cycling movies

Looking for a movie about bikes that isn't Vive le Tour or Quicksilver?  C-U's local video store That's Rentertainment has compiled a long list of cycling movies, including both notable (The Bicycle Thief and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) and obscure (Velorution).

That's Rentertainment's got many of them available too, in case some evenings are too rainy or humid for bike rides.

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.

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!

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.)

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.

bike sharing... via text message

A few weeks back, Smile Politely reported on a new bike sharing program in C-U: Grab-A-Bike.  Grab-A-Bike's still in the works, but other cities (and small towns) already have similar bike sharing programs up and running.  Smile Politely's article notes the logistical difficulties involved in dealing with maintenance and theft issues in bike sharing programs.

A bike sharing program at Emory University in Atlanta has come up with one solution: using text messages as a virtual key to unlock the bikes.  From The Chronicle of Higher Ed:

Students in Emory University's bike-sharing program will soon be able to unlock the bikes they want to use by sending a text message. The university will replace its current system, which requires manually checking out a key, with the automatic one, developed by students at the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology.

Each bike in the new "viaCycle" fleet will be equipped with a GPS and locking system. When students or employees want to use a bike, they will send a text message with the bike's identification number to a server. The server will forward the request to the bike and unlock it automatically. After using the bike, the rider will use an attached cable to secure it anywhere and send another text message to lock it.

More at the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog.

"vive le tour" et cetera

Someone put one of my favorite cycling movies on youtube: Louis Malle's Vive Le Tour.  Part 1 is here; part 2 here.  It's only about 20 minutes long and every minute is great, so watch it.

While you're at it, watch this scene from Quicksilver, too.  And this, from Rad.  In fact, head over to That's Rentertainment and rent one of those movies ASAP.

bikes for sale!

Yes, winter's a good time to stay warm indoors and watch Arrested Development DVDs.  But spring will be here soon and then you'll want a bike to get around C-U.  Right now The Bike Project has a bunch of great bikes for sale... and they'll probably disappear pretty fast once the temperature rises.

If you're looking for a great bike, you should stop by the shop and check out our finished bikes.  We've got helmets, locks, and lights for sale, too -- so you can get everything you need to zip over to Jarling's Custard Cup this spring (starting March 5th!).

Here's a selection of bikes we've got for sale right now:

 

just a selection

Nassau 3-speed, with rear basket, $90

Specialized Hardrock, $200

AMF Nimble, $70

Murray Monterrey cruiser, $60 (and "sweet")

Trek mountain bike, $175

Schwinn Caliente, $70

 

Bridgestone Skyway, with front rack, $80

We've got more, too.  Come see them before they're sold to someone else! 

And if you'd prefer to build your own, you can become a member, choose an unclaimed bike and build-a-bike:

we'll help you learn how

(We're still looking for a digital camera!  and a better photographer.  email us!)

more public meetings of interest to local cyclists

The Illinois Department of Transportation will hold public hearings to discuss its Highway Improvement Plans this week.  The meetings will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. this Wednesday, January 20^th, at the Champaign County Highway Building, located at 1605 E. Main St., U, and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursday, January 21^st, at the University of Illinois Extension Office, 12190 U.S. 150 in Oakwood.

Why should we care?  Cynthia Hoyle spells it out in an article for Smile Politely.  In a nutshell:

IDOT has proposed spending $1 million to build a pedestrian overpass for Curtis Road and I-57. This proposal has raised questions as to why it was necessary to build a separate bridge for pedestrians when sidewalks and bike lanes could have been included in the new overpass for Curtis Road that was opened last year. 

Questions have also been raised about why facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists are not being built for other overpasses such as Windsor and/or Kirby in Champaign.  Many residents now live west of I-57 and those who cannot drive and must bicycle, walk, or access transit are in serious danger when crossing over these overpasses crowded with motor vehicles.

Another point of controversy is that the Illinois Legislature passed a “Complete Streets” bill that required IDOT to design all future IDOT road projects to include facilities for all roadway users including pedestrians and bicyclists. This bill was passed in 2007 and has yet to be fully implemented.

 These meetings are a chance to tell IDOT you want more cycle-friendly roads.

hack economist asks: do bike helmet laws discourage cycling?

Continuing Economics's impulse to provide poorly-reasoned explanations for everything, today the Freakonomics blog summarized the findings of a paper arguing that mandatory-helmet laws decrease the number of cyclists.  The post's here.  According to some other economists, mandatory-helmet laws diminish bike ridership among the young people such laws impact because

1. The cost of helmets, both monetary and social — i.e., Helmets are uncool, so if I’ve got to wear a helmet to ride my bike, I’ll find something else to do.
2. “There is evidence that youths have suboptimally high discount rates (Gruber 2001), such that some youths might place too little weight on the expected gain in future utility from the prevention of injury or death relative to the costs of wearing helmets today.”
3. Bike-helmet laws lower the price of activities similar to biking — skateboarding, rollerblading, etc. — that do not require a helmet.

Freaky economist also offers his own possible explanations:

1. Helmets are a hassle.
2. Helmet laws make cycling seem more dangerous than we used to think it was. Therefore, a certain kind of parent develops a bias against it, and no longer encourages his or her kids to ride a bike — or, perhaps, never even bothers to buy the kid a bike.

Helmet laws exist in 21 states... including Georgia and Alabama.

nytimes discovers non-pedal-powered biking!

Sanyo has developed a "sleek, lightweight" electric bike (or "e-bike"!), retailing for the low low price of $2300.  ("Lightweight" somehow means 50 pounds.)  Here's the Times article's acerbic opening lines:

TECHNOLOGY has eliminated many of life’s milder physical demands, like getting off the couch to change the channel, or going to the store to buy a book.

The latest exertion to be conquered: biking uphill.

Read all about it here.  (Spoiler alert: the electric bike turns out to be "an ambiguous fashion statement.")

pedal-powered waste management!

Today Daily Kos featured an interview with the founders of Pedal People, a "worker-owned human-powered delivery and hauling service for the Northampton, Massachusetts area."  Pedal People won a contract to haul -- by bicycle! -- trash from downtown Northampton.

Both the interview and their site are worth checking out, especially their photo gallery, full of bike trailers hauling full loads of garbage and recyclables... like this seasonally appropriate picture:

(photo by Robin Barber for Pedal People) 

Happy New Year from The Bike Project!

a build-a-bike

Here's a bike I built at the Bike Project:

It's a late 70s Free Spirit/Pinnacle frame, originally sold by Sears.  I replaced almost all the components with spare parts from the shop.  Then I posed it in front of my 1950s-era hideous sofa.

Later I added a front rack and rode it in the Cranksgiving! bike race.