house, where the width that I blew the driveway out Christmas Day was the width it would remain until well into March when it all finally melted away.

It may have been aggravated by Public Works employees slacking off when they should have been working, caught on tape by a local tv station and precipitating the resignation of Public Works Director Bruce Brees from that position (although he fell comfortably back into his old $111,000 a year job as "Administrative Manager for Public Works", man, no wonder my property taxes keep going up!). To be fair, the actual video was people who were supposed to be filling potholes, but one wonders if the same level of effort went into the snow clearing. And commications between departments wasn't very good, so that Traffic Enforcement wasn't aware of the parking ban until quite late in the winter.

Tonight's hearing, on short notice for those of us who don't live in the immediate area, is asking for input on the project. The main effect on the neighbors was the parking ban on selected days, and the way these things are likely to go, those will be the people who show up to complain about it. Not represented unless you and I go there will be people who use the street but don't live right there. We're taxpayers too, remember, it's our street as well, and if you are a Lake/Marshall user, you would be smart to show up and have your say.

If you can't be there in person, you can submit a comment to the Union Park District Council here. You can read about the meeting on the Union Park District Council website.

In summary, Marshall is an important bicycling route year-round because it is one of the few Mississippi Crossings. The road width is such that, if left not fully plowed, parking and then bicycle traffic gets shifted out further and further into the road as the winter goes on. The pilot project and the proposal is not to ban parking entirely; rather, it is to ban parking on specific days so our hard-working Public Works employees can clear the road full width, keeping it safe for all users. For a variety of reasons, it didn't work very well this year. It deserves to be tried again with a better effort next snow season.

Happy Earth Day from the NYPD

2010-04-23T09:32:00.003-05:00

President Obama was in New York yesterday giving a talk on the need to pass some inadequate financial reform with insufficient consumer protection. Before he came, the New York Police Department went along the route his motorcade would take and removed all the bicycles, citing fears that they could contain pipe bombs because, you know, there have been so many bicycle-based terrorist attacks in this country. And those mouth-foaming Obama haters are all such big cyclists. There are a couple of photos posted here. I wonder if they told the workers these might be pipe bombs, since they seem to be protected only by nylon windbreakers.

Would it be unworthy to wonder if this has something to do with the current trial on one of New York's finest who assaulted a Critical Mass rider a couple of years ago in what looks to be an episode of douche-on-douche assault, then lied about what he did (what? cops lie?) but was caught on video and has since, umm, retired. Or the other recent NYPD-to-cyclist payouts, like the one at the end of March where the city paid $40,002 to two people who filmed police cutting locks and removing bikes in 2007. Police and the security state hate the first amendment, and these two were arrested for disorderly conduct for refusing a lawful order to disperse and blocking the sidewalk. These charges were later adjourned and dismissed, and the city spent an estimated $72,000 defending the case and for the payout. And just last week another $98,000 was paid to five cyclists for being harassed during a Critical Mass including another case of a cop knocking a cyclist off his bike.

Fortunately, the NYPD Bomb Squad seems to have managed to defuse all the pipe bombs without any injury.

Gee! Maps!

2010-03-10T13:14:00.002-06:00

I heard on the radio this morning that Google Maps now has an option to map routes for bicycles. This sounded cool; I've been generally impressed with their auto mapping and even their transit mapping works well here in the Twin Cities, telling you which bus you need and when the next one should arrive at your location. It would be an exaggeration to say I leapt immediately out of bed to give the bicycle routing a try, but once I did slither sluglike from my repose and completed my elaborate morning ablutions I did give it a common destination pair for me, between church and home. This is about 14 miles one way, crosses the Mississippi and can involve several bicycle-specific shortcuts or route options. How would Google do?

Google did pretty well. From north of Como Lake in Saint Paul to just east of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis it selected a route that used both the Intercampus Transitway and the Midtown Greenway. The Intercampus Transitway runs between the Saint Paul and Minneapolis East Bank campuses of the University of Minnesota and is limited to buses, emergency vehicles and bicycles. As a cyclist, it took me a while to notice it because it was so off my radar as a motorist, but it is a useful shortcut and google selected it.

The Midtown Greenway is a bicycle and pedestrian path from the Mississippi to Lake Calhoun that runs parallel to the very busy Lake Street in an old railway trench. It's like a bicycle Interstate, with limited on and off ramps and it goes under dozens of bridges carrying the surface streets. It even has a big swoopy bridge over Hiawatha/Highway 55/the Light Rail line just for bikes and pedestrians. It's not open to motorized traffic at all.

Google didn't select my usual route, down Hoyt and through the State Fairgrounds to either the Transitway or Raymond, but, to be fair, the fairgrounds aren't open all the time. They shut down for most of August for the State Fair and for selected weekends when they have boat shows or classic auto rendezvoux. The rest of the time, bicycles and pedestrians can slip through the NE gate (always open about 3 feet wide) and cruise through the grounds in splendid solitude.

I have to say Google does a much better job than my GPS unit. I have a Garmin Nuvi 275. I got this last year in anticipation of a trip to the UK and France because it has both the North American and European maps built in. I got it a bit early to see how well it did locally on roads and destinations I know, and I have to say, it did really well. It knows all the little back roads and residential streets in the Twin Cities (not sure about the bleeding edge of suburban sprawl, but certainly in our area it was good). It has lots of businesses in it. Once in Europe, I was delighted to find that it knew its way around medieval York, Winchester and Bayeaux as well as it did around 1950s Roseville. It knew speed limits, traffic camera locations and the number of exits out of roundabouts. It was particularly delightful that I could load in the Campaign for Real Ale's (CAMRA's) Good Pub Guide point of interest file, which cost six pounds, and the GPS would ding whenever we got within a mile or two of one of the pubs. You could select the pub and it would set it as a waypoint and guide you there, off the main roads and down the lanes to The Swan or whatever back in the countryside. All this of course is built into the GPS, it isn't picking up data downloads like the iPhone maps application, data downloads that can cost the unwary a fortune whilst overseas. I think the GPS unit is the single most impressive piece of computer gear I've ever used and is extremely useful in a country where the only straight roads are the ones the Romans built.

Anyway, back from our sojourns, I decided to try selecting "bicycle" as the vehicle type and see how it worked. It was hopeless. Basically, the route selection algorithm is the same but the average speed used to calculate time of arrival is much lower and it doesn't use Interstate highways. Put in home and church and tell it you're a bicycle and it sends you down every major arterial street clogged with traffic, transit, doorzones, intersection conflicts and highway on and off ramps. It even sends you down Snelling, perhaps the most gruesome bit of bicycling roadway in Saint Paul. It doesn't use the Intercampus Transitway or the Midtown Greenway at all. As brilliant as the GPS is for motor vehicle navigation, it really is pretty useless for bicycle navigation where, in my opinion, thoughtful route selection that is almost always different from what you do in a car is key to happy and safe cycling.

The only bad news about the bicycle option on google maps? It's not in the iPhone Maps application yet, where the choices are still motor vehicle, transit or walking (and yes, I checked the App Store for updates). I suppose it's still a beta product (I think gmail is too) so maybe they're going to get some feedback first, but it would be very useful for cyclists on the iPhone.

Hummer? Bummer.

2010-02-24T16:58:00.003-06:00

The Hummer in many ways represented the worst of the excesses of the last decade, consumerist, credit-driven, confusing militaristic with patriotic, fuel-guzzling, road-hogging, wannabe SUV. I remember seeing them in one of their original breeding grounds, an actual H1 (the military-sized and highly capable off-road vehicle) being driven by a cute blond in Sun Valley in 1996. Later, GM grafted a lookalike body on a Tahoe frame and charged the earth for them as H2s, then later yet, added a more compact H3 for those with the Hummer personality defect who couldn't cough up the $50K+ for the H2. They had a bunch of dealers build special Hummer areas including big rocky things to park them on out front.

Well, it didn't work. Gas got expensive, leading to the ironic situation where the biggest complaints about both the Hummer H2 and the Toyota Prius was the mileage, the H2 because it guzzled gas so voraciously, the Prius because it would turn in 43 mpg and not 52 as its buyers had so fervently hoped.

Gas got cheaper, but then credit got expensive, unemployment went up, houses went underwater, repo men got busy and Hummer sales tanked. The rugged image of the highly-capable military vehicle was diluted as it became an under-armoured deathtrap susceptible to Iraqi IEDs mid-decade. GM would have gone belly up if the government hadn't stepped in to rescue it, and the company has ruthlessly cut brands, closed plants and terminated dealers. A deal was reached to sell the Hummer division to some Chinese company, but even they don't want it. From today's New York Times:

DETROIT — General Motors said Wednesday that it would shut down Hummer, the brand of big sport-utility vehicles that became synonymous with the term “gas guzzler,” after a deal to sell it to a Chinese manufacturer fell apart.

The buyer, Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines, said in a statement that it withdrew its bid because it was unable to get approval from the Chinese government, which is trying to put a new emphasis on limiting China’s dependence on imported oil and protecting the environment.

In addition, people close to the negotiations had said that the biggest obstacle to emerge in the last few days was not regulatory approval, but rather bank financing. While Tengzhong has the cash to pay for the Hummer brand, it needed bank financing to operate the division, redesign vehicles and set up new production plants in China.
A spokesman for Hummer, Nick Richards, said G.M. had no specific timetable for completing the wind down, but left open the possibility that G.M. would be open to new bids...

About 3,000 jobs in the United States could be affected by the shutdown, including positions at G.M. and the brand’s dealerships. A factory in Shreveport, La., that builds the Hummer H3 and H3T and other G.M. trucks already was scheduled to close by 2012. The larger H2 was built for G.M. by A. M. General in Mishawaka, Ind., until December, when production was temporarily halted to allow for the sale process to conclude.

The deal would have made Tengzhong the first Chinese company to sell vehicles in North America, though it planned to keep Hummer’s operations in the United States.
“Tengzhong worked earnestly to achieve an acquisition that it believed to be a tremendous opportunity to acquire a global brand at an attractive price,” Tengzhong said in its statement. “The renewed investment to be made by Tengzhong and other investors would have provided Hummer’s existing management team the ability to build greener utility vehicles that would have been attractive and useful in new markets such as China as well as the existing core markets.”

Mr. Richards said Hummer dealers in the United States have about 2,500 vehicles in their inventories. In January, the brand made just 265 sales in the United States. Hummer sales plunged 67 percent in 2009, to a total of 9,046.

I won't miss them, but I was never the market anyway. I have to say that for all the hatred Hummers inspired (and it merited it's own site, FUH2.com, consisting of photos of people flipping off Hummers), I've never been yelled at or otherwise abused by a Hummer driver. It may be because there aren't that many of them compared to, say, pickup trucks, who as a class are the most frequent communicators with me while cycling. And once, while looking at some actual facts, I noted that the footprint of a Hummer was actually slightly less than that of a Honda Odyssey minivan, though the H2 was wider and therefore blocked the views from behind more than the minivan. Maybe it was the whole fake-military attitude at a time when a bunch of chickenhawks had taken us to war that was so aggravating. Anyway, may those Hummers rest in peace.

On the Manliness of Cycling

2010-02-19T23:09:00.001-06:00

I liked this comment on the inestimable BikeSnobNYC blog, by a guy watching the Olympics:

I'm really enjoying these winter Olympics in Vancouver, between men's figure skating and short track speed skating relay, these sports make road cycling in lycra and shaved legs look like Aussie Rules football.

Those Darn Red Lights

2008-10-04T22:21:00.001-05:00

There is the usual flap going on in the letters to the editor and blogs right now about cyclists on the streets, with the predictable arc including the most common gripe amongst drivers, that cyclists never stop at stop signs or red lights. There is some truth to this, just as there is to my counter-assertion that motorists don't stop at stop signs or red lights either. Today I got a dramatic demonstration of this.

I was going to Siwek's Hardware over by the Lowry Street Bridge to get some 10" wide cedar siding for my house. It's an odd size, but Siwek's carries things like this. I was driving my pickup truck, since I'd be hauling lumber. I drive north on University and wanted to turn left, west, on Lowry. I signalled. There was someone wanting to turn left on the other side of the intersection who'd blocked up a line of traffic. They were impatiently pulling out of line to get around her, so I waited. The light turned yellow, she turned. I hesitated while a last couple of cars came through on yellow, irritated that they might miss the light, then completed my turn onto westbound Lowry.

A van went by eastbound, pretty fast, I thought, and I looked in my rear view mirror just in time to see a Jeep Liberty come into the intersection on the red (the van had the green, the Liberty was northbound on University like I was). The van caught the ledt rear of the Liberty which carried on through the intersection.

I went on to Siwek's, got my lumber, then came back. The Liberty had got spun around and the rear wheel had come completely off, so that it was sitting on three wheels and a shock absorber. It was some young lady driver, and she was now talking on a cell phone.

The Lesson? Well, the point is that motorists are pretty bad about stopping at stop signs and red lights, bad enough that I am impatient with the constant accusations that cyclists never stop at these traffic control devices.

Also, the van had the green light and the right of way and was probably pretty surprised when the Jeep suddenly materialized in front of them. On a bicycle, this could have been a real shock! I always check intersections because there are sometimes late or oblivious red light runners coming along.

Finally, this chick just blithely sailed through the light and got clipped. She was probably embarrassed, undoubtedly late, her insurance is about to go up and her nice shiny silver Jeep is kind of messed up. But, she is basically ok, well enough to be jabbering away on her mobile fifteen minutes later. A cyclist running that light like that and getting clipped by a van would be badly injured or dead. Drivers are dense and oblivious enough as it is, if cyclists really just ran red lights all the time they'd be dead.

There are plenty of lousy cyclists out there but they're armed only with 30 pound bicycles. There are plenty of airhead drivers out there and they're armed with 4,000 pound steel motor vehicles. Be careful out there.

Henry in Velonews!

2008-06-19T22:09:00.004-05:00

Yes, my son has made it to Velonews! The shot shows the tight group of men racing for the finish line at the end of the Mankato Road Race last Saturday. The arrow picks out Henry.

Yep, that's my boy, holding up the orange flag! I was a Volunteer Coordinator for the races this year and one of my main responsibilities was the course marshalls. Henry worked Wednesday and Friday nights and all day Saturday. The glory boys may be those sprinting to the finish line, but the volunteers make this all work. I had the privilege of working with dozens of these folks and the races went great. Henry was one of many who worked multiple shifts and days and I am legitimately proud of him. You can read the account of the racing stuff in Velonews; this photo is from Mankato's Stage 5. The photo is by Kurt Jambretz of Action Images, though I added the arrow!

Sprocket Man

2008-06-07T10:42:00.004-05:00

I was at Barley John's with some of the other nutters from the Three Speed Tour and there's often a show'n'tell. Many times these are old English bicycle parts of such rarity that I have no idea what they are, other times it's more recent but interesting stuff. I hardly ever have anything, at least since I last modelled my Rainlegs.

This time, though, Juston showed up with a comic book called "Sprocket Man". Here's some of the cover art:

This comic book isn't dated, but a close reading says it's probably 1973/74. Old bugger bike guys notice the high-flange front hubs, suicide brake levers, automobile styles, leg lights, lock styles and of course the fashions. This would also be in the midst of the 1970s Bike Boom.

Now, this isn't the weirdest bicycle safety material ever (the undisputed top place has to go to 1963's One Got Fat, sort of Planet of the Apes version of the League of American Bicyclists material and well worth watching) but it must rank right up there. In this comic book, Sprocket Man, complete in superhero outfit, dispenses advice on bicycle safety. Even more than One Got Fat, the material is well-thought out and remarkably relevant even 35 years later. The 1970s Bike Boom was a time when adults were riding bicycles in traffic in the U.S. for the first time in decades, and you'll notice the Right Hook, alternative left turn possibilities, ride with traffic, obey traffic signals, signal your turn, stay off the sidewalk, be courteous to pedestrians on the trails, use lights and reflectors, etc. I borrowed Juston's copy and scanned it in; you can read Sprocket Man here but be warned it runs 12 Meg (it started out at 62 Meg, so I've cut it down for you).

Comic books can be an effective communication tool, combining pictures and text (see the entry on Making Comics in Cool Tools) and Sprocket Man is actually pretty good once you get past the superhero thing. Now people draw on computer, and the pen-and-ink thing looks old, but it's still pretty cool.

Credits: Louis Saekow, Artist; John Troja and Julia Molander, Directors; developed by the Urban Bikeway Design Collaborative, a project of Urban Scientific and Educational Research, Inc., Washington, DC; this copy originally distributed by Pavlak's Pedal Palace, Mt. Clemens, Michigan, a Raleigh and Rampar Bicycles dealer. There is a Stanford Univeristy article from 2002 describing Sprocketman's origins. Finally, the CPSC has its own 24-page Sprocketman comic, apparently much the same material without the glossy cover which takes my PDF to 28 pages. Their copy is a smaller PDF but not as clear as mine; you gotta make choices in life.

Volunteers Needed

2008-06-04T21:05:00.010-05:00

I'm a volunteer coordinator for the Nature Valley Grand Prix/Great River Energy Bicycle Festival which is coming up next week and we're still looking for more volunteers. I thought I'd post the info and see if anyone bites.

There are races on five days, Wednesday June 11 to Sunday June 15:

Wednesday 6/11 (evening) – Downtown St. Paul Criterium
Thursday 6/12 (evening) – Cannon Falls Road Race
Friday 6/13 (morning) – St. Paul Riverfront Time Trial
Friday 6/13 (evening) – Minneapolis Downtown Criteirum
sure hope Friday the 13th isn't a Portent of Doom
Saturday 6/14 – Mankato Road Race
Sunday 6/15 – Stillwater Criterium
(and yes, it's Father's Day)

For each race, there is setup work to be done, course marshalling during the race itself, and then teardown afterwards. There are volunteer shifts for all of these work needs at each event and I'd like to ask you to consider signing up to work a shift or two.

One of the women zooms past. The course marshalls are very close to the action.
Don't care much about bicycle racing? Yeah, me either. However, there is fun to be had working on events like this with friends and, in the end, the profits from the races go to Children's Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota. I've volunteered for several years but last December, now part of the organizing committee, was at the meeting where we presented one of those big printed checks to a doctor at the Clinics, who went on to discuss the palliative care for terminally ill children he works on. There were suppressed sniffles throughout the room. I hadn't worked these races for noble purposes, but felt privileged to be there for this presentation and an aspect of the races I hadn't considered.

The setup work is important stuff and goes on even in the rain. We've torn down in roaring thunderstorms before. This is 2007 in Minneapolis.

Like to see what to expect as a volunteer? You can read about my experience last year, in 2006 (you have to scroll down) and even in 2005 (you have to scroll down here too).

Interested? You can sign up on the NVGP's website volunteer pages. If you don't want to work out on the races but wouldn't mind hosting a bike racer or two for a few nights, we have a Host Housing signup too, though it might be getting late for that.

Thanks for reading this, and I hope to see you at a race or two as a volunteer or spectator!

Thanks
Matt Cole
NVGP Volunteer Coordinator

Website: http://www.minnbikefest.com/

From my 2006 write-up, referring to my old friend Paul who rode up here from Iowa to work on the races for multiple days:

"Karla reminded me of something I'd said when she asked me about why Paul would do this, why would he ride up here to work like a dog for several days? She said I responded "Oh, Paul's always up for a bad time". On the face of it, working nights like Friday moving fencing in an unbelievable downpour doesn't sound like a great time, but it's a bonding experience. I wouldn't even say male bonding, because there were several women out there in the rain working away as well. And as they say, of those to whom much is given, much is expected. We are blessed with decades of fun on bicycles, good health, the flexibility to get the time off and the attitude that hard work shared with old friends can be enjoyable. It's also a great time of year to be outside doing stuff. You should consider joining in next year."

Bridgework on Sunday

2008-05-25T21:28:00.001-05:00

As is often my custom, I took my bicycle to church Sunday to ride home after the early service, in which choir I sing, while my wife the Music Director stays on to play the late service. These are usually nice rides home without much in the way of time pressure and I can wander a bit.

I'd seen that today the construction guys working on the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi were going to lift into place a couple of big concrete segments using some enormous crane on a barge. This sounds fun! So I rode past the West Bank of the University of Minnesota and onto the 10th Avenue Bridge immediately adjacent to the I-35W bridge construction site. This makes a marvelous viewpoint, by the way, and is fabulously accessible by bicycle. Here's what I saw.

Jeez, fellas, I hate to be critical or anything, but it looks to me like these aren't level. This is the land side of the approach to the southern bank of the bridge. This would be by the Holiday Inn, for the locals.

There were a bunch of workers here where the big concrete bridge deck segments were to be placed. I kind of wonder what individual workers do in a lift like this. A bunch were taking photographs. In the background you can see part of the Stone Arch Bridge, now used only for pedestrians and cyclists to get across the Mississippi. On the lower right you can see the downstream lock doors for the Upper Saint Anthony Lock.

This is one major crane. It's two barges side by side and moored to the river bank against a pretty strong current. That's a towboat parked behind the two barges. Off to the right is another barge with the two bridge segments to be lifted with a towboat that had moved them into position. These things are cast in the Bohemian Flats area about half a mile downstream. This used to be a neighborhood full of (you guessed it) Bohemians but it was prone to flooding and they were moved out in the 1960s. It's normally open parkland now, but has proven darn handy in the event a major bridge falls down a few hundred yards upstream. They moved a lot of the steel beams there to figure out what had happened, and now are casting these concrete segments there. The little tiny tow nestled in at the bottom of the photo seems to be a water taxi...at one point, it chugged across the river with somebody, then came back. I suppose getting from one side to the other would be a real pain otherwise.

The overall lift scene. You can see downtown Minneapolis in the background and the Upper Saint Anthony Lock and Dam in the middle distance. The river has some real current to it at the moment.

The crane was going to lift this thing, which the workers are fiddling with. Each bridge section had four long rods sticking out of it; near as I could tell, those would go through the four yellow holes in this puppy and be secured somehow, then lifted into position. The pulley on this crane has lots of mechanical advantage and they have to pull oodles of cable to get it move anywhere.

Unfortunately, there was lots of standing around activity going on and I had tickets to The Triangle Factory Fire Project ("a whimsical lighthearted romp!") at the Hillcrest Center Theatre at 2:00, so at 12:30, just as some actual activity was stirring on the deck, so I took my reluctant departure and rode on home and didn't see the actual lift.

The play was excellent, by the way, but today's performance was the final one. This was opening day for bridge segment lifting, and there are 120 sections to be done, so you still have plenty of time to see more.

OK, I'll Tutor You on How To Commute

2008-05-24T18:37:00.000-05:00

My class on Bicycle Commuting was a bit of a bust. The young lady from the TMO was there and was apologetic from the beginning because the neighbourhood newsletter advertising a whole series of classes, seminars and rides (of which mine was the first) hadn't gone out yet. I noted in the last entry that it could be anything from three to 175 people. I was too optimistic. They'd been touting the class at Bike to Work Day and other events, but in the end, one woman showed up.

I ran through my spiel anyway. It was more responsive to audience input than it might have been with a larger group. On the off-chance it was a hit, I'd done thirty copies of my Bicycle Commuting handout and brought along a stack of the Trek One World Two Wheels (great name!) brochures. There were plenty of spares!

Despite the thin audience, it reaffirmed several points I made in the handout; both women were confused by derailleur gearing (they knew how to shift, but not about how to think about it or the amount of overlap and duplcation derailleur drivetrains have); the TMO woman does intermodal transport, taking her bike on the bus to work, then riding home, due to lack of shower facilities at her place of employment. I mentioned this as an alternative. She also said that the bike racks on the buses are getting more use, and she has had a bus come along with both slots taken even though she's early in the route; I mentioned that as well.

We went on for about an hour and a half when I detected fatigue setting in and wrapped things up. I packed everything back up, my 29 spare brochures (actually, I left one for the church, who I had credited on the back cover) and laptop, on which I had a pile of relevant photos in a Powerpoint show. It was beautiful outside, maybe 60. I had changed upon arrival to dress trousers, shirt and tie to make the point that it could be done, and decided to ride home all dressed up, just changing to cycling shoes.

Despite the lame attendance, running through the presentation in some semblance of order was worthwhile. The deadline helped, as well, as it made me write my handout. I consider this a beta version, but if you want to read it, it's called Bicycle Commuting: Making a Simple Thing Sound All Complicated and runs 20 pages. After Thursday's experience with my rapt audience of two, I'm tempted to make it longer, filling out the Gears and adding to How To Ride in Traffic in which, at the moment, I don't mention the Door Zone, for instance. If you read it and have comments, I'd like to hear 'em. My e-mail address is printed on the back cover (and the next version won't be quite so time-specific but will still make many references to the Twin Cities).

Anyway, I was riding home and going up Victoria saw a bicycle ahead of me which I easily overtook. It was a lady pulling her daughter on an Adams Trail-a-Bike. Her daughter was ringing her bell, so I rung mine back at her as I went by. I stopped at University at a red light and she caught up. She asked if I was riding home from work (still in tie, remember). Nope, I said, I actually just taught a class on Bicycle Commuting. Really, she asked, we're on our way home from church at the cathedral. We're trying to use the bike more. She was proud of her bicycle, a stylish new Trek. The light changed, we exchanged farewells and rode across University. Then it occured to me; I've got a couple of dozen spare handouts with me, why not offer her one?, so I pulled over and rummaged around in my pannier as she came up and stopped.

I asked if she'd like a Commuting handout. Sure! I gave her one and said I'd appreciate any comments she might have. She thought riding more sounded like a good idea, and thought maybe Commuting seminars are something they could sponsor at church. That probably wouldn't be a bad idea. We again exchanged goodbyes and rode on.

I wonder if this is finally Our Moment. My Trail-a-bike lady mentioned gas prices; my single outside attendee talked about her Suburban and gas prices and her commute. Is gas finally costing enough to make people begin to reconsider transportation options? I've seen false starts before, with the first oil embargo along with the 1970s Bike Boom, with the 1979/80 Iran embargo and high prices then. Cars got smaller, the speed limit dropped to 55, but then oil prices dropped dramatically in the mid-1980s and those efforts faded. The speed limit crept back up; our national fleet mileage peaked in 1986, the year oil dropped from around $30 a barrel to around $10; the young adult baby boomers who had driven the Bike Boom and cycle touring in the 1970s settled into middle age in motor vehicles. With oil so cheap it was hard not to partake of the cheap energy situation. This time, though, it doesn't seem like oil and gas will get cheap again. Is this the inflection point when some more permanent shift in transportation takes place? It feels like it, and hope to be able to help those wanting to incorporate cycling into the mix.

Teach You To Commute I Will

2008-05-19T22:38:00.005-05:00

I'm teaching a class on Commuting by Bicycle on Thursday. This is being done on behalf of the Midway TMO (actually, it merged with the Saint Paul TMO and became Smart Trips). It was to be publicized in a mailing but the mailing hasn't gone out yet. I guess they've been flogging it at some events, but there's no signup required so there's no idea how many people will show. Fifteen, they guess, I'm printing 25 copies of my handout, and this is one of those events that could end up with 3 people or 175.

In the event you feel the need for advice from a dilettante commuter such as myself, it will be Thursday May 22 from 6:00PM to 8:00PM at Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church at 217 Mackubin Street in Saint Paul. Maybe only two civilians will show up and we can impress them with the beauty and efficiency of bicycle commuting by having a bitter and recrimination-filled argument about clipless pedals.

I did commute today, what a hero, Me commuting isn't that notable except today I went to Home Depot after work. We're in the midst of a slowly-evolving kitchen renovation and this was the day to talk Cabinets. This isn't all that fascinating, either, but I rode the new bike trail that parallels Saint Anthony Boulevard. This was a disused train line, and in fact where the trail starts off Walnut just south of County C, there is a sign saying that this right of way is reserved for commuter rail use. The implication; the bike path is temporary, and don't whine you cyclists when we take it back. For the moment, and at the rate those projects move, for many years to come, it makes an excellent alternative to ridng on Saint Anthony Boulevard itself, which is four-lane divided and likely to be regarded as almost Interstate-like by motorists.

To get to the trail, I rode down Cleveland and took County C west. County C west of Cleveland pretty much blows. East of Cleveland there's a superb bike path south of the road AND a four- or five-foot shoulder for those who disdain sidepaths. West of Cleveland there's hardly any shoulder beyond the two travel lanes each way and it's concrete with lots of cracks and potholes indifferently filled in with asphalt. At least there's plenty of truck traffic and impatient motorists. Since it's outside of Saint Paul, it's not under the purview of the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board and I don't know of any plans for the lousy bit of County C, but if they rebuild it to the standards of the road east of Cleveland it would be an excellent route towards downtown.

Although this isn't exactly unexplored territory for me (although I hadn't been on the trail, which opened last fall), I did consult my excellent Twin Cities Bike Map, 9th edition (that's the brand new edition, just out). Little Transport Press has become Bike Everywhere which I think is just a new name. I really like this map and am constantly surprised by the number of cyclists who don't have it. I'll be urging it on those who attend my Commuting Class because I have found it very trustworthy over the years. The price went up to $11.95 from $9.95 but it's printed on some kind of waxy paper that is supposedly water resistant, which is good because my older ones have gotten pretty worn being carried around. You should get one of these maps.

I did like this bit from the new edition:

The I-35W bridge over the Mississippi is missing on the map. He'll have to put it back in, of course, but it won't affect cyclists other than to reopen the bike path on the east bank.

Speaking of bridges, I got an email noting that in the flurry of self-congratulatory bill passing at the last minute by our government (our Governor Tim Pawlenty seemed more agreeable than usual, perhaps hoping that next year he'll be Vice President) was a couple of million bucks to remove and rebuild the Cedar Avenue Bridge over the Minnesota River in Bloomington. This will be for cyclists and pedestrians only and is a useful connector across the river. Doug will have to update the map again; right now, his says "Bridge Out" at that spot. He also still shows the Lowry Avenue bridge open; it had a pier move 11 inches and our suddenly bridge-sensitive government closed it down (the same happened to a bridge in Saint Cloud, and the Hastings Highway 61 bridge is down to 1 lane due to buckling gusset plates...sheesh, you have one Interstate Bridge drop off the map and all of a sudden people give a damn about our crumbling infrastructure). It's getting hard for a cartographer to keep up with the bridge status in this state.

The Three Speed Tour

2008-05-19T07:27:00.002-05:00

The 2008 episode of the Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour was this past weekend. As always, Jon and Noel organized a wonderful event. We gathered in Red Wing, rode to Wabasha Saturday with some tailwinds and a spot of rain to make in an official Three Speed Tour, had the usual bash at the Eagle's Nest Coffee Shop Saturday night, then gathered to ride back Sunday. It was cooler Sunday, sunny, but we had stiff headwinds. Fortunately, these were often screened along the river but the group that took the highlands route out of Wabasha suffered for their decision though I gather there were terrific views. There was a Brew Up in Lake City, the usual social gathering in Old Frontenac, the excitement of the Hill Avenue climb and descent for many of us, then the slog into Red Wing into the teeth of the wind and the post-ride gathering at the Staghead. This was of course all done on three-speed bicycles whilst dressed in proper ladies-and-gentlemen fashion. In my case, I again went as the Quicker Vicar, seen here at the Lake Pepin sign on the Wisconsin side.

Last year I took the easy way out, sticking to Highway 35 south of Maiden Rock rather than taking the County AA/E climb to the top of the bluffs. This year, I climbed. Actually, I walked a bit of it, but it turns out that not much easier on the legs than riding. Once atop Maiden Rock, which had been ridden to by a tandem pulling a trailer and many riders including several young ladies in skirts and heels, we fell about to bask in the view and the sunlight.

That's Wisconsin Highway 35, the lowlands route, down below. The ride across the dandelion meadow is just about the only off-road riding I do all year. The reward is great, since two years ago I'd done the Death March selection for the loop and bypassed this outcrop by accident. It's worth going out to.

I'll write more, but it'll be a few days. Got a busy week coming up. To all who rode the Tour, thanks for a great event, it's terrific how our little bit of alternate reality for two days creates such a high and it's a priviledge to ride with you. It makes a great kickoff to the summer cycling season.

Gridlock

2008-05-14T11:26:00.002-05:00

It's Bike to Work Day in Saint Paul. Convoys formed at various points around the city and rode downtown to food and prizes and speeches. I don't work downtown, though, and am hoarding vacation time for other purposes, so just rode to work by myself.

I stopped at the dry cleaners to drop off some trousers to get cleaned and pressed for my clerical duties at this weekend's Three Speed Tour. I rode down Hoyt and took Hamline north up to Larpenteur, where I got in the left turn lane. A motorcycle pulled up next to me in the straight-through lane. Crossing traffic stopped, southbound Hamline traffic got the advanced-left signal and began going, I got poised to start, and....cross traffic started up again.

Neither I nor the motorcycle were heavy enough to trigger the traffic light.

Now, there was a segment on Channel 5 IMissedIt News a week or two ago about cyclists' running red lights and stop signs. Now here we were, me and the motorcyclist, obeying the traffic semaphores as cars stacked up behind us. If we strictly followed the law, nobody would go anywhere, ever.

I checked to make sure no cars were filtering forward to right-on-red, and rode over to the pedestrian crosswalk button and pushed it, then rode back into my left turn lane. Half a minute went by and cross traffic stopped. This time the southbound traffic got the advanced left again, but our lights turned green and we got to go. I hope that the motorists stacked up behind us noted that traffic signals don't always work for cyclists and that sometimes we have to take a liberal interpretation of their meaning or nobody goes anywhere.

I saw a couple of other riders along the way. I rode up Hamline rather than my usual Lexington to work, so am not sure if these folks are regulars or not, but a couple looked well-equipped (panniers, attire) and waved as they went by. No speeches at work, no free food, no prizes, just another day riding past the gas stations with their $3.72 signs up. With those kinds of prices, and possibly worse to come (a story last night on the news noted that many older gas pumps don't go past $3.99 a gallon, a faint echo of the late 1970s or was it early 1980s when older pumps wouldn't go past 0.999 a gallon), there may be more of us on the road. Give them a wave when you see them.

Bicycle Sales Up Worldwide

2008-05-13T22:16:00.000-05:00

Forbes has an article (reabable here) about the booming sales of bicycles worldwide. Some snippets:

Rising petrol prices, growing awareness of environmental issues and the popularity of cycling as a recreation sport has fuelled a surge in demand for bicycles around the world...

Bicycle sales have over the past five years increased by 14.6 percent among European Union nations, which buy 70 percent of the world's bikes, according to Bike Europe. In the United States, sales have increased by almost 9 percent in the same time period...

Europeans increasingly pedal to work on bike-friendly streets planned by city governments that encourage cycling, while a growing pool of commuters in China use battery bikes and Americans ride mainly for sport or to work off calories...

Would-be riders in newly developed regions such as Taiwan still see bikes as a symbol of a poor past, while riders complain worldwide of inclement weather, unsafe traffic and rampant theft despite the best locks.

That's an interesting point about the poor past in the last bit I cite above. I have read that in bicycle-friendly Amsterdam, one of the challenges is getting immigrant communities, especially Muslim ones, to adopt bicycling. It's not part of the cultural background for many in these communities, and, in an echo of late 19th-century America, the freedom bicycles allow women is discomforting to the traditional social structure.

Another interesting bit that addresses a market hardly even breathing in the U.S.:

Giant also manufactures battery powered bikes which are popular in China where the company operates three factories. Battery-powered bikes are a big hit as China's economic boom puts money in the pockets of even the poorest factory workers who almost immediately upgrade their bikes.

Chinese consumers snapped up more than 20 million battery powered bikes in 2006. The bikes, powered by a 36 or 48 volt battery can travel at around 25-km an hour. They sell for around 3000 yuan ($430) a unit.

Now, 25-km an hour is only about 16 mph, but that's still a useful speed, faster than my usual cruising in-town, and gets rid of some of the sweatiness that inhibits many people from commuting. Maybe this will become a market in this country as well.

Pedalphile

2008-04-29T16:39:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I was registering twocitiestwowheels.com as a domain name. I was thinking about registering pedalphile.com as well, but made the mistake of doing an inquiry in Network Solutions' site. It was available, but at $35 a year. At godaddy.com it was way cheaper to register a domain, so I registered Two Cities Two Wheels and tried to register Pedalphile, but it showed it held by Network Solutions. Darn them! I figured I'd get back to it once the hold was released and register it, but when I tried today someone else had already snagged it April 13. Oh well. It's a great name, and I hope they make use of it.

Oil has been on people's minds lately. The runup in oil prices has not been that big a surprise, or at least should not have been to sentient beings. With gas prices in the $3.40 a gallon range, there are now calls to drop the federal gasoline tax for the summer to help the American consumer. Senator Obama is against it, Senators Clinton and McCain are for it. I think it's a stupid idea. Gasoline has become more expensive, but it's going to stay that way and you might as well get used to it. In the meantime, the Federal budget deficit continues to increase (and will take a nice jump next week when the government sends us all money borrowed from the Chinese so that we can go out and blow it. I may take my children to dinner since they're the poor sods who'll be paying it back, with interest) which helps weaken the dollar which helps push up oil prices.

Although not normally someone I cite when I make a point, how about this quote:

"Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States"

That's Dick Cheney in October 1986 shortly after introducing legislation to increase the gas tax. He supported it in part because it would help reduce the federal deficit, something that seems to have become less of a priority for him in recent years.

It has been interesting to watch the airlines' reactions to the oil price increase. Prices are going up and some airlines have simply shut down operations. I think airlines are in a bad position and combining Northwest and Delta, as has been proposed, does not answer the question of how to get by on $120 a barrel oil. With the economic headwinds from contracting credit, reduced consumer confidence and increased commodity prices showing up in oil and food, there is going to be reduced demand for air travel, a situation exacerbated by the higher ticket prices airlines will have to charge. Almost the whole industry has gone through bankruptcy and they don't have the equity cushion to absorb a lot of losses from fuel prices.

I think airlines are going to have to find some new equilibrium, with much higher ticket prices and a much reduced flight schedule. I looked to see how many flights there are from here to Chicago O'Hare each day. Care to guess? My boss guessed 12. Wrongo. If you choose to fly on May 5th (I just picked a date), you can select from 32 flights to O'Hare on United, American or Northwest (you can find USAir or Continental flights, too, but they're just code-shares with these guys). There's two off at 6AM, two more at 7AM, and after the fifth flight of the day goes at 8:15 not an hour goes by without a flight until the gap between the American 7:35PM departure and Northwest's 9:15 and 10:16 flights, at which point we're done for the day, only to run it all again tomorrow.

One wonders, is there currently and will there in future be sufficient demand to support 32 flights a day between here and Chicago? (I'm ignoring flights to Midway airport, although when ATA collapsed a few weeks ago a lot of those went away). What if there's only really demand for 24 flights, or 17, or 10? There will be some painful price discovery and service adjustments as the competitors and customers grope through the scheduling and pricing scenarios trying to find this equilibrium.

Less acutely, regular people are going to have the same groping, expensive journey. Transit ridership in the Twin Cities is already way up this year; bicycle commuting will probably increase as well, helped along by the promise of finally getting some temperate weather. Does anyone doubt that carpooling will become more popular? My father used to carpool in the 1960s and 1970s, partly because we didn't have a second car until I was 16. If you live a long way from work, or work and home are areas not well-covered by transit, these adjustments are going to be hard.

I have to say I have enjoyed the cheap energy era. As much as I like bicycles, I also love airplanes, and first flew when it was so unusual that everyone dressed up and they published a passenger list, just like on a ship (OK, 1960, for the curious, by British Overseas Airways Corporation Douglas DC-6, Buffalo-Gander-Shannon-London service)(and no, I don't remember a thing, but I do still have the passenger list and I am exceptionally cute in the photos wearing my camel hair overcoat). I've enjoyed many a car trip just aimlessly sightseeing, and many of the advantages of cheap energy, from year-round fresh foods to cheap airline tickets, have enlivened my life. I think this era is drawing to a close, that we are getting higher energy prices from structural economic reasons rather than transient supply disruptions, and that adjustments are going to have to be made.

Bicycles are part of the answer. They can't do everything, of course, and they're pretty useless for nipping down to Chicago for the day, like I did last year on planes with a cheap advance-purchase ticket, but for many trips most of us take much of the time, they'll do fine. I guess it's our job to welcome new cyclists into the fold, show them the ropes, restore to them some sense of the joy and discovery that riding still holds. No matter how much you like bicycles, though, I'd probably hesitate to introduce yourself as a pedalphile!

This is a bit harsh

2008-04-25T07:38:00.000-05:00

I think bicycle thieves are among the scum of the earth and don't get punished enough, but this is going a bit far: Two Jailed Over Boy's Pool Death.

Kid steals a bicycle, the owner and some friends throw him in a pool, prevent him from getting out, and he drowns. A crowd watched:

She said about a dozen people watched Shane struggle in the water and did not try to rescue him.

Ah yes, Jolly Olde England!

I'm not sure what the appropriate punishment is, but death sounds too harsh. These guys are all at pretty stupid ages, not unlike the 15-year-old who stole a car a couple of weeks ago in Minneapolis, drove 80mph down Lake Street running red lights and killed a woman going to church. I wouldn't be surprised if bike thefts rise this year, triggered by more people trying bicycle commuting and the resulting increase in opportunities for theft by the more feral elements of the population.

Coincidence?

2008-03-27T18:15:00.005-05:00

February 10, 2008: Matt sees Robin Williams at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show.

March 27, 2008: Robin Williams' wife of 19 years files for divorce

Hmmm, I wonder if the Visa statement showed up?

Stupidest Bike Lane?

2008-03-27T18:11:00.001-05:00

Slate has a video purporting to show the stupidest bike lane in America, a 275-foot effort in Los Angeles. Take a look here to watch the video. He solicits suggestions for stupider bike lanes if you have any in mind.

Bummer

2008-02-04T14:38:00.001-06:00

I was getting my jollies reading today's Bike SnobNYC and the comments and amidst the comments was the news that Sheldon Brown has died. I think most any interested cyclist has referred to Sheldon's extremely good site on cycling gear, technique and history. He was very engaged in the community and even commented on my blog a couple of times, which made me feel honored. I never met the guy, never talked to him personally, exchanged emails just a couple of times, but his loss leaves a hole in the cycling community. He'll be missed.

This is an image of Sheldon that Ahearne had engraved on one of their flasks as part of a tribute memorial to him at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Portland.

Peak Oil at the Legislature on Monday

2008-02-01T07:26:00.000-06:00

Matthew Simmons of Simmons International will address the Minnesota legislature on Monday, February 4 at 1:00 p.m., Room 200 of the State Office Building. He will speak to a joint meeting of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, Technology and Communications and House Energy Finance and Policy Division. His visit is sponsored by Representative Bill Hilty in an effort to move forward a resolution directing the state to plan to meet the challenges of peak oil. The meeting is open to the public and we are encouraged to attend and show legislators they are concerned about this issue.

I like Matt Simmons and have a link to his website over on the right. If you read the Peak Oil sites, you'll find all kinds of attitudes and opinion, some of which can give you the willies. Simmons, an investment banker with long experience specializing in the energy industry, brings a voice that I find informed and reality-based. Not to say that he's reassuring; he thinks the peak may have hit in mid-2005 and we're in the early stages of the production plateau/rising demand with the resulting increase in energy prices. Also, he has been warning about peak natural gas, which is alarming to me since my house is heated with gas.

Simmons has links to many presentations on his site. I particularly like the perspective from his Presentation to his Harvard Business School 40th Reunion (like I said, he's real mainstream)on the history of the energy industry these last four decades.

Anyway, this meeting is open to the public. There are many reasons to ride bicycles, among them their supreme efficiency. They are a simple answer to many complicated problems. If you want to hear about one of these complicated problems from an informed expert, this meeting would be a good one to attend. Having said that, I'm not sure I'll make it, having just been gone three days on a business trip (on which, in an apparent effort to speed up the Peak Oil phenomenon, I was "upgraded" to a Ford Expedition for no additional charge, what a bloated cow of a vehicle that is!) and next week I'm gone after Tuesday, so time is short at work, and I may not make it.

Portland on Marketplace

2008-01-21T07:32:00.000-06:00

I went down to the Iowa Bicycle Summit in Des Moines this past weekend. The Summit ran Friday and Saturday, so I drove down after work Thursday evening. On the way down, I was listening to NPR and on the Marketplace show and they had a segment called Portland's Support of Bikes Pays Off. It opens thus:

Imagine San Diego as one big peloton today. Thousands of cyclists are converging there for the Bicycle Leadership Conference. They'll be figuring out how to expand the bicycle market. One obvious answer: get more commuters to ride bikes to work. On that score, Portland, Oregon, is way out front of the pack. According to Bicycling Magazine, the city has the highest number of bike commuters in the country.

Apparently there's an Oregon state statute that any story on bicycling in Portland starts with the Zoobombers, and this one conforms. They talks about other companies and even Vanilla Bicycles, which I think are just about the most succulent of the custom frames out there. Ten grand now, and a five-year waiting list. Anyway, it's nice to see bicycles getting a bit o' coverage on a show mostly concerned with larger markets.

I'll be out sampling the Portland Bicycle Scene in a couple of weeks; I'm taking the Framebuilders Express out to Portland to go to the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. I'm sure Vanilla will be there and the list might be six years by the time the show's done. It's going to be like getting on the list for Green Bay Packers season tickets--you'll need to sign up your unborn offspring.

A couple of items of note from the Iowa Bicycle Summit: Trek is doing an advocacy effort and apparently liked my blog name a lot. They've called theirs One World Two Wheels and have some nice non-Trek-specific advocacy materials. One of the things they wanted to do, but Clif Bar beat them to the punch, is a site like Clif's excellent 2 Mile Challenge, which shows people what's within 2 miles of home, and thus easily rideable. From Trek's point of view, getting more people to ride means selling more bicycles, and addressing the Practical Cycling arena is a way to expand these markets. I'll write more about the Iowa Bicycle Summit tonight or tomorrow.

$100 A Barrel

2008-01-03T17:16:00.000-06:00

Was it really less than three years ago that President Bush took a nice romantic hand-holding walk with Crown Prince Abdullah to urge him to keep oil below $50 a barrel?

Yeah, that worked well.

Yesterday, a single oil contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange traded at $100.00 a barrel, and ten more traded at $99.90. That's within spittin' distance of the inflation-adjusted highest price ever of $102.81 a barrel, reached in April 1980. The Journal does a wonderful interactive grahic of this, with the green shading being the inflation-adjusted price. You can see the Journal's graphic here. Maybe Mr. Bush should have let the Prince get to second base.

I think we're in for a tough year or four. Not only are house prices dropping (and the real shitstorm of mortgage problems in the most bubblicious states still lie ahead of us), but plenty of people are eyeball-deep in car payments, too. This article in the L.A. Times called "New Cars That Are Fully-Loaded--With Debt" looks at this problem. Motor vehicles are the most expensive piece of depreciating consumer crap that most of us buy, and more and more people are getting underwater on these loans.

Part of the reason I haven't been blogging as much recently is the usual December Christmas crush and partly because I have spent a lot of time reading on what has been termed the Subprime Crisis but really is a broader credit crisis underlaid by financial institution solvency issues. What can I say, my degree's in Economics, my background is finance, and I like this stuff. If you want to follow along on this, I highly recommend the Calculated Risk blog. Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with bicycles. If you'd rather hit yourself with a hammer than read about mortgage backed securities servicing agreements, Calculated Risk may not be the spot for you.

Cycling Congressman

2007-12-29T06:19:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not dead. December is our busiest month and my lightest cycling month of the year. It's also a bit weak on blogging not that the world mourns. I did notice that this weekend's Wall Street Journal has an article about Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon congressman who bicycles everywhere. It's not a common choice among U.S. Representatives. Apparently, the Journal is going to be set free one day soon but for the moment I have printed the article into a PDF file and you can read it here.

Have a Happy New Year!

Scofflaw

2007-11-04T12:22:00.000-06:00

I haven't been blogging much in recent weeks, but thought this was notable. There will be a ribbon cutting for the new Midtown Greenway bridge over Hiawatha on Thursday November 8 from 4 to 6PM. I expect there'll be the usual huge ribbons, oversized scissors and speeches. It's a good moment for the Greenway Coalition and the politicians who supported and funded this. The bridge is really nice.

I can say this from personal experience, as on the way home from church this morning (Karla plays two services, I just sing in the first one and then ride my bicycle home, having taken it on the car to church) Henry and I rode up Bryant and onto the Midtown Greenway. There were signs up along the path about the Thursday grand opening. When we got to the end of the Greenway where it turns right onto the sidewalk to go across Hiawatha you could see the end of the bridge ramp approach with huge TRAIL CLOSED signs. However, there was some guy who'd overtaken us a couple of minutes before riding up there. It didn't look that closed. Signs are for motorists and other losers, let's go take a look. So, Henry and I rode between the two TRAIL CLOSED signs and up the west approach.

It looks really nice, all landscaped now with streetlights in place. It curves up to the big support pole that holds the whole bridge up. There are a couple of benches facing towards this pole, which seems a weird thing to sit and look at. Then, over Hiawatha, across the light rail tracks and swoop back down to the trail on the east side of the street. Other cyclists there were coming up the trail and dutifully queuing up to cross on the crosswalk. I thought about calling out to them and suggesting that they use the bridge, but figured I'd leave that up them, they'll know soon enough.

This is really nice. No more riding on the sidewalk, no more crossing on a crosswalk, just up and over all that traffic. We rode on eastwards to the end, where you can see how wonderful the Short Line bridge would be to cross the Mississippi and connect into Saint Paul, but had to get off and move over to the Lake/Marshall bridge.

Maybe you can't get across during the week if there's lots of construction guys around finishing up work, but on a late Sunday morning there was no problem, and a week from now it will be officially open.

The Education of a Cyclist

2007-09-30T19:19:00.000-05:00

I was appointed to the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board last February. A few months in, I can see the frustrations that others have experienced in this sort of capacity. The BAB is a Mayor-appointed committee with members from each of Saint Paul's seven Wards (I'm Ward 5) and a couple of at-large members. There are also representatives from Parks and Recreation, the Police and Public Works. We are to provide public input to the city on bicycle aspects of Saint Paul transportation. Part of the frustration comes from having no budget and no staff and all the power and influence that implies, so nearly all the work we do is volunteer out of our time (a city employee does keep minutes, a Parks and Rec guy works up the agendas). We meet every month and discuss things; how about a bike path on this street? Can we get the path along Shepherd Road repaved, it sucks? Most of these run into a welter of objections, no money, other projects, road widths, neighbour objections, other agencies have jurisdiction, so pipe-dreamy as to be out of the question, so on a month to month basis it's hard to feel like we're accomplishing much.

Others have felt this as well, have served on the BAB for a time then left in frustration or disgust to work other avenues. On the other hand, some things have got done. There are bike lanes painted on Como Ave. now, Share The Road signs have sprung up, there have been a couple of public meetings to solicit bicycle input and the recent heads of the BAB worked up the Bicycle portion of the Saint Paul Transportation plan. Perhaps it's the speed that things move that seems so slow, it's like walking off the end of one of those airport moving sidewalks where you suddenly slow down, like the Star Wars leap to light speed in reverse. You ask for something simple like a resurfacing of an existing bike path that is in bad enough shape that cyclists are returning to the adjacent highway and are met with all the problems, Scenic River Committee plans, DNR involvement, path not up to current design standards, DOT study of additional access points to road and how that will affect the path, some on county land, blah blah blah. All we really want is a six foot-wide path resurfaced, it'll be another 40% more expensive next year, but there's this flak cloud of objections. Perhaps someone sympathetic will get killed and that'll hasten things along, in the meantime the BAB seems like a long and tedious slog in a policital milieu in which I'm not used to operating.

Bike lanes or no bike lanes, I think more people are going to be riding in any case, led along by higher fuel costs and the rising popularity of city bikes, which have been big at last week's Interbike (Quality Bicycle Products just introduced their Civia line which, from the photos currently on the site, apparently include a generator hub but no lights, and I've long been a fan of the Breezer Uptown 8 where they had the guts to spec the Nexus Redband 8-speed Premium hub instead of the heavier Nexus 8 and do include lights along with the generator hub). If it's going to take until 2014 for the studies to be complete before we can commence the planning for the design criteria prior to the RFP to repave this stinking bicycle path then there must be something I can do in the meantime.

So I looked into the League of American Bicyclists League Certified Instructor (LCI) program. There are currently just three active LCIs in Minnesota and the profile of the LAB is so low you could slip it under the door. Not only that, it seems to have been through some turmoil. From what I gather, the LCI program arose from the Effective Cycling work of John Forrester. He's an opinionated guy and holds that cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles. Broadly speaking, I agree with this, but in the ways of so many cranky cyclists and the Roman Catholic Church, broadly agreeing isn't quite good enough, and there was some schism in the LAB. I haven't bothered to discern all the fault lines here, but there is a whole website called LAB Reform which goes on about Board actions, copies emails and quotes bylaws. I've been active in churches and charter schools in the past and recognize precisely the sort of self-righteous outrage in this site. When people start quoting bylaws then things have really fallen apart. (Not only have I seen this in churches and schools, but the bicycle-oriented Thunderhead Alliance just chopped their executive director as well, undoubtedly after the requisite internal bitterness) (but not before she got top credit on their new 2007 Benchmarking Report "Bicycling and Walking in the U.S." which I printed out but haven't had time to study yet). The League is apparently trying to restore rigour to the LCI program after a period of what some felt was too simple a qualification (this is hearsay, I don't personally know how the program changed).

The Iowa Bicycle Coalition led by Mark Wyatt wanted to increase bicycle education in Iowa and decided to train some LCIs. This meant having candidates do the Road 1 course, the basic LAB cycling course for adults, and then subsequently do the LCI training which is basically learning how to teach Road 1 and a couple of other classes for Commuters and Kids. I follow the IBC site and noticed the announcement of these classes so pestered Mark long enough and cited my Iowa connections enough that he let me in. Road 1 was in late August. The LCI course was September 21/22/23.

This was actually pretty good. The League's been around since 1880 (as the League of American Wheelmen with a really cool LAW logo rather than the gender-neutral League of American Bicyclists with LAB which sounds like a dopey dog). The LCI course has evolved out of the course they actually called Effective Cycling, which is now a registered trademark of John Forrester.

Some of the materials need updating:

Before riding, perform the ABC Quick Check. Here our rider sights down the chain line. Yep, looks good!

A fundamental skill is to be able to check traffic behind you while riding in a straight line. This also helps communicate with motorists. What do you think this rider is communicating?

Keep a firm grip on the handlebars! Yes, there were some women in the course as well.

[OK, OK, these aren't actually LAB materials. They're from the 1901 Fancy Cycling: Trick Riding for Amateurs by Isabel Marks. And you thought spinning the front wheel on your fixie was cool!]

They have been updating some of it and we were on the cutting edge. When we took the Road 1 course in August (14 or 15 of us versus the 11 in the LCI course) we were shown the old LAB movie. This was from probably 1988 or so and featured a smarmy actor I've never heard of ("Joe Blow, Hollywood star") and such a procession of old bicycles, cars and helmets that it was hard to pay attention to the message (Hey, look, a Pinto!) (I had one of those helmets!) (Jesus, remember those shoes?). The new movie instead has an actress presumably taking an older male friend on a bike ride. This poor actress is stuck with the thankless task of droning out all the Important Points in a way that no real humans ever speak to each other ("But Bob, you should wear a helmet whenever you ride and it should be level on your head with the straps properly positioned and snug around your chin" instead of what we'd really say, something like "Hey idiot, where's your helmet?"). This guy rides so little he has to clear a levee of flotsam out of the way to get his bike out but she wreaks her revenge by apparently taking him on some 80-mile multi-hour ride, whining all the way ("But Bob, you should signal your right turn by holding your left arm out bent up 90 degrees at the elbow although in some states it is now legal to signal by pointing right with the right arm so you should check your state laws and local ordinances"). Oh the whole, the new movie is a lot better than the old one but after a while I'd want to extend my left arm out, knock her over and make a run for it.

The LCI training ran 3-8 on Friday, 8-9 on Saturday (and I don't mean 1 hour) and 8-6 on Sunday. Some of it was classroom work, discussing learning styles and how to address them, various exercises. Much of Saturday morning was each of us doing a 10-minute presentation on an assigned topic. My buddy Paul from Cedar Rapids (who had independently arrived at the idea of doing this class) got the thankless task of explaining gearing and derailleur adjustments but my Atlantis saved the day due to the wondrous SKS/ESGE/Pletscher two-legged kickstand which, due to some quirk of geometry on that bike, clears the crank arms completely. Paul put the bike up on the table and demonstrated this stuff right in front of us, the huge bike towering over the class as he showed the derailleurs shifting and adjusted my cables out of whack ("This is what it sounds like when the derailleur is badly adjusted" he'd say, twiddling away at my barrel adjuster). Others had to do their units on lane positioning, safety statistics, brake adjustment and operation, helmet fit and changing a flat tire. Mine was clothing and accessories, which was funny because I hadn't really packed thoughtfully ahead of time so brought most everything cycling-related at the last minute. I showed off my Bell Metro helmet with its mirror, gloves, the always-impressive Rainlegs Assless Bike Chaps, SPD shoes, legendary Jong Won JSB-500 water bottle, Carradice Nelson Longflap with Nitto Quick Release, panniers, Ortlieb front bag, wool jerseys, etc. My presentation was a modest hit.

That afternoon we went out to work out the outdoor parking lot units. There are some basic skills the LAB teaches; a Quick Turn (especially useful when someone tries to Right Hook you and you use it to turn inside them, and taught as countersteering in the Motorcycle Safety Foundation classes), the Panic Stop (emphasizing the front brake and shifting your weight backwards to keep from going over the bars and helping the rear wheel to maintain traction) and the Rock Dodge (that quick wheel twitch you do to miss a rock without actually changing the overall direction of the bike). To experienced cyclists, these seem pretty straightforward, but to a lot of people, it's new ground. The Road 1 course has you set up these obstacles in a parking lot using tennis balls cut in two and running people through them. Here are some of the parking lot scenes from Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Carl returns to the start of one of the exercises. It was getting late and we actually managed to talk a pizza shop into delivering $80 worth of pizza to a parking lot at the corner of Third and Locust.

Zac's a Transportation Planner, Angela is an ex-state-trooper, Legislative Ombudsman and Des Moines's Bike to Work Program Director.

These folding bikes can look a bit daft but Paul rode his 140 miles over from Cedar Rapids.

Sunday morning we did the parking lot exercises for the Kids classes. Here Donnie and Zac compete in the always-popular slow race. You don't do this in Road 1.

Lori and Tina line up for the Quick Turn exercise. Tina didn't learn to ride a bicycle until she was 30.

Dan Ring doing well slow-riding on his Bike Friday. Iowa Bicycle Coaltion head Mark Wyatt is in the background.

The long time frames in the Saint Paul BAB look horrendous when viewed at the start, but we left Des Moines in 1994 to take a job in Minneapolis and they were talking then about the renovation of the East Side of downtown to be done in the unimaginably distant 2008 or something, and, well, here we are, the East Village (as they call it) is hopping, they have way more bicycle parking than, say, the Saint Paul Farmers Market (a shining symbol of the BAB's power!) and publicly-provided dog poop bags! No shit!

We'd each do our presentation, whether inside or out in the parking lot, then John Rider, the instructor, would ask us what we thought went well and what didn't, and the other LCI students would critique the presentation. We were getting to know each other pretty well; several of the Iowans already know each other, and we'd all done Road 1 in a day in August and were now in the midst of three days of the LCI class. This exercise was actually pretty useful, and made us think about and rapidly improve the way we talked, where we stood, the instructions we gave. It was particularly fun Sunday morning when we were instructed to act like 7th graders and responded with a welter of "Donnie farted!" and bicycle insults. Wait--bicycle insults sounds like 30-year-olds.

The last thing Saturday night was the night gear test, where we all rode to a dark path by the river and rode up and down the trail one at a time both with and without headlights shining on us to see how our reflectors and lights looked. This was illuminating har har. Sunday afternoon we did the road test, where in two groups we went out and did a 7 mile ride, alternately leading the group through a variety of traffic obstacles. It was surprisingly hot and very windy out.

There was a debriefing with John. Carl went first; he lived closest by, but a friend's 23-year-old daughter had been killed in a car crash and visitation was at six. Paul and I went next, as we were driving the furthest (Paul came to Saint Paul overnight, then took his Bike Friday on Amtrak the next morning to Washington DC and Cape Cod to visit a couple of his sisters). I noted to John that the League and the LCI program seemed a bit in transition and that they should get their act together. I pointed out a number of nagging errors in the text and a couple of stupid and even hilarious typos. Fundamentally, the set program of instruction, the base skills, the overall message was really good, but it is quickly undermined by mistakes or inconsistencies in the materials. If you're going to hold yourself out as the authority on bicycle education, the materials have to be excellent and error-free and the message consistent. It looks like the League is working on this; the parking lot drills instruction handout was very well done and new within the past month, and the video of the woman whining at Bob was much better than the old "hey look at that" one from the 1980s. Paul did his debrief as well, and we headed back to Saint Paul, pulling in right at eleven.

The traditional class shot, by some passer-by on Mark Wyatt's camera. Left to right you can see John Rider, League of American Bicyclists Regional Trainer (from Madison) and our teacher; Angela Dalton, Des Moines Bike to Work Program Director; Daniel Ring from Muscatine who I don't think has any official capacity but who I believe has commuted since the 1960s; Lori Leporte, Past President of the Des Moines Cycle Club and on the Board of Directors of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition; my old chum Paul Salamon from Cedar Rapids, who has no official cycling capacity but has ridden for ages; Tina Mowbry of Altoona; Mark Wyatt of the Iowa Bicycle Coaltion, who organized this training and who I believe also runs the Iowa Bike Summit (next one in January 2008); Mike, a consulting engineer from Des Moines; Carl Voss, who among other things serves on the Des Moines Trails and Greenways (TAG) Advisory Committee; me, of the famous Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board (which has basically no web presence); Zac Bitting, Transportation Planner for the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization; and Donnie Miller, who owns Donnie's Indoor Cycling Experience in Moline, Illinois, is the Safety and Education Director for the Quad Cities Bicycle Club and is the Coach and Vice President for the Double "I" Cycling Experience Racing Team. Part of the fun of the weekend was all the riding styles; Donnie was very much the racer, Zac a mountain biker and a couple of these folks are big recumbent riders but went conventional for this course.

So once the paperwork clears, we'll all be LCIs, and eligible to buy the cool Instructor jerseys. I'll be the fourth active one in Minnesota though I have no doubt there have been others over the years who have drifted away or lost interest or gotten pissed at or disgusted with the LAB or one thing or another. I'm not sure if it's a widespread phenomenon, but two of the participants mentioned that there were local LCIs in their areas already but that they were such unpleasant old coots that people didn't like to use them any more. Perhaps it's healthy to have some new LCIs coming in who are agnostic on the old battles. I think there is some prestige among LCIs in having low numbers and mine of course will be unfashionably lofty (though, I'm hoping due to last-name order that it'll be lower than my buddy Paul's!) but in at least a couple of cases it sounds like a bit of fresh and friendly blood is just what's needed. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with my LCI; contact the other ones to start with, I guess, to see see if they have any Road 1 plans. I do see a lot of need for training. In fact, I came up with a slogan:

They say you never forget how to ride a bicycle.
Actually, a lot of people never really learn.

Suddenly more sensitized to it, I see idiocy and incompetence all around. Yesterday, Saturday, I was at a ribbon cutting for the Lilydale Regional Trail extension, it was Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and U.S. Representative Betty McCollum and speeches and thanks all around and a green ribbon and a huge pair of scissors, the culmination of some political, planning and funding process that stretched back God only knows how far, and while we're there some guy rides up and asks to get through and he has his helmet on backwards. Then last night, coming home from a chamber concert at church just after 10, a cyclist cuts left from the right hand side of the road across the cars starting off as the light turns green and across the intersection and off to the left. One of the cars honks at him, as well it should, it was an idiotic move, and the cyclist flips him off as he rides lightless down Lyndale. I didn't correct the helmet doofus (he looked like maybe he meant it and would regale you with 10 minutes of theory why, or that he wouldn't take kindly to having such a public error pointed out) or chase down the lightless idiot left-turner, I could puff up my chest all I want and say I'm an LCI, but that and $3.31 will get you a latte at Caribou. I also doubt that either backwards helmet-man or lightless flipper offer would take a Road 1 course, but perhaps there are people out there who would like to learn how to operate in traffic and to whom we can transfer the knowledge and training needed to give it a try and get out there. In the end, the best argument we have for bike lanes, bike bridges and bike parking will be more bicycles, and, as I said waaaay back at the beginning, maybe this LCI thing will be a channel to work on the training part while in the BAB I nudge and wheedle on the facilities bits.

[Want to join the LAB? Besides this education stuff, they also lobby on behalf of bicyclists in Washington DC. If you join using this link I get credit for it! In what is sure to be a popular move among Local Bike Shops, every person who joins gets me a discount coupon for Performance; every three get me a chance to win a bicycle in a raffle. These prizes don't mean much to me; I've never ordered from Performance and the bicycle is undoubtedly not made in my size, but having a voice in Washington can't hurt. Give it some thought.]

Hope for America's Future

2007-09-28T08:58:00.000-05:00

I just did the League of American Bicyclists League Certified Instructor training last weekend in Des Moines, something I'll write up this evening or tomorrow. Once the paperwork goes through, I'll be the fourth currently-active LCI in Minnesota. I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to do with this, to tell you the truth, but have been thinking about bicycle education these past few days.

Imagine my delight when, while riding in this morning, I overtook a pack of maybe 40 cyclists going north on the west Lexington sidepath. It looked like kids of various ages and I wondered if it was a school outing. Intrigued, I pulled off in the parking lot for the Smooth Grind coffeeshop and Network Liquors. The cyclists were pulling into here as well, and, the liquor store not being open yet, were going into the Smooth Grind. I asked one of the kids if it was a school outing. Yep, he said, we've done a few days on bicycles and this is an outing to show how you can use them to actually go places. Cool, I said, and asked the teacher's name. She was inside already and with a horde of kids descending I figured this wasn't the time to go talk to her, but it was good to see that someone's at least talking about bicycles as transportation in school.

Stylish Cycling

2007-09-26T07:48:00.000-05:00

I was watching a bit of The War last night. It had to do with the breakout from Anzio Beach and the advance into Rome. The background was the letters home from a soldier who was killed right about then and the grief that greeted this news back home in the U.S. But on one of the shots of tanks and trucks draped with laconic American troops entering the city there passed in the foreground an Italian guy on a bicycle smoking a cigarette, smartly turned out in suit and tie.

Apparently this still goes on. In today's New York Times there's an article called Forget the Vespa: Making Your 2 Wheels a Bike in Rome.

“Bike riding has gotten more popular due to the city’s antipollution politics,” said Alessandro Piccione, a Roman engineer pedaling along the Tiber immaculately dressed (of course) in a blazer on his way to work. “I don’t just bike working days, but weekends, too. It saves a lot of time and trouble parking.”

I sometimes feel bad about wearing cycling-specific clothes to ride to work, then changing, when the cyclists in Amsterdam and Copenhagen manage to get along looking normal and even downright fashionable. Days like today I could wear my office clothes, but soon it'll be too cold and not long ago it was too hot. In the meantime, Rome sounds a treat off a bike.

Really?

2007-09-16T20:43:00.000-05:00

Alan Greenspan's new book comes out tomorrow. There's already reviews of it out, and they cite this quote:

Without elaborating, he writes, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Can this possibly be a surprise to anybody? Does anybody think we'd give a rat's ass about bringing democracy to the freedom-loving Iraqi people if their main export was pomegranates?

Lions Led by Asses

2007-09-15T11:16:00.001-05:00

The President gave a speech the other night. I didn't listen, I can barely stand to hear the Chief Doofus talk, but read later that he talked of all the progress in Iraq and how we have to carry on the struggle etc. He did say that there would be some reduction in troop levels next spring. This was hailed as some compromise, some movement towards the center. Bullshit.

Troop levels will come down next year because we're out of troops. The Surge from 15 combat brigades to 20 to secure Baghdad (as it was advertised) started in January with 15 month rotations, up from the 12 month tours troops served at the beginning of the war. These start expiring in April and those troops come home. There aren't troops to replace them, to maintain a higher level. Oh, President Bush could extend tours again but he's done that once and that's a lot to ask when his own desultory military service was cut short by a year so he could attend business school. The whole point of the Surge was to lend stability to Baghdad to allow the Iraqi government to get their act together. Even General Petraeus last week admitted that this wasn't happening.

Against this backdrop came some awful news. In August, seven NCOs (non-commissioned officers, the backbone of the Army) on active duty with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times called The War as We Saw It (it's now archived on the NYT site and costs money, but you can read it here) and you should, if you've not already done so. These are the boots-on-the-ground soldiers who every day see the reality of Iraq, not some senator, President, think-tank official or even journalist who flies in and travels only in a protected bubble.

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

They had to put that last bit in. Soldiers don't have the same First Amendment rights that we have, or used to have.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Hmmm, funny, I recall President Bush in 2004 talking about the Iraqi Army ("The best way to take the pressure off our troops is to succeed in Iraq, is to train Iraqis so they can do the hard work of democracy, is to give them a chance to defend their country, which is precisely what we're doing. We'll have 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year.") and how it would take over. What happened to those 125,000 troops who were ready at the end of '04?

The Sergeants go on:

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

Even NCOs on the ground can see that our President and his regime is delusional or deceptive. Is that what makes this tragic?

No. What makes this tragic is that one of Sergeants, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, was shot in the head August 12, a week before this was published. He has been evacuated back to the United States and is expected to survive. Two others, Staff Sergeant Yance Gray and Sergeant Omar Mora, were killed in a truck crash last Monday. Thoughtful, experienced, capable men who took a huge career risk to try and bring some reality to the discussion over Iraq, and not a month later one is wounded and two are dead while the President drones on delusionally about the ever-shifting goals and strategies in Iraq and tries to tell us that the inevitable reduction in troop numbers is an actual decision reached because of all the progress we've made.

These Sergeants represent the ideals that should define us; patriotic, strong, but also clear-thinking, informed, pragmatic and even willing to risk their personal careers for the greater good of the country. How many more good men have to die so that lesser men won't have to admit a mistake?

Commuting Dilletante

2007-09-13T21:24:00.000-05:00

I've been riding the Atlantis to work (when I ride, which honestly isn't every day). It's the Queen of the Fleet, my nicest bike, but when I built it up I economized in a couple of areas. One of them was the wheels where I bought a $129 wheelset from Harris. The front wheel was subsequently replaced with one built on a Phil Wood front hub I bought in 1977 but the back one soldiers on, some low-end Shimano hub (C-205?) and I couldn't tell you the rim's make. Not that I've minded; I don't fool myself that a better hub will make me faster, stronger, more attractive to the ladies, etc., and actually this hub runs virtually silently so that the Atlantis is so completely silent running right now that you wouldn't be able to appreciate it because your bike is too noisy.

Anyway, what you do give up when you buy the cheapo wheelset is durability, and last night I went out and had a broken spoke and a corresponding wheel wobble. I rode the bike home (and my commute's only 5 miles) but the rim at the wobble was hitting the brakes, so she's out of action until I can get it fixed.

So, today I rode the Chatsworth, my name for the big blue bike that started out life as a Schwinn World Sport. What was intended as an ugly cheapo bike to leave in front of bars and movie theatres instead evolved into quite a striking machine; I had it powder-coated, replaced everything so that the only thing original from the bike as I got it is the steel of the frame, and run it most of the season with a Nexus 8-speed Red Band hub (I switch this to a Sturmey Archer AW three speed wheel for the Three Speed Tour). That hub alone was much more than the Atlantis wheelset. Last year, busy with my father and things in Des Moines and before I upgraded this bike, I actually rode it more miles than my Atlantis since it was what I'd ride to work. This year, the ongoing pesky fitting issues have limited its mileage. Time for that to end.

I like this bike quite a lot but it has infuriatingly tight clearances on everything. The Atlantis, you could run anything from sew-ups to tractor tires on it and still have room for fenders. This Schwinn, despite being a huge rangy frame (68cm, 27"), barely manages to fit a rear fender. And the fenders are exquisite, 43mm plain aluminum Honjos I had powder coated (along with the chainguard) the same as the frame, it is very striking. The fenders are an extremely tight squeeze and actually required me to go from 700C X 32 tires to 700C X 30. I had to tighten all the off-side spokes a half turn on the Nexus wheel to pull the wheel over to clear the fender as well. This thing came with 27" wheels and now has 700Cs, it must have been impossible to put fenders on it originally. Why oh why didn't they mount the rear brake bridge 1/2" higher and add 1/2" to the chainstay length? Life would be great! Anyway, several times this season I've set off on the Chatsworth only to turn back and switch bikes because of tires rubbing or something.

What's the point of a backup, even a beautifully built-up backup, if it never works? Not much. Last night after choir I went out to the garage and fiddled with the bike until it was functional, and I rode it in this morning. It would have been too lame to say, well, I own four bikes but had to drive because they're all out of service at the moment (my winter bike just needs air and a new chain, my 1975 Motobecane is in pieces).

I expected to be slower. The Chatsworth is real upright, Albatross bars and a Brooks Champion Flyer (think sprung B17) saddle I bought the first time Brooks went out of business, but this morning there was a brisk southerly breeze and I sailed on in over 2 minutes faster than I did yesterday. I locked up to the new bike rack out front and came in.

Later, after getting coffee, I noticed a huge dark bank of clouds and thought, I should bring the bike in. For some reason, just after installing a new bicycle rack I'd lobbied for, my employer decided I ought to be able to park the bicycle in the underground garage, used by VPs and Directors (but not me) for their cars. We think of it as the Batcave, since you go around the side of the building, scan the security card, and up it opens. It could stand a cool Bat logo or rocks that slide out of the way and maybe access from the top floor down a firepole. I haven't been using it for the bike, instead parking on the new rack out front as an advertisement that it's ok to ride. Public service you know, advancing the cause, Critical Matt and all that. A couple of people have noted that I'm always so well-dressed (pressed wool trousers, dress shoes, ironed cotton shirt and silk tie, dressier than 90% of the people in the building) even though I ride. Well, public service be damned, it looks like it's going to rain and I think once this has gone through it's supposed to get colder too. Much better to pack up and leave from the nice warm garage than out in blustery rain! So I went and moved it into the garage for the first time, the VPs, Directors and me.

Funny thing is, the garage access is only enabled until November 15. Really, that's about when I need the access to start, not to end! They said let us know if you need it longer. I have ridden during the winter before though not to work, but if I have heated underground parking there's not going to be much excuse!

One reading of all of the above is that I'm something of a dilletante. When I ride to work, it's on a lovely Rivendell Atlantis built out just the way I want it. If that's got a broken spoke, I defer to an oddball but surprisingly nice internal-geared bicycle. Winter comes, and I can ride my winter bike, on the small side, but at its base a pretty nice, light hardtail mountain bike. I can park them in the garage or out front. If it's raining, or it's golf night, or I've got errands to run, or just because I'm lazy, I can drive. Not everybody has these options. There is an article in the Wall Street Journal today about Arlington, Texas, the country's largest city without a transit system. They are looking at starting one because high gas prices are starting to bite. Here are a couple of snippets:

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Truck driver Mark Soliz, 32, began walking his five-mile commute to his company's offices this summer because he couldn't afford the high cost of gasoline. Tired of hoofing it in 90-degree heat, he applied to a local charity for a donated bicycle and now cycles the distance.

"Anything to get there. Anything other than walking," he says.

Climbing gasoline prices have hit low-income workers as never before, and that is particularly evident in this city sandwiched between Dallas and Fort Worth. Though Mr. Soliz owns a car, for him and many other cash-strapped residents here, high gas prices have made driving a last resort. And taking a bus or train isn't an option.

As I said, Arlington's the largest city in the nation without public transportation. Although they are considering it, the city's designed for cars:

In some parts of the country, commuters have begun relying more on public transportation as gasoline prices have climbed. National public-transit usage has jumped 30% since 1995, says Rose Sheridan, vice president of the American Public Transportation Association. But southern cities were designed for cheap gasoline. Urban sprawl here developed around a car-and-freeway system rather than subway and train mass transit.

The article draws the distinction between people like me, who can accomodate higher gas prices and have options, and people who don't have that flexibility.

When gas prices rise, middle-class commuters in areas that don't have convenient public transportation typically compensate in various ways. They can switch to a more-fuel-efficient vehicle, telecommute, or cut back on luxuries such as restaurants and movies. "They leave their Suburban at home and take their Prius," says Dan Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Low-paid workers have fewer options. As they are already living on a shoestring, cutbacks can mean going without groceries and utilities. They also often drive older, less-fuel-efficient cars, Mr. Sperling says.

Melinda Daniel, 39, drives a 1988 Cadillac El Dorado that gets very low gas mileage. After breaking up with her boyfriend in Fort Worth, she could no longer afford the gas to commute to her job in customer service at Alliance Funding in Arlington, and she temporarily moved into a Salvation Army shelter while looking for an apartment nearer where she worked. "In Arlington, if you don't have a car, you're really stuck as far as trying to find a decent job and make a decent living," Ms. Daniel said.

Car ownership can be a real mixed blessing.

Sharon Whittington, 42, who has a six-year-old daughter and a husband who is unable to work because of an accident, drives an older-model Oldsmobile Intrigue. "It's been horrible, if I want to drive across town, I know I need to have at least a $5 bill," says Ms. Whittington, who voted for previous Arlington transit initiatives.

A couple of times the opposition worries that transit will bring in a rougher demographic. Meanwhile, one mission is using bicycles:

Mission Arlington, the nonprofit offering help to low-income residents, now gives away four or five bicycles a day, compared with only a few every week three years ago, says the executive director, Tillie Burgin.

Along the same lines, Bicycling magazine ran an article a couple of years ago called Invisible Riders, about the poor who use bicycles to get around. They're easy to miss, except when they come the wrong way up the bike lane, but there are those who don't ride nice bikes and park in underground garages. You can read the article on the Utne Reader site here.

I think these riders will become more common. If Arlington's seeing residents stressed enough to consider transit when oil is $65 a barrel, what's it going to be like now that it's nuzzling $80? There's plenty of us commuters who do it because it's fun, we like bikes, we're actually doing something to support our troops, we're cutting CO2 and pollution, reducing congestion, getting much-needed exercise, dislike the alienation of car culture or other high-falutin' reasons. Soon there'll be more people doing it because they don't have viable alternatives.

Doggerel

2007-09-10T08:43:00.000-05:00

Riding in this morning (lovely cool weather, too!) I was inspired to rewrite the words to Home, Home on the Range. It was free-asscociation: I regard motor vehicles as buffalo, big, strong, fast, ubiquitous, oblivious, often stupid and occasionally hostile, and yesterday at the start of the Saint Paul Classic bike ride there were some bikes in animal dress, including a buffalo one, which got me to thinking. There wasn't any incident or anything, just one of those random flashes that happen from time to time. I think what we need is more bicycling songs, so here's the chorus from Home, Home on the Range.

Home, home on the road
Where the cars and the SUVs play
Where often is heard
A disparaging word
And the pickup guys all think I'm gay.

Need to work on the verses.

Half Century

2007-09-04T21:57:00.000-05:00

Due to some technical issues, I've been unable to blog (with photos, at least) until this past weekend. I've still taken a few photos, and here are some from August.

La Crosse Amtrak station

Earlier this summer my friend Paul used Amtrak to Winona as a way to cut a day off his ride back to Cedar Rapids. Annoyingly, he was compelled to box his bicycle up even though Winona's the next baggage stop down the line and Amtrak offers the roll-on, roll-off Bikes on Board service on other routes. Doubly annoying, when the Empire Builder train showed up, the baggage car had little bicycle logos that indicated it was equipped for the Bikes on Board. Grrr.

Move forward to the weekend of 11/12 August. I'm meteor-shower camping with my daughter Geneva, her friend Regan and the seemingly Zelig-like Paul at Lake Louise State Park near Le Roy, Minnesota. My son Henry is coming in off a church trip late Friday, so we had the brilliant idea to have him catch the Saturday morning Amtrak to La Crosse, we'd nip over and pick him up, and the weekend would proceed (we planned bicycle rides but events conspired against us, as you shall see).

This didn't go like clockwork. The night of 10 August there were major thunderstorms in the Twin Cities which caused extensive damage quite near our house (State Fairgrounds, Como Park). They also caused signal problems on the rail lines between Saint Paul and La Crosse, so the train, running an hour late into Saint Paul, was two and a half hours late by the time it arrived in La Crosse. My cell phone didn't get a signal near Le Roy, and we innocently turned up at the expected arrival time of 10:45. Ooops.

We had time to look around. The La Crosse station is nicer than the Winona one, though the Winona station, if you compose carefully, does look exceptionally cute:

I took this while down for the Great River Shakespeare Festival in July, which would make another good excuse to train down and either ride or train home. For logistical reasons too complex to elaborate, my wife and son rode the train home after a Saturday matinee of Macbeth, which is when I took this photo. Note that those are train tracks right in front of the station giving it a precious Thomas Kinkade/Thomas the Tank Engine look, but the Amtrak actually stays on the main line which is behind me in this photo.

The La Crosse station is bigger.

This being Wisconsin, it of course has a bar in it, and also the Train Station Barbeque. Paul and I ate lunch. We did a little shopping (forgot paper towels, bug spray, etc., how did the voyageurs manage without Target?).
La Crosse apparently requires bicycle boxes too. There was one atop a baggage cart waiting out on the platform:

Bicycle boxes often seem to be ill-fitting. My huge Atlantis might be a problem:

Finally the train showed up.

Regrettably, the baggage car did not have the bicycle logos. I guess we can't count on the availability of the Bikes on Board capability on the Empire Builder, thus Amtrak's insistence on a box.

I've thought about Winona as an out-and-back, Amtrak down, ride home. Jim from Hiawatha did it with a couple of friends and rode it home in a day. This works nicely if the train's on time and the day is long, though they rode until well after dark. I'd thought of it more as a late September/early October, down on Saturday morning/back Sunday evening with an overnight in Red Wing. If Winona wasn't enough miles for you, you could go to La Crosse instead and try that, though Paul, who has ridden all this, says Winona to La Crosse on the Wisconsin side is mostly a crushed-limestone trail and not worth it.

Anyway, with this idle interest I was happy to visit the La Crosse station and see what it was like. When the train finally showed up, Henry popped out, we fed him some barbeque and drove back to the park, through La Cresent and Hokah, towns that a week later would be flooded in major rainstorms.

Additions to the Fleet

The kids' high school is a little over a mile away. Last year Henry rode his bicycle fairly often in the warmer months. Now Geneva's starting there too, and I figured I'd get her a three-speed to ride rather than her nice Schwinn 24-speed. We chose one from Sunrise Cyclery that Jamie was going to tidy up for us (it wouldn't hit all three gears) and we'd go back and get it.

I the meantime, August 25th I was in Des Moines doing the League of American Bicyclist's Road One course (a pre-req to getting the LAB League Certified Instructor rating, which I'll do down there in September). My cell phone rang. Who'd be calling me there? Some grievous accident up in the Cities? I answered, and it was my boss, calling from a garage sale where they had a Dunelt men's bike, was I interested? A few questions, and I said yes, and got it Friday. It's a bit small for Henry, who, though not yet as tall as I am, is getting darn close, but he liked it and was completely taken with bottle dynamo which does a great job on the rear light, though the front one isn't working at the moment.

Here's Henry on his Dunelt. It's be a bit small to ride coast to coast:

Meanwhile, time dragged on with Sunrise. I called to check on the status and Jamie seemed a bit confused about which bike it was. Geneva was exhibiting remarkable excitement about getting a three-speed, so Saturday I drove over. There was a Dunelt there for us. I'm pretty certain it's not the one we tried (which had an odometer and a headlight), but it looked ok, and I went ahead and got it. Geneva was thrilled. Here she is on the bike:

Isn't she lovely? The New York Observer just ran an article about Beautiful Women on Bicycles and there's a whole blog called Copenhagen Girls on Bikes. People are noticing: girls look great on bicycles. Of course, Geneva's been lovely since she was born, it doesn't take a bicycle to do it, but I am tickled that she (and Henry) is so happy to have the bicycle to ride to school.

It also seemed nicely circular. Saturday was my fiftieth birthday. Forty years ago, 1967, I got a three speed Columbia Tourist for my tenth birthday and was also tickled. It was cool to be exactly four decades later and have an old three speed thrilling my daughter ("Look, Dad, I can ride with these shoes!"). She also has new braces, new glasses and her first perm. Life's getting exciting!

Gravity is Your Friend

2007-08-08T23:23:00.000-05:00

The Times of London ran an article on the Parisian rental bike scheme entitled Parisians show their va va voom as city rolls out 'freedom' bike scheme. You know, smashing success, 1.3 million rentals of the 10,000 bikes in three weeks, traffic calming, blah blah blah. I liked the way people are using them:

In Paris there have been few teething troubles with the high-tech system that supplies the bikes for up to €1 per half-hour — but one is a result of residents using them to glide downhill to work and then taking public transport home, resulting in gluts of bikes at some low-level stands and shortages at higher altitude stations, such as Montmartre.

The end of the article outlines some other tries that have gone by, the last one in particular which relates to my prior entry:

Copenhagen Prototype scheme, with advertising sponsorship – bicycles have tyres that do not puncture

Lyon 1,500 bicycles available for 15,000 users. Costs 30p for 30 minutes

Germany Some glitches with GPS system

St Andrews Bikes were stolen in the Scottish university town in an early pilot scheme

Cambridge When a pilot scheme started in the 1960s, the fleet slowly vanished. When it was resurrected in 1993, all 300 bicycles were stolen on the first day

This morning I was down getting coffee and talked to Linda, who lives down by Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, not too far from the now-famous ex-bridge. On Thursday, the day after the bridge collapse, her fiance rode over to take a look. Governor Pawlenty was there, some Senators, camera crews. There's a camera crew here, she says, the Governor's here, and right behind him is my fiance. Cops are all over the place, of course. He laid his bike down on a grassy knoll to watch for a minute as statements were made on camera, then turned around, and his bike was gone. He went to the grassy knoll and asked a cop about it. Yep, she said, some guy rode off on it (pointing) but I couldn't leave my position. Sheesh.

Downhills and thievery bring up my Bait Bike idea. Get a bike you don't care about a lot, ride it to a place where it's likely to get pinched, do an indifferent job locking it up, (this is the crucial bit) unhook the brake cables, and leave. Ideally, this location is at the top of a long downhill slope ending in a busy street. Think of the fun. It would make good YouTube footage!

Bike Thievery Around the Nation

2007-08-08T07:33:00.000-05:00

Every weekday morning I get a journalism story ideas email from the Poynter Institute. It's a terrific way to keep up on various stories developing around the country. This morning it had a bit on bicycle thefts:

Bike Thieves Keep Active
As people try to go green and ride their bicycles, bike thieves are having a field day. (Texas Hill Country Daily Times). I am seeing reports of rising bicycle thefts in Washington, D.C., (WJLA, Channel 7 ABC from Falls Church, VA) where thieves are hitting metro stations. Some places like this Michigan town, (Northville, Michigan), Denver (Denver Post) and West Des Moines, Iowa, (KCCI Channel 8 CBS) are installing bike racks to prevent thefts.

It's no wonder bikes are so attractive to thieves. They are easy to steal, they can be worth a lot of money these days and they are easy to sell to places like pawnshops. Police often don't spend much time investigating the crime, so the chances of getting caught are small. This would make for a fairly easy story to personalize in your town.

In Denmark, police have announced they won't spend much time on bike thefts, but will instead focus on more serious crime. An estimated 80,000 bikes are stolen (The Copenhagen Post) in Denmark each year. If you figure there are three months a year when bikes are not frequently used in Denmark, this would mean that more than 10,000 bikes a month — a few thousand or so a week — are stolen.

Not included in the Poynter email but another interesting article is Chasing my stolen bicycle by Justin Jouvenal in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. I like this quote from the article:

"Bikes are one of the four commodities of the street — cash, drugs, sex, and bikes," Veysey told me. "You can virtually exchange one for another."

I've had one bicycle stolen, from my garage, and it was maddening. Funnily enough, I'd be angrier if my Atlantis was stolen than if my pickup was stolen. Bicycle thievery is one place where I can see the advantages of sharia law--cut off their hands!

Stone Arch Bridge Open

2007-08-05T16:59:00.000-05:00

The Stone Arch Bridge has been reopened to bikes and pedestrians as of about 4PM on Sunday. For those not from here, that's a lovely old railway bridge that is open to pedestrians and cyclists only. The 10th Avenue Bridge remains closed, which isn't surprising. No word on the Number 9 bridge (another old railway bridge converted to bike and pedestrian usage).

In my prior entry I said that bike routes weren't really affected. This was wrong, as my first commenter pointed out. Although I-35W doesn't really affect bicycle routes across the Mississippi, at least once everything reopens, it fell onto the West River bikepath (see this Star-Tribune slideshow about a cyclist who was 20 seconds from the bridge when it fell onto the bike path in front of him, after which he climbed onto the wreckage and helped people) and across 2nd Street SE on the north side. These routes will be closed until the new bridge is in place, which officials are optimistically hoping to do by the end of 2008. There are other usable routes close to 2nd Street SE, and the City of Minneapolis is recommending using the Light Rail bikepath to get into Minneapolis from the south in place of the river bikepath. Some of this is Matt-centric; I use the Stone Arch and Number 9 bridges but hardly ever use the West River bikepath. Those who do use it for commuting will of course be disrupted for some time to come.

Bridges

2007-08-04T12:27:00.000-05:00

Well, the outlines of our Governor's Infrastructure Strategy have become apparent:

Reject gas tax increases. Twenty cents a gallon was good enough for 1988, it's good enough for 2007! ("An unnecessary and onerous burden" he called the proposed 7.5 cent per gallon tax in May, vetoing a bill which also mandated annual bridge inspections; in 2005, he asked "How dumb can they be?" of Democratic legislators proposing a gas tax increase; in early 2007 he accused them of being "having been simply obsessed with a gas tax"; the GOP Minority Leader in the House this spring called the gas tax proposal "a joke" and a "pocket picking mechanism" but now, with a bridge collapsed and several dead or missing, is open to ideas. Also, our Governor's hopes to be Number Two on the Straight Talk Express appear to have been derailed now that McCain is flying coach and carrying his own bags, staying in the race just long enough to collect matching public funds to pay off campaign debts.)

Defer projects and maintenance. I personally like how the bid for the Crosstown Commons rebuild required the contractors to loan the state the money for a year until we could afford to pay for it. Unsurprisingly, nobody bid, and the project was delayed a year.

Wait Until Things Get Bad. As you may have heard, a main Interstate Highway bridge collapsed Wednesday during rush hour near downtown Minneapolis. At the moment, the official toll is 5 dead and 8 missing, though I'd be amazed if this doesn't get bigger.

Compare this Catastrophe to 9/11 and Katrina. Hmmm, wasn't that about 3,000 and 1,200 dead, as compared to 5? Still, we've got some great visuals!

Er, Let's Hold Off on that New Twins Stadium Groundbreaking, shall we? Bud Selig was going to be here Thursday for this celebration, but it seemed a bit tasteless even for him to celebrate a taxpayer-financed ballpark the day after a taxpayer-owned bridge had collapsed.

Get Money from the Feds. Helps to have one of our representatives as head of the House Transportation Committee, it looks like $250 million is headed our way. Maybe, with luck, the new bridge will be in place in time for the opening of the new taxpayer-financed Twins stadium and the new taxpayer-financed University of Minnesota Gophers football stadium. Give credit to the Gophers football team, though, they have gotten us used to historic collapses.

Get a visit from the President. President Bush was here this morning, looking solemn and wearing a hard hat and, in contrast to a couple of days ago, able to pronounce our Governor's last name. His trainers must have been hard at work. We're promised an expedited effort to rebuild the bridge (I'm guessing it won't be to the original plans). One wonders if this has to do with the Republican National Convention to be held here just about a year from now. Not going to look so good, this big hole in the transportation fabric.

Very savvy. If he'd listened to those obsessive dumb jokers in the legislature we'd have higher gas taxes and be using money picked from the pockets of hard-working Minnesota taxpayers to patch up this structurally deficient bridge. Now, we'll get a nice shiny new bridge paid for by the Feds! Exchange 5 dead for $250 million and the chance to look concerned and solemn in front of a photogenic structural collapse. Perhaps there are those who think this is an ok deal. I don't.

How Close Were We?

Had the bridge hung on another 15 or 20 minutes, it could have been us. We were on our way, all four of us, to a concert at Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis. We had the option of just going down Larpenteur/Hennepin or taking the Interstate. I-35 is usually quicker unless there are construction backups, but it was just past 6:00 when we left and we opted for the Interstate.

I didn't time-stamp things, but I figure we left about 6:10, by which time the bridge had collapsed although we didn't know this. We headed off down I-35 but as it came up to the Highway 280 exit there was a cop there closing off the road and directing everyone onto 280. This was immediately jammed up. I wondered if there's construction going on but Karla, who drives this way multiple times a week, said that was usually on weekends for a full closure, she thought there must be an accident. As I sat in the 280 line, creeping forward, I figured I'd listen to 88.5 Jazz and Traffic. They were just saying that rescue units were on there way to the scene; sounds like a crash. They were asking people to stay away; hmmm, must be a big one--maybe a semi with chemicals crashed. Then they said, to those of you just joining us, the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi has collapsed into the river. This affects both directions and I-35W is closed.

Holy smokes!

We got off 280 on County B (now closed off, as 280 has become a surrogate freeway for 35W traffic) and made our way down to Hennepin. Going towards downtown we crossed I-35W, not surprisingly completely jammed with immobile cars. It was going to take a while to untangle that lot, I thought. Making our way through downtown took a long time, traffic clotted up and a welter of ambulances, firetrucks and police cars making their way through. We got to Orchestra Hall about 7:20, nearly an hour later than we'd planned. I wondered about the concert; if the musicians had a 6:30 call, it would be credible to have some affected by the collapse or the traffic jam behind it. The 7:30 concert got off about 10 minutes late after a graceless tribute and moment of silence in which the Assistant Conductor didn't say what had happened ("And now a moment of silence for the this evening's tragedy") to an audience where a lot of people may not have known what had happened yet (the people right in front of us didn't, having gone to dinner first). We'd planned to eat before the concert in Peavey Plaza but hadn't had time, so went to Brits afterwards for a bite and to let the concert crowd clear. Going home, stuck in traffic on the 3rd Avenue Bridge, the lawyer for the company doing the road surface work on the I-35W bridge was on the air assuring everyone that the road deck work had nothing to do with the collapse. Wow, after four hours he'd already figured out the cause.

To me, ours doesn't seem a close call. There are people who were on the bridge and miraculously survived, others who were last off or about to get on, a friend of ours only five minutes removed, a co-worker of a co-workers's husband who was ten cars back. A 15 to 20 minute miss seems pretty roomy in that context, but in the context of a 40 year old bridge, all it needed to do was hang on for 15 more minutes and it could have been us.

What Happened?

It'll take a while before the NTSB deliberates, but in my extremely informed highly expert considered opinion, I noted the following things:

1) in the publicly-released video of the collapse, I thought it was remarkable how horizontal the main deck was when it went down. This also makes it clear that it started at the south end of the bridge, not in the scene, and the NTSB noted that the south end had displaced 50 feet sideways, so it looks like the truss didn't break along its length but instead the structure folded sideways.

2) I think the south end started to go sideways and pulled the deck off the north end. Then the approach ramps, all unbalanced, went. You can see the north one hang on a couple of second before falling backwards in the video.

3) the bridge deck isn't supposed to be part of the support structure, but I thought this quote from this morning's paper was telling (the article is about the first responders, and Hoeppner is one of these guys):

"At the site, Hoeppner talked to construction workers who survived the fall. They had been doing repair work but expressed concern to him that the bridge had been wobbling several days before it collapsed. Every layer of concrete the workers removed, the bridge would wobble even more, they told Hoeppner." The article's here. I'm guessing that various plaintiff lawyers will be very interested in talking to those construction workers.

Maybe the transverse members that held the bridge trusses parallel were in worse shape than people thought and the deck was doing more to keep them in place than was thought. As the deck lightened, these folded sideways and pulled the whole river span with it. It didn't seem to pull off the north piers--the photos look like the deck ripped off and then the north approach pivoted backwards off the pier, displacing the pier in the midst of all this. That's what you see in the video.

Taking a Look

Well, one wants to look, right? I rode down last night to take a look. For the most part, you couldn't see squat. The perimeter is backed way off, so that the Number 9 bridge, 10th Avenue bridge and Stone Arch Bridge are all closed. Virtually any spot with a view is blocked off with tape and cops. In part this was probably because of the impending (at the time) visit of President Bush--another blogger noted that a cop told him that if they opened the Stone Arch Bridge they'd just have to close it again and sweep it for bombs. Keeping the Number 9 and Stone Arch bridges closed is a bit short-sighted, as those are common bicycle commuter routes and with them closed, cyclists get dumped out onto city streets already contending with additional traffic loads. Maybe once Mr. Bush has come and gone they'll open again. Although I don't normally ride downtown during rush hours, for a set of reasons too boring to relate my dentist is in downtown Minneapolis and I have an 8:30 checkup Monday morning, so maybe I'll see then.

Lots of people down looking, many in cars. Fools! Bicycles are the perfect way to probe an urban perimeter like this, and that's what I did. I didn't know the Number 9 Bridge was closed and went right to it from the end of the Intercampus Transitway. Nope, closed off. Tons of foot traffic and a stream of frustrated motorists. Oddly enough, my son did a report on the Number 9 bridge this past spring and I'd ridden all over and around it taking photos. I tried some of the approaches. You couldn't see much. Lots of yellow tape.

I rode down to University Avenue. Lots more cops. Moving back a couple of blocks there's a pedestrian bridge across I-35W (connecting 5th Street SE either side of the Interstate). The highway is now empty, but the cars under here were just a couple of hundred yards from being directly involved. These people had the close calls.

There was a bit of a view here. (As usual, if you click on the photos you'll get a larger version, and for once, it might be worth it).

You can see where the road pivoted away with the cars of the closest calls of all balanced on the pivot point. Across the river you can see a semi-truck and some construction equipment on the south approaches to the bridge. It's the stuff in between that's missing. In the foreground is University Avenue; we know a person who got off there (frustrated with the traffic) five minutes before the collapse. Like I said, our 15 to 20-minute miss seems plenty big compared to these.

Down by Metalmatic at 2nd Street and 8th Avenue there was a view down between the factory on the left and the condos on the right. The is the north approaches to the bridge, not part of the main truss system, but the southbound lanes were pulled from their piers and there was a pileup, as you can see. This was a popular photo spot and there were some tv stations nearby.

I moved upstream. The power company now has some viewing walkways out into the river which I've never been on. These looked promising, and I rode out. Couldn't see a damn thing. I came back to shore and rode up to Nicolet Island, crossed the river, and headed back down towards the Guthrie. I went by the Mill Ruins Museum.

Boy, they're right on top of things! Actually, this is the Mill Ruins Museum, but it's very close to the bridge just upstream.

Probably the Guthrie's cantilevered bridge offers a nice view (we watched fireworks from it on July 4 after seeing 1776 with an aunt from England) but they're not letting the great unwashed out to gawk. (I like how we mere citizens "gawk" while politicians "inspect", "visit" and "survey"). The bike path which used to go under the I-35W bridge is of course closed off, so I moved over to Washington, crossed the abandoned freeway, and moved in behind some apartments. Bingo!

The semi from the first picture is the one on the left on this photo. This is from a parking lot of an apartment complex between 19th Avenue South and the Interstate. This is an odd bit of Minneapolis--the bridge paralleling the collapsed I35W bridge is called the 10th Avenue bridge, and on the north side of the river the street is 10th Avenue Southeast. On this side of the river, the street is called 19th Avenue South. Why it changes names I don't know.

Anyway, this 10th Avenue Bridge must offer spectacular views. Driving Wednesday to the concert, what residual journalism instincts I have (I started out as a journalism major) cried out to go home, get a camera and bicycle and get down there before everything got closed down. The 10th Avenue bridge is where I would have gone, but of course now it's closed. Officially it's due to concerns about it's integrity vis a vis debris from the collapsed bridge but really this would be one continual spectator stream made worse by the lack of a sidewalk on the upstream side (there is a very nice one on the downstream side). The bright light arrays they had up even as we came home from that Wednesday concert are on this bridge and I expect it will be some time before it reopens.

The light was fading and here, by the north end of the Number 9 bridge, the opposite end of which I'd begun my evening's viewing attempts, I'd made the full circuit. I rode into the U campus looking to take the Washington Avenue bridge home. I was at the lower deck level, not the upper deck, and the ramp up was closed, so I went into the building, took the elevator up one floor, and came out. As I got on the bike, a campus cop guy came over and told me firmly not to do that, that I should go around the building. Look, I said, I tried to use the ramp but it's closed and I don't know my way around. You need to go around next time he says firmly. Yes sir I'll keep that in mind. Sheesh, put these bozos in a blue shirt and badge and they're really feeling their oats, all this hero talk is getting to even the kampus kops.

I rode home using the Intercampus Transitway. It's a bit disrupted right now with road construction and work on the new Gophers Stadium. A big huge grain elevator that used to be there is gone now, and prep work is going on all over.

Bicycles are a great way to do this stuff. I basically never ride on sidewalks or the wrong way down one-way streets but did this night, in a situation like this it works wonderfully. In a car you can't get near anything, you get stuck in traffic, you can't see shit and there's nowhere to park. On foot, you're slow. On a bike, you can make good time, get most anywhere, transition from roadway to sidewalk to parking lot to pedestrian overpass seamlessly. You can even take the elevator up a floor in buildings at the U. You can see what's happening. I've done this before, many years ago during flooding in Des Moines, and just in recent weeks bicycles were of great utility in Japan after some earthquakes and in Britain during some flooding.

One irony of this bridge is how invisible it always was. It was as unremarkable and utilitarian a structure as they come, you only saw it when you drove over it, it had no real redeeming look to it. From the Number 9 bridge it was obscured by the 10th Avenue bridge, from the Stone Arch bridge, it's light truss structure was dominated by the same 10th Avenue bridge in background. Once the wreckage is cleared out, there won't a visual hole in the scenery like the missing World Trade Center towers.

Bicycling Implications

The collapse doesn't directly affect any bicycle routes since there was no bicycle or pedestrian facility on the bridge. As I mentioned earlier, a couple of very useful bike/ped routes are currently closed off but I expect that won't last. The most direct effect is likely to be increased street traffic until a new bridge is built.

However, old, deteriorated bridges have been the topic of conversation elsewhere. Only about 6 weeks ago there was a rally about reopening the Cedar Avenue bridge over the Minnesota river, which would be extremely useful to cyclists down there. Without going back and rereading the articles, I recall comments about how rotten the metal on that bridge is. I'm guessing that will be viewed with more concern now that before even if the loading is just bicycles and pedestrians. A new bridge might be in order rather than a restoration and as usual their are about fourteen agencies who have some say in the effort (for instance, it's close to the airport and any new bridge might have to support emergency vehicles in the event of a plane crash, etc.).

Separately, the wonderful Midtown Greenway across Minneapolis currently terminates at the river. There is this great big lovely railway bridge (the Short Line Bridge) that crosses the river. It used to have 2 tracks, now it has one, and it just serves a spur up and down Hiawatha. The railway has no interest in letting the county use the other bit for a bike path. There are various reasons, but in essence I think the railway has on its hands a big old rusty bridge (nobody seems to know exactly when it was built, but it was around 1880) serving a few grain elevators and scrapyards. I personally think that they look at this customer base, at the rapid improvements along Hiawatha due to the Light Rail which runs the other side, and figure that within a decade all these elevators will close down and they can abandon the spur and bridge. If they allow some stupid bikepath to go over it and all of a sudden it's being used by 3,000 people a day to get to work they now have to maintain their big old rusty bridge forever. Amid all this are discussions of the bridge's integrity and along the line was a comment that it's a design where you remove one element and the whole thing would come down. Again, I expect there will renewed sensitivity to that argument and that we will never see a bikepath on that structure, which is a real pity.

Other Bridgework

Ironically enough, I took some photos of bridge construction last weekend. Henry and I rode to Baker Park, in Western Hennepin County, to camp for a couple of nights with a bunch of church folks. Our late departure (5:35 from home) kept us from dawdling and taking pictures on the way out. We rode down Roselawn and wanted to cross Highway 280 to Broadway but even before the I-35W bridge collapse traffic volumes on 280 were up and no gaps presented themselves, so we went down to Hennepin and moved over. We took Broadway all the way from Industrial Boulevard to Golden Valley Parkway, including an unlovely bit of urban landscape in North Minneapolis, worked our way to Medicine Lake and took the Luce Line trail out to the park to camp by Lake Independence. It was about 33 miles altogether and if our 9:15 arrival sounds late it's because of stopping to navigate, get snacks and buy groceries.

Saturday Henry hung around the campground with the kids. I rode the Luce Line out to Watertown, then up to Delano and Rockford. I'd lost my mirror off my helmet last night and am unused to riding without one, so this felt odd to me. I ate a burger and a beer in Finnegan's in Delano and it wasn't very good. I'd gone in because they had a Boddington's sign in the window, but the didn't actually serve Boddington's. I had a Newcastle Brown Ale and a greasy half-pound hamburger with some bad fries. At least the service was indifferent. From Rockford I rode back to the campground, stopping to snooze for a while under a tree in front of a church. This was about 37 miles in all. Henry was taken home that evening as a bunch of the kids were going to Valleyfair on Sunday after church.

Sunday I got up, packed up and one of the other folks said, hey, we'll take your bags for you. I'm lazy, so I said OK, and they took the tent/pad/bag and both panniers, leaving me light and carefree to ride home. I rode the bikepath through the park to get to the connector back to the Luce Line. This marker was along the way:

I was once in Yellowstone and there was a bunch of cars gathered along the road and it turned out to be a marker of the 45th parallel, halfway to the North Pole!, we took photos, etc., and then I discovered that in fact it runs right down Draper Avenue in Roseville and that I cross it every day going to and from work, usually refraining from stopping to take a photo. Anyway, these markers amuse me.

For those of you following along at home, I went south down Crystal Bay Road to Fox Road, and headed east. I was planning to go through downtown Wayzata. Along the way, Fox Road had a sign about ROAD CLOSED and BRIDGE WORK AHEAD. I ambled along, wondering if it was closed to everyone or just to mere motor vehicles. A cyclist came the other way and I called to him, Can you get through? We circled in the street a couple of times. Yep, he said, they're making a new bridge but you can kind of walk along the side. Last week you couldn't get by. Ok, thanks, I said. Hey, he said, nice Atlantis, I've got one too. Thanks, I sure like mine. And off I went.

The bridge over a little creek was being built but looking pretty impassable. He'd mentioned walking along the side and I looked around. Sure enough, there was a platform on the south side, probably for the workers. I lifted the bike up there and walked gingerly across. One false move and I could be pitched in excess of two feet into the murky waters below!

The walkway I used to get across.

The Atlantis in Exploring Mode--saddlebag, handlebar bag, ice water in seat tube water bottle. It held gin and tonics on the way out. This is on the east side of the bridge after my successful crossing.

I made it without incident, and rode on. On Peavey Road there was another ROAD CLOSED situation. It was half a mile ahead, so I figured it wouldn't cost me more than a mile total, and rode down. Another cyclist caught up to me (not an unusual situation). He's a local, and wasn't sure if it was open yet or not. This road was oozing money, driveways more expensive than my house, big estates, boats. The bridge, however, was impassable this time, and we turned back. I chatted with the other cyclist a bit, he directed me the way to Wayzata, and off I went. I stopped along the waterfront for a bit, munching peanut M&Ms, admiring the expensive cars, the expensive boats, the expensive women, even a remarkably riveting pair of expensive boobs, before riding on. I went past the Cargill headquarters, lost back in some woods, made my way down to Hopkins where I ate at a Chipotle, then rode on the Kenilworth Trail into Minneapolis.

My left crank arm was making noise, so I popped into Calhoun Cycle but there was no mechanic on duty and in fact I helped a customer who wanted to raise his stem and who thought he needed to loosen his headset locknuts to do it. I also bought a replacement mirror for my helmet. I moved on to Sunrise Cyclery where the owner quickly figured out my pedal was just loose, tightened her up, and the bike was once again silent running. Some Twin Cities Bicycling Club guys were there about to go on a ride, but they were heading out to Hopkins and I'd just been there, so I moved on. I took the Greenway to the river, crossed at Lake Street and headed home, about 38 miles total, a beautiful day for a ride.

Bloody 'ot

2007-07-25T21:20:00.000-05:00

It's been pretty miserable out the last couple of days. As a Practical Cyclist, it would be nice to ride around in street clothes and not look like a cycling doofus while off the bike, just like those folks in, you know, Amsterdam. You can do that here, in May and October, but days like today cry for separate clothing. Here's the temperature in Saint Paul right now:

And in Amsterdam:

I think their climate and terrain is better-suited to riding the bike everywhere in street clothes. Me, I've been riding to work and showering and changing there. On less-tropical days, I'll ride and just change with a damp mop, but this New Guinea climate isn't going to work for dress trousers, pressed shirt and tie.

I'm guessing that in 6 months I could run the same entry, entitle it "Bloody Nippy" and show our biting cold versus the relatively balmly Amsterdam weather.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

2007-07-24T21:34:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday was something of a novelty, a day free of obligations. For the last year and a half there have been pressing priorities, resulting from my father's deteriorating health, the decision to move him to a nursing home in northeast Iowa near one of my sisters, the need to move some of his possessions up there from Des Moines, to deal with the rest, to work on the house and sell it, to host his sister, my aunt, visiting from England. Much of this weighed heavily this past spring as my cycling buddy Paul and I worked on the house, starting in February, stripping wallpaper, ripping up carpet, painting, jacking up one settling floor, changing locks, all the details of an older house's need four hours from home. My last trip down was in early June and the house got listed, but then it was the bike races, not an obligation, but another event in a crowded spring.

It came to closure this past few weeks. The last Thursday in June my aunt arrived from the UK for her visit; the next day Dad's house sold, and I no longer had a real estate interest in Des Moines. Margaret's visit was two weeks long; as soon as she left, my mother in law arrived for a couple of days. She left, and a weekend loomed up with no obligations. Happily for me, the latest Harry Potter book was arriving. Henry rode up to the Har Mar Mall bookstore for the party and to buy the two copies we'd reserved; he rode home about 1:30AM and the next morning the household plunged into Pottermania. Nobody was even going to notice if I were gone.

I rode off east to start with, following a ride mapped on Map My Ride. It's 20 miles and passes near the house, so I thought I'd follow the eastern bits, not all of which I've ridden. I did this, riding down Summit to the end and decided I didn't want to go home yet, it was a gorgeous day and at home would be hungry cats and oblivious Potter-obsessed humans. I rode across the Lake Street brigde and up to the Midtown Greenway, and headed west.

At Hiawatha I was pleased to see that work is progressing on the bridge over Hiawatha, which will circumvent the current level crossing. Not only is work progressing, they were working on this lovely Saturday!

Your Tax Dollars At Work I

The cable support and crane for the Hiawatha Bridge.

The cable anchors on the west side.

The grading is looking done on the east side. It looks like this bridge might be open this fall.

I rode on. Is there anything more luxurious than a beautiful day, a lovely bicycle, and absolutely no agenda whatsoever? I rode to the end, then backtracked to the Cars'R'Coffins where I settled in to read a 'zine, drink a latte and consume a delicious ginger and currant scone.

Riding up Bryant Avenue there were new markings on the street. There's not room for bike lanes, but these get put down. I guess they've been trying them in some cities and they serve as useful reminders for motorists that bicycles are there and to cyclists which direction to ride (just tonight, coming home, I had to make room in my lane for a wrong-way cyclist). Plus they're cheap. It's the first time I've seen them in person.

I rode on, back to the Greenway, out to the end of the path, then back up the Kenilworth Trail. It leads to the Cedar Lake Bike Path and I've never ridden on this. I got on it and rode into Minneapolis.

I have to say, it's a pretty greasy way to enter Minneapolis. It goes by highways, past the impound lot, past vast dunes of sand the city keeps to scatter about in winter, growing a crown of weeds now, by piles of smashed concrete. Minneapolis is a lovely city in many parts, but the Cedar Lake Trail is not the way I'd bring in a first-time visitor!

Ominous signs loomed up. TRAIL CLOSED AHEAD. I idled up to the sign and peered on down around the bend. A young couple pulled up. Do you guys know if this goes through? I asked. One of our friends says it's ok said the young lady. I have no schedule, what can happen?, I ride a mile and have to turn back? I head on past the sign and the young couple follows.

The trail carries on for a mile or two, the scenery not improving, and finally does come up to a read end, another sign, but backed up by a fence next to a steep dirt hill leading to a parking lot behind a warehouse. The young lady, the couple having caught up, muscles her bicycle up the path. The young man gets a phone call and takes it and I head up the hill too, having noticed a grisly-looking homeless person watching us with interest. I hung around in the parking lot with the young lady and the homeless guy who kind of grunted at us and sidled off, until the young man showed up, then I clipped in and headed around the corner.

The fencing that ends the trail is blocking off the site of the Minnesota Twin's new ballpark. There is some pissing contest going on about the price of this unpromising-looking bit of real estate, the price having gone up once the Twins got interested, but despite the lack of resolution on price, work has started.

Your Tax Dollars at Work II

A panorama of the ballpark site.

It would be aggravating to work in the building in the background since there was a continuous headache-inducing pounding going on on the pilings in the foreground. Sure are a lot of construction guys working this lovely Saturday!

I was getting kind of hot so rode over to One on One Bicycle Studio, locked up, and got a cold drink and sat reading a book for a few minutes. I took my leave and rode home, stopping for a photo or two, idling along, up the Hendon hill off Como Avenue, cutting through the U of M Saint Paul campus only to find that I was locked out of the State Fairgrounds due to some event, backtracked, took Como Avenue home and arrived back before teatime. I popped my head into Geneva's room and she was crying into the book; the house orca had just died or something. Bummer. I couldn't think of anything appropriately soothing to say so just went back downstairs and put the water on.

It wasn't a fast ride, it wasn't a long distance (about 38 miles in the end and some pathetic average speed, par for the course when I'm exploring, lost or taking photos), there was absolutely no purpose to it at all, but it sure was delightful to just wander along without an agenda and follow my nose. For all their utility as transportation, bicycles are just plain fun as well. I hope I have more days like these, and I hope you do too.

Daily Reading

2007-07-18T00:04:00.000-05:00

While I have been preoccupied the past month with various duties, visitors and trips, I have begun reading a couple of fun blogs pretty regularly. I really like the locally-done Pinch Flat News, which comments on bike industry trends and seems unduly hostile to folding bikes (I don't have one, but like the idea).

Separately, the New York-based Bike Snob NYC has a hilarious take on bicycle fashions, especially the Fixie Phenomenon. I can laugh at this with a clear conscience, never having had a fixie and having dispensed with singlespeed bicycles when I got my Columbia Tourist 3-speed for my tenth birthday. However, I can also recognize the passing fads of cycling when I see them and know that I haven't always been immune. When I was that age, it was lugged steel ten-speeds with too-high gearing and sew-ups. It's funny, and a bit rueful now, to look back and think that I couldn't possibly live without the superior handling of the silk tubulars whilst riding my bike to work at Sears.

2007:
Rational Observer: "But your bicycle has no gears or brakes."
Earnest Enthusiast: "Yeah man it's pure cycling and I have mad skillz and don't need gears or brakes."

1977:
Rational Observer: "But your tires are skinny, hard, fragile and expensive."
Earnest Enthusiast: "Yeah man but when you have exquisite cycling sensitivities such as myself you demand only the finest-handling gear to ride to work."

A rational look would have had me riding to work on a three-speed, probably, with the gear ratios knocked down a bit, but the early 20s are not a rational age and are informed by fashion, style and a painful earnestness. The crowning mercy for those of my vintage (nearing 50) is that we pretty much embarrassed ourselves among a limited circle of friends whereas now any clownish hipster can proclaim their painful earnestness and infatuated enthusiasms to The World on the web. This scrap of self-knowledge doesn't keep me from enjoying Bike Snob; take a look, you might like it too.

I've been workin' on the races

2007-06-27T16:53:00.000-05:00

I worked on the 2007 Great River Energy Bicycle Festival/Nature Valley Grand Prix races last week. With a bit of effort they might be able to come up with a longer name! Here's how it went.
(Note: I actually am posting this July 16th, having just had a frantic couple of weeks with an aunt from England visiting, but I'm leaving the post date as the date I wrote most of this)(It may seem cheesy post-dating, but on the other hand all the camera crews filming this race do so for a program that won't air until August on the Poetry Channel (Verses)).

Wednesday June 20

It started Wednesday. My cycling buddy Paul rode up from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to work the races on his Stealth Bike (a black Nashbar cyclocross frame outfitted with virtually all black components). I figured he'd call or something when he got to downtown, but he didn't, so I went down in my truck at about 5:00 to do course-marshalling. Paul was already there, having arrived at about 1:00 and spent the afternoon setting up including doing the giant inflatable Wheaties box.

I checked in at the volunteer tent, was issued the standard orange vest, flag and whistle and sent to the northeast corner of Mears Park to be a course marshall. This is the fancy name for crossing guard and the main task is to keep onlookers from going onto the course in front of oncoming cyclists. The main challenge here can be on big open corners with lots of drunks, but this night the corner was just medium-sized (and we narrowed it down for the men's race for better crowd control) and the crowd was well-behaved.

This was my corner in Saint Paul. While standing here I saw a guy walk by with the best t-shirt of the entire five-day affair. On the back it said "The Older I Get, The Faster I Was".

Paul took this photo. The only thing notable about it is that I'm in it, corner marshalling on the left in the yellow shirt, olive shorts and white baseball hat.

I shared the corner with Nora.

Clouds threatened all evening, but it didn't rain until the teardown was nearly complete. It did rain and storm quite a lot elsewhere around East-central Minnesota this evening.

One of the women zooms past.

I figured we might get wet this evening as huge impressive clouds built up and moved around us, but all night long the weather held and the storms went elsewhere (tonight and Thursday the insurance company for which I work would get several hundred hail damage claims from north, south, east and west of Saint Paul) until well after the races were over. Once the men's race was done, I traded in the orange vest for a yellow one and worked on teardown duty which seemed to go pretty well. At about 10:00 we got done just as a thunderstorm finally hit downtown Saint Paul but it mostly just rained on us as we walked to the parking ramp to get the truck and go home.

This criterium was new to the Nature Valley Grand Prix. The last couple of years when I've worked multiple days on the event, the Wednesday Saint Paul race was a time trial along Shepherd Road. While pretty user-friendly for a time-trial (there is a parallel bike path along the whole thing), the race ran mid-day down the hill from downtown Saint Paul and attracted only very modest crowds. Time trials can be a bit dull, too, from an observer's point of view. The criterium format in the evening is much more of a crowd-pleaser, with the racers going round and round a course including Mears Park right in the core of downtown Saint Paul. This seemed to go very well.

Thursday June 21

Thursday Paul and I didn't work any races. We instead went to Cannon Falls to watch the road race. Cannon Falls is about 50 miles south of Saint Paul, so we just drove down. We went downtown and wathced the start of the men's race, then drove out into the country to catch them at a couple of spots. Last year we went to the transition from pavement to a couple of miles of gravel but this year the course was altered somewhat due to some highway construction on Highway 1.

The race leaders are presented at the start line in Cannon Falls.

Paul has actually met this guy. A couple of years ago Paul did a tour of the Tour of Georgia. They'd ride the course, travel in a bus with some racers, meet some afterwards. This guy was one of the racers on the bus. He had perhaps the best hair in the race.

Once again, weather threatened. There were dark clouds and even cumulus mammulus overhead but it never did rain. In fact, compared to last year's heat and brutal wind out of the south, the occasional breath of wind and cool overcast skies made for a delightful evening to ride 60 miles in 2 hours and 21 minutes, which is what the men did.

The lead police car ahead of the racers.

The peloton heads through the corner.

Hey! A guy racing on a steel-framed bike! Of course, he is well-behind the peloton, looking hopefully back.

We caught them at a couple of places and waited for the women to come along as well. There were dark hints of gravel again this year, and word out that a couple of women had crashed in the practice ride and that the women anyway had agreed to take it easy on the gravel, but nobody seemed to know where it was. I had my trusty DeLorme map with the course highlighted (as well as last year's, so I could compare and contrast) and once the women had gone by, Paul and I headed back to town. The men weren't due for a bit, so I idly drove through town and out onto a county road and, Bingo!, the gravel! It was just a short stretch, right before coming into Cannon Falls, and on a road that's normally closed off.

Dramatic clouds, often associated with violent weather, above the course.

There was just one guy there, and when the race came he was going to have to pull fencing across the road, stop traffic and direct racers. This seemed like a lot to do for one guy, so Paul and I donned our vests and helped him.

The men's peloton approaches the gravel.

The men transition to the gravel. This would be pretty short; last year it was a couple of miles.

The men came by and made the transition without incident. We reopened the road and stood around talking with this gentleman, a retired malted barely salesman. Apparently there was a big barley malting operation in Cannon Falls at one time and Goodhue County had been a big producer of barley for malting and thence beermaking. Budweiser one day dropped their business and the operation never really recovered, and eventually shut down. We chatted about a bankrupt development across the street, landscaped, roads, lights and sewers, but lots of problems with the soil which is full of blue clay and causes heaves in the roads and disrupts foundations, I guess.

About 50 minutes after the men came through the lead vehicles came into view and we again dragged out the fencing, stopped traffic and pointed down the road. The women made the gingerly transition to gravel and disappeared over the hill. The support cars and motorcycles all came through, a couple of stragglers, and we reopened the road. The volunteer guy's car wouldn't start, a dead battery, and we didn't have jumper cables, and his OnStar wouldn't work in the car because of the low battery, and his OnStar number was busy from his cellphone, so we promised to stop back after dinner to make sure he was ok, and went into town. The Mill Street Cafe or something like that is where we ate, good beer and mediocre food (at least the bourbon marinade salmon sounded much better than the overcooked fish we got), and then popped back out to see if the volunteer guy was ok. He was gone, as was the fencing. Just out of curiosity, I drove up the gravel road to see where it came out, but the chain that closes it off was already back across the road and I had to go out the way I came in. We headed on home.

Friday June 22

Friday started off with the Time Trial. This was run in Saint Paul, but instead of sending them down main artery Shepherd Road (there was at least one complaining letter to the editor about this last year), it was on the south side of the river starting under the High Bridge and running along Lilydale Road to the Saint Paul Yacht and Pool club. This is a very un-busy road and its main defect as an event venue was that there isn't a continuous bike path alongside so that you can ride down to the end from the start line. At one point the road jogs under what used to be a railway bridge (the short bridge is gone, but the approach trestle is still there), then down a hundred yards and across a small bridge. There is a bike path up to the trestle crossing and then after the small bridge, but that's a hazardous gap in between with the racers coming out every 30 seconds and no clear view through this jog.

The women were already racing when Paul and I showed up on our bicycles about 9:00. When this had been the first event, the order was pre-established. Now that the Saint Paul criterium and Cannon Falls road race were under their belts, there was a General Classification order and the judge was having trouble making herself heard. I asked if she wanted help getting racers up to the start and she said no. A few minutes later number 11 barely made it, rushing past the line, up to the start, and stabilizing for maybe 10 seconds before being launched off on her run.

Kristin Armstrong starts her time trial. She'd be back 10 minutes 24.36 seconds later, well ahead of the others. She would also win the whole Grand Prix by the end of Sunday.

With not much to do, Paul and I watched the women go. We drank some free coffee and laughed at ourselves: You know, without dedicated volunteers like our noble selves, who would make these events possible by standing around drinking free coffee? We wandered down to the trestle. We stayed here quite a while as the men went by. There is a bit of abandoned roadway that bears left and it turned out to be a handy place to pee and also it led past some trash to a path down to near the stone bridge. I took some photos there, then helped a bunch of the women racers in getting across the road and down the course to where the bike path resumes.

Riders going both ways. The abandoned railway trestle ends on the right, a judge guy with a radio checks off riders in the middle, and two inbound riders come through the swerve as an outbound rider heads west. That's an abandoned generating plant across the Mississippi, in the background, and an active grain elevator.

Two riders inbound over the narrow bridge.

Three riders coming through the road bend. I'm not sure who's the hunter and who's the prey here, but someone's having a bad time.

After a while I went back to the trestle. One of the motorcycle guys pulled off and parked. He said one rider had a deer run across the road just in front of him. He couldn't tell from behind quite how close it had been but it looked close, he said. A judge was across the road checking off riders on a list. He had a radio and would let us know how far along we were. The last five men went at one minute intervals. Once the last of them came by we rode back to the start/finish line, parked the bikes, and worked on teardown. This went quickly; there was only a bit of white fencing up. About 12:30 or so Paul and I rode off and headed home.

We packed some lights for the bikes, raingear, a snack or two, and rode off to downtown Minneapolis to help on setup for the Friday evening Criterium there. We couldn't go through the Fairgrounds due to a big Back to the '50s event complete with lots of old cars

I rode Paul past a bunch of the landmarks for my usual cycling rounds; the entrance to the Intercampus Transitway, the Raymond Street turnoff, past Muffaletta where I took girls other than my wife on dates as far back as 1984, down Como, over the Talmadge St. level crossing the railway wants to dump, over the Stone Arch Bridge and through downtown Minneapolis. We got to the Volunteer Tent erected on Nicollet Mall just outside the Dakota, locked our bikes up to one of the tent poles, put on the reflective vests, ate a sandwich and then looked around for the fencing truck.

One of the coordinator guys came up. You guys looking for something to do? Yep, I said, we're looking for the fencing truck. You wanna do sandbags? Sandbags? Nope!

This is the third year I've taken time off from work to work these races, and a couple of years before that I just course-marshalled the Friday night Minneapolis Criteriums (Criteria?), and I have figured out what I like to do and what I don't. I'm happy as a clam with the fencing truck, whether pulling fencing off and setting it up, or taking it back down. It's a lot of work, as with many simple tasks there are a couple of tricks to it, but when you get the experienced volunteer group, it all happens in an unspoken coordinated fashion from which I derive some satisfaction. I don't mind taking down the start/finish structure, I don't mind cutting the zip ties to remove the sponsor banners, I did CAUTION taping for the first time this year and that was OK, and course marshalling is fun. However, there are some things I don't like. Sandbags is one of them, I'm 6'5" tall and have a sometimes-wonky back, the last thing I need is to be bending over and lifting damn sandbags all over the place. The same goes for banners; I'll happily snip them off the fencing and even brought along two pairs of wire cutters to do it with, these things being at a real premium at teardown time, but you need to find someone shorter and younger to roll the damn things up. I'm not fond of collecting the haybales, either. There's nothing wrong with these jobs, mind you, I just don't like 'em. Sandbags? Not just No but Hell No! Where's the fencing truck?

I found it. We don't get to close off the streets until 6:00PM but a lot of the white fencing can be set up alongside the streets and pulled into place when the time comes. During this period it rained. It always rains on the Minneapolis Criterium Friday. I put on my comical Ortlieb Waterproof Hat and my raincoat and we set up fencing in the rain. Last year there was lightning and hail and it rained later and delayed or shortened the races. That storm during teardown was of epic proportions and I have never been so wet without actually going swimming. This year the rain all fell during setup. I went to get the raingear and found the Volunteer Tent was draining about a quarter of its rainfall collection onto our bicycles, including Paul's 1973 and my week-old Brooks saddles. I put a garbage bag over them. Can't possibly let a Brooks get wet, you know, might shrink or dissolve or something, so They say. We got all the fencing out in place and Paul and I mooched a Buy One Get One Free Caribou coupon out of a volunteer swag bag and went to Caribou and had a cup of coffee.

Did it rain? Is the pope Catholic? This is the Minneapolis criterium, of course it rained! Not during the race, though, just during setup. Here are some of the Minneapolis skyscrapers wreathed in clouds as the rain cleared.

Some of the crew working in the rain. We're moving the fence truck to another part of the course.

Andy's the coordinator for a couple of these races. A spot of rain's not going to slow him down!

Andy may be in charge but that doesn't exempt him from helping! Here we're setting up in front of the Hell's Kitchen restaurant on 10th Street. You can see one of the loathsome sandbags on the right.

Setting up fencing is a two-person operation--pick it up, install the feet as you walk into position, hold them in place until the fence is down.

Emerging, one of the leaders asked if we'd do CAUTION taping. I don't know, I've never done it, I can think of no reason not to, it's not like it's stinkin' sandbags. Sure. He gives us 3,000 feet of CAUTION tape, says we need some sort of dispenser (you can buy nice ones for about $9 but we made do with a course marshall flag pole) and said to tape both sides of the street. Paul and I walked off full of swagger and confidence only to discover that we weren't sure exactly where the course went. Hmmm, we could sent them down the I-394 entrance ramp, never to be seen again! We walked back and found another volunteer coordinator and confirmed where the course was supposed to go, then spent a happy 45 minutes running CAUTION tape from light pole to parking meter to flower planter. It's no white fencing, but it was OK. I'd do it again.

By the time we reported back the course marshalls had already been dispatched around the race course. We put on orange vests, collected flags and a whistle (I still had mine from Wednesday, although it turns out they run them all through a dishwasher each night) and walked back up the north side of the course with all the lovely CAUTION taping. At one intersection there were a couple of uncertain-looking marshalls, both newbies, it turned out, so Paul took one side and I the other and spent the races helping out. Crowds were nice again, once again I was on an inside corner, a couple of times we had to move people back a bit, but I also had the pleasure of lining up kids (stand right there and don't move!) so they could see the racers go zooming past.

Races over, we went back, changed into yellow vests and went to work. I cut banners with my handy side-cutters for a while as a guy came along rolling up behind me, an ideal situation, then the fencing truck showed up and Paul and I spent the rest of the night pulling in fencing. Once that was in, and the finish line thing was down and apart, we unlocked the bikes from the Volunteer Tent, helped take it down, looked longingly at the lovely rare beef and large glasses of wine being eaten by the beautiful people in The Dakota (wanna trade for some peanut butter Nature Valley granola bars?) and rode off. We stopped by One on One for a short time, talking to Gene and drinking a beer and a half, the half being half a can each of Surly's Furious which I found annoyingly hoppy. I've made beer before, this stuff made me wonder if the guy tripped and dumped a whole bucket of hops in the brewpot instead of a cup and just said screw it, let's bottle it, maybe someone'll buy it. Paul figured Gene was happy to see us since that made him the third oldest guy there. We chatted with some of the kids back there who all seem really young, just out of college, first jobs, fixies, full of the joys of life, younger by a decade than Paul's saddle or my front hub. We rode on home and turned in.

Saturday June 23

Saturday, no bike races. It's in Mankato and I've never gone down to see those. However, we did some planning. Paul's off to the Boundary Waters with the Boy Scout troop his son is in next week, and the forecast the next couple of days was hot and winds out of the south. On Saturday I suggested he take the train to Winona or La Crosse and ride from there--the eastbound train is a 7:50AM departure (if it's on time). He decided this was a good idea, it pares 100 miles off the ride on a day that promised heat and headwinds.

There was one issue: Amtrak wants you to box the bicycle. This seems silly, it's just Saint Paul to Winona, the next baggage stop down the line. Maybe he could talk them out of it. Paul shaved ("I do it once a week whether I need it or not") so he'd look respectable and we popped by the Amtrak station to see if he could just do a roll-on, roll-off, not disassemble and box the bike. Nope. You know, it's just the next stop, and I'll be riding it away. No, sorry.

Bummer. On some routes, Amtrak has a program (Bikes on Board) where you can do this, and it would be great from here east, where the luggage stops are Winona, La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago. But they don't offer it (yet--I think I'm going to write Amtrak and my Congressman and inquire about this).

We went to find a bike box. My first thought was Erik's in Rosedale. I find Erik's a really boring bike store and I change radio stations when and Erik the Bike Man commercial comes on, but they are large and must sell tons of bikes, so they ought to have boxes. Nope. You have to reserve one. They get bikes in twice a week and immediately recycle the boxes unless you reserve one, so they have a modest collection off to one side but they're all for specific people. We hadn't reserved any of Erik's garbage, so next came County Cycles at Lexington and C2. I like these guys, and sure enough, they had a box Paul could have for free.

Paul was impressed with County Cycles. People are impressed with bike stores for funny reasons. With Paul, it was because they had:

Individual tire patches. He needed a couple.

Individual allen wrenches. Need only a 3mm? You can get it here.

A big spoke display of different sizes out in the open along with...

rims. No tubular rims, but still, they did have...

a selection of tubular tires.

Oh sure, they had bikes too, but it's the details that differentiate a cool bike shop from a boring one.

Anyway, we went home and worked on packing the bike into the box. It was enough of a squeeze that I wonder what I'll do with my enormous Atlantis. Still, we got it in and taped it up.

Sunday June 24

So Sunday we got to the train station about 6:45AM to check the bike in. We'd been warned to do it early because of all the extra handling. The train was running late, so we got a coffee and then I drove Paul around, showing him the Midtown Greenway both east and west of Hiawatha, the Short Line Bridge and the Hiawatha bridge a-building over the road and light rail tracks.

Back to the station, where we poked around a bit. Security's a bit loose, and we looked at the train cars sitting around until some lady came out and yelled at us. Then the train showed up. Paul got in line to board, I took a couple of photos of the luggage car getting loaded, and off I went home.

If you've read my Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour write-up, I mention at the very end seeing a cool custom railcar go by on the end of the Amtrak train. This is the car, I'm certain of it. It must be quite a view out of this car!

Paul's from Cedar Rapids, and that's what the car is named.

The logo would make a great headbadge!

Paul's bike on the luggage cart on the right, waiting to get loaded. The annoying thing about this photo is that he had to box his bike but on either side of the door of the luggage car is a bicycle logo; this car is equipped with hooks for roll-on, roll-off Bikes on Board service! Grrrrrr!

Tell me again why I have to box up the freakin' bike when you have bike logos all over your Baggage Car????

The train sets off to Winona and points east and south.

In the Amtrak parking lot was a bike with this unusual display of what gear you're in. I suppose people in the bicycle business would know what this is and when it's from, but I've never seen it before.

I changed into biking gear, got out the Atlantis and rode to Stillwater. This was 21 miles and I hadn't been out for several years. I liked the new underpass at County 12 and the Gateway Trail, much safer than the old level crossing. I was overtaken by many people along here including one large group that refreshed my memory on how much faster it is to ride in a crowd than it is solo, which I virtually always do. They caught me about half a mile from County 12 and for a brief time I was suddenly faster. I don't ever ride in groups, and I'm not sure of the etiquette; could I just ask to join them? I was uncharacteristically bashful, they moved onto the road at 12 while I took the bike path and I watched them ride away and disappear from view as I lumbered along solo. I might have to try some group rides.

Once I'd plunged down the hill into Stillwater I was starved and ate one of the volunteer ham sandwiches. I pretty much lived on free sandwiches, Nature Valley granola bars, Sport Beans and Cokes during these volunteer stints. The women's race was already in progress and I was due to relieve a course-marshall at 1:30. My position was pointed out to me; it was right by the Expo where the racers would start, in full sunlight. The past couple of years I've been up on the brutal but shady Chilkoot Hill at the top of which lies the finish line. That's OK, I slathered myself in sunscreen, suited up with shirt, vest and whistle, and took over.

Oh No! Look Out! This camera (a Kodak V705) does in-camera panoramas, but there's a bit of delay between each shot. The result is this three-shot, left-to-right image, what looks like a soon-to-be-fatal breakdown of course-marshalling as the unsuspecting pedestrians on the left are in dire peril of getting hit by the zooming racers on the right.

The racers gathered at the start. The guys with the rope set the front row, which was widely ignored, and here are trying to gather up their rope while the men's field bakes at the start line.

This guy's chain came off partway up the hill and he couldn't get it back on. He coasted back down and a mechanic works furiously on it. He got going again, but only after the peloton came by, leaving him a lap back. In a race where the judges began pulling racers two laps in, this probably wasn't good news for him.

It was easy course-marshalling, the crowds mostly having gathered up on the hill. The racers all assembled right there in front of me and I could see them getting pulled, some as early as two laps into the race. It went on for an hour; 45 minutes at speed, then 5 laps declared and counted down. The field was winnowed severely, probably more than half pulled by the judges. With two laps to go there was a crash at the corner near me, one guy running wide into the fence, another crashing trying to miss him, another hitting him and flipping over the bars. There was nothing for me to do; other marshalls, a race judge and a cop ran over, a couple of marshalls waved their flags at oncoming racers who couldn't see the fallen riders, but in a couple of minutes it was all cleared out and the race carried on to its conclusion, cheering and excitement up the hill, some uncertainty about whether the racers would be back, and after a few minutes, everyone began milling about, cleared out briefly for a kids race.

The same routine; switch vests, spend some time snipping down sponsor banners, then look for the fencing truck (of course, it was up the damn hill which is hard to walk up, never mind ride) and set off after it. By the time I got there it had moved on and I helped disassemble the finish line scaffolding, then the truck showed back up with only two people aboard, woefully shorthanded, so I joined them and spent the rest of my time taking in fencing.

Man, this was hot. I eventually went and sucked down a couple of ice waters, then rejoined the teardown efforts.

About 5:00, the fencing in, me wilting in the sunlight and heat, I turned in my vest, drank some water, mounted up and rode off. I thought about a beer and snack along the river, but wasn't really that hungry yet, so set off up the hill out of town.

Since I was last out this way, the Gateway Trail got an underpass under County 12, much safer than a level crossing. It's shared with a horse trail, as you might see.

This hill isn't as steep as the one on the race course, but it was all I could do to slog up the bloody thing. I found myself getting hungry for something other than Sport Beans and granola bars and came across a farm selling strawberries. I bought a pint and sat in the shade at a picnic table and ate the lot. Ahhhh, much better! I rode on home, County 12 to the Gateway Trail, that to Arlington, then surface streets home, not riding very quickly, and arrived right at 7:30, tired, grubby and hot, to take a lovely shower and change.

Another race set over. It's a lot of hard work even as a lowly volunteer, but it's also a pretty satisfying time. I don't regularly do much in the way of physical labour and there's a refreshing simplicity to dealing with fencing and CAUTION tape and sponsor banners and even to course-marshalling with it's opportunities for public interaction. The races are good fun to watch, and they're satistying to work. You might consider doing one or both next year.

Great River Energy Bike Festival

2007-06-18T17:41:00.000-05:00

The Great River Energy Bicycle Festival/Nature Valley Grand Prix bike races are coming up. This is a series of five races running Wednesday June 20th through Sunday June 24th. I volunteered as a crossing guard and for setup and teardown in the past, including last year's Minneapolis Criterium, cut short by thunderstorms with teardown in belting cold rain. My buddy Paul rode up last year and is doing so again this year. We're volunteering at the Wednesday Criterium (changed from the Time Trials they've done on Wednesdays in the past) in Saint Paul, Friday afternoon's Time Trial in Saint Paul (along Lilydale Road this time) and Friday evening's Criterium in Minneapolis (will it rain again? good chance!). Paul's heading back Sunday, but I'll be at the Sunday afternoon Criterium in Stillwater with its brutal hill climbs. I think they still need volunteers, so if you have an interest, go to the site's Volunteer Page and sign up. Setup and teardown are pretty easy and being a crossing guard is straightforward. I personally take along foam earplugs (stacking the metal fencing in teardown Friday evening can leave your ears ringing), leather gloves and a pair of diagonal cutters, useful for snipping the sponsor banners' Zip-ties off the fencing. Sunscreen is good, raingear has been essential.

On the off-days, we're just going to hang out. We'll probably go down to Cannon Falls to watch (and not work on) the road race. The race loop is such that you can catch several bits of the race by moving around a little.

Volunteering isn't too hard, you get a good view of the race and, if you see Paul and I around, you can join us for a beer afterwards.

Great Moments in Bicycle Mechanics, or, my Atlantis 3-speed

2007-06-12T17:01:00.000-05:00

As a self-taught bicycle mechanic of middling ability I have learned from many mistakes, both mine and others', over the years. Oh those fond memories of carefully repacking the bottom bracket only to find a ball bearing left over, the tremendous stopping ability of a brake block carefully adjusted to grab the tire or, my favorite, the surprise of discovering that the left pedal is left-hand threaded after a wrestling session involving two guys, a big wrench and a pipe. Happily, that last one happened to a couple of friends of mine and not to me, and they eventually gave up and took it to the bike shop where the mechanic got if off, though not before asking what sort of gorilla had installed it. You'd think that eventually every iteration of error would have been made but, no, there's always new frontiers.

Last night I installed a Pletscher/ESGE two-legged kickstand on my Atlantis. I got tired of my best bike having the worst kickstand and really like these two-legged units. I meticulously installed it, measured, cut off some of each leg, reinstalled, re-measured, trimmed off a bit more. No, the obvious error of cutting the legs too short so they dangle helplessly from the bottom bracket 10mm off the ground wasn't my problem. I got them trimmed to the right length, carefully installed the kickstand, rode it around the driveway and packed up for the night.

So today I'm riding to work, taking the Atlantis because the big blue Chatsworth is having some fiddly clearance issues with the fenders, and I go to shift with my excellent Dura-Ace bar-ends and....nothing. The lever will hardly move. I stare down at the crankset as I ride along and realize that, yes, I have carefully and meticulously clamped my rear derailleur cable to the chainstay along with the kickstand! D'Oh!

I rode along. This wasn't a critical service item, no need to return home and drive. This must be what singlespeeds are like. I kept peddling. At least it's in a decent gear--a lot of the time I shift to the largest cog as I wallow through the yard from the back gate. I wonder if I can shift chainrings...yes, I can. Hey! It's a three-speed!

I pulled off at the Lake Josephine changing house to see if I could loosen the clamp and free the cable but the 6mm allen wrench on my cute little Crank Bros. multi-tool won't reach in there. I also have a small allen wrench set, but it stops at 5mm. I really must rethink my field service tools! I rode on to work and parked it, and will ride home tonight on what may be the world's only three-speed Atlantis before making the needed repairs.

You Can't Spell Carnage without Car

2007-05-29T18:01:00.000-05:00

One of the aspects of motor vehicles that isn't often remarked upon is the number of deaths we accept each year for our convenience. In 2005, the last year for which figures are fully compiled, 43,443 people died in motor vehicle crashes, an average of 119 a day. On average, then, it takes about 3 1/2 weeks to kill as many people in motor vehicle crashes as died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Those attacks have dramatically altered our country's behaviour, reputation, finances and politics, yet the death toll continues to tick upwards on our roads with hardly any comment. It is so widely accepted as part of life that it seems we all know somebody killed in a car crash (one of our old employees' sons was killed a few days ago in Boston, a passenger in a taxi rammed into by a car being chased by police) or someone who has killed someone in a car crash (Laura Bush, for instance). In among the dead are 750+ bicyclists a year and around 4,800 pedestrians, though I think this undercounts pedestrian deaths.

Since I work for an insurance company, I get the industry rags that come around. Most of it is dull stuff, new insurance commissioners, competitor filings in different states, ongoing industry debates about various lines, but the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety does a number of good publications. They have just released a special Status Report called One Day of Crashes, which looks in detail at several of the crashes that killed people on Tuesday June 7, 2005. June 7 was chosen because 119 people were killed that day, the average daily total in a year with a low of 67 deaths (February 17th) to a high of 197 (June 25th). As it happens, there were no motor vehicle deaths in Minnesota that day, though there were two each in Wisconsin and Iowa.

The first death that day was at 12:05AM in Mooresville, Indiana, when a 16-year-old driving 90mph lost control, hit several trees and ended up upside-down. His father came across the wreck on the way to work and identified his son in the car. He is interviewed for the article and you can feel the unspeakable grief coming through. There are several other crashes detailed, ending with a newly-married couple clobbered by a drunk Marine in a pickup who ran a red light in Arlington, Texas and the final death of the day, when a motor scooter in Fort Worth ran into the side of a tractor-trailer at 11:55PM.

One story is a bicyclist death, one of four that day. A 61-year-old woman in Ocean Springs, Mississippi was riding her bike home from Wal-Mart when she was hit from behind by a Ford pickup driven by a 75-year-old man. He didn't stop until a policeman who'd seen the collision pulled him over. He claimed not to have seen the cyclist. There were 782 bicyclists killed in crashes with motor vehicles in 2005. Most died of head injuries, and 86% of those killed were not wearing helmets.

Another is a pedestrian death. An 83-year-old woman was crossing the street on a Walk signal when she was hit by a 74-year-old man in a Lexus SUV. The driver said he didn't see the pedestrian until his wife pointed her out and, startled, his foot slipped off the brake and onto the accelerator. The SUV lurched into the woman and she died of head trauma, one of 8 pedestrians killed that day, one of 4,881 killed in 2005.

It makes an illuminating litany of the daily carnage with all the usual causes; teenage stupidity (driving fast, no seat belts, inexperience), drunkenness and running red lights (the Marine t-boning the couple), inattention (two sleepy truck drivers, one runs off the road and kills himself, another runs at 53mph into the back of a stopped car and kills the driver), bad luck (the motorcyclist hitting a cow in the dark, a couple killed when a car crossed the centerline and hit them), speeding (a factor in nearly 1 in 3 fatal crashes), older drivers (75-year old hits cyclist, 74-year old hits pedestrian). They are often referred to as accidents, but many are not, they are behaviours people consciously choose. For all the motorist ire about cyclists always running stop signs and red lights, it is the ubiquitous speeding, cell phone talking, red light running, drunkenness and inattention which kills people by the score every single day. Yes, I know, I'm too important to obey those dreary speed limits, this phone call demands my immediate attention, that was close enough to a stop, I didn't drink that much, I am too important to be inconvenienced by legal behaviour and if more than 40,000 people a year have to die because of it, so be it.

You can read the IIHS Status Report here if you're interested.

In the meantime, be careful out there.

Three Speed Tour, Three Music Events

2007-05-25T20:44:00.000-05:00

Last weekend was the Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour. It was great fun. It took me a few days to get my account and photos posted, but they are up now and can be read here. I went as the Quicker Vicar this year and even ran a short service in the parking lot before we set off. Here I am Sunday in Old Frontenac:

When I'm not out in public as a Vicar (ordained in the online Universal Life Church!), I actually sing in the church choir directed by my wife. We're in the rotation for the Lake Harriett Bandshell service and our Sunday is this one, at 10AM. If you're in the area, stop by, and hear us sing. It's not as traditional as The Blessing of the Bicycles and in fact we're singing some pretty catchy tunes.

Sunday afternoon there's a benefit for Chris Zito, who was hit and badly injured by a hit-and-run motorist on March 30th. The benefit is Sunday the 27th starting at 3:00 at the Nomad World Pub on the West Bank of Minneapolis. There's a ride to the Nomad World Pub originating at Minnehaha Coffee (4554 Minnehaha Avenue) in Minneapolis at 2:00, there's music, there's food, there's beer.

Finally, next Saturday, June 2nd at 7PM, my son Henry and the Minnesota Boychoir are singing with the Twin Cities Gospel Choir. They'll be at University Lutheran Church of Hope at 601 13th Avenue SE in Minneapolis. It ought to be a cookin' concert.

I Did My Part

2007-05-16T07:14:00.000-05:00

There has been an email going around suggesting that we all boycott buying gasoline on May 15 to bring the oil companies to their knees and compel them to reduce the price to $1.30 a gallon, where it apparently belongs. Well, dubious though I may be about these efforts, I dutifully did my bit and didn't buy any gasoline yesterday. Due no doubt to you petrol-buying slackers, these efforts appear to have been for naught. Oh well.

I did go to the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board Bike Summit down by Boca Chica. It was ill-attended, probably due to the lack of publicity. I think my blog entry was about the most obvious announcement of the meeting, so the handful of non-BAB, non-presenters at the meeting was a disappointment compared to last autumn's 100 or so attendees. This session was really looking for comments on the bicycle portion of the transportation plan, not as open-ended a discussion as at last fall's Summit. There was some discussion of the power of the railroads in the context of the Midtown Greenway (which is now looking to build its own Mississippi River bridge rather than share the railroad's existing Short Line bridge), the Saint Paul part of the Greenway and the powerlessness to do anything about the Raymond Street bridge, which has a fairly horrid bend in the road and blind spot.

One interesting discussion during the break was with the City of Saint Paul engineer talking about Stop signs. Apparently, most residential streets used to have no Stop signs, they were uncontrolled intersections. The resulting accidents prompted the city to put in Stop signs on what he called a basketweave pattern, e.g., one every two blocks in opposite directions. Accident figures dropped, everyone was happy. Now, as time has gone on, people have become used to these signs and, as I noted in a recent entry, don't really stop, but slow down, take a quick look, and roll on through. By people, I mean motorists, not just cyclists. Accident rates at these intersections are now back to pre-Stop sign levels plus the city has got the cost of installing and maintaining all these signs. One proposal is to make all these intersections four-way stops which means, as one citizen apparently put it, it takes two idiots instead of one to cause an accident. This of course chops up travel even more--stopping (or pretending to) every block instead of every two, and is twice the number of signs that the city has to install and maintain and undoubtedley people will adapt to this, roll through these as well and, after an initial drop in accidents, no doubt the rate will creep back up.

I noted that there are some uncontrolled intersections in residential Minneapolis and I always creep up to them, afraid of someone barrelling down the opposing road. The engineer guy said that is often the case, that the responsibility is on the drivers and they take extra care. He said often as not, the safest bits of the highway are those known as Dead Man's Curve or Suicide Hill because everyone knows they're dangerous and takes extra care. Uncontrolled intersections are the same; people are cautious because they don't know what to expect.

In the insurance industry, we've seen the same sort of effect with anti-lock brakes. When they first came out, the assumption was this wonderful technology would make driving safer. In fact, the loss experience for ABS-equipped and non-ABS equipped automobiles is virtually identical. Where once, pre-anti-lock brakes, you'd creep gingerly up to icy intersections ready to pump the brakes, now you just zoom right up and stomp on the pedal, knowing the clattery ABS noises will keep you from locking up your wheels. It's been noted that people would drive a lot differently if there was a pointy metal spike sticking out of the steering wheel rather than a pillowy airbag. They'd drive differently if residential intersections were all uncontrolled, too.

It's been done. Here's a brief excerpt from an article about it:

Hans Monderman, the pragmatic Dutch planner who was one of the first to introduce the naked streets concept in Holland, reorganized streets so that cars had to proceed as cautiously as pedestrians. Drachten, a city of 45,000 people, has removed more than 80 percent of its traffic lights and more than half its road signs under Monderman’s guidance: the number of accidents has dropped dramatically. “I am used to it now,” Drachten resident Helena Spaanstra told one newspaper. “You drive more slowly and carefully, but somehow you seem to get around town quicker.”

This also ties into another bike program, the Share the Road signage. Saint Paul has Share the Road signs on a number of streets, which is good I guess, but many have their own poles and, speaking as someone who lives on a busy street, I'd be really annoyed if someone came along and slapped a pole in my front yard with a Share the Road sign on it. I was relieved a couple of years ago when some motorist crashed through our telephone pole, mailbox and street sign into our lilac hedge (then, in true motorist fashion, left the vehicle and ran off into the night). The power company replaced the telephone pole, I fixed the mailbox (which has since been hit again, again by someone who took off) but I just cut off the bent-over street sign and it was never replaced, which made me happy. I hate to say this, but I think Share the Road signs are just more visual clutter, something we can do with less of rather than more.

I rode to the Summit on my Atlantis dressed in regular work clothes--dress slacks, dress shoes, white shirt, tie. It was a good evening for this, as riding there involved a ferocious tailwind and 200 foot drop in altitude, and the wind was mostly gone by the time I rode home. I did pass a couple of Mormon missionaries proselytizing some guy at a bus stop. They, too, were on bicycles, with helmets, in white shirts, ties, dress slacks and shoes. This makes the Dressed Up Cyclist the perfect cycling uniform--if you overtake a slower cyclist, it's extra-humiliating for them to be overtaken by a guy in a tie; if you get overtaken, well, it was just some guy all dressed up, who couldn't overtake someone like that?; and strangers won't bother you for fear of being recruited into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Cyclists. When I told my wife that I looked like a Mormon missionary she pointed out that, no, they're usually young and attractive. Ouch.

Bikey Week

2007-05-11T07:17:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of bicycling-related things going on next week that may be of interest. First, for Saint Paul cyclists or those who have an interest, the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board's revised Saint Paul Bicycle Transportation Plan is going to be presented for public comment on Tuesday May 15 from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center for Community Building, 179 Robie Street East, Saint Paul. There is a link to the plan and map at the Midway TMO website, look at the upper right. In the way that these things work, this plan has been distributed to District Planning Councils for comments, this meeting is for public comment and it will be forwarded at the end of the month for inclusion in an overall Saint Paul Transportation Plan.

Then, on Friday May 18, it's Bike to Work Day! I've never participated in the events since they seem to be very oriented towards people going to the downtowns whereas I start in Saint Paul and head north, but this year I may help out in downtown Saint Paul. I expect that if you are reading this blog you know about commuting; if you're new to it, May's a great month to start. There are a bunch of rides planned, so maybe one will fit your needs. Hope it doesn't rain!

Stop Dammit! But not in front of me!

2007-05-10T07:02:00.000-05:00

One of the most common complaints aimed at cyclists by motorists is how cyclists never stop at stop signs or red lights, but just sail on through. This complaint is levelled as if motorists were all innocent little law-abiding lambs when in fact almost all motorists speed almost all the time (try driving the speed limit all day one day, and you will discover that speed limits are viewed as suggested minimums rather than legal maximums) and a huge percentage don't stop at stop signs, either. Just watch the wheels--if it's an uncontested stop (no opposing traffic), motor vehicles will slow down, look back and forth, and go on through without ever coming to a complete stop.

Is this outrageous behavior? Not really. It's how I drive, and so does virtually everybody else, though for some reason when cyclists slow down, make sure it's clear and then proceed, it raises the ire of motorists.

There's a good reason for this behavior, and it has to do with conserving momentum. It's a somewhat bigger deal for cyclists, who have tiny reserves of power and hate to squander it in coming to a complete, track-stand or foot-down stop, then have to accelerate from zero, over and over again (read about this in a couple of articles by a prof at Berkeley here in English and here if you want to check the math). It's a factor for autos, as well, and people who swear that they stop will slow down to 6mph or so (I've paced many motorvehicles through stop signs to see how slow they were) and then go.

Well, one guy stops. In Slate magazine one of their columnists made a comment about this yesterday, in relation only to cars and having nothing to do directly with bicycles.

Possibly bad idea of the day: I got a ticket a couple of years ago for failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. I was so guilty. Ever since then--and after I was admonished by a cop I met at a party--I've tried to come to a total, 100% stop, with the weight of the car falling back on its haunches, before stepping on the accelerator to get moving again. When I do this I can hear and actually feel the engine sucking in vast quantities of precious refined petroleum to overcome the inertia of 3400 pounds of metal at a dead rest. Which leads to the thought: Wouldn't we save a lot of gasoline quickly and cheaply if we replaced most of our "STOP" signs with "YIELD" signs? I'm sure there is a safety argument against this, but I'd like to hear it, along with up-to-date comparisons with countries that rely on "yield" more than "stop." ... N.B.: a) You could still require that everyone slow down to under, say, 10 miles per hour. It's the first 10 miles per hour starting back up that seem so gratuitously wasteful. (Maybe "YIELD" is the wrong sign. Maybe it should say "SLOW to 10.") b) Traditionalist drivers--e.g. geezers--could still come to a complete stop and retain the right of way. c) Policemen could still raise revenue for their employers by giving lots of tickets--they would just be tickets for "failure to slow" or "failure to yield." ... 3:51 P.M. (here's the link).

People already do this. Interesting that he picked 10mph when people often do 6 or so already. Maybe a car going from 30 to 6 looks like a stop but a bike going from 14 to 8 doesn't. (I've written about this before, in July 2005: you can read my previous masterpiece here if you missed it the first time around).

Separately, there's a flap on in Toronto where a motorist got pissed off at a cyclist (ironically, for stopping for a yellow light), got out of his car, and punched the cyclist, breaking out a tooth. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that some school kids were filming it. It turns out the motorist was an off-duty cop. One wonders at the message being sent: "You cyclists piss me off because you never stop at stop signs or red lights, but by God, if you do stop at one in front of me, I'm going to punch you out"? You can see the video over at Martino's Bike Lane Diary and the links flowing out from there. Reading through the comments can be both entertaining and annoying--some note that the teacher was hot, others say they have conceal and carry laws in Florida and that they'd just shoot the cyclist in the face. That seems like a twisted fantasy; if you want to kill a cyclist, all you have to do is run them down and you're likely to get away with it. Just make sure no school kids are filming you at the time.

And now the news from Europe

2007-05-05T10:06:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal yesterday ran an article titled Building A Better Bike Lane. It starts off with a slight sense of wonder about how Europeans use their bikes:

COPENHAGEN -- No one wears bike helmets here. They're afraid they'll mess up their hair. "I have a big head and I would look silly," Mayor Klaus Bondam says.

People bike while pregnant, carrying two cups of coffee, smoking, eating bananas. At the airport, there are parking spaces for bikes. In the emergency room at Frederiksberg Hospital on weekends, half the biking accidents are from people riding drunk. Doctors say the drunk riders tend to run into poles.

Some 40% of people commute to work by bike in Amsterdam, but...

Even in Amsterdam, not everyone is pro-biking. Higher-end shops have already moved out of the city center because of measures to decrease car traffic, says Geert-Pieter Wagenmakers, an adviser to Amsterdam's Chamber of Commerce, and now shops in the outer ring of the city are vulnerable. Bikes parked all over the sidewalk are bad for business, he adds.

Still, the new measures in Amsterdam and Copenhagen add to an infrastructure that has already made biking an integral part of life. People haul groceries in saddle bags or on handlebars and tote their children in multiple bike seats. Companies have indoor bike parking, changing rooms and on-site bikes for employees to take to meetings. Subways have bike cars and ramps next to the stairs.

Then there's the best part:

Within the past four years, the city increased the fine for buying or selling a bike in the street. Punishment for stealing a bike is now up to three months in jail.

You need a subscription to see the WSJ online, but I did a PDF of the article which you can read here.

Speaking of Amsterdam bikes, there's a web page with some interesting photos I like despite myself. It's at Amsterdam Bicycles and is 82 photos of bikes in Amsterdam taken in 73 minutes last autumn. Here, let me be catty for a second and say what I don't like about this page.

Deficient Photos - many of the photos are blurred. He needed a faster shutter speed or to pan with the bikes and in some cases the autofocus picked up on subject matter behind the bikes. This can probably be forgiven since he wanted to run all the photos he took. I've certainly had that impulse before.

Unfamiliarity with subject matter - this shows mostly in his vast overestimation of the effort required to run a bottle generator but also on his frequent reference to $15 or $20 bikes. Generators take little effort and free you from batteries and these bikes are worth lots more than $20. Many of his mistakes are gently pointed out in the comments that follow.

Annoying tic - in this case, "riding his bike in Amsterdam". Over and over again, it's Here's a lady in a dress talking on the cellphone riding her bike in Amsterdam. Yes, we know she's riding a bike and it's clear from the last 20 times you said this that it's in freakin' Amsterdam, so stop it already.

OK, I feel better now. Despite these gripes, it is an interesting set of photos because the mode of dress and riding is so much different than what we normally see here and the photos get this across.

Although I haven't previously posted this link, I think Cleverchimp did, and it's another set of Dutch cylcing photos from an apartment's second story. Again, a completely different riding vibe than we get in the Cities. Note that when you open this the use of white space on the front page of this PDF makes it look like it's blank. It's not.

Finally, the Cleverchimp guys are opening a bike store carrying some of the Dutch Cargo Bikes. It's called Clever Cycles and will be open soon (and, as I copy the links to put in here, I see he beat me to the WSJ story...oh well).

Heb een groot weekend!

Blueberry

2007-05-03T22:07:00.000-05:00

Blueberry died today. She was our dog, just over a year old, we adopted her in September. She worked her way into the family, becoming a fixture in the house, with the usual dog adventures of accidental poops in the hall, eating Henry's unattended hamburger, Geneva's entire birthday cake and annoying the cat. We got used to each other and she was one of us. We are generally responsible pet owners, keeping her shots current, feeding her decent food and walking her on a six foot leash. Today, though, she got out, chasing after some bunnies and squirrels. Karla went out after her, but Blueberry on the loose can be elusive. Karla was behind the house when she heard the skid and the Yipe! from out front. Karla ran out there; the car had left, but Blueberry was on the curb. She was badly hurt, and snarled when Karla touched her hindquarters. Her tongue was bleeding. A policewoman showed up, and she and the mailman and Karla got Blueberry on a blanket and into the car; to the vet, fortunately close by; it was morphine and a muzzle and xrays; a tearful phone message on my voicemail while I was at lunch; a broken left rear femur, collapsed lung, perforated organs, internal bleeding, air and blood bloating her abdomen; off to get Henry from school; me back from lunch and off to the vet; the dog, sleek and clean after the bath Geneva and I gave her last night, a mask on, asleep on her side, with labored breathing; a sombre talk with the vet; Henry and Karla tearfully out of the room; stroking Blueberry gently as she got the shot; twenty seconds and the breathing just stopped; a brief search for a heartbeat; Blueberry was gone. I went to get Geneva from school as well, plucked her from class for a tearful ride home, all Kleenex and remorse about having been annoyed about having to help with the bath, home for hugs and tears and tea.

And so tonight we find ourselves missing her presence already, no excited dog tumbling down the stairs to greet us, no hesitation before getting up from the recliner to allow Blueberry to leap out of the way, no "Walkies!" with her tail wagging so hard her whole back end goes back and forth. Her sudden departure has left us with the towel still damp from last night's bath, some fur from the bathtub a forlorn reminder in the garbage.

Blueberry at the farm at Thanksgiving. She was about 50 pounds, mostly Lab, who knows what else, with striking pale blue eyes and delightful ears.

Does this have anything to do with cycling? No, not really, other than to remind us how quickly things can change, to remind us that too many motorists will just drive off, maybe it was just a dog this time, but a couple of years ago a couple of blocks away it was an older gentleman, he was dead too, and that motorist didn't stop either, and they still haven't found him. It could be any of us. Be careful out there.

The Practical Pedal

2007-04-19T07:20:00.000-05:00

Someone's trying a magazine about Practical Cycling and subscriptions for the first year are free, with the first issue due out this summer. Here's what it says:

The Practical Pedal is a quarterly journal of practical bicycling. What's practical bicycling? It's bicycling for transportation, be it on the daily commute, the run to Costco, or a trip around the world.

Bicycling is good for the environment, good for the body, and good for our cities. We're convinced it was a mistake to relegate the most efficient means of transportation devised by man to the aisles of recreation and sport alone.

The first issue of the Practical Pedal will be out this summer.

The subscription page is here and they have a blog called The Practical Pedal as well. I'm not sure a magazine about Practical Cycling is a way to wealth and fame or even keeping all but the smallest wolves from the door, but I wish them luck and signed up.

Odds'n'ends

2007-04-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

There have been a number of things go by in the last two or three weeks that I thought worthy of mention but haven't got around to. Now you get 'em all at once!

Hiawatha Bridge

The Midtown Greenway is a great installation, a serious transportation-oriented bicycle and pedestrian facility, but the crossing of Hiawatha Avenue hasn't been great, a crosswalk across many lanes of traffic. The plan is to put a bridge in to carry the Greenway over Hiawatha, and construction has begun. This photo is actually from March 24th, my first outing on the Atlantis this season:

The Greenway website is uniquely uninformative in telling about this but my recollection is that it won't open until next spring. Still, given the long lead times on these kinds of projects, it's good to see concrete being poured.

Handlebar Review

The kids went to Kentucky for Spring Break to visit one of my sisters in Pikeville, deep in the heart of Appalachia. They went by Amtrak. They've never travelled alone and I had some anxiety about the outbound connection, a 2 hour layover in Union Station. If they were late and missed this, the next train to Ashland wasn't until Tuesday and I didn't like the idea of 15-year-old Henry and 13-year-old Geneva alone in the Big City. Given all this, I flew down to ensure things went well, show them the ropes, etc. I put them on the train at 7:30AM in Saint Paul, caught a very full flight to Midway in Chicago, took the CTA into the Loop (you can buy a $5.00 24-hour transit pass, a great idea), found Union Station and checked the train status (a bit late), then had some time to kill and was hungry. I decided to go to the Handlebar.

There was a blogger called Den of Awkwardness (the blog's still there, but has been dormant since last fall) who is a young lawyer riding in the Big City. Along the way, she bought into a bar called the Handlebar, which is bike-oriented, and it sounded like a hangout for cyclists. When planning this I noted that I had time to kill before the kids showed up so I thought I'd pop into a few bikeshops and did a google. The Handlebar had popped up in this search and is close to one of the shops I wanted to visit, so off I went to lunch.

The reviews on the Handlebar are mixed, from "greatest place in Chicago" to "interminable wait for surly service". I took the CTA Blue Line out to the Damen Park, made a couple of false starts (Milwaukee Road comes through the grid at a diagonal right here, cutting up the usual grid), and went to the bar. Here it is:

A couple of reviewers mentioned the tuna, tomato and avocado sandwich, so I had that and some local ale. It was delicious. I actually was very fond of the spicy coleslaw but only got a little dollop of that. The place does look pretty attitude-filled (I liked the bumper sticker "Only Users Lose Drugs"), lots of urban hipsters, young, tattooed and perforated, but my waitstaff was polite and the service pretty quick. Of course, it was about 1:45 on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, maybe it would have been different at 6:00PM. Bike attitude can take you only so far, good food and drink is necessary, and the Handlebar makes it on that point. I wandered down to the bike store (Rapid Transit Cycles and poked around, then caught the train back downtown.

Here are some other Chicago views:

Iconic Chicago view I: The Sears Tower. This is actually very close to Union Station.

Iconic Chicago View II: Razor Wire. When you ride the trains, this stuff's all over the place, in this case, at the Damen Street station. Chicago was just selected to make the U.S. bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, so I figure their logo ought to be the Olympic rings in razor wire.

You think they'd have wicker chairs in Wicker Park. This is also right next to the Damen Street station.

I flew home that night and the following week the kids came back. I didn't go back to meet them, my point on the outbound leg was to show them the ropes, and they successfully made the homebound connection and got back Easter Saturday, 15 minutes early.

Motor Trend

I'm guessing that most readers of this blog, a number thought to be well into the double digits, don't subscribe to Motor Trend. I don't either, but one day a couple of weeks ago I was in my dentist's office about to get a new crown installed and the May 2007 issue was sitting there. The cover story is about the Subaru WRX, a hot little overpowered sports car, and I noticed it because I've been involved in a VIN re-symboling project at work (tedious enough to be fatal to the uninitiated) where WRXs are real outliers. I picked up the issue and paged through and there's an interview in there with former CIA director James Woolsey. He's a strong advocate for energy independence and has attitudes that are right in sync with many cyclists: We are funding both sides of the War on Terror, gas pumps are collection plates for Al Qaeda, his Prius has a bumper sticker saying "Bin Laden Hates This Car". It was kind of unexpected for a magazine that usually salivates over the prospect of new V-12 engines to have this interview in there. It's worth a read, it's not online, but you can stand around in Barnes and Noble or your local library and get through it.

Peak Oil: Mexico's Cantarell Field

I read some of the Peak Oil stuff and believe that we are at around the Peak Oil point, that there will be an imbalance between energy supply and demand and that energy will get more expensive. I think those that believe energy will be cheap again are being unrealistic and hope that those that expect total societal breakdown are wrong. The Wall Street Journal on April 5 had an article entitled "Mexico Tries to Save A Big Fading Oil Field" about their Cantarell Field. Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

In March 1971, a Mexican fisherman named Rudesindo Cantarell took a few geologists from state-run oil company Petróleos Mexicanos to this spot, where he had seen oil slicks. Mr. Cantarell didn't know it, but he had stumbled across one of the largest offshore oil fields ever found.

A few decades and 12 billion barrels of oil later, the field that bears Mr. Cantarell's name is dying, and Pemex, as the state-owned company is known, is struggling to stave off the field's demise. From January 2006 though February 2007, Cantarell lost a staggering one-fifth of its production, with daily output falling to 1.6 million barrels from two million.

The oil industry was stunned. Cantarell, which currently produces one of every 50 barrels of oil on the world market, is fading so fast analysts believe Mexico may become an oil importer in eight years. That would batter Mexico's economy, which depends on oil exports to fund 40% of its government spending.

The continued deterioration of the world's second-biggest field by output would also put pressure on prices on the global oil market, where supplies are barely keeping up with growing demand as it is. And it would leave the U.S. even more dependent on Middle Eastern supplies -- and that much more vulnerable to political tumult in that region.

The Oil Industry was stunned? Even I have read about the likelihood of this happening, and I think the estimate is that production will decline another 15% this year. I do like the almost whimsical way the field was discovered, this fisherman who kept complaining about his nets getting ruined by oil and travelling hundreds of miles to complain to company officials until they finally came out for a look. Anyway, I find it interesting when the Peak Oil stuff makes its way into traditional business media. Eventually, the facts can't be ignored.

Drilling my Dropout

Long term readers may recall that I bought a big Schwinn World Sport a couple of years ago, fundamentally an ok bike but in kind of rugged shape; that I changed this to a 3-speed internal hub for last year's Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour, then switched over to a Nexus "Redband" 8-speed internal hub; that I ended up liking this bike much more that I thought I would, and that I am now going to get it painted.

One quirk of this bike which makes it problematic for internal-gearing is that the left rear dropout was partially filled-in with steel, meaning I had no back-and-forth adjustment to get the chain tension right and thus severely limiting the choice of rear cog. Here is a photo of the dropout right before I rectify this:

It wasn't just my bike; by buddy Paul has one of these and his has the same situation, but his is now a derailleur-equipped Xtracycle so the horizontal adjustment is not critical. Time to fix this.

First, drill the hole. There's a hardware store nearby going out of business and I got this cobalt bit from them. I was concerned that the dropout might be forged and tough to drill, but it didn't take long at all. It did make for an awkward setup on the drill press, a 68cm frame held by my wife and I and several clamps and props in position. Even with the hole drilled, I still have a bunch of material in the dropout to get rid of.

Dremel to the rescue! Unfortunately, my cutoff disks were pretty small and I had to go at an angle, so I couldn't tidy it all the way up. Instead, I moved out most of the remaining steel in a dramatic shower of sparks and acrid smoke.

All done! I filed the remaining material down until the right dropout was cleaned out. Oddly enough, the left dropout (on my bike and also on Paul's) didn't need this. There must be some reason they left the dropout partially closed, but I'm damned if I can figure it out.

Headbadges

The Schwinn had a headbadge on it and I had to take it off before going in for painting. It was two small rivets and drilling them out was quick work. The frame was now close to ready for painting. (I did go ahead and sand off all the decals too). I looked at the headbadge and thought, wow, that's lame. Headbadges are a bit of the bicycle that allow for real artistry. There's a Bicycle Head Badge group on Flickr and I was looking through that. There are some wonderful badges in there, and the Atlantis of course has a magnificient one. There is a woman named Jen Green who does custom headbadges (you can see her work at Headbadges.com though the site design kind of blows) but I didn't want to spend $80+ on a headbadge. At the other end of the scale, while paging through the Flickr Group I saw that there is a bike shop called The Bicycle Escape that does badges by hammering flat beer bottle caps and selling them for $1.50. You can see a photo here.

Damn, that sounds easy. I happen to have a box of about 3,000 bottlecaps in the basement (I use them for homebrewing, from a brewery I once ran for about 2 months as it was going out of business, it's a long story) so went and got one and hammered it flat. Here you go:

I'm not going to use a Joseph S. Picketts & Sons bottlecap, boy they're dull, but as a proof-of-concept it looks to be just about the right size compared to the original Schwinn. Cool! I could even use beer can material, as far as that goes, and as I clean out my Dad's house in Des Moines there's a bunch of steel beercans down there....the Tuborg Gold bike, or Billy Beer bike. We actually used to cut a bit of aluminum can material and put it in the bottom bracket to keep grit from falling into it down the seat tube, but I never thought of beer packaging as a fashion statement.

Anyway, I'm going to give this a try. I just got the bike back from being powder-coated Friday and it looks wonderful (full story in a couple of weeks, I am going to be gone for a bit here), a RAL 5002 Aquamarine that probably looks different on your monitor than in real life. I went to my local liquor store and decided that LaBatts Blue caps looked great, so bought and dutifully consumed a six-pack and am going to try hammering those out. The best thing is, the more you screw up, the more you can drink (oh darn, out of bottle caps, need to get another one).

Once back, I'll write up the paint job. Anybody can paint a bike frame, I had the frame painted, a Wald steel chainguard that I'd had de-chromed, and, in what I feel will be the beginning of a fashion trend, a set of smooth Honjo aluminum fenders. It's going to be built out next weekend and I'll run photos after that. In the meantime, I like this bottle cap idea and think I might tap and thread the rivet holes in my headtube and bolt on the headbadge with tiny stainless steel allen bolts so I change it when I so desire.

Shimano's newest product

2007-04-01T21:47:00.000-05:00

So far I haven't jumped on the fixed-gear bandwagon, fearful of the constantly turning cranks, the lack of brakes and the hordes of women I'd have to fight back because I'd be so irresistibly cool especially if I got a few tats and maybe a nose ring. However, I'm leaning more towards a fixie now that Shimano is throwing its technological expertise into the arena:

Shimano Announces Patented BioWheel
Irvine, CA (04/01/2007) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Shimano today announced its newest entry into the growing field of fixed-gear bicycle equipment with the introduction of the Shimano BW-700C/29BS Biowheel™ fixed-gear rear wheel. This wheel combines in a single unit Shimano's most advanced wheelset features including a one-piece solid mandrel construction, angular contact bearings and an oversized 7075 axle with the patented point-symmetric egg curve form factor at the wheel's rim. This allows BioWheels to offer the cyclist healthy, efficient pedaling at slower cadences than is possible with round wheels.

"Previously, the Biopace™ solution had to be implemented at the chainring" said Shimano USA President Kozo Shimano, "but the rising popularity of fixed-wheel bicycles with an unchanging crankset/drive wheel relationship allows us to apply the solution at the rim of the drive wheel and alleviate the chain tension concerns of fixed Biopace users." Shimano went on to note that a regular round front wheel is sufficient for most applications but that Shimano is also introducing a BioFront™ front wheel for cyclists who prefer stylistic consistency. Difficulties in the design phase have delayed the introduction of the matched BioBrake™ sidepull brakes so Shimano has made the BioWheel wheel disc-brake compatible for those who feel brakes are appropriate on fixies.

Google Bikes

2007-03-25T17:42:00.000-05:00

Wow, this is a nice benefit. Getting feelthy steenking rich is a good one too. I wonder why they aren't doing it in California? Poor climate?

Google is improving its green credentials by offering all of its employees a free bike to ride to work.

The bikes, manufactured by Raleigh Europe, will be offered to around 2,000 permanent employees of the search engine giant in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All of the bikes - plus free helmets - will be branded with the Google name.

Holger Meyer, Germany's first Google employee, came up with the idea and staff will be able to choose from a range of models including a "cool cruiser" - a folding bike for those that only make part of their trip to work under pedal power - and men's and women's hybrids.

The whole article is in The Guardian.

Burma-Shave

2007-03-23T07:23:00.000-05:00

Minneapolis is doing a Share the Road day or something like that next month. During my first meeting as a member of the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board in early March it was suggested that Saint Paul should do something in coordination with Minneapolis for this day. One idea that was floated was to do a series of Burma Shave-like ads for the sides of the roads that day.

If you're not familiar with Burma Shave signs, they were an advertising campaign by a shaving cream maker involved bits of doggerel on signs along the highways and always ending in Burma Shave. Each line of the little poem would be on a separate sign spaced a few seconds apart with the last one reading Burma-Shave. These started off in 1925 and the last new ones were posted in 1963 which means that they overlap my life though I don't actually recall seeing any.

Here are a couple of examples:

Dealing with the product:

His cheek was rough
His chick vamoosed
Now she won't
Come home to roost
Burma-Shave

A whiskery kiss
For the one you adore
May not make her mad
But her face will be sore
Burma-Shave

And with driving safely, which many did. It's hard now to remember how narrow the roads were and how bad the tires, brakes and even windshield wipers were in those cars, which of course had no seatbelts or airbags:

A guy
who drives
his car wide open
Isn't thinking
He's just hopin'
Burma-Shave

As you can tell, these aren't as rigidly defined a style as haiku or limericks.

Anyway, the challenge is to write some of these that will end with Share the Road rather than Burma Shave. Here are some of my attempts:

On my bike
I may look dorky
but because I ride
I'm not porky!
Share the Road

Diabetes, strokes,
cardiac disease
riding your bicycle
can help avoid these
Share the Road

Driving to
Your Spinning Class?
Ride your bike
and save the gas! (alternatively, you lazy ass!)
Share the Road

Your auto weighs four thousand pounds
My bicycle weighs thirty
If you hit me when you drive
Your grille will get all dirty
Share the Road

On my bike
I work and toil
to Support the Troops:
I burn no oil!
Share the Road

Some would be for cyclists:

If you ride
your bike at night
Get a Clue
Turn on a light!
Share the Road

One of the other BAB members has written some as well. Sadly, I don't have them with me, but one I liked went something like:

The cell phone is
A wonderful invention
Perhaps you could hang up
And call me an ambulance
Share The Road

which I like because it doesn't even attempt to rhyme.

There's more time for ideas! Leave them in the Comments below so all can see! And Share the Road!

Some Bike Porn

2007-03-12T23:54:00.000-05:00

The North American Handmade Bicycle Show was in San Jose the weekend before last, and Cycling News has posted a heap o' photos. You can see them here. There were a lot of utility bicycles this year, and there's a Gallery of Handmade Townies posted. The photographer does a good job but doesn't recognize some items, like the Stokemonkey or Tubus Cosmo. I did note that Vanilla Bicycles, which I've regarded as what I'd order if I won the lottery, now have a four-year wait. Holey smokes! Ahearne Cycles was there with one of their very nifty cargo racks with a slot to carry your U-lock though I think of them more as the cool flask cage maker. ANT from Boston was there; the Boston Roadster I think looks like a great utility bike. They also had a Rohloff-hubbed frame which would be deeply appealing though very expensive.

I don't know, though, my suddenly very modest-seeming Atlantis is expensive enough that I typically won't ride it somewhere where I have to park it outside for a couple of hours (like to a movie); I don't know what these bikes are running, but I'd be really nervous about a $5K or $8K or $10K bike to pop down to Rainbow for some milk. Still, they look fabulous and it's fun to see something other than just another (yawn) racing bike.

In other news, I stripped down my Schwinn today, starting preparations to get the frame painted. It needed some work when I got it, but new wheels (internal hub gears, dynamo hub), pedals, seat and handlebars looked after much of it. One thing I never looked at was the bottom bracket. After I got the crank arms off, I tried turning the bb axle and it is so tight and rough I can't turn it with my fingers! Yikes! I've never felt a bottom bracket so wretched. Think of all the newfound speed I'll have when I get it all put back together properly!

Finally, in the Tale of the Knickers, the lady around the corner couldn't handle buttonholes but there is a tailor in the strip mall nearby and he's going to do my conversion of a pair of summer weight black wool dress trousers to knickers for about $40. My legs will be 3 inches longer than the Bicycle Fixation knickers. I even got to choose the color of satin for my gusset (I went with blue, to match the frame color I'm likely to get). I also admired the achingly beautiful fabric samples for custom suits, which start at $1,300. I didn't tell him my trousers were $20 from Sierra Trading Post. Can't afford a custom bike, I can at least get handmade knickers. Anyway, these things'll be done next Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes.

Zwei Drei Geschwindigkeiten

2007-03-11T21:01:00.000-05:00

According to Babelfish, that means Two Three Speeds.

If you're not into old bikes at all, this entry is going to be even duller than usual. If you have a passing interest, these bikes might be of interest. These bikes are a slightly different tack than the usual English three-speed bicycles. These are German three-speeds. They're called Rabeneicks, I'm guessing they're from 1958 or so (based on Sturmey Archer hub vintages), and they're down at One on One Bicycle Studio in Minneapolis (yes, that's Ein auf Einem).

The back story? I guess the original owner was in the U.S. Army in Germany in the 1950s, bought these there, and brought them home. It is thought that they weren't ridden much once back in the U.S. I am not an expert on this stuff, Rabeneicks seem to be ill-documented on the web (at least in English), but they look to be largely original. I thought they were cool when I first saw them in the infamous One on One basement, and asked if I could come in one Saturday morning, pull them out, and take photos. I did this yesterday. These are the photos and notes.

There are two of these bikes, a mens' and a ladies'. They are for sale for $600 for the pair, or $333 each, though it would be a pity to break them up after being together half a century.

Here are my photos:

(Note: as with almost all my photos, if you click on the picture you'll get a much larger version to better see the fine details)

This is the Rabeneick Men's bike...

...and this is the Ladies'.

One of the things that immediately drew me to these bikes was the "hood ornament", a metal eagle on the front fender. It looks so Germanic!

Everything's very solid, including the bell, with the Rabeneick name prominently showing.

The ladies' bike says Rabeneick Rad. Rad? Wow, man, that's Rad!

The men's bike has Weinmann 1020 brakes, the ladies' has one of those on back and an Altenburger sidepull on front. This is the brake lever for it. Both bikes had these Bakelite handgrips.

German they may be, but they're both Sturmey-Archer three-speeds.

The ladies' bike has this seat tube decal. A feature I really like is the little tool box affixed to the frame, visible in the background.

This is the toolbox.

This shows the dogbone wrenches (literally, "Hundeknochenschlüssel", what a great language, I should have taken German instead of French in high school) in the ladies' toolbox.

I don't know what this means. Neither does Babelfish.

Here's the Weinmann brake lever.

The ladies' bike has a 1958 Sturmey Archer SW hub. This was the replacement for the common-as-dirt AW hub but could be a finicky unit (the joke is that SW stands for Sometimes Works) and the AW came back into production, so that the one on my bike is a 1967 AW.

It's funny with steel stuff how slender things can be. This is the front hub. I like the wingnuts.

This shows the actual Altenburger front sidepull on the ladies' bike.

The bikes both have wheel locks. Nowadays, European bikes (and Breezer Uptowns) have these kind of "handcuff" locks--this one just sticks a bar in the spokes. It's called a Trelock Automat.

The Ladies' bike has Continental Type Corsa tires. Love these whitewalls. I think the ridges on the sidewall are to improve traction for the sidewall dynamos. Clever chaps these Germans! Also, the ladies' bike had all these holes drilled in the rear fender. It looks to me like it was to lace in a skirt guard. The men's bike doesn't have these drillings. Finally, notice the textured rim, little dots cut into the braking surface.

The saddle is an "L. Lepper, Beilefeld" unit.

I love fender lights. I just ordered one for my Schwinn, though it's batteries and LEDs while this one's a bulb and dynamo. Even so, it seems to have side windows for better visibility to traffic.

This is the downtube decal on the men's bike. This bike isn't Rad I guess. (Rad actually means "wheel" in German).

The cable routing for the men's bike takes the shift cable over a pulley. No cheesy English plastic shift pulleys here, boys, it's a metal pulley.

This is the whole drivetrain. At this date a swastika crankset would be out of the question, but they could have had more fun than this. Again, the steel components are very slender compared to modern aluminum or carbon components.

Even then they had reflectors in pedals. I don't know well these work, but they are pretty neat.

The men's bike has an alloy-shelled Sturmey Archer AM hub. The AM is the medium-range (the common-as-dirt AW is the Wide range). This is a 1956 unit.

The 6 volt 3 watt dynamo. That's the same as current specs.

This is the headbadge on the men's bike.

The ladies' stem is very plain, but I loved the sort of "ship's prow" casting (forging?) for the men's stem.

Another L. Lepper. You might want a cover.

They're solid, handsome bikes. They're also 50 years old.

To photograph these I set them up at the front of One on One and just used the mixture of open skylight and incandescent. I had to move a couple of new Bianchi racing bikes to make space. Boy, was that illuminating! Having just hauled these battlecruisers out of the basement I picked up a tiny (probably 19") Bianchi carbon racing bike and it weighed about 4 pounds. I exaggerate, but it was extremely light, especially compared to the all-steel Rabeneicks.

Thanks to One on One for letting me do this. I bought a coffee and then lunch from them and they were very agreeable to letting me do this. I may do it again on other interesting bikes in their collection. Also, in case you are wondering, I have no business arrangement with them--if this entry hastens the sale of these bikes I don't get paid. I just did this because they looked like unusual bikes and it was kind of fun to do on a unique pair of cycles.

Finally, if you're deeply interested in photography, these were all shot on my Sony DSC-R1 10.2 megapixel camera using a tripod. They're at ISO 160 and exposures often ran more than a second. One some photos I filled in the shadows a bit by holding a reflector just out of view.

You know you're too tall when...

2007-03-08T07:19:00.000-06:00

...your knickers are too short.

One of the longstanding themes of me and bikes is the difficulties trying to get stuff big enough. I stand 6' 5" tall with a 36" inseam and wear a size 14 shoe (49 European). The fashion in bikes is for everything to be small, so that most bike shops leave me utterly uninterested in their newest offerings, which often max out at 60 or 62cm frame sizes.

In the last couple of years I've managed to address this. My main bike is a Rivendell Atlantis in the 68cm size (27"). I've got 175mm crank arms on it and the 56cm wide handlebars. It's really the first bike that ever fit me properly and has been a joy to ride--there's only so much that lots of stem and seatpost can do on a fundamentally too-small frame. (If you click on my Profile photo you'll see me dwarfing a 21.5" Marin mountain bike frame with lots of seatpost, a tall stem and riser and handlebars that come up a bit more--but the bike still feels cramped, and is now relegated to winter duties). My around-town bike is a early 1980s 68cm Schwinn World Sport bastardized into an 8-speed Nexus hub bike. It has regular 170mm cranks but the wide Nitto Albatross bars, real longhorns. Both these bikes, when around other people's rides, look like they have about a foot of headtube and the Schwinn, with thin 1980s frame tubes, looks particulary willowy.

Clothing remains an issue. In everyday stuff I wear a 17 1/2 X 37 shirt, 46 XL suits/jackets, very large hats and XL gloves. Cycling shorts are no problem, of course, nor are short-sleeved jerseys. Other items, though, get harder. It's tough to find size 49 cycling shoes, and 48s and a grimace don't make it (I tried). When I came across the Adidas El Moro IIIs in 49, I bought two pairs. One learns to buy when stuff is available. Long sleeved jerseys can be a problem; I tend to buy XL or XXL just to get the sleeve length, ending up with a really baggy fit since I have a very flat chest, due in part to a big chest operation I had when I was about 16 which at least gives me an artful scar and two belly buttons (OK, one's a drainage tube scar). The buy-large strategy doesn't always work; I recently got a Nike Tete du Course merino wool jersey in XXL length. It was $200 originally, I got it on deep discount sight-unseen, and the sleeves are short. It's made in Italy and their impression of an XXL doesn't seem to match up with North America's. It's not uncommon for garments made with really expensive luscious fabrics to be a bit stingy in the fit, which is pretty cheeky when you are asking $200 for a jersey.

Anyway, I decided to try some knickers. I was going to buy some last year but the places with my sizes were out and I never got around to it. This year, the guys at Bicyle Fixation are doing some knickers. They're wool, they're dressy, they're actually made in the United States of America! They even have a bit of flashy satin lining! I ordered up a pair.

They arrived yesterday. I was so happy, and nobody else was home, so into the living room and off with my trousers! I tried on the knickers and...they're too short. Not by a lot, 2 or 3 inches (OK, that's a lot in a garment), but with my upper leg horizontal, as on a pedal stroke, the knickers' cuff binds diagonally over my knee. I was really bummed out about this. There was a little note in there from the Bicycle Fixation people, how the wife was unimpressed by the selection of cycling garments for her husband, how they put together these wool gabardine knickers, how the flashy satin was actually from their wedding...I loved the vibe on these things. I wish they worked for me. They just don't fit.

(As an aside, there is a review of these knickers at Fixed Gear Gallery).

So, I'll be contacting them and returning them. In the meantime, I just got a pair of unhemmed wool dress trousers from Sierra Trading Post for $20 and they're lovely. There's a lady around the block from us who does alterations...I'm thinking I'll call her up and see if she can sew the trousers into knickers for me. I'm going to call her tonight and take over the Bicycle Fixation knickers so she can see what's involved. On the whole, I'd rather keep them, but they do need to fit. If you're normal-sized (my buddy Paul, who picked up the Tete du Course jersey for me in Cedar Rapids, said "that's what you get for being a freak" when I whined about the short long-sleeves on the garment), I'd think about a pair.

PS Later on today, after having posted this entry, I got a call from George's Shoe Store, where I'd left a pair of Rockport Dressports 14 Narrow shoes to be resoled. The sole that I'd selected? They don't make them that big. Sheesh, story of my life. I approved a different sole, and they'll be ready next week.

Wow, that's a slap in the face

2007-03-01T07:21:00.000-06:00

The Wall Street Journal has a front-page article this morning about a health club in Hong Kong that has hooked up some of its elliptical exercise machines to run its lights. The machines had little generators in them already to light up their own displays, but most of the power was wasted as heat. Rewired, they run several fluourescent lights. The article goes on to talk about other efforts along these lines; generating power from backpacks, dance floors, even heel strikes of Army boots, something the military's been looking at. Of course, says the article, this has a long history. Old phones had a crank that generated electricity when you wanted to make a call, you can get windup radios and flashlights and...

Some people have been capturing their own sweat for years, including children on bicycles whose pedaling generates electricity to operate their headlights.

Yep, lots of SON hubs on those Huffys! The emphasis was mine, not the Journal's.

It will be interesting to see if dynamo hubs get more popular as the light output of LEDs rises but remains well within the output of the hubs (about 3 watts). A 3 watt bulb is OK, the 3W LEDs are getting really bright.

The online Wall Street Journal requires a subscription so I'm not linking to it.

Separately, Wells Fargo seems to have got a reprieve. Longtime readers may recall that I was not allowed to make a deposit last July in the drive-through lanes of the local Wells Fargo bank branch. A desultory correspondence with Wells Fargo yielded conflicting answers as to whether this should be allowed and the suggestion that I just go inside. I relished the idea of dragging my filthy dripping bike into the Arden Hills branch, which at that time had no bike racks, but in November some racks appeared. Now, the small church that employs my wife as a superb Music Director started offering direct deposit, and she signed up. Both Februrary paychecks have appeared all by themselves in the account. I was chastised by some commenters for not having done this earlier, and I have for years in my own employment, but it was only just offered by the church. Wells Fargo has averted my wrath a bit longer.

Finally, despite this being a worthless winter for me riding (I've been gone a lot, either on business trips or working on my father's house in Des Moines), I was named to the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board on January 24th. Unfortunately, they didn't tell me until February 6th, the morning of what should have been my first meeting, and I was in Des Moines scraping wallpaper off walls at the time. It is a pity I wasn't informed on time because I would have gone to the Iowa Bicycle Summit on Thursday/Friday February 1/2. I drove to Des Moines that Thursday evening anyway, I would have just gone a day earlier and gone to the Summit.

Fortunately, my longtime cycling and house-repairing buddy Paul went. He was about to spend a bit more than a week scraping wallpaper, ripping up carpet, painting, repairing, throwing out stuff, etc. with me. He sent me these links:

The Iowa Bicycle Coalition.

Iowa Department of Transportation Bike Site. Iowa does a bike-specific state highway map which is clever. They of course get huge numbers of riders for the annual RAGBRAI ride and my sister emailed yesterday and said it's ending up in Bellevue again this year, where she lives.

Iowa Bicycle Summit homepage which has links to the Powerpoint presentations. The one called "Bicycle Facility Design" took all day Thursday. Paul also liked the one called "Road Diet". These have lots to do with traffic engineering--lane widths, three lanes versus four, etc. Over the weekend, scraping wallpaper and talking about the Summit, we were both consumed with a desire to take tape measures out to streets and measure some lane widths. As with most Powerpoints, these would be better with the accompanying narrative, but they're still something to chew on.

There was a separate link about Bicycle Boulevards.

Like I said, if I'd known that my Ascent to Power had commenced, I would have taken another day off and gone to this summit, but I wasn't informed until too late. I got the materials from the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board and my first meeting is March 6th, so I'll add my voice to that group and probably be better-informed about what's going on. In the meantime, I am the Ward 5 representative, and so one of my first goals is to ride every street and visit every tavern in Ward 5. Don't know where Ward 5 is? Yeah, neither did I. It abuts Larpenteur on the north (the north city limit), then basically runs from Hamline east and north of Front to Dale, then north of the BNSF railroad tracks east to Edgerton.

Anyway, March is here, and although it's snowing like a bastard at the moment, the weather will turn much more promising in the next few weeks. I have a couple of more weekends to do down at Dad's, but with luck we'll sell the house this spring and be done with that time sink.

Gold Plated Bicycle

2007-01-16T22:05:00.000-06:00

I was out wandering around The Northwest last week, in Boise for a day, then Salem, Oregon for three days and ended up in Portland, Oregon, before flying home, connecting through Seattle. It was a business trip through the end of day Friday, then I took a look around Saturday and Sunday morning since I'd never been there before. Here's the notable bits.

I stayed in Salem, the capital of Oregon and also where our Western Regional Office is located. I was looking around downtown to see what that was like and went into a bike store called The Bike Peddler. Nothing notable, particularly, but they had a pretty cool bike hanging up high.

It is called a Cellini and it's very striking, mostly because the frame is gold plated. The photos hardly do it justice. I asked the guy about the bike. He said one of the store guys bought it for $60 or $80 from an estate sale. They thought it was about 1982 and was all-Campy on a gold-plated frame with cherrywood rims. The Cellini name was also engraved on some of the components, like the chainrings.

They didn't know many details. They said there was no bike maker named Cellini that anyone knew of, but that the bike did have the name of Italy's largest goldsmith on it and the initials of a major tradeshow. Maybe it was just showing off. How it came to be in Oregon nobody knew, but here it pops up at an estate sale for under a hundred bucks. The frame was stunning. The components alone would be worth more than the $60 or $80. I should have offered them $150, think of the profit!, but it would have been hard to get home.

One of my lesser life goals is to take photos of all the state capitols. It's not a Mission from God or anything, but when I'm in the area, what the heck. I nailed Salem Saturday morning (I got Boise, too, but had shot it before). It's a pretty boring capitol building, as these things go, not big and majestic like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Out front they had inspiring carvings, including this one of some chick slapping a horse.

The accompanying notes showed it was Sacagawea leading the Lewis and Clark expedition Westward Ho, and from straight-on it doesn't look so much like a dope slap.

I drove north towards Portland on a highway west of but parallel to I-5. I was going to McMinnville, Oregon. It's lovely country, with lots of vineyards and nut orchards, particularly for hazelnuts. At McMinnville, a charming little town, I went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum. I like airplanes, and visit aviation museums when in the neighborhood, and this one has a very odd, one-off aircraft, Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose. This is one big-ass airplane:

You can see a guy standing down at the lower left. It's kind of a novelty aircraft, not an Important Airplane, but it's cool to see it live. It was designed to carry troops and supplies from the U.S. to Europe, overflying the German U-boat menace in the Atlantic. As a seaplane, it would land on a handy body of water and offload through a hinged nose right onto the invasion beach. It would lift 100 tons using its 8 3,000 horsepower engines and was made of wood so as not to use valuable strategic metals or workers needed for other aircraft. As it happened, the U-boat menace faded, ships work lots better for moving lots of men and supplies, these engines would have been nightmares, the plane wasn't done until two years after the war was over and only flew once, for about 2 miles. It has a colorful history, though, and represents the outer limits of piston-engine aircraft development (the wingspan is bigger than a 747s or even Airbus's new A380, although that's partly because they have swept wings). Although I haven't seen it, the movie The Aviator is about Howard Hughes and includes the Spruce Goose tale as part of it.

An interesting sidelight is that Evergreen, besides being a global aviation company and owning this museum, also owns a hazelnut farm and a vineyard/winery, so they had a wine tasting going on in the museum. I tried the wines and bought a bottle of 2004 Spruce Goose Pinot Noir and a hazelnut cookbook (plus some nuts), which actually looks pretty good.

On to Portland! I originally had plans of spending all day Saturday on a rented bike looking around, but didn't arrive until 2PM in my rental car. I did Plan B, driving (oh shame!) around to several bike shops.

One notable thing was wooden fenders. These seem to be the in thing in bike bling in Portland. River City Bicycles had them, and they looked great, plain finish or contrasting woods in stripes or patterns. River City Bicycles also had a neat gate made of bicycle frames that surrounded the little picnic and garbage area behind the building. I liked this idea:

I went to Cyclepath which turned out to be high-end racing stuff, but they also had wooden fenders. The guy here was at least straight about them--he said they didn't work that well, since there's no shape to them--they're flat rather than concave. He also said his were varnished where the River City ones are just oiled. OK. Sure looked nice, though, and the Cyclepath guy said his were cheaper because they were made from scraps from a furniture factory or something.

The other item that struck a chord was the Ahearne Cycles flash cage. I have a weakness for flasks anyway, and this is just really appealing in a novelty sort of way. Would it be useful? Not really. I like whiskey, for instance, but basically never drink it while riding. About the only time I take booze on the bike is when I pack 1.5 Gin and Tonics in my stainless steel insulated water bottle and go to the Bike In at the Bell. Still, I like the idea even if it seems to be optimized for the Surly flask. You can check out the rest of the Ahearne products, as well; I like the Grocery Rack with the optional bottle opener.

I hit up a couple of other stores as well, it makes a good way to see a city, trying to find a whole succession of addresses in a place you've never been before and without benefit of a navigator. The city seemed like a mix of the Twin Cities and San Francisco, with some big hills (though not as many as SF) and crowded streets. It was about 27 and cloudy but at least it wasn't raining.

Sunday morning I went to an Episcopal Church downtown and then, leaving, took a wrong turn and head up the hill towards the Zoo. I'd read about Zoo Bombing, a bike culture thing in Portland, where they ride the (excellent) transit system to the Zoo, up on the heights, and then ride down. This is often done on kids bikes or BMX bikes and for the more daring includes getting onto Highway 26, a virtual Interstate, where the circa 50mph speeds allow them to blend with the traffic. It helps to be young, stupid and drunk, apparently. Me, I was just stupid, got off at the Zoo exit, crossed the highway and headed back down and then off to the airport. It is a long steep hill and I can imagine getting going faster than hell on the way down. Nowadays when I go fast down hills, like over 30 mph, my thoughts drift towards the pragmatic, like, hmmm, I wonder what would happen if my front wheel blew? Or if someone pulled out of a cross-street? I don't enjoy it quite the way I used to.

Anyway, half a day of driving to bike stores gives only the faintest hint of the bike culture out there. Next time I'm out maybe I'll do it in a more attractive time of year and actually spend a couple of days in Portland on an ill-fitting rental bike. It would be cool to see some of the luscious Vanilla Bicycles and maybe try out a Stokemonkey, both Portland-based enterprises.

As bleary as 27 and cloudy looked, it at least wasn't 36 and rain. Two days after I left they had a big snowstorm and there were enough photogenic wrecks it made the news here in the Cities.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-26T18:46:00.000-06:00

I've barely ridden since Thanksgiving, being occupied with all the regular church stuff, a huge dinner we lay on there (about 150 people this year) and painting our dining room. I love this time of year, but December tends to be my lightest riding month and this year was no exception despite the moderate temperatures. Merry Christmas anyway!

Not actually our house. This one belongs to a family a couple of blocks from us called, I think, the Griswolds. As with most of my photos, click on the picture to see a larger version.

Wells Fargo Worries About Their Carpet

2006-11-22T19:07:00.000-06:00

Long time readers may recall my low-level argument with Wells Fargo and their policy of not accepting deposits from bicyclists in the drive-through lanes. Wells Fargo, apparently wanting to inconvenience their bicycle-riding customers as much as possible, suggested that I just go inside the bank. There's no bike parking at the Arden Hills branch, I said. It was suggested that I just take my bicycle inside with me and if the staff has any questions say I'd been instructed to do this.

This has been a slowly-evolving story, and I thought the next move (besides using the drive-through ATM to make my deposit, just as quick and they can't refuse to accept it) would be to ride in in mid-January with my studded knobby tires and filthy bike dripping snow, slush, salt and grime on their carpets and cheerfully say that I'd been instructed to do this rather than use the drive-through lane. I discovered last winter that the bike will retain a lot of filth and drop it pretty quickly when it warms up (I found this out at church, where I'd park it by a floor drain).

Wells Fargo, very prescient, must have figured out what I was going to do and countered. On 21 November I went over to the bank and...

Curses! The canny bastards have put in a bike rack at Arden Hills! No excuses about no bike parking.

I contemplate my next move...

Velos de los Muertos

2006-11-02T20:26:00.000-06:00

Last year, on a whim, I made myself a skeleton outfit out of black Levis, a cheap black sweatshirt, a Mayo Clinic Health Guide and some iron-on interfacing, then rode around on my bicycle cackling at people with a pumpkin on back. This was good fun.

I got my inspiration in part from the Mexican Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations, which tend to be exuberantly colorful.

This one was in the Museum Shop at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

I decided to do this again. First, we had to get the pumpkins ready. We have a huge yard with a back gate, so have a couple back there, a couple by the back door and one by the front door, plus I needed one for the bicycle.

I pressed Henry into service doing pumpkins.

And here I am. Got to add fingers to my black gloves. When I first tried this last year, I used an REI candle lantern to illuminate the pumpkin. This turned out not to work very well. I switched to using several red blinkie lights and that works great. In this photo, I have six of them blinking away inside the pumpkin. Of course, they all blink at different rates so you get this cool flickering effect, much better than an actual candle.

Photo Note: to get the pumpkin face to show up, I used a slow shutter speed, 13 seconds in this case. The bike and I are illuminated primarily by the flash, the long exposure allowed the pumpkin blinkies (and background sky, neighbor's living room and moon) to burn in. A tripods is handy for this. This distant shot was to see if I framed it right--it was extremely dark outside. Once established that I had the camera aimed right, I zoomed in and got a closer shot:

The quick feedback of digital is great! This is with my new Sony DSC-R1 camera, my first "serious" digital, giving me the flexibility to use external flash and set manual exposures.

I rode about 10 miles all in all. I prefer to ride towards people and grunt or recite some doggerel like Ghosties Big and Ghosties Small, Skeletons are the Worst of All and then cackle and throw a candy bar at the smallest kid. Sometimes I just grunted, sometimes I stopped and handed out candy. Unlike last year, nobody came out and gave me a beer. I don't think it actually frightens anyone under 6, but it sure startles the hell out some folks! I think it adds to the light-hearted neighborliness as well.

And I look nice and friendly:

The makeup looks better from a distance!

Late Summer & Fall Pictures

2006-10-15T17:28:00.000-05:00

I haven't given up riding, I've just got really bad at blogging! I've got a couple of posts to catch up, and am going to date them at roughly the correct time, but here is a smattering of photos from the late summer and autumn.

I wanted to go and take some pictures with Mamiya 6 (a 120 medium format film camera) to try out some cheap mailers, so went riding along the Mississippi River in Saint Paul. Here's how I carried the camera; in the usual camera bag in a basket mounted on my Topeak rack. These racks are pretty ugly, but you can quickly interchange components using a sliding attachment, some spare ones of which I bought last spring. This isn't even a Topeak basket, it's a Wald with a Topeak mount on it. Anyway, this works great for Bicycle Based Photography. You ride to the spot, part the bike (the kickstand is great for this, as when this train went through), pull out the camera bag and shoot away. This is how the Atlantis was set up in late summer, with the cute but so far largely-unused Nitto front rack.

Here's the Billingham camera bag in the basket on back. The bag has some padding to protect the camera. Also notable here is the stainless steel Jong Won JSB-500 double-walled water bottle, which will keep ice water icy for hours even on hot sunny days, and hot coffee plenty steamy on an hour's ride to church in the winter.

I love how bike magazines talk about "the cockpit" of bikes they test, like it's real complicated or something. Somewhat more cockpit-like than usual is this VDO computer, which has an altimeter and temperature. I'm at 711 feet about sea level here at 89 degrees Fahrenheit, and am pretty sure the altitude's right because I, being a nerd, rode to Holman Field to set the base altitude one evening (704 feet at the north end of Runway 14/31), then rode straight home to establish my garage's base altitude (916 feet ASL). You have to reset the base each morning (or at known altitude locations, like airports, Continental Divides, the ocean, or the top of Mount Everest) because changes in barometric pressure will fool it. It also can get fooled, so that when I take it out of my air-conditioned office into hot summer afternoons and ride home, the temperature-compensation can give misleading altitude gain readings as the thermometer catches up to the heat.

Ah! A new shipment of tubes so Rivendell can make some more Atlanti! Gotta love steel bikes!

When my employer asked me (as a commuter) about bike racks, I developed an unhealthy interest in bicycle parking. This, by the way, will get you nowhere with the babes at parties. In any case, driving back from dropping the kids off at camp Karla and I stopped in Forest Lake. They've developed their lakefront, and installed their U-racks improperly (they should be parallel to each other, not in a line!!!).

Meanwhile, back in Minneapolis, Phase III of the Midtown Greenway came into wide use well before its official opening. There are thoughts about extending it across the Short Line Bridge into Saint Paul, which would be great. Sadly, there was a fire on the bridge over the summer that damaged it. I was glad to see repair machinery out on the structure and have since seen trains at the elevators on the Minneapolis side of the river. The Greenway ends here at the moment, and the fencing is much more formidable now, but in August I could still walk right up.

That's not the only bridge work. In the summer of 2005 Como Avenue, a good way to downtown Minneapolis for me, was closed for months while they completely rebuilt it. In the summer of 2006, the street was beautiful but now the railroad was rebuilding their bridge across Como Avenue by Mannings Cafe. On weekends, you could pick your way through. During the week there were lots of construction guys around and I (on the way to my dentist in downtown Mpls), took the detour.

You can see the new supports here alongside the old steel (or iron?) ones. The new ones won't have a support in the middle of the road like the old ones did. The trick to all this was keeping the rail lines open during construction. Funny that I'd take photos of bridgework on the way to the dentist! Ho ho. The road is open again.

Another way of carrying cameras. This is an Ortlieb front bag with the camera insert. This insert provides some padding and structure to the insides of the bag. In this instance, I'm carrying a Contax G2 film camera in there.

One day in September I rode the Intercampus Transitway going towards Minneapolis and at the end, instead of vast empty parking lots, there was a fuss going on. It was the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new University of Minnesota football stadium. Some official was blathering on about the commitment to excellence and proud football tradition and how the new stadium would be great. Personally, I thought they were idiots to get rid of the old stadium, about a block away from where this ceremony was taking place. They had a nice brick traditional stadium and knocked it down to make way for the Aquatic Center. Swimming pools are nice, I guess, but college football in the sterile environs of the Metrodome is just lame. I thought they were nuts when they made the move, in 1982, and it's rewarding to see them come full circle and essentially admit it was a mistake. Now, as a Minnesota taxpayer, I get to help pay for this farce! This evening, the Gophers took on the University of Michigan and lost 28-14.

There are some grain elevators where this stadium's going. In the well-established tradition of actual productive businesses making way for entertainment venues, these will be knocked down to make room for a few football games each year.

The U (as the University of Minnesota is known in these parts) apparently has bought these silos. The warning signs are to keep people out. There have been occasional deaths of kids playing in grain elevators and falling to their deaths.

The lameless and futility of the University of Minnesota football team is a perennial feature of life here, but so is the beauty of fall. This picture is north up the Mississippi River gorge from the 46th Street/Ford Parkway bridge at the end of September.

Since I'm catching this up later, I can report that the University of Minnesota Golden Gopher football team, playing in the storied Insight Bowl, gave up a 38-7 third-quarter lead, allowing Texas Tech the largest comeback in college bowl history, and lost. A day or two later, the coach was shitcanned. Ahhh, the proud traditions of U of M football!

And on the way to work one day there was a flock of birds paddling by on Lake Johanna. I pulled over, dismounted, and took this photo.

Saint Paul Bike Summit Report

2006-09-14T19:11:00.000-05:00

I went to the Saint Paul Bike Summit last night at the Dunning Community Center on Marshall. This was hosted by the Saint Paul Bicycle Advisory Board (I'd put a link but the information is very ancient so I won't bother) and was a forum to present accomplishments, discuss plans, solicit comments and prioritize items brought up by the audience. About 50-60 people attended, including me.

[Note: this entry is likely to be boring enough for everyone, but is going to especially tedious if you are not familiar with Saint Paul and riding here. Sorry!]

As a bit of background, I have no history of bicycle advocacy other than just riding the damn things, and, for the last year and a bit, writing this blog. I did wonder last year while riding the Midtown Greenway (Phase III of which just opened September 8th, by the way, congratulations!), who put this together? I like many of the rails to trails ideas, the Greenway is unlike most paths in that it is fast, direct, useful and non-scenic, and I'd wonder who worked within the system to get this stuff done, especially with my vague awareness of the long timeframes, competing constituencies, funding issues, planning requirements, etc. I have no direct knowlegde of these issues, but know they exist and am glad that people have worked and are working on our behalf within the system.

The meeting started with some reviews of things getting done. Many of these I've noticed; the bike lanes painted on Como Avenue from Dale to Rice (my usual route downtown, e.g., to the Saturday Farmer's Market), the lanes newly-painted on Marshall towards the river (not my usual route, and the lanes stop early, but from where they stop to the Lake/Marshall bridge is two lanes wide and down a hill so I have no problem taking the right lane and zooming down), the newly-painted lanes on Como west of the Intercampus Transitway and the ones on Concord down by Boca Chica.

The longest part of the meeting was the comments section. You may not be surprised to know that practical cyclists are an opinionated bunch. Without taking minutes, the comments included these things:

The lack of decent north/south routes through the western part of the city was a recurring theme. There are two sets of railway tracks and Interstate 94 that present really big obstacles, and smaller ones like the Ayd Mill road cutout. North/South, I like the Chatsworth route (or Chatsworth/Victoria if you want to cross University on a light) but it requires carrying your bike across an "informal" railway crossing when there's no train there. I speculate that if the City asks BNSF for a crossing the rail guys will fence the damn thing off. The only other level crossings on these fast main lines in the city are at Black Bear Crossings (Como Avenue, SE side of Como Park and heavily-controlled, not that that prevented a 7-year-old on a bike from getting clipped and killed a few years back), and Talmage Avenue which actually is in Minneapolis now that I look at it, not that anybody knows where it is. Adding a new uncontrolled level crossing may not be what they want to do.

Others complained about Snelling south of Como across the railways. This probably does suck, but I never ride it, partly because it sucks so bad. Cranky we may be but we are nothing if not persistent; one guy said he'd been commuting on that route for 25 years and the bridge is due for a rebuild.

Some of it was poor sidewalk thresholds that dump you into traffic. The older thresholds, or ramps (there is some name for them) went down at the apex of the sidewalk corner, which dumps cyclists or wheelchair-bound people into traffic. The new ones go straight across, two apexes or a continuous radius on the corner. Old ones will be replaced in the normal course of events but no time frame was mentioned, there are bound to be some around after I'm dead.

There is another feature for traffic calming where the curb for the parking lane comes out and narrows the street down to one lane. We have this on Victoria south of Larpenteur near our house. I know neighbours liked this idea to slow down traffic (I went to a couple of planning meetings back in the mid-90s on this); from a cyclist point of view, it forces us out into the traffic lane. People proposed a jutout that doesn't stick out so far.

Various complaints. Poor bad paving on older trails, bad snow removal, debris on trails, cars in bike lanes, etc.

Specific street complaints; Snelling was the worst, no surprise, I prefer not to drive on it, followed probably by Lexington (my Chatsworth route is a parallel alternative to Lexington), Hamline and University. Ford Parkway was repainted but no bike lane added. Lanes suddenly ending. Lexington, for instance, is excellent north from about Roselawn to County E (just about exactly where I ride) in Roseville and north. In Saint Paul, south of Larpenteur and particularly south of Como Park it's narrow and too fast and there's not much they can do about it. One guy said Hamline and Marshall is the most-run red light he knows in the city. I don't like Hamline south of University and this is no surprise to me.

Some people like the recent improvements on Selby including some sort of structure in the middle of the street, if I understood correctly, which I may not have. I'll have to go take a look.

A couple of comments struck me as odd. One person said we need to integrate with the Minneapolis trail system. For the most part, there's a river between us and the opportunities to connect are extremely limited (Highway 5 bridge, Ford Parkway/46th Street bridge, Marshall/Lake bridge, hopefully the Short Line bridge, and the Franklin Avenue bridge). The Intercampus Transitway and Como Avenue, both on land borders, are already hooked up. How can we not connect with them? Also, one woman was very concerned about changing the laws to allow bicycles on sidewalks in some business districts. Is that a worthy undertaking? Has anyone ever gotten ticketed for sidewalk riding?

Some things are more complicated. This was the City of Saint Paul, not Ramsey County, not the Met Council, not even Falcon Heights or Lauderdale. The plans end at the city limits. One guy, who says he commutes from Hudson to Minneapolis each day, would like Larpentuer made more bike-friendly. Larpenteur, at least from Dale to Highway 280, is actually pretty good, wide with a big wide shoulder/parking lane. It narrows a bit between Lexington and Hamline, but stays useful and direct to Hwy 280, where Minneapolis starts, the street changes its name to Hennepin and it gets busy, narrow, broken up and often obstructed by trucks and commercial traffic. I normally take Eustis down a sharp little hill to Como right before this happens and ride the rest of the way west on Como. [at the moment, BNSF is rebuilding a cruddy old steel railway bridge on Como and you'll get detoured on weekdays. Go north to Talmage and you can try out the other mainline level crossing. On weekends, you can ride your bike under the bridge. I think it's done in October.]

The complication with Larpenteur is that it is the Saint Paul and Roseville city border. I once called 911 on a car crash on Larpenteur. The operator asked me which direction the car was heading. Does it matter? If it's eastbound, she told me, I'll call Saint Paul, if it's westbound, I'll call Roseville. Oh. Eastbound, I said, but it crossed the median and is now in the westbound lanes. I left her to sort out who to call. Given this niggling over who to call about a crash, how will we possibly coordinate striping lanes and installing signage?

Education and awareness. It's always an answer. The vast majority of motorists share the road with cyclists without undue issue. There is a tiny minority who are mouth-breathing twits. Education and awareness is not likely to help them. One guy said he once had a drink thrown on him, got the license, but the cops wouldn't do anything because he couldn't tell who was driving. He was indignant; that would never happen to a car! Oh yes it would. I had a Saab 900 I liked a lot and was sitting at a red light in Duluth one morning when I got rear-ended so hard I hit the car ahead of me who hit the car ahead of him. The guy who hit me took off. The cops seemed to know who this guy would be and in less than half an hour found him at home. Been home all morning he said, smelling of booze. Cop looked at the car, which not only had front-end damage and was still warm but also had my taillight in his grille (the cop there and my cop compared part numbers from my intact taillight and the one in the guy's grille). However, nobody saw who was driving and this boozed-up insurance-free bozo got off free. It doesn't just happen to bikes. (and if you ever get in a crash while drunk, take off and lie, there are apparently no consequences)

Maps. There used to be a Twin Cities Commuting Map available but someone said it's out of print. Several people complained about how there wasn't a decent map of the Twin Cities for cyclists and that the Metropolitan Council should update it and reissue. I think they're wrong. I really like Little Transport Press's Twin Cities Bike Map, which has the core cities on one side with every street shown, and the larger metro area on the other. I adore maps anyway, and liked this one a lot when I first got it, but I like it even more now that Doug Shidell, the publisher, incorporated a couple of my comments on the latest one (Minnehaha west of Snelling as a marked route rather than Thomas, for instance, and the full length of the Intercampus Transitway). It's in bike stores now, it has the Light Rail on the cover and you can instantly tell it apart from the prior version of the Light Rail cover map by looking at MSP airport and seeing if the north/south runway is shown (another suggestion of mine, though I think he rendered it too short) (the really old Little Transport Bike Maps had the Stone Arch bridge on the cover and, although ok, weren't as good as this one). I actually talked to Doug about buying a bunch of these (10 or 12, whatever the package is) and carrying a couple with me for sale because people ask me about them so much (I stop a lot because I'm taking pictures, admiring the view, drinking beer, plus I'm from Iowa so am a friendly approachable guy) and want to know where to get them. I direct them to their local bike store, but if they're lost when they ask me it would be handy to give them a map. Just call me Matt the Friendly Bicycle Ambassador. By the way, Doug also does Madison and Milwaukee maps and a Twin Cities Bird Map, not that I've seen these others.

The last place I could have sold these maps was to three women on the east end of the Midtown Greenway by the Short Line Bridge, which as I have reported earlier, had a fire this summer. These ladies were from Chaska and had somehow got onto this trail, not at that point officially open, and followed me because I looked like I knew what I was doing. I told them this great trail might go over the ratty-looking bridge and connect to Saint Paul. We chatted, I showed them the map and where they were and directed them to the West River Road and towards Minnehah Park. The good news is, it sounds like the trail will go on across the bridge. Nobody is confirming anything, but the City of Saint Paul is doing the trail up Ayd Mill and calling it the Greenway and the comments made it sound like the Short Line bridge will be accessible to bikes. As usual, this is probably a couple of years out, but that would be great.

Bike Parking is an issue. Many people commented that it was an inhibitor to using their bikes more. The good news is that there are racks going in in the Marshall/Cleveland business area (think Izzy's ice cream and Trotters Cafe and Bakery) as well as in other places. There were a lot of comments, and I'd used mine on the Chatsworth rail crossing and didn't want to go again, but not only is bike parking (decent racks and especially lockers) not widely available enough outside common destinations, it often sucks outside bike stores. I first noticed this at World Cycling Productions and mentioned it in my blog, mocking them since the customers drive their cars there to get their $700 bike wheels, but in fact a lot of bike shops have sucky bicycle parking. The place to start might be getting decent racks outside bicycle retailers, then start hounding others. Jim at Hiawatha Cyclery has done a nice job outside with racks outside his shop, for instance, and he sells the Twin Cities Bike Maps, so you can have a fulfilled Practical Cycling experience. I may do a page of Bike Shop Bicycle Parking in the Twin Cities to illustrate this point.

At one point a lady was commenting on the proliferation of drive-through lanes for various businesses and someone piped up, yeah, and they won't even let you use them! Damn Right!

Although University Avenue is plenty wide enough for bike lanes at the moment, it probably won't be when Light Rail goes in there. There will be requests for sidewalks, parking, traffic, left turns, bike lanes and light rail, and it probably won't all fit, although the design hasn't yet been settled upon. Just don't be surprised. Also, University is likely to be tougher to get across once light rail goes in assuming it looks like the Hiawatha Line and not like Toronto's streetcars. I think it's due to open in 2014. These planning time frames are enormous.

All in all it was an interesting evening. Jim at Hiawatha has commented recently about how much he dislikes government and maybe anarchy would be better. That's a safe viewpoint from the standpoint of someone who's government provides police protection, puts out the fire if your house burns down, built the street you live on, enforces the property rights that allow you to stay there and provides a legal framework which, among other things, gives the mortgage company enough security to lend you the money to buy it, clears the snow, allows fresh water to come out of your taps and takes care of your shit when you flush the toilet. I think anarchy sounds greatest when you're a college sophomore. However, anarchy quickly dissolves into something else, tribal or feudal or fascist or, very rarely, and after some struggle, democratic.

This Bicycle Summit was a good example of citizens participating in government. Our opinions were being solicited, our viewpoints heard, non-cycling City of Saint Paul engineers were there to hear what the cycling community wants. I appreciate the opportunity to be heard and to have some tiny influence on what happens. Will we get everything we want? Nope. Can we affect what happens next and provide the benefits of our cycling experience? Yes. And we can affect it better if we're not the only anarchists; it'd be bad if well-organized pet owners got outdoor free-range hamster runs funded while anarchist cyclists just complained about The Man and how much it sucks and You Just Wait. As I mentioned earlier in the article, I have from time to time been astonished and grateful that someone, quite some time ago, took the time to get the approvals, design, funding and construction of the Minnehaha Park trails, the Midtown Greenway, the Munger Trail in northern Minnesota, the bike lane striping on Como and Marshall and Minnehaha. Somebody gave enough of a damn to get that stuff done, they probably did it in their spare time and they probably didn't get paid. Now it's our turn. Maybe one day we'll get a level crossing at Chatsworth and the railroad tracks and it'll be christened the Matt Memorial Level Crossing to choruses of rousing cheers; maybe they'll talk to BNSF and the railway guys'll have a conniption and fence the thing with barbed wire and my name shall evermore be cursed. Maybe nothing will happen. At least I will have tried my little bit to influence what happens, and I'd encourage you to do the same.

Saint Paul Bicycing Summit

2006-09-12T07:38:00.000-05:00

The Saint Paul Bicycling Summit will be held Wednesday from 7:00-9:00PM at the Dunning Recreational Center at 1221 Marshall Avenue. I could summarize what this is about, but only noticed it from the Saint Paul Pioneer Press article, which I quote below. There is also an online survey about Saint Paul bicycling you can take.

We have the bikes, here come the trails
With more paths and a conference Wednesday, St. Paul aims to become state's bicycling capital
BY JASON HOPPIN
Pioneer Press

As bicycle commuters go, Steve Scholl is among the hardest of the hard core.

Nothing stops him from biking from his home in St. Paul's Highland Park to his job downtown at the Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Nothing. Not traffic, not even the most daunting of Minnesota obstacles — winter.

"Ten years ago, 15 years ago, it was really difficult," Scholl said. "Today, I think it's really easy."

With varying levels of success, St. Paul has tried to become more bicycle-friendly.

But in the next few years, an unprecedented level of public investment — millions of dollars, much of it from federal funds — in bicycle infrastructure will at least bring St. Paul's reputation closer to that of Minneapolis, widely regarded as a national leader.

For Scholl, it means something as simple as the city plowing his bike route, the Shepard Road trail, during winter. But a vast expansion of the city's trail networks now under way would eventually allow bicyclists to cross town without sharing so much as an inch of pavement with automobiles.

The developments come as the city prepares for its first Bicycling Summit on Wednesday at Dunning Recreation Center. Together with an online survey, the conference will form the basis of a bicycle transportation plan that will be added to the city's overall plans.

"Mayor (Chris) Coleman is trying to make the city of St. Paul one of the most livable cities in America, and having trails and opportunities for cyclists is critical to making the city more livable," said Anne Hunt, Coleman's deputy policy director.

"What makes a great urban city is that you have opportunities to bike or walk or get in your automobile or use mass transit," Hunt said. "You want to provide residents and business people a variety of transportation options."

NOT JUST FOR HEALTH

The Twin Cities have a reputation as a bicycling mecca, but St. Paul has always lagged behind its neighbor. In the 2000 census, 2 percent of Minneapolis residents reported commuting to work by bicycle, third highest in the country for a city of that size. St. Paul came in at a third of that rate, 0.7 percent.

But the census is taken in March, typically a miserable month for weather in Minnesota. And the top two finishers, Tucson, Ariz., and San Francisco, are fair-weather cities year-round.

"It says something about the activity level here — a lot about the activity level here," said Bob Works, who heads the bicycle and pedestrian program for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Demonstrating the area's love for biking was this weekend's 12th annual St. Paul Classic Bike Tour, for which 7,000 cyclists registered to ride, including Coleman. It is the biggest bike tour in the state.

And there are anecdotal reports that many more people are hitting the roads on their bikes daily, driven largely by health-awareness campaigns and the cost of gasoline.

"It sure seems like there's been an increase in the number of cyclists in Minneapolis and St. Paul," said Steve Clark, bicycle- and pedestrian-program manager for Transit for Livable Communities, a nonprofit organization that oversees a $25 million pilot project to improve bicycle infrastructure and awareness, one of four such federally funded projects in the country.

"It's not just gas prices and climate change, but also health consciousness," Clark said.

And that may be one of the factors pushing St. Paul trail projects — more people than ever are using them.

One of the biggest projects is the extension of the Midtown Greenway into St. Paul. By putting a dedicated bike lane alongside the railroad bridge near St. Anthony Avenue, the project would create the second Twin Cities Mississippi River crossing exclusive to bikes and pedestrians (the Stone Arch Bridge is the first).

Eventually, the Greenway extension would connect to a new trail along Ayd Mill Road, which connects to the Interstate 35E bike route, which connects to the Dakota County Big River Trail.

ADDING CONVENIENCE

And that's the point — connectivity. Once a series of interconnected projects is completed, cyclists will be able to:

• Pedal from an afternoon concert on Harriet Island to Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood for dinner while staying off streets altogether.

• Travel from the University of Minnesota to the Capitol, helped by new trails in Como Park and a bike lane along Como Avenue.

• Bike from Lowertown to, well, Duluth, if you're motivated enough, via an extension of the Bruce Vento Regional Trail in the works that will connect downtown to the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary and a series of regional and state trails.

Furthermore, while Summit Avenue was one of the first streets in the metro area with a bike lane, Minnehaha, Como, Marshall and Fairview avenues and others now have striped bike lanes. And more are coming.

It's a far cry from St. Paul's ill-fated 1995 foray into bicycle utopia. With much fanfare, the city introduced dozens of communal yellow bikes for the citizenry to jaunt about town.

It was a harsh lesson for idealists pushing alternative modes of transportation. Within days, they started showing up mangled and vandalized. Others just disappeared.

Other ideas have emerged since then. In mid-2004, Metro Transit finished putting bike racks on every bus. Trains on the Hiawatha light-rail line also have racks, as will trains planned for the Central Corridor. Metro Transit's Bob Gibbons said they've helped people get out of their cars, especially with the recent spike in gas prices.

"Anecdotally, our bus drivers tell us they've seen a big increase" in the number of bikes, Gibbons said.

Bicycle backers say it has taken a major change in mind-set to get street engineers, for example, to think beyond the automobile. But it is happening. The city's parks department and its public works department now work bikes into their plans. When Marshall Avenue was recently repaved, for example, a bike lane was added.

St. Paul Parks and Recreation Director Bob Bierscheid said the health and welfare of residents are part of his responsibilities, and biking opportunities are one way to address that.

"We've got this obesity issue that we're dealing with, and it's getting worse, not better," said Bierscheid, an avid cyclist. "We've got to get people out and active."

People who have toiled in grass-roots efforts to see these kinds of improvements say things have changed since the old days. Political leaders are more willing to back the projects as assets — not only to residents, but also to business leaders looking to locate a new shop or factory.

"I think the opportunities have gotten better and the climate has gotten better," said Richard Arey, a founder of both St. Paul's bicycle advisory board and the St. Paul Classic. "It does take a certain amount of self-enlightenment, but it does work."

Jason Hoppin can be reached at jhoppin@pioneerpress.com or 651-292-1892.

If you go:
What: St. Paul Bicycling Summit
When: 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Dunning Recreation Center, 1221 Marshall Ave.

If you have an interest in cycling in Saint Paul, it would be good to go this meeting. I expect to be there and am even skipping choir practice to do so!

Fancy Bikes Get More Costly

2006-08-25T17:39:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal ran an article a couple of weeks ago about how high-end bicycle prices are likely to increase due to constraints on the supplies of some high-tech frame materials, particularly titanium and carbon fibre. Quoting the article:

Cycling enthusiasts can expect to see prices head uphill for bikes made of in-demand specialty materials such as titanium and carbon fiber.

Driving the increase is a sharp rise in orders for airplanes made of the same materials, meaning that bike makers -- along with makers of sailboats, lacrosse sticks, tennis rackets, jewelry and bone screws -- are paying 25% more for raw materials and passing along some of the costs to consumers.

Prices for high-end bikes from makers such as Trek Bicycle Corp., Cannondale Bicycle Corp., and Serotta Competition Bicycles, some of which already cost more than $10,000, could rise 5% to 25%. A custom-made La Corsa titanium frame from Serotta, for instance, would sell for up to $7,000 with top components by the end of this year, up from $6,000 in January.

Amid rising demand, titanium and carbon-fiber makers are largely catering to their bigger customers: the aerospace industry. Zsolt Rumy, chief executive of St. Louis-based Carbon Fiber maker Zoltek Companies Inc., says he is trying to keep prices lower for bigger customers by raising prices for smaller ones, such as bike and golf-club makers, who constitute 15% of his company's business. "We really jack up the price" for smaller customers, he says. He's passed on more of the 60% to 100% increases to sporting-goods customers.

The article repeats an oft-heard misapprehension, that titanium is as strong as steel and as light as aluminum.

Titanium makers say their silvery gray product, made by refining and melting an ore extracted from rutile sand found in Australia and elsewhere, has the strength of steel and the light weight of aluminum. But it's far more expensive than both: Titanium can cost more than $32,000 a ton, compared with less than $1,000 a ton for carbon steel. The price of high-quality titanium, aluminum and carbon fiber has risen as orders from airplane makers and defense companies such as Airbus, Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. are buying up a greater portion of the supply to keep up with demand.

Actually, titanium weighs quite a lot more than aluminum, 280 pounds per cubic foot versus aluminum's 169 pounds per cubic foot. It is stronger, so you can get by with less of it in smaller tube diameters and make very light frames, but let's not mistake that for being lighter than aluminum. It is lighter than steel, which comes in right around 500 pounds per cubic foot. It also has a much higher melting point that aluminum, which is handy if you're making, say, Mach 3 aircraft, but I typically don't ride fast enough that atmospheric drag dangerously heats up my bike frame. You want a nifty material? How about magnesium, at 109 pounds per cubic foot? There are people making bikes out of magnesium. You'd better hope like hell they don't catch fire!

Lots of people spend a lot of money on bikes:

The tight supplies of titanium and carbon fiber, a strong lightweight synthetic material, come as the bike industry keeps expanding. About 19.8 million bicycles were sold last year in North America, up 8.2% from 2004, according to the National Bicycle Dealers Association. Sales of bikes and bike-related parts topped $6 billion last year, up from $5.7 billion in 2004. Some bike makers estimate that 30,000 cyclists each year spend $3,000 or more on a new bike, a $90 million market.

But the growth also reflects the ever-escalating upgrades in bike models. Bike makers now use laser measurements, computer simulations, test-ride videos and drawings of a rider's body dimensions to create a more perfect ride. The desired growth in sales, coupled with tightening demand for raw materials, puts the bike industry in a bind.

A new wave of affluent cyclists is increasingly willing to pay higher prices for bikes that weigh less and are made of high-tech materials. But bike makers believe high prices eventually will hurt sales for middle-class buyers and could cause a return to other, cheaper materials such as lightweight steel. Cheaper bikes at retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are typically made of steel.

Older cheaper materials like steel? Wal-Mart bikes? What a slap in the face to us Rivendell riders!

I've always thought that the cutting-edge materials use in bikes was pretty neat. I don't partake in the fancy materials myself, sticking with brazed lugged steel frames and forged aluminum components for the most part, but for all the technology cars brag about, it's bicycles where advanced steel alloys, aluminum, titanium, stainless steel, magnesium, carbon fibre and even beryllium are used to hit lightweight high-performance targets. It's possible to produce bikes in these advanced materials and have them used in real-world conditions so that knowledge advances (I'm old enough to remember some of the early attempts like the Exxon (really) Graftek, the Viscount bike with the failing aluminum forks and the Teledyne Titan) . Military aircraft have used these advanced materials for years, they began to work their way into commercial aircraft in the last round of model introductions, and now are going to be used extensively in the new generations of planes like the Boeing 787 and Airbus A380 and A350 models. That's where all the big-volume demand is coming from and driving up the prices for your Litespeeds and Trek OCLVs.

Does this affect us Practical Cyclists? I'm guessing most daily commuters and ride-to-the-store cyclists aren't using carbon and titanium frames. Plain old steel works fine and some nice Practical Bikes like the Breezers are aluminum, partly for anti-corrosion reasons, but using exotic materials would only make the bike more attractive to thieves I think. I'm not going to fret about the rising cost of carbon fibre and titanium, I'll leave that to those who chase the latest in cycling technology and keep riding my steel steeds. It is going to hurt, though, when I get my titanium-masted carbon-fibre yacht. Curses!

Wells Fargo Answers Again: No

2006-08-25T07:07:00.000-05:00

I got a call from Wells Fargo. It started off as an email, apparently unaware of the prior communication I'd had through the account messages, and which I had quoted earlier.

"I would like to speak with you regarding the feedback you provided about our Arden Hills branch and the drive up. Is there a number and time I could reach you? If you would rather, you can call me so we can discuss this further. I look forward to speaking with you."

It was from an Administrative Assistant for the Northeast Metro and Northeast Suburban Districts of Wells Fargo Bank.

I called Katie and left a message. She called back. She was pretty cheerful but the news she bore wasn't good; the teller who had initially refused to serve me that Friday afternoon was correct, the ones who had previously taken my deposits and the one who did so the following Monday were in error. It is for my safety. She went on about how it's hard to see cyclists and often car drivers aren't watching when they come up to a drive-through and could run into me and the pavement is sometimes uneven and the tellers can't see us. I said that I am taller than a car, nobody's going to have trouble seeing me. What about a pickup? she countered. I look over them, I said. Visibility isn't an issue.

Katie carried on; it wasn't that Wells Fargo doesn't want my deposit or is trying to make it hard to do business but it's for my safety. Look, I said, I ride all over the place and I deal with distracted and oblivious drivers all the time, a drive-through lane at a bank is just about the least of my worries. Oh but there's been an incident she said ominously, she talked to the Risk Management people, looked right at their internal website (not public, I looked) and there was some sort of incident that has brought this to the forefront again and they want to remind all the branches of the company policy. What sort of incident, I asked? Katie wasn't sure, of course, and thought she couldn't even find out, though she did say it was in Metro Minnesota so could be most anywhere.

If oblivious, dangerous motorized customers are a hazard to people, maybe they should be made to park and go inside. I took this photo at a Wells Fargo last August on one of my recreational rides when I wanted to use the ATM:

Now Where Did I Put That Deposi...Yaaaah!!

When the other person answered they said it was up to the branches, I said. What other person?? Katie sounded surprised for once. She didn't know about the response I'd had previously. I read it to her. She was dismissive of that response; that's just an Online Customer Service Representative, she said, she could be in Phoenix or somewhere and not even be familiar with the specifics of the different branches.

Don't you see we're doing this for your safety and that of other cyclists and pedestrians? I said it sounded like the Nanny State, trying to protect us from ourselves. I proposed to her that if the problem were that motorists were running into people, perhaps it is motorists who should have to park and go inside since they were the ones causing the problems. She laughed; this obviously wasn't a solution.

What about mopeds? I asked. Would you serve a moped? It's motorized. Wouldn't that still be classified as a bicycle, she said? Maybe it it's under 50cc, but it's motorized. Well, she said, it makes noise so drivers would notice it. Well then, what about my boss's Honda Accord Hybrid; when it stops, the engine shuts off and it makes no noise. Or what about an electrically-driven bicycle (like the Stokemonkey-powered Xtracycle, though I didn't cite the model)? It would be motorized. She wasn't sure, said that with the ever-increasing variety of vehicles maybe some adjustments would have to be made. I think she thought I'd be so grateful that Wells Fargo was concerned for my safety that I'd just say gosh thanks I hadn't thought of that and that would be it.

I don't think drive-through restaurants allow bicyclists or pedestrians, she said. Partly true, I said. In the discussions from my blog entries about this it came out that Wendy's and Taco Bell do not serve drive-throughs but that I had personally gone through MacDonalds as recently as last summer without issue. Oh, she said. I don't think she's done the research on who allows what.

And you know, I said, my Wells Fargo check card has a stagecoach on it. You wouldn't serve that? She laughed? OK, I said, maybe you don't see many stagecoaches (actually, not true. According to Wells Fargo's own site, a WF stagecoach will be in tomorrow's Minnesota daily State Fair Parade), but what about the Amish? They're in horse-drawn buggies. She didn't know. I'm not sure they use banks she said. They have money, I pointed out. They probably tie up the horses outside and come in she said brightly but you could tell she was making this bit up.

She tried to make it seasonal. Do you ride in the winter? she asked, sensing a trump card. Yes, I do, I said. Oh, well most people don't, and there would be a danger of people slipping and cars not seeing them and running into them. Look, I said, I ride all over town in the winter and deal with cars all the time.

My favorite bit was when I pointed out there was no bike rack at the Arden Hills branch. She said I could take my bike inside and if anyone asked just say I was a drive-through customer but that I couldn't be served. She told me that going inside was pretty quick. No it's not, I said, last time I went in it was about a 15 minute line. Well, it's kind of hit and miss, she said. What I didn't think of at the time, but did after, is how delicious it would be to take my bike inside in, say, February. I learned riding last winter that when you park your bike in a warm building, all the crap melts off. I wonder how the branch manager would react if I brought in a slush, snow and salt-caked bike and cheerfully said "Oh, I can't use the drive-through and Katie said I could just bring the bike inside with me!" as little blobs of filth dripped onto the carpet.

It was all cordial. She's got some oblivious and safely anonymous Risk Management Department on one side saying "Horrors! We must keep cyclists out of our drive-throughs so our innattentive and unseeing motorized customers won't run them down" and some pesky customer on the other wondering why it is that his vehicle choice makes it so hard to use the stupid drive-through, with a clueless Online Service Person chipping in three weeks earlier with possibly incorrect information. Her title is Administrative Assistant, so she has no decision-making authority and probably the boss gave it to her and asked her to handle it, which she cheerfully and doggedly did, she could be a White House Press Secretary. She kept brightly assuring me that Wells Fargo values my business and isn't trying to make it hard to do business with them but that they have my safety in mind when they made up this rule. I told her I understood the message, and that for the moment I would just use the drive-through ATM for my mobile banking needs.

My Hiatus

2006-08-22T18:46:00.000-05:00

Hello again. I've been on something of a hiatus the last month (a lot of the usual bloggers have been quiet during this time as well), triggered by the visit of an aunt of mine from England in late July to early August and then having to do some work in Des Moines for my father.

My father lived in Des Moines alone until last March when, because of a back injury on top of his pre-existing early-stage Parkinson's disease, he went to hospital and then to a nursing home. He picked a facility in Bellevue, Iowa, where one of my sisters lives, and I took him there at the end of a tumultuous and unexpected week in mid-March. Happily, he has improved a lot since then, a combination of therapy and probably of having the right medications properly administered, and improved enough to move into an apartment adjacent to the nursing home. He's pretty chipper now.

His sister, Margaret, Auntie Margaret to me all my life and to Karla and the kids, decided to come see him. She fitted this in between her other trips, to Vietnam and Morocco and Italy earlier this year, to Belgium and Costa Rice coming later. Not bad for an 85-year-old retired schoolteacher.

She came right in late July and was here for two weeks, returning right before the latest terrorist airplane bomb scare in London but knocking out three of our weekends from the normal routine. Then, this past weekend, I did the 800-mile loop, here to Des Moines, where I met my sister and loaded her Suburban and my pickup with Dad's furniture and hauled it to Bellevue, then drove home. It'll take another trip to get the rest of what Dad needs, then some work on the house before we sell it. Looking back at the blog last year, it seems I had lots of time to go for rides and take photos; this year, many weekends since March have been taken with Dad-related work.

There wasn't much bike-related during Margaret's visit, but I noted the following:

The last entry was about a fire on the Short Line bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis. While Margaret was here, we ambled down to Bellevue by way of the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona (Twelfth Night) and the American Players Theater (Measure for Measure) in Spring Green, Wisconsin. While in Winona, we popped into the Minnesota Maritime Art Museum which had opened for the first time that day. We were pressed for time; it was 4:30 when we got there and they closed at 5:00, so they let us in for free. They have a lot of gorgeous seascape paintings (weirdly out of place in the middle of the continent, but still lovely), some painted carving folk art display, and a set of photographs taken by Henry Bosse, an Army Corps of Engineers guy in the 1880s. Included in these was a photo of the Short Line Bridge in 1885 or so. It was pretty cool to see a 120-year old photo of the bridge that I had just included a photo of in my blog. I intend to return to the Museum when I have a bit more time.

One might ask why there's a Maritime Art Museum in Minnesota. The story goes that a local senator built a big new house and had a big wall he needed a picture for and ended up looking at maritime scene paintings, many of which are conveniently large, and fell in love with the genre and started buying them. He is kindly loaning them to the Museum for their displays. Frankly, this all sounds a bit odd to me, but I also like this type of art and am happy it's here and that the Senator didn't fall in love with velvet paintings sold out of Ford Econolines in abandoned gas station parking lots.

We'll be appearing in Julius Ceasar at The American Players Theater. We actually went and saw Measure for Measure, but a staff guy came out afterwards and said that they wanted to record the crowd scene audio for Julius Ceasar so anybody who wanted to stick around afterwards could do so. We did. We chanted "Cea-sar, Cea-sar!" and catcalls and cheers and other bits, rehearsed briefly and then done in response to the text read by the Brutus actor or the director. There were about 200 of us in the crowd and it was great fun, the noise echoing off the surrounding hills (this APT is outdoors in the Wisconsin River Valley). If you happen to catch Julius Ceasar, when they play the crowd scene audio, that's me and the family and Auntie Margaret and 200 others!

In June I rode to Prescott and back to scout out the way in to the Cities from Wisconsin Highway 35. I wrote about this in Breakfast at Enrique's and noted how I'd seen a big country house called Cedarhurst that did afternoon teas. When Margaret said she was coming, we decided to go. It was excellent! A lot of tea places (Chickadee Tearoom in Lake City on the Three Speed Tour, for instance) are too cute and not all that good. We've seen a number of attempts go under over the years and often rightfully so. Margaret's an actual tea-drinking English person and Karla and I would auction off English teas at the Manor (our house) at church and they were very popular, due mostly to Karla's superb cooking and also the gin and tonics we'd administer later in the afternoon. In other words, we're a jaded audience. We were very impressed with the tea (the actual drink) and the accompanying 9-course food, from a scone to fruit to sandwiches to, at the end, lemon sorbet sitting in champagne in a glass bowl (this is a brilliant dessert, easy to do, you can scoop it ahead of time, showy and tasty). I'd highly recommend this place if you do teas.

Speaking of the Three Speed Tour, the 3ST guys held a special meeting at Barley John's to meet Auntie Margaret. She used a bicycle as transportation for a lot of World War II, including a period when she commuted 16 miles each way in and out of Birmingham. Her brother, my Uncle, was actually bike touring in France when the war broke out. She's not a Cyclist, particularly, but is a direct connection to a time when cycling was a common form of transport for a lot of people in the UK.

Now Margaret's gone home, the kids are back from camp, the bulk of Dad's stuff is moved, maybe I can get back to more normal life. It wasn't like I gave up riding during all this. In fact, distressed that most of my miles were accruing on the Big Red Schwinn (8-speed Nexus), I commuted a few times on the Atlantis. Karla and I have done a few rides, and she is getting more comfortable with the bike and with the distances I like to ride and may start commuting to church on the non-rehearsal days pretty shortly. Henry's been riding but somehow managed to bash up his rear derailleur pretty badly and it needs replacing. I've ordered a derailleur and shifters for his bike and will probably do that this weekend.

Damaged Bridge

2006-07-20T20:03:00.000-05:00

One of the nice features for biking in Minneapolis is the Midtown Greenway. This currently runs from the lakes on the west side to Hiawatha on the east and construction is underway right now to take it to the West River Road. This follows a rail line from more or less Hiawatha to the river road. I wrote about it last fall; I have actually ridden a section this summer and am happy to see the lighting in, the access ramps getting built and the base gravel layer being put down. In fact, the Greenway site says the paving is complete to Brackett Park but please stay off so the contractors can finish up. The whole Greenway works like a bike highway, great for making quick time across the city.

The final part of this project would be to extend the Greenway across the Mississippi River on the rail bridge. (See the Google image here). This bridge used to have two rail lines; now only one is operational. Actually, right now, none are, because there was a fire on the bridge. I heard it on the 10:00 news, and here's the Minneapolis Star-Tribune article about it:

A broken Minneapolis railroad bridge
A fire that damaged a railroad bridge over the Mississippi is affecting Minneapolis businesses that rely on trains to ship their products.
David Chanen, Star Tribune

Last update: July 19, 2006 – 10:20 PM

Whoever launched fireworks that set fire to a railroad bridge spanning the Mississippi River in south Minneapolis may have no idea what mayhem they caused.

The 1,061-foot-long bridge, also called the Short Line, carries the only railroad line that can serve several grain elevators and a scrap metal recycling business along Hiawatha Avenue. It will cost more than $200,000 to repair a hundred-yard section in the middle of the 125-year-old bridge.

Because of the fire, the span won't be operational for at least a month and that could mean a $200,000 loss to Leder Brothers, which ships its recycled products throughout the United States and Canada, according to co-owner Mark Leder.

At least 65 railroad cars that reached the Hiawatha businesses before the fire are stranded, and a 25-car train of grain headed for the elevators on Tuesday had to be diverted to storage elsewhere.

More than 5,000 railroad cars of wheat, rye, barley and corn cross the bridge each year, said John Gohmann, president of the company that provides railroad access to the Hiawatha businesses. If the elevators have to ship grain by truck instead of train, the companies would lose about 30 percent of the dollar value of the product, he said.

He said that his company, Minnesota Commercial Railroad, will lay off up to six employees until the bridge reopens. And in about five weeks, it will be prime time to move grain out and make room for new shipments, he said.

The steel deck truss bridge with seven spans starts near W. River Road and E. 28th Street and crosses to E. River Road and E. 25th Street. The bridge's tracks hang 150 feet above the river.

A passerby reported a fire to police shortly after midnight Saturday. Winds fanned the blaze, which took two hours to extinguish.

Accidental causes have been ruled out, Minneapolis police Sgt. Sean McKenna said. He also said that fireworks were found on the bridge.

Several "no trespassing" signs are posted at each end of the bridge, but police say people still climb on it. Laura Baenen, spokeswoman for Canadian Pacific Railway, said people have been cited for trespassing, but the company hasn't had previous problems involving fireworks.

And "the bridge isn't a place for a hike," she said.

Custom-treated ties

When the bridge will be open again is unclear because of the work required to replace 250 custom-treated wooden ties. It will be done in two phases, and the first will let trains use the bridge at very slow speeds.

The lack of rail access hasn't slowed two elevators owned by General Mills, said spokeswoman Kirstie Foster. Archer Daniels Midland operates two other elevators served by the railroad but said it couldn't determine the effects of the bridge fire.

How much business Leder will lose depends on a fluctuating steel market, he said. Their finished product is sent out monthly, he said.

"We can't make sales we have waiting in Canada and Iowa," Leder said. "This is definitely having a large impact on our business."

Using trucks isn't feasible, he said. One train car carries the same amount of their product as 3½ semi trucks, he said. It's also difficult to find trucks that will only travel one way, not to mention the additional fuel costs, he said.

Leder also talked about past uses of the bridge, including the delivery of a mammoth drill for a tunnel that carries light-rail cars beneath Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and deliveries of new light-rail cars (Metro Transit is adding three cars, but not until January).

"People don't realize how important this bridge is," he said. "We will really have to scramble until it's fixed."

I am gratified reading this article to see that they have plans to fix the bridge. I was afraid they might just write it off and abandon the rail line and the chances for using it for bicycles would drop significantly. Even fixed, I think there is some chance it will never serve for bikes, but it would be a terrific route if they would. Here's hoping the bridge gets fixed and the Greenway gets extended. It would be a real addition to the Cities' cycling infrastructure.

Oddly enough, I happened to take a photo of the Short Line Bridge (as it's called, see this site and scroll down to Bridge 23) on Saturday morning, just hours after this fire was reported and put out.

I was on my way to the Riverview Theater to watch the Tour de France (I highly recommend this!) and the upriver-bound tow and the rowing shells sharing the river caught my eye. The Short Line Bridge is the rail bridge the tow is about to go under. If you can't see the rowing shells, click on the photo to get the larger version. The buildings in the background are the part of the East Bank part of the University of Minnesota.

Huey's Alp

2006-07-19T17:25:00.000-05:00

Slate has an article entitled The Tour de France Almost Killed Me in which the author, Andrew Tilin, rode the route of Stage 15 of the Tour de France, including the climb up the L'Alpe d'Huez, along with 7,500 other ~~fools~~ enthusiasts. It sounds brutal.

Wells Fargo First Communications

2006-07-19T07:48:00.000-05:00

There is a "Contact Us" link in the account screen from wellsfargo.com. I thought this would be handy as it is affiliated with the account and I entered other data as well like the date and amount of the transaction. My initial attempt to use this was thwarted because my florid eloquence went on too long, so I trimmed it down and wrote the following:

On Friday 7/7 I attempted to make a deposit at the Arden Hills Wells Fargo branch. I was depositing my wife's signed paycheck into our joint account using a deposit slip from our checkbook and requesting no money back. The teller and her supervisor (Suzanne?) refused to accept this because I was on a bicycle in the drive-through lane. I left. On Monday 7/10 I successfully made the deposit in the exact same branch from my bicycle. After posting this experience on my blog I got a lot of comments, some indicating no problem with doing this and others saying their Wells Fargo branch does not allow it. I would like to know the policy; is it company-wide, branch by branch or teller-dependent? I routinely ride my bicycle to work and have done this exact transaction before (see 6/2/06) without issue. Please let me know what to expect.
Thank you. Matt.

Wells Fargo responded to the Messages and Alerts section of the account screen.

Dear Matt:

I apologize that you experienced a problem when you attempted to make your deposit. With proper identification, there should be no problem in making the deposit as you described however, the decision is ultimately with the branch.

I have forwarded the details of your experience to our management. We constantly strive to provide you with the highest level of customer service.

We appreciate your business and thank you for banking with Wells Fargo.

Sincerely,
Joyce H
Wells Fargo
Online Customer Service

Hmmm, so the decision is ultimately with the branch. I guess I'll have to go and inquire at the Arden Hills branch about what their policy is in relation to serving cyclists in the drive-throughs. I also wonder about Joyce's "with proper identification" qualification; in my email to Wells Fargo I was very specific about the nature of the transaction and it's one for which I have never had to provide ID since I'm not getting any money back. I even referred in my email to the last time I did this transaction from my bicycle so that if they were looking at the account they would see the same deposit amount from the prior month. The deposit would recur in the months previous but I can't be certain I did them from my bike on those dates.

Tour de France at the Riverview

2006-07-18T18:53:00.000-05:00

It was a pretty quiet weekend, cycling-wise, too bloody hot to do much. I rode over to the Riverview Theater Saturday morning to watch the OLN Tour de France coverage. I'd not done this before, and it was great fun. It's free, for one thing, and you can buy a bagel and orange juice and coffee and watch the coverage on the Big Screen in air-conditioned comfort.

I chose my days well. Saturday there was a breakaway by five riders that got 28 minutes out in front of the peloton, described as cruising along as on a Sunday ride, though at a pace that would kill me. One guy got dropped from the breakaway group after trying an aggressive breakaway of his own, then just 5km from the end the remaining four split into two pairs, the front one consisting of Jens Voight and Oscar Pereiro. Voight won in a final sprint, the other pair rolled in 0:40 later, the fifth guy, dropped some time back, came across 6:24 after the winner and, if the rules were strictly enforced, those five would have been the only riders left in the Tour. It was 29:57 before the main peloton came across the finish line and that would have left 152 riders outside the stage's time limit and therefore out of the Tour. The race jury moved the limit from 9% to 10% and the peloton could remain in. Whew! Though CBS on their Sunday Tour de France weekly wrapup didn't make much of this day, to me a nearly half-hour pickup by these two riders (giving Pereiro the yellow jersey) seemed like a hell of a gain for one day.

Sunday I suggested that Henry, Karla and I go to the Riverview, watch the coverage for a while, have a bagel, and Karla could go off and play the 9:00 service then come back and get us. We did this, driving over in the surprising but very welcome rain. It was another great day to watch, a six-man breakaway getting 5:40 up on the main peloton. The peloton began reeling these guys back in until there was a crash. You must have seen the coverage of this, it even made the local news station sports report on Sunday night, six guys go into a corner, front two slip, one of them falls, number five brakes and falls over, slides into metal barrier, number six brakes, locks up back wheel, in control behind falling number five, but crashes into barrier and flips over in extremely dramatic fashion disappearing behind the guardrail, the bike tumbling down, then, in a final touch, a water bottle flying up from the bike. The remaining three racers carried on. Rider One (Rik Verbrugghe) suffered a complex fracture of his left femur and is out for the year, Rider Five (David Cañada) broke his right clavicle and Rider Six (Matthias Kessler), whose dramatic tumble over the guardrail will long be remembered, actually got back on his bike and carried on. He tarried until the peloton caught up with him and ended up finished 12 minutes down. Those of us who find helmets useful admired the rocks stuck in the air vents of his helmet as he carried on.

With just three riders, the time gap narrowed, ticking down to under two minutes and then under a minute. The race got really spread out, and the peloton was pretty small but ruthlessly tracking down the remaining riders. On a final climb before the downhill into the finish line the breakaway dwindled to two riders and the lead to 0:25. Down the final descent and you almost could hear the Jaws theme as the main group closed the distance. It was oddly compelling, shots of the two lead riders coming around a corner and then, startlingly close, the main group. A rider broke away from the main group and began pushing hard, closing the gap to the breakaway riders rapidly but then the Finish Line went by and they'd held on, Pierrick Fedrigo winning the stage, Salvatore Commesso right behind, Christian Vande Velde at 0:03 seconds back, his attempt to catch the breakaway guys at the finish having fallen just short, and then the pursuit group of 33 riders 0:07 back. Other racers continued to drift in for quite a while including Kessler in a group of 12 riders 12:04 back. OLN doesn't broadcast them all coming over the line, of course, but it's interesting to see the official results, with a group of four riders coming in at 22:08 behind the first place finisher and one final straggler in at 32:05.

It was still raining when Karla returned and we went home. The CBS Weekly show got moved from it's 4:00 time frame last week to noon this week, and we watched that show as well. The bit about the last two days seemed not to convey the drama, but maybe every day's like that and it's just that I saw those two days of OLN coverage (we don't have cable at home). I did putter with the bikes a bit in the afternoon, installing a U-lock holder on the red Schwinn and buying some odd bits of hardware to try and permanently mount my taillights to my rear racks.

I highly recommend the Riverview's Tour de France coverage. The French scenery is lovely and well-shot as the helicopters, cars and motorcycles cover the ride. The commercials are doubly-annoying on the big screen, unless they're doubly amusing; the Flomax ad for male urinary difficulties in particular seemed a crowd favorite. I'm not sure why the Riverview does this, the crowds don't look big enough that they'd make a lot of money on bagel sales, but I'm glad they're doing it and hope to continue attending. See you there!