urbana named "bicycle friendly community"

Congratulations to Urbana for being designated a "Bicycle Friendly Community" by the League of American Bicyclists.  Here's the city's press release:

The City of Urbana is proud to announce that we have been named a Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) by the League of American Bicyclists. Andy Clarke, League President, said "Communities from all areas of the country, climates and populations see bicycling as an integral component of building livable communities. The Bicycle Friendly Community program is recognizing those leading the way."

Receiving Bicycle Friendly Community recognition was a goal of the Urbana Bicycle Master Plan as well as an Urbana City Council and Mayor goal. The City of Urbana recognizes that Bicycle Friendly Communities are places with a high quality of life, where people want to live, work, and visit. Building such a community can translate into a more connected, physically active, and environmentally sustainable community that enjoys increased property values, business growth, increased tourism, and more transportation choices for citizens.

The application process to become a Bicycle Friendly Community is rigorous. The BFC application provides a comprehensive picture of a community by asking questions across five categories often referred to as the Five Es - Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, and Evaluation & Planning. A community must demonstrate achievements in each of the five categories in order to be considered for an award. Currently only 140 of the 359 total applicants have a BFC four-year designation. Urbana was the only city in the state of Illinois to receive BFC status this round and is the first downstate city to receive recognition (Chicago, Naperville and Schaumburg are BFCs).

bike generated electricity and its vicissitudes

April gave us two prominent news stories about places using stationary bikes to generate electricity.  It's green power, of course, but the social meaning of such "renewable power" turns out to be determined almost entirely by the whole state of things in which it's embedded.  In the first story, for instance, bike-power appears as a... let us say unusual punishment enforced on prisoners unfortunate enough to be locked down in Arizona.  In the second story, by contrast, bike-power is a luxury for wealthy and rootless cosmopolitans.

First up: a report on "America's toughest sheriff"'s decision to require inmates at an unusual outdoor jail in the proto-police state of Arizona to pedal on a stationary bike to generate electricity if they want to watch television:

Arpaio installed an energy-generating stationary bike (PDF) attached to a TV when he found that 50 percent of the inmates were overweight, many morbidly so. As long as an inmate is pedaling, the bike will produce 12 volts of energy--just enough to power a 19-inch tube TV. But if an inmate stops pedaling at a moderate speed, the TV shuts off.
Because inmates can't be forced to exercise, access to cable TV could provide incentive for them to do so. Female prisoners will test the program first, because they were more receptive to it, Arpaio says.

Next: a story about the Crowne Plaza Hotel in bicycle-friendly Copenhagen, at which guests who pedal a stationary bike to generate electricity earn a free meal:

Guests will have to produce at least 10 watt hours of electricity - roughly 15 minutes of cycling for someone of average fitness....Guests staying at Plaza Hotel will be given meal vouchers worth $36 (26 euros; £23) once they have produced 10 watt hours of electricity, hotel spokeswoman Frederikke Toemmergaard told the BBC News website.

Here you can make your own conclusion. 

Make it witty.

tuesday, 4 may: c-u's very own bike to work day

If you're not already biking to work -- and, really, it's been so nice out that you should be -- next week's C-U Bike to Work Day might be just the motivation you need to get started.  Next Tuesday, 4 May, a generous group of sponsors (including The Bike Project) will hold our micro-urban shangri-la's celebration of car- and carbon-free commuting.

From 7-10am, C-U Bike to Work Day will have four stations set up around town featuring coffee and other treats for old and new bike commuters.  The stations will be located at

• Downtown Champaign - Neil Street & Main Street
• Downtown Urbana - Main Street & Vine Street
• University of Illinois - Engineering Plaza (Green Street across from the Illini Union)
• Savoy - Savoy Recreation Center (Prospect Avenue and Graham)

You can register for C-U Bike to Work Day here.  You can find out about the third and last in a series of classes on Bike Commuting 101 here.  And if you'd like to volunteer to help staff one of the Bike to Work Day stations, you can sign-up here.

...and you can click here for a great website all about commuting by bicycle!

this sunday: seminar on brakes

This Sunday, 2 May at 3pm at The Bike Project shop at the UC-IMC, we'll be holding an informal class on brakes.  We'll be tackling basic issues like brake pad alignment and cable adjustment.  If there's time, we might also speculate on the historico-material significance of the difference between rod brakes, cantilever brakes, and drum brakes.

(Hint: dialectically speaking, these differences are determined in the last instance by capitalism itself.) 

Bring your bike by the shop and we'll help you shape up your brakes!

tonight: the bike project general meeting!

Tonight at 6pm at The Bike Project shop at the U-C IMC, The Bike Project will hold it's monthly general meeting. All members are invited; pizza and soda will be served. Pizza eating might look something like this:

(n.b.: President Obama probably won't be there.)

Here's a list of things we'll be discussing. You can also check out some sweet bikes for sale repaired by Joel, Carl, and me!

three speed hub maintenance clinic tonight!

Yesterday's Bike Stroll 2 got rained out, but to make it up to everyone we're having an event indoors tonight:

Tonight, 27 April, at 5:30pm at The Bike Project shop at the UC-IMC, TBP volunteer Carl will be conducting a three speed hub maintenance clinic, focusing on maintaining and rebuilding 3 speed Shimano and Sturmey-Archer internally geared hubs. If you've never seen it, the insides actually look something like this:

(public domain image from Wikimedia Commons, which also includes a list of labels for each part)

That's just 45 things to learn about, multiplied by how it all fits together!

California Proposes Ban on Texting While Biking

From NPR: Senator Simitian is trying to get a bill passed that includes cyclists in California's hands-free cell phone law. Sounds like a pretty good idea, what do you think?

this sunday: bike stroll 2

Last week, we accidentally had the first ever Bike Stroll (tm): a sociable and nearly aimless slow ride around C-U. Think of it as Critical Mass minus its nascent political project or antagonism toward cars. Plus fun.

This week, we're reprising it. We'll meet around 5:30pm on Sunday evening outside The Bike Project shop at the U-C IMC. From there? Who knows. We heard that The Big Lebowski's playing at the Canopy Club this Sunday at 7pm (presented by Smile Politely), but if we get swerved from there, then that's okay. Maybe we'll stumble upon an interpretive dance in a barn again instead. Think of it as bicycle-based dérive or psychogeography.

And the best part? You're invited. Meet us, if you like, outside The Bike Project around 5:30 Sunday!

campus bike project open house!

One day late and with our sincerest apologies to Mother Earth, the Campus Bike Project will be hosting an Earth Day Open House on Friday, 23 April, from noon to 5pm. Every hour on the hour, Campus Bike Project manager Joel will give tours of the shop and also answer any questions you might have about The Bike Project.

Here's the text of our press release:

CAMPUS BIKE PROJECT NOW OPEN

In case you weren't aware, The Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign now has a second location: it's called the Campus Bike Project, and it's located at 608 E. Pennsylvania Ave. in Champaign. Google maps still thinks that address is in Urbana, but click this link to see a correct map of the CBP location. We're behind overhead doors 8 through 13 on the west side of the Natural Resources garage, just east of the law building and just west of the Stock Pavilion; just south of the Natural Resources building and just north of the cemetery.

We opened at the end of March, and we're ready to help with your bike repair needs. The CBP works pretty much like the IMC location does, and your membership is reciprocal, so feel free to use whichever location is more convenient.

The CBP is open during times when the Urbana location isn't, so between the two locations, we now have almost 30 hours per week of staffed hours where you can get help fixing your bike. Here are the hours at the Campus location:

Sunday: 5 to 9 p.m.
Monday: 8 a.m. to 12 noon
Tuesday: 6 to 9 p.m.
Friday: 12 noon to 5 p.m.

OPEN HOUSE TOMORROW AFTERNOON

To celebrate Earth Day one day late, the Campus Bike Project will be holding an Open House on Friday, April 23 from 12 noon to 5 p.m. Every hour on the hour, you can get a tour of the shop and ask any questions you might have.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The CBP is still in that cute baby-animal stage when it's almost able to walk on its own, but still stumbles from time to time. Aw, precious, huh? Don't you just want to give us a helping hand? Here's are some ways you can help:
Forward this email to people you know who you think would get some good out of our shop
Hang up some fliers around campus. We have plenty at the shop; stop by and pick some up. Post them on bulletin boards, staple them around bike handlebars, hand them out to random people on the quad or at a residence hall, etc.
Volunteer during open hours. Have a couple hours a week to spare? Want to learn more about bike repair or help others repair their bikes? Or maybe you have organizational skillz you'd like to share? Or perhaps you'd just like to greet people at the door? We have a bunch of volunteer opportunities available, so stop in and inquire, or reply to this email.
Donate something on our wish list. We have several things we could use that we'd prefer not to have to purchase. Scan through this list and see if you have anything you can spare:
Bookshelf stereo or computer speakers: my little transistor radio isn't getting it done
Couches or chairs: we'd like to get a lounge area going in the back of the shop; end of the school year is coming, and this kind of thing should be opening up
Small refrigerator: Just a little dorm-sized guy would do the job.
Microwave: Same here; we get hungry too, you know?
Digital camera: Doesn't have to be anything special, just so we can upload photos to the web
Bikes and bike parts: Don't abandon your bike on the rack for the summer, and don't let your friend do it either. Drop it by the shop and we'll put it to use.

slate.com asks... "why are there no hipsters (and track bikes) in China?"

...and no "ironic" fixed gear bikes, in particular. Despite the fact that 51 million bikes were sold in China in 2009, the fixed gear trend apparently hasn't caught on there.

Why? Well, as Slate tells it, "the anemic fixie scene seems to offer an object lesson in the difficulty of marketing fashion irony here":

"There is a saying in Chinese: 'Laugh at the poor, not the prostitutes,' " Juanjuan Wu, a professor at the University of Minnesota and author of Chinese Fashion From Mao to Now, told me. "Hipster fashion only really works by communicating your irony—in other words, someone needs to 'get it.' Hipster irony in dress would most likely be misinterpreted in Chinese society as simple poverty or weirdness."

(Bonus: The Flying Pigeon Project blogs about classic Chinese bicycles. Here's the Wikipedia article about Flying Pigeon, a Chinese bike company. Fun fact: Flying Pigeon bikes have 28 x 1-1⁄2 inch wheels.)

report from the first "bike stroll"

Sunday, we went out for an aimless slow ride, ostensibly a) to check the gearing on my new Sturmey-Archer 5 speed internally geared hub and b) to see, in person, some murals we'd seen in pictures last Friday night at C-U's Pecha Kucha night (which was a great success!).

Well, the hub's working great but we never made it to the murals. We got sidetracked watching some UIUC dance students perform an improvisational piece -- while dressed to look sort of like zombies -- in a barn on the south side of campus. Bike Project volunteer Tony wrote about the experience for Smile Politely:

There was a large troupe of dancers in dark coveralls moving about, shuffling, sliding, writhing, and plunging in a mixture of zombie-like and playful ways. Almost as interesting as the dancers was the space. The basement of the barn was a dairy operation with eerie metal cages and milking stations set up in a circular array. Upstairs in the humongous domed hay loft a silo formed the center and the curvature of the roof drew the eye upward.... A spare musical accompaniment complemented the improvisational dancers as they were drawn into the hay loft. The audience was mixed in with the performers and they were clearly engrossed in the piece.

And so we're making Bike Stroll a weekly event. More details soon, but we'll be having very slow, very relaxed aimless rides around town on Sunday evenings departing at 5:30pm from The Bike Project shop. Check the blog again soon for more details!

the official bike project deck

...and by deck, I mean slideshow, powerpoint style...

Tonight Campus Bike Project manager Joel will be presenting a slideshow at C-U's third Pecha Kucha night. Never heard of Pecha Kucha? Well...

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.
It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

You can learn more about Pecha Kucha here. C-U's third Pecha Kucha takes place tonight, 16 April, beginning at 8pm at the Canopy Club. The Bike Project goes on early, with a slideshow about some basic bike repairs.

campus bike project meets smilepolitely.com

Hoping to express as many conflicts of interest as possible, I wrote an article about the new Campus Bike Project for Smile Politely, Champaign-Urbana's equivalent of an alt-weekly. I also interviewed Joel, Smile Politely editor and Campus Bike Project manager, for the first Smile Politely podcast. See if the lede moves you to read the article:

When and if the oil runs out and runs postmodern car culture aground, Champaign-Urbana’s pretty well positioned to deal… at least insofar as it will still be pretty easy to move around town, scavenging for food and whatever else one does after cars are gone (besides, like, live in a totally unalienated utopian World Made By Hand). It’s completely flat here and with the roads free of cars there’ll be no excuse, really, for not always just cycling from point A (say, your non-alienated libidinal workplace) to point B (e.g. the collective farm where you’ve gotta pick up your broccoli ration).

"it's a beautiful victory! now we'll do some drug testing!" (a video to honor the inaugural bike project tour de kickapoo)

nyt reports on a cyclist with parkinson's disease

Pretty amazing: a Dutch man afflicted with Parkinson's disease is unable to walk, but somehow able to ride a bicycle.  From the article:

the man told Dr. Bloem something amazing: he said he was a regular exerciser — a cyclist, in fact — something that should not be possible for patients at his stage of the disease, Dr. Bloem thought.

“He said, ‘Just yesterday I rode my bicycle for 10 kilometers’ — six miles,” Dr. Bloem said. “He said he rides his bicycle for miles and miles every day.”

“I said, ‘This cannot be,’ ” Dr. Bloem, a professor of neurology and medical director of the hospital’s Parkinson’s Center, recalled in a telephone interview. “This man has end-stage Parkinson’s disease. He is unable to walk.”

But the man was eager to demonstrate, so Dr. Bloem took him outside where a nurse’s bike was parked.

“We helped him mount the bike, gave him a little push, and he was gone,” Dr. Bloem said. He rode, even making a U-turn, and was in perfect control, all his Parkinson’s symptoms gone.

Yet the moment the man got off the bike, his symptoms returned. He froze immediately, unable to take a step.

The Times posted a video along with the article.