Now with campus and traffic...

I was in Chicago today and dropped into my favorite bike shop in the city, Uptown Bicycles. It got me thinking about biking within an urban setting and how to get folks who are new to biking acclimated and prepared to bike in an environment where there are more than just cornfields around (say an increase of 30,000 students, a third who are new to the campus, and any parents and friends of these students).

So scouring the internet, I found this handy article: http://www.good.is/post/bike-commuting-and-living-to-tell-about-it/. There are some handy tips, especially since he's talking from his experience in NYC.

On a side note, I'm thinking about how to vamp up some education programs for members of the Bike Project. Any suggestions on what one may want to see in classes or programs, let me know. Of course, this happens outside of dissertation thinking but I'll squeeze it in when I can.

"yogurt pedaling"

Last weekend, I met the "yogurt pedaler," Annie Lambla.  Annie's biking from Chicago to Ohio, visiting farms and markets along the way, and teaching people about locally-made yogurt.  While in C-U, she visited Urbana's Market at the Square and UIUC's Quad Day, came out to our alleycat race, and graciously agreed to an interview for Smile Politely:

SP: Where did you get the idea to bike around with the yogurt trailer?

Annie: At first, I had an idea to ride around the Midwest from farm to farm, learning about new farms on the road, and selling my yogurt along the way.  My friend suggested building up a bike machine to run a refrigerator while I pedaled, but all of that just became too complicated and expensive.  So I decided to change it into a project to inspire people to get excited about making things, which is what bikes and yogurt have done for me.

You can read more of the interview here and follow Annie's bike tour at yogurtpedaler.com.

Energy Savings Clarified

A new study from Columbia University suggests that many of the public perceptions about energy savings (and the more effective ways to save energy) are actually incorrect.

The link above includes a link to the full article PDF, which is available to read for free (open access).

Of course, Cycling is definitely still efficient. In some respects cycling is up to 5 times more efficient a use of your energy than walking, and with significantly lower emissions than whatever this is.

salon.com's globalization blogger offers "one more reason to ride a bike"

Andrew Leonard, author of a blog called "How the World Works" over at Salon.com, wrote a great piece Sunday in praise of one specific consequence of bike commuting: riding a bike shows other people how easy and fun it is to ride a bike, perhaps inspiring them to ride a bike in turn!  Here's my favorite part of Leonard's piece:

You may be wondering why I decided to share this tiny urban cycling vignette. In the big scheme of things it's not all that important. But it brightened up my day like a ray of afternoon sunshine breaking through a blanket of San Francisco Bay Area fog and I just had to share the glee. Real human contact with a complete stranger is much rarer in our lives than it should be. And any time someone decides to ride a bike instead of driving a car is good for them and does the world a favor. And might even be good for someone else too, who isn't riding a bike ... yet.

If you're a newcomer to Chambana looking for a great used bike, stop by one of our shops during open hours and check out what we've got!

"the earth doesn't care if you drive a hybrid car"

... is the title (or at least a title) of this Robert Laughlin piece in the American Spectator.  Alternately entitled "What the Earth Knows," the essay argues that within the barely imaginable spans of "geologic time," the impact of human beings' carbon emissions is less than negligible.  It's a provocative thesis and leads to this great paragraph:

On the scales of time relevant to itself, the earth doesn’t care about any of these governments or their legislation. It doesn’t care whether you turn off your air conditioner, refrigerator, and television set. It doesn’t notice when you turn down your thermostat and drive a hybrid car. These actions simply spread the pain over a few centuries, the bat of an eyelash as far as the earth is concerned, and leave the end result exactly the same: all the fossil fuel that used to be in the ground is now in the air, and none is left to burn. The earth plans to dissolve the bulk of this carbon dioxide into its oceans in about a millennium, leaving the concentration in the atmosphere slightly higher than today’s. Over tens of millennia after that, or perhaps hundreds, it will then slowly transfer the excess carbon dioxide into its rocks, eventually returning levels in the sea and air to what they were before humans arrived on the scene. The process will take an eternity from the human perspective, but it will be only a brief instant of geologic time.

Laughlin recently discussed carbon and peak oil on an interesting podcast with Russ Roberts, a George Mason economist.  There, Laughlin speculates that while we may run out of oil within 60 or so years, human beings will likely begin to use liquefied coal and biofuels to create liquid fuels.  Most provocatively, Laughlin seems to suggest that human beings will never stop using carbon energy because nothing can replace it and people will never give up cars, airplanes, and the like.  The podcast's worth a listen (especially if you've got a long drive back from O'Hare!)

"who pays for free parking? everyone but the motorist!"

In last Sunday's New York Times, Professor Tyler Cowen argued that ubiquitous free parking amounts to an immense subsidy for automobiles.  Most new commercial construction in the U.S. is required by law to include a generous number of free parking spaces, leading to the horrific seas of pavement likely coming soon to Olympian Drive in Urbana.  As with gasoline, drivers are insulated from paying the true costs of operating cars.  Open space gets paved and new commercial buildings usually look like the ugliest of Robert Venturi's fantasies.  Progressives like James Howard Kunstler have spent years advocating that we recognize the true costs of automobility.  Cowen's essay argues that we do so in prices:

Higher charges for parking spaces would limit our trips by car. That would cut emissions, alleviate congestion and, as a side effect, improve land use. Donald C. Shoup, professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, has made this idea a cause, as presented in his 733-page book, “The High Cost of Free Parking.”

Many suburbanites take free parking for granted, whether it’s in the lot of a big-box store or at home in the driveway. Yet the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.

Pricing parking to reflect the true costs of driving would also encourage the growth of green modes of transit, like buses and bicycles. "Perhaps most important," Cowen adds, "if we’re going to wean ourselves away from excess use of fossil fuels, we need to remove current subsidies to energy-unfriendly ways of life."

The Bike Project's blog will soon be in new hands: I'm passing it off to the co-op's new Volunteer Coordinator.  We'll introduce her or him next week!

e-bikes in chicago!

Today, an entrepreneurship blog at Crain's Chicago Business featured a long interview with John LaStarge, owner of Chicago Electric Bicycles.

The business started when LaStarge converted a mountain bike into an e-bike, then sold it to a relative.  A year later, Chicago Electric Bicycles offers four different e-bikes.

In the interview, LaStarge talks about the motive and means behind his e-bike business:

In the spring of 2008, gas prices shot up to about $4.50 a gallon in Chicago and angry CTA commuters were complaining about bad service and high costs. I thought: there’s got to be another way to get around this city. I’ve always loved bicycles, so I looked up electric bikes online and bought one from overseas. The battery only lasted three months and they didn’t offer any services or support. So I decided to build my own.

 Read more over at Enterprise City.

"driving is why you're fat"

Good Magazine diagrams a simple equation: the more time you spend driving a car, the more likely you are to be overweight.  Meanwhile, the DC Streets blog reports that the car-dependent states are more likely to have high rates of obesity.

"Correlation isn't causation..." of course, but interesting stats nonetheless.

joel reflects on bike bike

Once again Joel saved his best material for Smile Politely! (Just kidding, kinda!).  Over there, he wrote up a "Bike Dispatch from the Great White North", about his trek with Carl into an alien land where you have to show your papers just to get in and out.

Actually, it's just the condensed version of his blog posts here.  Call it "rarefied."

On another note, tonight some TBP volunteers will be building bikes to sell in concert with the annual Dump-and-Run sale coming up on Saturday.  If you'd like to help, send us an email and let us know and we'll tell you the when, where, and how.

Some Random Bike!Bike! & Toronto Impressions

This was my first real trip to Canada and my first time in Toronto, as well as my second Bike!Bike! experience, so I'm going to subject you to some of my impressions:

CITY COMMENTS

Toronto is fairly “bike-friendly” just because of the sheer number of bikes that are used for transportation, but its bike infrastructure is nearly non-existant. We were given city bike maps when we arrived, and they were helpful for getting around the city, and they were also great-looking and well-produced. However, there's really no point in seeking out the occasional, intermittent bike lanes that crop up on streets seemingly at random.

The main thoroughfare connecting the Bike!Bike! Venues, Bloor Street, was a clinic in riding in the door zone constantly, as well as avoiding the frequent right hook opportunities. Toronto was nowhere near the bikeable city that Minneapolis was last year, but in its defence, there were tons and tons of people on bikes. Boo to the City of Toronto, and Yay to the People of Toronto.

Holy shit, that's a huge, over-populated city. As I type this while Carl navigates a traffic jam near Gary, Indiana, I'm fully decompressed from the experience, but it was a pretty intense couple of days. Toronto is teeming with life in every corner. The sidewalks, storefronts, and streets were never empty, regardless of neighborhood or time of day. With the exception of Pizza!Pizza! And Tim Horton, most of the businesses appeared to be local, one-off deals. It's a truly dizzying array of ethnicities, as well, which only added to the complexity. I felt completely overwhelmed.

If you go to Toronto, make sure you bring plenty of cash. Most of the businesses wouldn't accept credit cards, and my bank apparently saw my initial ATM withdrawal from Canada for the registration fees and decided to shut down my ATM abilities. Yay! Stores and restaurants that accepted plastic were the exception rather than the rule, which really surprised me.

This being the great white north and all, very few of the buildings and businesses were air-conditioned. That was totally fine with me, but it was definitely something different than what I've become used to in Illinois over the last couple of sweltering months. It was in the low-to-mid-80s in the heat of the day, and there were nice breezes off of Lake Ontario in the evenings. It started getting humid over Saturday night, but we didn't have to stick around for too much of that.

BIKE!BIKE! COMMENTS

A huge advantage that Minneapolis had over Toronto is that they secured a single venue for all of the sessions and mealtimes. Toronto had two basic areas for the sessions with two single-room venues in each area, but unfortunately they were about three miles apart from one another, and the mealtime location was in a completely separate location between the two. The “Bike Bus” concept down Bloor which they encouraged – basically making each commute a mini-Critical Mass – was fun, but it was near-exhausting to rush back and forth from Bike Pirates to Campus Co-Op House to Hart House each day.

The food was fantastic, as it was last year, and was a great example of how I should eat all the time. It was vegetarian/vegan without relying heavily on starches (and very few sweets), which was great. And the volunteers did a great job of fixing enough food and keeping thing moving. Mealtimes were wonderful.

Most everyone who attends Bike!Bike! gives a lot of themselves the other 51-1/2 weeks of the year, and the strain often shows. It's a lot of work to selflessly give of yourself in an often thankless position, and it seems like a lot of BB'ers really want their decisions and dedication validated, more than anything. That need for attention often derails discussions, but I'm glad that these folks have an opportunity to be in an atmosphere that supports them for a few days, at least.

This is probably what it's like for anyone who's been to SXSW or Pitchfork, but I just couldn't get over how SUPERCOOL everyone else was. It's like hippie/hipster fantasy camp for me, to be able to spend a few days in such a group. I know I'm a square, but it's driven home exceedingly well during Bike!Bike!

Another thing that really worked out well (for me, at least) at Minneapolis was that the B!B! venue had free wireless available, so that I could pop out my laptop during breaks and throw up a blog post. This year, I spent all my time on breaks riding between venues and searching for somewhere to get on the Internets. Poor me. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Bike!Bike! Day 2 (Saturday, August 14)

SATURDAY SESSIONS

After an excellent night's sleep in Tim's downtown Toronto apartment (which apparently was interrupted by our host's drunk ex-girlfriend calling to be buzzed in from the lobby – I slept through all of that), we began Day 2 with a refreshed outlook on life. The breakfast of tofu scramble and home fries at the Campus Co-op House was awesome, and we were ready to locomote.
Carl went to Meeting Facilitation first off, which was complementary with the Battlefield:Consensus course that he attended the previous day. Everyone has an inner facilitator, and if one person dominates, then the vibe can skew the points that others want to make and stifles the creativity of the group. It's important to recognize that, and several other co-ops had established styles that would work. One group took a straw poll at the beginning of each meeting to establish priorities for the meeting. Also, they shifted facilitators every few meetings (not necessarily assigning, but letting someone present themselves) to keep things fresh; also, having a spotter to assist by keeping track of who would like to comment and contribute to the discussion. Another idea is that instead of using your voice to demonstrate approval (which could derail someone's point), simple sign language can be used (curved finger = I've got a question, finger-wiggle to demonstrate approval, etc.) to accomplish the same thing without being invasive.

I went to a two-part course on volunteer orientation led by the Boise, Idaho, co-op staff. The two parts of the course followed the two-part orientation that Boise requires for anyone that wants to be involved in their shop as a volunteer. The first part focused on the importance of having an orientation program for shop volunteers, as well as the conceptual training that they provide in their first session for new volunteers. They've found that having some structure to their volunteer training makes their volunteers more effective because they understand what the purpose and mission of the shop is, as well as having some basic mechanical understanding of the bicycle. It also serves a purpose for the shop by “weeding out” those who really aren't very interested in volunteering or would be doing it for reasons other than wanting to help people.

The second part was a hands-on demonstration of what the Boise group does for their second volunteer orientation session. They just go through pulling a stem, taking off the pedals and cranks, and using a chain tool to remove and re-install a chain. Their main emphasis is that there's a proper tool for each task, and that the tools must be properly used in order to avoid problems.

I think that greater volunteer care is one of the areas which we could really improve in our shop. I'd like to personally spend some time over the next couple of months focusing on getting a regular volunteer orientation set up for new volunteers, following up with those who've expressed interest in volunteering on their membership form, finding a volunteer with non-profit accounting experience who'd be willing to help us put together for independent 501(c)3 status, and getting more volunteers involved at the CBP.

Carl went to the Bikes & Universities session for his second session of the day.

I wasn't really excited about any of the sessions directly following lunch, and I was really behind on blogging, so I skipped that session and holed up at a branch of the Toronto Public Library to let some of my hard-earned Canadian tax dollars pay for my free WiFi. It was a beautiful experience. Here's the view out of the second-floor window, which unsurprisingly featured a Tim Hortons:

Carl was a good organizational man and attended both of the afternoon sessions, catching Bike Advocacy/Working with the City and Earn-A-Bike Programs.

I was a little late getting to my final session of the day: Facilitating a Paid Position at Your Shop. It was led by a grant-funded employee of the Bike Kitchen in Los Angeles. There are several models for staffing shops, from Bicas in Tempe, Ariz., where pretty much everyone is paid (13 employees), and they make anywhere from $8 to $14 per hour, depending on level of responsibility, to Bike Kitchen, which is all volunteer with the exception of the single grant-funded employee. I'd say the majority of the shops represented at Bike!Bike! Are 100% volunteer-run, mostly because they feel it's important to their mission to charge little or nothing for their services, or they have higher expenses because of their location. The biggest takeaway I got from this session is that any decision to pay someone(s) must be arrived at by a collective, democratic or consensus decision, and that it's helpful to get advice from a financial expert on whether or not the shop's finances are healthy enough to support a paid position.

SATURDAY EVENING

Carl and I met up and headed to dinner at the house of a friend of our host's, Jacqueline. Jacqueline and her housemates were also hosting several Bike!Bike! Attendees, from Montreal and Atlanta. They lived near a sunken park called the Christie Pits and had an amazing backyard with grapevines, tomato plants, and other vegetables. It was truly a beautiful thing. We enjoyed a great dinner of pasta, vegetables, and homemade bread, all of which originated in Ontario. We also enjoyed some local beverages, as well as some Corona courtesy of NAFTA.

Altogether too soon, it was time to head out to a local anniversary ride to commemorate the 2003 East Coast Blackout. Our host, Tim, whose birthday coincided with the blackout, had pleasant recollections of the beautiful hospitality and community demonstrated by Torontonians (?) when the lights went out. Pleasantly buzzed, we rolled down to a park at Bloor and Spadina, where several hundred cyclists were gathering to take part in the ride.

I'm accustomed to the 20-30 riders which make up a healthy C-U Critical Mass, so this was something different than I'd ever been a part of. We rode several miles along the bar-lined streets of southwest Toronto in a large group, corking intersections and doing a good job of staying together, although the sheer quantity of riders meant that we still stretched out for several blocks.

Then, just when things were running out of steam, a pre-planned meeting with a percussion band and fire-twirling troupe on a dead-end street occurred. Everyone dismounted from their bikes, and let by a steady drumbeat and rings of fire from half-dressed fire-twirlers, we marched a block down the street to a railroad underpass, which we occupied for 10 minutes or so, stopping automobile and streetcar traffic. It was really a joyous scene, which I hope comes through in the video below:



Before we upset any motorists beyond repair, we marched back to the dead-end street and set up a more permanent party. The drum-pounding and fire-contortioning continued in conjunction with some energetic dancing on the “darkest street they could find” for better than an hour.

Carl and I were pretty wiped out by that point and weren't going to survive the additional dance party planned at Bike Pirates afterward, so we took our leave and rode back to Tim's apartment. We took a little detour into a fountain park in downtown Toronto to take some pictures:

We lived to tell the tale of the remainder of our ride, although Carl had a close call when he hooked the rearview mirror of an SUV on Queen Street. After spinning a little Richard Hell on Tim's hi-fi, we called it a night – me a little earlier than Carl, apparently.

la mayor Antonio Villaraigosa finds out first hand how drivers generally treat cyclists

...and becomes an advocate for enforcing laws to protect cyclists and force drivers to share the road:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the new champion of cyclists' rights in the nation's second-largest city, a conversion that came after a bone-breaking fall from his own bicycle.

The mayor, who said little on the topic during five years in office, is campaigning to make streets safer for cyclists after a parked cab abruptly pulled out across a bike lane, causing him to shatter an elbow. The ill-fated ride was his first on city streets since taking office.

Since the July 17 accident, Villaraigosa has utilized the Huffington Post and YouTube to say that it's time to recognize that bicycles also belong on LA's streets, which were largely designed for autos. In the YouTube video, he announced plans to convene a bicycle safety summit.

Bike!Bike! Day 1 Recap (Friday, Aug. 13)

It's important to set the scene, so that's why I've included a gratuitous shot of the Rogers Centre and the CN Tower above. Have I sufficiently transported you, the reader? OK, here's a rundown of the Friday activities at Bike!Bike!:

I'll try to avoid making this a comparison of my experience at Bike!Bike! last year in Minneapolis vs. this year, but that will probably come up from time to time. I apologize in advance. Also, I will try to use Canadian spellings and metric units whenever possible to make sure you realize that I am in a foreign country and deeply entrenched in its culture and idiom. Apologies also for that.

We rolled up to the Bike Pirates shop and found the door locked, and rushed back to the car to re-check our instructions. Sure enough, we were supposed to meet at the Free Gallery, which was just across Bloor Street (which isin a pretty interesting part of Toronto). The Gallery has preserved the hardware store marquee of the previous tenants, which makes it kind of hard to spot on first glance, but we got it figured out eventually. Geoffrey got us registered and sent us to the back of the gallery to pick out a loaner bike. I found a CCM (roughly the Canadian equivalent of Schwinn) Supreme 10-speed city bike, and Carl found a custom-painted Bike Pirate mountain frame with slick tyres. Soon afterward, we found ourselves locking them high on a nearby fence to prove how hip and citified we are:

 We're about five miles north and west of downtown Toronto, and just to the west of what appears to be in Koreatown. After registering, I realized that the first session that I wanted to attend, Mobile Bike Clinics, was actually located at the Hart House on the University of Toronto campus, which appeared to be just ten blocks away or so per the provided Bike!Bike! map.

Once I started the ride, though, I realized that many of the streets weren't shown on the map, and I was actually on a three-mile ride. No big deal, but by the time I found Hart House, I was hopelessly late. Hart House was also a huge 19th-century stone building which took me 20 minutes or so to find the proper room in. Mobile Bike Clinics was pretty much over by the time I rolled in, but oh well. It was led by a gentleman from Harrisburg (Pa., I believe) who fixes kids bikes from his organization's mobile shop. Good stuff! Maybe some day TBP will get something similar started.

Carl texted me to let me know he would be attending Battlefield:Consensus, so I headed to the Co-Op Incubator session at the Diabolo Coffeeshop, just across the Quad from Hart House. Here's a picture of the lovely men and women who attended:

The session was led by Tito from the Sopo bike co-op in Atlanta. It was more of a group discussion surrounding the difficulties of starting and maintaining a space and organization. Here are some of my notes (the short night had really taken effect by this point, and I had trouble staying awake):

• The grizzled gent in red emphasized: "Non-profit or not, we're all running businesses," and emphasized that your board should have a business specialist on it
• An ongoing theme for me at this conference has been the need for volunteer orientation, and having minimum requirements and training for volunteers, and this came up in this session as well
• It can be helpful to seem less political and more community-oriented when asking for help, which isn't really a problem for TBP, but can be for more outwardly-radical organizations
• Space is crucial for having a successful organization, a lot of what you can and can't do is dictated by the limitations or lack thereof of your space

Carl and I met up at the Campus Co-op house where we were served a delicious lunch of salad, hummus, veggies, brown rice and fruit:

We went our separate ways after lunch, and I went to How to Teach Hands-off, which was pretty straightforward. It was led collectively by three folks from different organizations in Montreal, Providence, R.I., and Toronto, from left:

We went through a helpful exercise where several volunteers had to explain to the rest of us how to cut a mango without doing it themselves. It drove home the point of making sure we're helping without doing the repairs for our members. Here are some of my notes:

• Building Confidence – need to be beacon of hope for anyone who walks in the door, confidence can be shattered easily, need to cheer on even the smallest accomplishment
• Competence – don't be afraid to call in more help for an unfamiliar repair. Two main concepts that are good for directing someone
• Information won't be communicated unless there's a path from something that's known to something that's not known.
• Chain: need to make connection; pretty easy to perceive what they know and move into the land of what they don't know
• Information will not be communicated unless it's done slowly

Carl and I joined up for the last seminar of the day, which was supposed to be a tour of five DIY shops in Toronto. Here are some pictures of Bike Pirates, the first stop:

After a sometimes-harrowing journey in a group of about 50 cyclists, the next stop was Bike Share.  Here are some pictures:

The time allotment for the session was already shot by that point, and we needed to figure out where we were staying for the evening, so Carl and I separated from the group. After making plans for a rendezvous with our host for later that evening, we made a little tour of downtown Toronto and the Lake Ontario harbor. Here are some select shots:

Just needed to check the clock for a bit.

One week too early to catch this event, unfortunately....

On the boardwalk, etc., etc.

A Chinese junk?

Gratuitous water shot.

More of that insidious yoga graffiti.

We grabbed some beer at the LCBO, some falafel at a little shop, and by that time we were exhausted and ready to meet up with our host so we could crash on his floor. More on Saturday's goings-on are coming soon...

Traveling to Bike!Bike!

Hey folks,

Sorry for being tardy with the update posts this weekend. We don't have WiFi available at any of the Bike!Bike! venues or at the house we're staying at, which makes updating the blog fairly difficult. I'm currently encamped at a Toronto Public Library location and skipping the Saturday 2:30-4:00 p.m. workshops in order to get caught up a little bit.  Even that's not going too smoothly, as the photos that I'd uploaded from Carl's camera are nowhere to be found. Alas, we'll make do with mine, which didn't include any en-route photos. Here's what I should have posted yesterday about our travels to Toronto:

Carl successfully acquired a passport card in Chicago on Thursday, and I picked him up in the thriving burg of Michigan City, Indiana, after I got off work. Our drive through Michigan was pretty uneventful, unless you count the seemingly endless bouts of road construction that we encountered. We stopped for a drink at the Lansing, Michigan, Meijer and proceeded to cross the border at Sarnia, Ontario, at the southern tip of Lake Huron:

The crossing was pretty smooth (the toll for the bridge was $3) and the border officials didn't give us any grief. All told it took maybe five minutes. 

This is just my second trip to Canada, and the only time that I've stayed more that just a few hours, so it's all new to me. There seems to be a Tim Horton's restaurant at every exit on the highway (and there's one right across the street from the library as I type this).

The part of Ontario surrounding Sarnia is known as the Chemical Valley, I believe from my Google exploits, but soon we were out of the developed area and onto a dark, lightly-traveled highway at that point in the night (it was well after midnight). We made it to the outskirts of London, Ontario, before we decided to call it a night at 2:30 a.m. We found a city park and Carl set up his sleeping bag, while I slept in the front seat of the car.

Just a few scant hours later, we arose and got on the road by 6:30 a.m. We stopped at a Traditional Pancake House (the only non-Tim Horton's breakfast option available at the exit we chose) and filled up on breakfast, and I filled up with petrol. Gas was $1.05 per litre (about equivalent to $4 per gallon).

I drove the last couple hours in Toronto with no problems, and we found the Bike Pirates shop pretty easily. Carl brought his Garmin, which was helpful once we needed to get around the city. I'll close with this shot of a bike bridge near the shores of Lake Ontario:

campus bike project closed friday 8/13 and sunday 8/15!

FYI: The Campus Bike Project will be closed on Friday, 13 August and Sunday, 15 August.

Carl and Joel -- current and former CBP Managers, respectively -- are leaving town (and the country!) to attend Bike!Bike! in Toronto.  Bike!Bike!'s an annual convention of bike co-ops from around North America and Carl and Joel will be there representing The Bike Project and learning from other co-ops.

Have a safe trip guys!

portland public bike share

Yeah yeah yeah, who cares, you say.  And that would be the right response except that this one was actually proposed by Mark Twain in 1895.  Saw this on cycleicio.us, by the way.  Here's Mark Twain's quote:

Portland ought to lay itself out a little and macadamize all its streets just like this. Then it ought to own all the bicycles and rent ‘em out and so pay for the streets. Pretty good scheme, eh? 

And some links: the original post on cyclicio.us, Mark Twain's 1985 interview in Portland, and a Twain story called "Taming the Bicycle."  If you haven't read Twain's book Life on the Mississippi, you should.

On another note: Joel and Carl are in Toronto this weekend for Bike!Bike! and are planning to keep us updated on their trip here on this very blog!  Last year, Joel and Phil kept a blog from Bike!Bike!, still legible here.

Learning With Vince HIATUS!

Yup, I'm putting the Learning w/ Vince thing on Hiatus for now. School is starting up, dissertation chapters are calling, and I want to figure out a way to make the class a bit more organized for the upcoming school year. Keep an eye out b/c once we roll it out, it'll be fabulous. Til then, if you have anything in specific you want me to work on during an open hours, I'm pretty sure I can find something to show and tell on. If I'm working on my bike for anything specific, I'll post it here and you'll more than welcome to come on in and find out how I'm doing X bike thing.

if you've ever wondered how google maps gets its directions "by bike"

...then read this great article from the New York Times!  A highlight:

The beta version for bicyclists is just a few months old, but it is already reshaping how bike enthusiasts travel. Spanning more than 200 cities nationwide — and with plans to roll out bicycle routes internationally — Google Maps relies on a mash-up of data, from publicly available sources like bike maps to user-generated information. It joins a host of other bike-mapping Web sites, from Bikely, which lets people share routes in cities around the world, to Ride the City, a geowiki (or self-editing map) app, available in 10 cities (including New York, Boston, San Francisco and Toronto) that allows users to edit their routes as they ride, to MapMyRide, which is geared more toward fitness training and logging workouts.

But the one with the most potential — and the most buzz among bikers — is Google’s. There are three kinds of routes highlighted on its maps: bike-only trails (dark green), dedicated bicycle lanes (light green) and bike-friendly roads but with no separate lanes (dashed green). The algorithm factors in variables besides bike lanes, like confusing intersections, steep hills or busy streets, before spitting out the “best” route. The software includes more than 12,000 miles of off-road trails as well.

Cruise ‘n’ Tunes

Hop on the bike and start your weekend off with cadence and rhythm. Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and Research Park are hosting another “Outside at the Park” concert event this Friday, August 13th. The music begins at 6:15 pm, but be sure to get there early for an opportunity to tour the Gable Home, the University’s solar home design which took 2nd place in last year’s solar decathlon. In addition, several local and area businesses will be set up at the park to demonstrate and explain some of their own green initiatives and programs. Admission is free, and Houlihans will have food and beverages available for purchase as well.

For more information, check out the event details on Krannert’s website, and bike your way to the start of a relaxing happy hour in the park this Friday night.

saturday: c-u across the prarie!

This Saturday, 14 August, the Prairie Cycle Club will host C-U Across the Prairie, the group's annual metric century ride.  That's 100 kilometres... or 65 miles for those of you who prefer freedom fries.

It's a supported ride, which means there'll be a sag-wagon in case you, um, can't find potable water for four hours during the century and then try to get some from a public park near Monticello but then it's probably not potable anyway and you have to do the last twenty miles thinking you've ingested a parasite.  Not that that happened.

Anyway, C-U Across the Prairie also features 35- and 17-mile rides for those who'd like to bike it but don't want to do the full 65.

The ride departs from Mahomet this Saturday morning and breakfast and lunch will be provided.

You can register here.

flatville fixie ride

(A secret ride, no less!  Now that it's over, I'm totally violating the organizer's imperative not to mention it on any forums or blogs, macro or micro!)

This morning, a group of The Bike Project's volunteers and friends rode 20 miles to Flatville from Urbana on fixed gear bikes.  It turns out Flatville's aptly named.  Its wikipedia page even has a flat tone:

Flatville is an unincorporated town in Compromise Township, Champaign County, Illinois, USA.

 ...and that's it.  But it's got a Lutheran Church, which kindly offered us sanctuary... and water.

The ride's organizer made some great corn-and-soybean spoke cards, to commemorate basically all of the scenery on the way:

Thanks Fred for organizing the ride and thanks everybody who rode along!

nyt video report from ragbrai

"bike lanes are a commie plot!"

...according to Dan Maes, a Republican candidate for Colorado's governorship.  Acknowledging that some might find his theories "kooky," Maes went ahead and offered some kooky theories about how Denver's increasing bike-friendliness is a surreptitious means to turn the city into a "United Nations community" (n.b. he didn't use the word "surreptitious"):

"At first, I thought, 'Gosh, public transportation, what's wrong with that, and what's wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what's wrong with incentives for green cars?' But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty," Maes said.

Look out for the Dan Maes stage on the upcoming Mustache Ride 2.

No learning with Vince today...sorry!

I just got back from a Rocky Mountain trip to Salt Lake City and Denver and arrived in Champaign at 1am this morning so I have to regretfully postpone the class on shifting today. Of course, the volunteer staff will be more than happy to help.

On a bike note, I don't know how the University of Utah students ride their bikes to and from classes. The campus is on the mountain (it takes less time to get on a hiking trail than it does to get to a Target) and most the students are commuters. I saw a bunch of folks riding their bikes up and down the main road. I could barely walk up a set of stairs. And finally, the fixie scene seems strong in the SLC, even though the beer is weak.

presenting... our new campus bike project manager!

Today's visitors to the Campus Bike Project might have noticed something different: a new manager.  At Tuesday night's member meeting, Bike Project volunteer Carl was named the new manager!

Former CBP manager Joel left to begin a new job making tofu crumbles (just kidding! -- kind of) and Carl very graciously agreed to take over managing the shop.  You've probably met Carl before if you've been in either the Campus or UC-IMC shops.  We were glad to have Carl as a volunteer; we're thrilled to have him working for The Bike Project.

Congratulations Carl!