The worst city in the US for bike commuting? Ahh, why bother.

One might think that Los Angeles or Houston are the worst places on the planet to ride a bike. But apparently Atlanta and many northern counties in Georgia can make that claim. An article today in the Gainesvilled Times says that even though gas prices have gone all... well...



that bike sales are actually flat. (Motorcycle and scooter sales are up, though.)

While the article spoke flatteringly of Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle as "bike friendly" towns with plenty of bike lanes (take that, Boulder! Pffft, Santa Clara! Fuggedaboudit, New York!), let's face it: The US generally sucks for bike commuting. If you take David Crites' word for it, the ideal bike commute is 2 to 8 miles. So the executive director of Georgia Bikes makes it clear that pretty much 75 percent of all Americans have no hope of bike commuting. (But hey, there' s this think called the Internets? Allowing more people to work at home? Then they can get their own Internets and ride their bikes. For pleasure!)


Anyway, what caught my eye in the article was this little tidbit:

But most roads, both in Hall and throughout metro Atlanta, are not designed to accommodate bicycles, and that’s a problem that no one has yet been able to fix.

Funny, most roads in Europe weren't designed to accommodate cars or bikes, and yet they seem to have no problem accommodating both. It's not a design issue, its a cognitive issue. If you turn a two way automobile road into a one way with a bike lane -- voila! You have a bike friendly city.

This ain't rocket surgery folks.

But of course American cities wouldn't be what they are without the serious lack of candlepower in the civil planners' offices.

Happy Thoughts for Your Critical Mass Ride Today

Out in Alameda, the city council is trying to pass an amendment that would make it illegal to ride bikes or skateboards in city parks, school yards, parking lots and public structures like parking ramps.

The original reasoning for changing the ordinance was to address an ongoing problem with skateboarders using the steep interior ramps of the new six-story parking garage as a recreation area.

I've noticed a couple other ongoing problems: The cost of fuel and the wastefulness of driving 2,000 pound internal-combustion cages and obese police officers. I'm just saying. I've noticed.


Meanwhile up in San Francisco they're sort of taking the opposite approach to Alameda. There, they're trying to pass laws that would limit urban sprawl and encourage population density. That is, more people living closer together within cycling distance to grocery stores, baseball stadiums, city parks.

The automobile is quickly becoming obsolete, so why not start planning for that eventuality?

Canadian crackdown

Up in Toronto, authorities have wrapped up their week-long "bike blitz," a dragnet operation that resulted in 7,000 tickets being issued to car drivers and cyclists. It was an attempt to shore up the rules and slap a few wrists -- from nailing outlaw cyclists that run red lights and menace the sidewalks, to cars drivers who blithely park in bike lanes.



I'm glad that justice was, in this case, blind and meted out on a fairly equal basis between riders and cagers. While I think bikes can and should bend the rules to suit their needs, they shouldn't do it in ways that antagonize car drivers.

Were Toronto's efforts the naked face of fascism? Or an effective marketing campaign reminding one and all that bikes are an inevitable and growing part of the city landscape?

Incidentally, "stout" is a euphemism for "fat"

Later this week over in St. Cloud, Minnesota, cyclists are attempting to put together the "world's largest bicycle parade," and to have it certified by everyone's favorite English brewer in Ireland, Guinness. The ride is dedicated to the purpose of raising awareness about childhood obesity.

But get this: The standing world record for the biggest bike parade is just 2,150 bicycles, a record that was set in Taiwan in March.

Totally low-hanging fruit, man.

Surely there have been Nude Bicycle Day rides that exceeded 2,100 riders. And the mass start of the Chequamegon Fat Tire 40 each year is just a few bikes shy of that "world record." Plus, I feel like I've been on a few Critical Mass rides in San Francisco that were twice that big -- and God knows there was no shortage of beer, Irish, English, and otherwise. Just no one sober enough to certify the thing, I guess.

Notes on the state of my "pro cycling journalism"

OK, so we're back. I covered the Nature Valley Grand Prix again this year for VeloNews, and it was -- as ever -- a hoot. Those athletes are something to see, and one of the pleasures of covering it with a MEDIA laminate hanging on my neck, is that it gives me an opportunity to run around talking to as many of them as I can. Being a shy and introverted person who makes a lot of bold and brash statements from behind my little screen and keyboard (we used to call this "cocking off" in the dark days before the Interwebs) this poses some interesting challenges. And it provokes a couple of interesting thoughts.

• Isn't it strange that Kristin Armstrong is completely unrelated to Lance, and yet dominates the pro women's field as much -- or even more -- than her male predecessor? Isn't that kind of a strange coincidence?

• CyclingNews.com's Kristin Robbins is a former pro bike racer turned journalist who cranks out the copy and gets the story straight, often from the mouths of the racers themselves. She knows which breaks were key, she gets inside strategy, and basically can spin a perfect yarn around any given race. That's what happens when you have her connections and history, and when you practice your craft 50-weeks out of the year. I think she's likely the best workaday journalist covering the domestic pro calendar, and I know that all the riders read her pretty closely.

• Robbins is also connected with Colavita/Sutter Home, one of the big pro teams on both the men's and women's side, where she has worked PR and media relations. In trad journalistic circles, that would be seen as working both the dark side and the legit side, but I can't see how that's much of a problem. Maybe if she had something ticklish to write about, some kind of major scandal within the ranks of her employers (The chamois butter is Canola-based! OMFG!) , then she'd be in a pickle. But frankly I think her longterm association with pro cycling is aces, and it's not like the domestic pro peloton is festering with secrets and intrigue. And if it is, it's probably just those goofy Aussies who wreck every after-party with their drunken derbying.

• I myself felt a little compromised in a couple of ways. First, it's great to cover this race year to year, but I'm at a significant disadvantage to folks like Kristin, Amy Smolens, and Kent Gordis (more about them in a second). Without regularly following the pro schedule in person, I don't have instant mental access to the general trends -- who's riding strong right now, who's injured, what happened at the Reading Classic last weekend, where is the peloton headed to next. True, I could stay on top of that stuff, but you know how it is. How much of your free time do you spend reading books that will help you do your part-time job better? (Part time as in about 20 hours per year.) But more than all that publicly available data, it's the inside information that would really help: the team directors personal cell numbers, the hard-working promoters, the USCF officials. I could get my sweaty mits on all that stuff, if I were more tenacious and anal and generally type-A.

• Another way that I was compromised in a more obvious way, relative to being an "objective journalist," was that I'd agreed to help out with the NVGP this year on the volunteer side-- I stood in to provide "race radio," which means riding in one of the officials cars and relating all available and relevant information about the race back to the team cars: You announce breaks, you call up cars to provide support to their riders, you give warnings about situations on the road-- loose gravel, railroad tracks, hard turns, the time gaps and the numbers of the riders in them, and so on. This is an ideal position to be in to try to reconstruct a race, incidentally, and by far the best place in the world to be. (One of the motos at the head of the peloton would be a slightly more advantageous place, but it would be hell to take notes. Truly at well-covered events like the Tour De France, television viewers have by far the best seat in the house. Those moto-guys with their cameras are amazing athletes in their own right.) I'm a terrible note taker, but I have an awesome memory for details-- what the course looked and felt like, how the peloton is behaving, what their mood appears to be, and so on. But I have almost no memory whatsoever about anything numerical or mathematical. Sometimes I think I'm a little dyslexic. Or maybe just an idiot savant, without the savant part. So it can be a significant challenge to take good legible notes about what happens during a race. The best way, in the end, is to make sure you get the numbers of the riders, the time gaps, and the portion of the course. No need to worry about teams or individuals until afterward, when you can reconstruct the race like a baseball box score. (You really can tell the story of a ball game, at least in broad strokes, from reading a box score, if you know what you're doing.) The officials I rode with in the Mankato Stage were brilliantly talented at remembering numbers, instantly editing them in order to read them back and confirm in ascending order-- meanwhile, I'm not sure I got about a third of those numbers even right. Luckily, the officials have a very redundant system of reading and confirming the numbers of any riders making a move or needing help or what ever.

• So anyway, I wondered: Working for the race and covering it would not pass the smell test of traditional journalism. But I didn't get paid, and it was actually a way of doing my job "out loud" and in service of the peloton and their support. Plus I only did it for one stage: The official kicked me out of the car in Canon Falls (I'd arranged to have someone else do radio tour that day because of the "smell test" issue.) If you want to see the difference between covering a race from inside an officials car versus covering it from the lawn at the finish line, you can read the Canon Falls report and compare it to Mankato.

• I'm not sure who, incidentally, really cares about the fine details of every little attack and every little 5 second gap, but maybe a lot of people are interested. Surely the riders and their sponsors would love to get every mention they can-- that's the business side of pro cycling, the pro part of pro cycling. Press coverage is PR. It's the reason companies like Colavita and Jelly Belly support cycling the way they do (though it very often has to do with a particularly enthusiastic cycling fan or amateur athlete high in the ranks of those companies marketing departments).

• If Kristin Robbins is the best "print" journalist working the domestic pro cycling scene, then Amy Smolens and Kent Gordis are surely the best on the broadcast side-- and more purely "journalists" in the traditional sense. Both self-employed, they cover many of the world's biggest cycling events from the Olympics to World Championships to the Tour de France to-- well, to the Nature Valley Grand Prix. It's a real honor to be chasing those two around and hoping just a tiny bit of their knowledge and expertise rubs off on a pretender like me. I envy them their expertise, but I definitely don't envy them their travel schedule. They live in hotels and airports and in rental cars, and probably have zip for a social life, and probably don't get to see their families very much. I don't think I could handle that trade-off very well, so there you go. That's the moral of the story: trade-offs.

• Finally -- for now anyway -- I hope that my work this year conveyed one thing most of all: What an astonishing athlete Kristin Armstrong really is. She's one of those athletes that establish whole eras. You know, before Kristin Armstrong and (inevitably) after Kristin Armstrong. And in many ways she personifies why pro cycling is really fun to cover as a journalist. She may be the best female cyclist in history -- the XX-chromosome Eddy Merckx (the Eddy Merckx with two X's, ha ha), and that's no exaggeration. Naturally, she's a cannibal on the road in every stage of every race, a take-no-prisoners kind of competitor. And yet she's so modest and approachable off the bike, taking extra care with media parasites like myself, almost looking for children and begging to meet them and sign autographs. She recognizes fans and makes friends with them. She wins the most competitive domestic races virtually alone, with no team, putting minutes into a field that is otherwise separated by seconds. She is head, shoulders, hips and thighs above any of her nearest competitors -- and yet you could never hope to meet someone more down to earth. If you never have the pleasure of seeing her race, you are missing a historical opportunity. An historical opportunity.
  

• Pinch Flat News is about bike culture. Less and less, maybe, as I just don't find the time to devote to it that I should or did. Several people approached me during the race to tell me how much they enjoyed the cyclocross coverage last fall, and I had to admit that I had "burned a lot of matches" on that coverage. Maybe I'll hit my stride again this fall, I don't know. Mainly, I just don't get a lot of feedback or ROI for goofing off here as I do, and I realize that's all a get-what-you-give deal, but you know. See "trade-offs" above. I get a lot of return for hanging with my amazing kids, making my Thursday night dirt ride, and occasionally, you know, showing up for the dayjob.

• Is pro cycling a part of bike culture? Definitely. It's a bit removed from the world of advocacy and spoke cards and mess bags full of PBR and clownish couch bikes, and there are elements of it that seem incredibly decadent and wasteful. The carbon footprint of any given race is gigantic, with all the huge vehicles chugging around the country just to put on a show of a couple hundred hardbodies in funny skinsuits. Decadent indeed. I was super bummed to see how the peloton threw water bottles this year during the extra hot Mankato stage, littering every little farmyard with plastic, stopping in front of a little ranch house to have a group nature break and whipping it out in full view of a little ranch house with a picture window -- when 100 meters up the road there was 5 miles of uninterrupted cornfields. Whatever. I just mention it because bike racing is still pretty exotic in rural America. To see the looks on the faces of these humble and generous people standing in their years to watch the show, and then to have their children literally pelted with litter, and their lawns urinated on by about 100 men-- well, I was embarrassed. I really was. Call me a puss. I know a lot of the guys could give a crap -- they're animals during a race, and that's fine. I'm just saying. There is actually a rule in place in Minnesota that riders are supposed to be fined for throwing their bottles. It's actually a matter of life-and-death-and-taxes, because livestock that eat plastic bottles can and do die. Any idea what a head of beef costs a farmer? Let's just say it's worth more than a handful of those fancy carbon bikes with Dura-Ace and Zippy wheelsets, and when they autopsy that Black Angus and find the shard of plastic that pierced the animal's intestines, and it has the words "Team Bissell Pro Bike Racing," what do you think their view is? Don't kid yourself: one head of beef is every bit as important to a farmers' livelihood as three or four bikes are to Team Health Net presented by Maxxis. I was chagrined that the officials made no effort to enforce this rule, although I announced it several times to the caravan on race radio. Maybe it's unrealistic, I don't know. And maybe the worst that will happen is that a few angry farmers will refuse to honor the road closures (which would not necessarily be all that harmless, come to think of it), or they'll just pull their shades. Whatever. I just know -- having grown up riding my bike around Mankato and knowing how little sympathy and understanding there is out there in that beautiful rolling and windy country -- that the last thing everyday cyclists need is less sympathy for our sport.
  

The biking over-under on Barack Obama

Sen. Barack Obama went for a bike ride yesterday, and a number of PFN operatives asked us to comment. We'll go with the tried-and-true plus/minus system that works so well in professional hockey.

1. Bike helmet: +1
2. Trek bike: 0
3. Seat too low/frame too small: -1
4. Underinflated tires: -1
5. Adams trail-a-bike with superlame seatpost coupling. -2
6. Implicit pro-bike advocacy and all that implies: +2
7. Riding a rigid hardtail in granny gear: +1
8. Schrader valves (Blue Collar, yo!) : +1
9. Pulling an entire nation's head out of its collective ass: +9

Score: A perfect 10

More like the "big gut of the law."

Seen in the morning papers:





Accompanied by this photograph:





Uh, I'd say the biggest reason for the Pittsburgh Police to get out of their cars and on their bikes is right there hanging over their belts.

Bicycle Safety 101

Bike commuters have more equity in their homes than you do!

A report on NPR yesterday noted that the burst housing bubble is at its worst in bedroom communities across the land. Homes in suburbs that require as much as a one-hour car commute are losing value faster than any other homes in the country. And certain urban areas near the downtown districts of Philly and D.C. are actually increasing in value.

Oh, and this: People also seem to be hoarding food.


The more I read the papers, the more I think Thomas Malthus was right, that grumpy old bastard.

"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."

Oddly enough, that Apocalypse of Malthusian Destruction sounds uncannily like the last Critical Mass ride I was on, when I could not find a Taco Bell to save my life!

Bribing public officials to ride bikes. Sweet!

In Boulder, Colorado, many public officials receive a bicycle allowance. Last week, for example, the new city attorney learned that he'll be receiving a salary of $155,000 plus a $2000 allowance to buy a bike.

That's a pretty decent allowance, even for the insanely expensive berg of Boulder, considering that it comes on top of that base salary. In fact, Jerry Gordon will be able to buy a full XTR group and still have $160 left over! Perhaps he can find a frame and wheelset on Craig's List.



Alternatively, he could by three Trek Limes, a screen to park them behind, and a decent disguise to wear while riding one.




Before all you hardcore conservative Republicans among our readers get your chamois in a twist about this, consider that most public officials in the US either drive publicly owned vehicles or charge the cost of using their own autos to taxpayers, at significantly more than $2K per year.

Oh wait, "hardcore conservative Republican" is an oxymoron today. Keep forgetting.

Who says Germans have no sense of humor? Biking the roundabout

Around these parts, you don't see too many rotaries, except maybe Back East. And when you do see 'em, you don't typically see bike paths on 'em.

Here's a good reason why: To foil those damn German flashmobbers.

This of course compares quite favorably to Mattei Mugerli's famous moving violation in one of last year's UCI road races, described oddly by Dave Towle as "a dynamic moment."

Peace pipes: Bamboo upgraded to cool, Pinch Flat downgraded to lame

As you know, I'd been poking fun last year at Craig Calfee's bamboo bike. To a know-nothing armchair critic like me, it seemed like yet another unsolicited and unwelcome reinvention of the wheel -- your typical clown-bike impulse to find the silliest material possible to build a bike.

But get this: I was totally wrong.

Bamboo is actually a phenomenal and sustainable bike-building material. And as this video from Craig Calfee makes clear, its availability in some parts of Africa may amp up bike relief on that troubled continent. Why? Because it's not so much the availability of bikes that's a problem (though Africa could use more bikes, for sure). The problem is that the bikes that are already there are largely pieces-o-crap dumped there by cut-rate Indian manufacturers, with no mechanics and no spare parts. And Calfee has created an ingenious method for using bamboo to reinforce wheels-- the weak link on cargo bikes that are often used to haul heavy loads of coffee beans, water, or other commodities.

Forced to behave like adults: CMNY

Last month, the City of New York passed a law requiring cyclists to apply for a permit, if they were going to conduct a ride with more than 50 riders. Clearly, the city wanted a legal tool for busting up NYC Critical Mass rides, and that's precisely what they did as soon as the law went into effect. But the official reasoning behind the law is so that police can close roads and regulate traffic.



During the February ride, members of NYC Critical Mass were ticketed and forced to behave like regular citizens and sue the city, but that lawsuit was dismissed today.

Whether you agree or not with Critical Mass (my own feelings rise and fall according to the ambient level of self-righteousness on any given ride; here in Minneapolis, the unkindest thing I've ever heard said to pedestrians and car drivers is, "Have a great Friday!"), you have to be troubled by any government regulation of the People's Right to Gather on Goofy Looking Tall-Bikes.




On the other hand, maybe Critical Mass NY should go ahead and get a permit, then maybe they can put the police to work for 'em, rather than agin 'em.

Funny little island in Atlantic has bike safety adverts

Every day I wake up and scour all the British newspapers looking for a job that will give me an excuse to drag my sorry butt from Minnesota over to, say, London... to live amongst a people who would produce and broadcast a TV advert like this.

Getting all "Greener Than Thou" on your bike

It's certainly true that bikes are a great alternative to cars in terms of the "footprint" each leaves on the planet. Obviously cars use tons of steel, paint, rubber, plastic, and heavy metals -- and that's before they ever gas up for that first drive off the lot.


On the other hand, bikes are not entirely green. After all, they require the same sorts of materials. And if they weigh as much as some of my bikes... well, I certainly have no good basis to be a self-righteous jerk about bikes being morally pure.


So it's good to see that little boutique shops like Worksman Cycles -- makers of work-bikes and utility riders based in Queens, New York -- are making the extra effort by installing solar panels and high-efficiency lighting.




Let's not ride on our laurels, which make for awful saddle sores.

Thinking on the outside of the box

Seen in the morning papers...

All I can say is it's about time. Those plain cardboard bike boxes have been dangerously hard to see -- not to mention dispose of -- for years. I for one applaud this artful effort on behalf of cyclists everywhere. I intend to ask my LBS to ship all of their discarded bike boxes to Portland in order to be painted.

Hang up and pedal! Then try again: A bike charger for cell phones

Two technologies the continent of Africa can really use: Bicycles and cell phones.

You'll recall what the suffragettes said about the bicycle: That in the US, it was single biggest contributor to women getting the right to vote. Similarly, it's been shown that fascist societies tend to tumble in direct proportion to the availability of private telephone lines.



Both cell phones and bikes seem like something you can easily just airlift into the Dark Continent, without a lot of infrastructure. But of course you need some infrastructure. Thus cell phones don't need a lot of hard wiring, but they do need cell towers and battery chargers. Bikes don't need paved roads or gas stations, but they do require mechanics and spare parts.

Folks in Uganda have designed an ingenious invention to at least keep the phones live: It's a bike generator designed to charge cell phones, so bike owners can be cell phone owners without depending on others for line electricity.



Personally, I think all cell phones around the entire planet should come with renewable energy supplies -- whether through solar power, handcranked dynamos, or the cool new shake-n-bake technology I got in my Christmas stocking last year. (I spend so much time irrationally shaking my Blackberry at the Gods that it would be great if that was actually charging the battery.)

Nice rack! There was one?

New York City is sponsoring a design competition for a new city bike rack. Apparently, the Powers That Be are hoping to update the Big Apple's current line of racks, and to develop something a bit more "iconic." Winners of the competition will not only see their design sprout like a dozen sunflowers somewhere in the city. They'll be honored at the Cooper-Hewitt design museum.

Zac Frank, a transportation official, explained that the two dominant bike rack design on city sidewalks. The first is the wavy rack, “called the continuous curve,” he said. “There is one called the single inverted U — and it is called the ‘inverted U,’” he added, helpfully.

City Room objected, dismayed that the wavy one — which is elegant and simple and ziggy — might be jettisoned.

“I think the wavy thing is good too,” Mr. Frank said. “But it’s just been around for a long time.” Or as the news release put it, the current rack “does not fulfill its potential to be an icon for New York City cycling.” (Ouch!)

Two things. First, I personally have not yet seen a bike rack in the world that I would call "iconic." Have you? It's a noble aspiration, but I mean... it's a bike rack.



Second, I hope to God they don't remove or replace the old, less-than-iconic racks. Frankly, it was news to me that the city even has a meaningful bike rack policy, program and presence. I never saw a single bike rack in a whole year of bike commuting from Park Slope to Mid-Town, and to call any bike rack design "dominant" there is a real hat-stretcher.

The Budweiser of bike brands sponsors a team

The new Canadian owners of Cannondale, Dorel, also happen to own Schwinn -- maybe one of the world's oldest and most abused bike brands. They bought them back in 2004.


Schwinn has always been more of a presence at bike shops and garage sales than at races or philanthropic events. (Right now, the Schwinn "team" consists of one BMX rider: TJ Lavin.)

But today, Schwinn signed up to be the first major bike sponsor of Team in Training, the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society's running and cycling program that about 40,000 people participate in each year. That complements another cool project they're already involved with, Tom Ritchey's Project Rwanda. Schwinn helped Ritchey design and build work bikes for Rwandan coffee farmers that are currently being rolled out with help from the Scallywags. (Neat how everything is connected thataway, huh?)

Now if they could step up to the plate and ask people to stop converting all those old Varsities and LeTours into fixies, that would pretty much guarantee Schwinn's place in Heaven. Of course, as everyone knows, travelers carrying a Canadian passport always get into Heaven without a hassle.

The bike-friendliest mayor this side of Paris gets his wish

That proposal Mayor Richard Daley had to ticket car drivers who door cyclists or cut them off with the old right hook? It got the thumbs up from the Chicago city council this week.



Careless Chicago cagers now risk fines of up to 500 bucks -- if, of course, Windy City police can be compelled to give a crap.

And I'm not just being a cynical jerk here; it's not necessarily an easy thing to do. You can pass laws till you're blue in the face, but it's been suggested by the police themselves how little they know or care about laws pertaining to cyclists.