bikes of the rust belt

Hello, friends, from Pittsburgh, where you're always biking in the door-zone... and usually up or down a hill, around a pothole, whatever!  Be thankful for C-U's complete lack of topography and calm roads!

One thing that drew me here was the sense that Pittsburgh's made itself into a laboratory for innovation, both entrepreneurial and social.  Pittsburgh's early de-industrialization may have given the city a quicker start, but it turns out that other rust belt cities are now making a virtue of necessity, giving birth to many innovative undertakings to fill the gaps left by disappearing heavy industry and declining populations.

If you haven't seen it, this documentary about Detroit (presented by Johnny Knoxville) offers an introduction to such enterprise in the Motor City -- and a great counterpoint to the ruin-porn that's too often the media face of places like Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and other rust belt cities.  Numerous great rust belt blogs present similar positive counterpoints: Rust Wire's a favorite.

Bikes repeatedly play a prominent role in these new rust belt enterprises.  For instance, detroitblog featured a great article about a new custom cycle club, the East Side Riders.  Closer to (my!) home, Pittsburgh just hosted an instance of Park(ing) Day, a worldwide holiday in which inventive people occupy and decorate parking spots around town.  Park(ing) Day in Pittsburgh included a slow-paced tour of all 25 spots throughout the city and showed off how older, denser cities can enable sustainable -- dare I say "green"? -- transit.

diy panniers

I just got a new bike... and, then, a new rear rack.  So now I'm looking for some panniers and realizing that I don't like much of what's out there.  Since it's an Axiom rack, I figured I'd check out some of the Axiom bags other bike co-op members seem to like.  These Monsoons looked great on our recent Tour de Kickapoo, but I don't know if I like them enough to drop one of those newfangled hundred dollar bills on them.  I'm into these grocery bags on Etsy.com, but like a lot of stuff on Etsy my second thought was "I could make that."

So I'm gonna try!  I'm reading up on plans for diy panniers found through everybody's favorite subject supposed to know, google.com, and lucky for you I'm sharing what I've found so far:

Here's the primary source, from a research scientist who presents the plans for his panniers exactly like you'd expect a research scientist would: using LATEX and featuring an abstract!  (When and if I perfect mine, I'll present the plans using the stupid conventional humanities-speak-title.)  From there, I discovered some other plans:

• This link features another set of conventional plans -- in an intelligible writing style!
• Here are two links about recycling old army bags into panniers.  I think I'm modeling mine on the second.
• Just for fun, here's one about recycling kitty litter buckets into panniers.  Virtue: it's waterproof!
• Another, from instructables.com!

Updates on my panniers coming soon.