From The Bike-O-Sphere

• The Seafaring Biker
• Cyclist Self-Defense
• Bicycle news
• Cycle Chic
• This looks fishy
• Eating miles like my name was pacman
• 10 Greatest Fictional Travelers
• Worst Of NYC Craigslist Bike Ads #18

In The News

• Bicycle whiz who can fix everything to ride off
• Going Canadian and mining bike repairs in the Yukon
• More bike access, please
• Long Beach to unveil bike racks on buses

From The Bike-O-Sphere

• Jakarta traffic taming
• 1000 Limes
• Cycling research may resolve questions
• Cycling in NYC: Know Your Enemy
• POLL: Baggage Options
• Ridesharing 2.0 Revisted – GoLoco!
• The Royal Danish Post
• Greece Is The Word
• Steel Resurrected: Part II
• Spouting Off Again
• Paper Cuts: Great Reading for Commuters?
• Gary Fisher commuter bike spy photo!
• “Ya ain’t from aroun’ here, are ya?”…SATIRE
• The wheels on the bike go round and round

In The News

• Bridge with a view reopens
• City aims to maximize bicycle parking space with new two-sided racks
• Bikes take centre stage at the Toronto Bicycle Film Festival
• What would help more people become safe bicycle riders? Reader suggests topic after near-miss with two bicyclists.
• Berlin’s Bicycle Boom
• City Council Approves Bicycle-Friendly Steps
• West Bengal Scholar pedaling his bicycle to spread HIV/AIDS awareness
• BUFFALO, NY: Gunman steals bicycle at gas station
• iZip Express electric bicycle amplifies your pedalling effort
• Bicycle Bridge to get a new look
• Family of four takes 500-mile bicycle trek
• Driver frustrated cyclist wasn’t sharing road

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. This is Part 10 of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. Here are the previous installments:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 |

The transportation corridors between Lake George and Albany are among the most heavily used north of Westchester. And they have been since before the days of James Fennimore Cooper, whose romanticized and racialized imprint still lingers over land and water – as at Lake George’s reconstructed, indeed reinvented Fort William Henry. But here The Last of the Mohicans won’t grip your mind for long, not with the tourist glitz that is today’s commanding presence.

Yes, Lake George village, with all its lights, cameras, and action, is a nice place to visit briefly but a better place to leave, especially for a bicyclist. And luckily, the towns and villages south of the lake have capitalized on this by creating a 17-mile, largely paved bike path that goes through magnificent woodlands and open spaces.

This bike route, well-mapped and marked, connects the communities of Lake George, Glens Falls and Fort Edward. The route’s northern section, labeled the Warren County Bikeway, follows the “Old Military Road,” a shaded path below congested Route 9 that makes you think of the very old days when colonial armies went to and from the original Fort William Henry and points north, like Ticonderoga. But after a half dozen miles, and then a slight detour onto the roads, the bike route becomes the Feeder Canal Park Heritage Trail, which provides a trip through the industrial history of several towns beside the Hudson River.

The Feeder Canal itself, which is still watered, goes through various abandoned and semi-abandoned industrial sites and a stunning series of locks (reminiscent of the spectacularly engineered “17 Locks” of the old Genesee Valley Canal near Nunda, NY) and eventually joins the Old Champlain Canal and its accompanying towpath/trail. The Champlain Canal, though, has become a marsh – still attractive, and certainly more of a wildlife refuge than it used to be.

This interconnected canal system then leads you to the edge of Saratoga County, and before you know it – partly because the roadways, unlike the slow-paced, moribund canals, inspire you to make time – you find yourself in Saratoga Springs.

And only then do you understand you’ve made quite an economic journey, too. So few miles from the middle-class resort of Lake George, to the hard-luck town of Glens Falls, to the even harder-luck towns of Hudson Falls and Fort Edward, and then to affluence of Saratoga Springs, still banking on its Gilded Age legacy.

How to characterize these contrasting towns? Well, Saratoga Springs has the typical ooh-and-ah storefronts: designer clothing, you name it. And of course there are sidewalk cafes and restaurants, though the morning I was there, hardly any customers were around. But Fort Edward? Part of the reason I went there was to check out the Amtrak station; I was considering hopping a train to Schenectady and then catching a westbound train to Rochester for a couple days so I could finish some paid jobs. (In a future installment I’ll tell how I ended up biking all the way to Schenectady and catching the train there.)

Well, the Fort Edward station, a beautiful old building that’s being restored with grant money, is hardly ever open. You can board a train from the platform, but you can’t check baggage, etc., and so if you’re packing/boxing a bike you might as well forget it. But at least as you stand there admiring the architecture and pondering the history, you can reflect on what might have been and still may be.

And so it is with the village of Fort Edward, which, like the milltowns of the Mohawk Valley or eastern and southern New England, is a survivor. Maybe because I was born and raised in the rundown industrial city of Niagara Falls, I appreciate the classic milltown’s rugged poetry, written in limestone and brick and the good faith of people who refuse to let their hometowns die.

Postscript: Just before I jotted this stuff down, I went for a ride on the Rochester River Trail from downtown to Genesee Valley Park. A few things struck me. Why haven’t they opened the trail under the west side of the new Anthony-Douglass bridge yet? Why are cycling improvements always the last things to get done, even though they’re the simplest and cheapest?

Going further south: Why does the RPD continue to ignore illegal parking on Moore Road within GV Park? The few spaces provided there are supposed to be for park users, yet every time I pass through the area, I see that UR and Strong employees have hogged the spaces for free workday parking. UR parking staffers are aware of the situation, and so are the cops, so where’s the action? Ordinarily I don’t give a rat’s ass about parking — but here’s a situation where parkland is being abused and officialdom is looking the other way.

I saw great things on my ride, too: a wide selection of birds, including a great blue heron, and the oddly compelling phalanx of black (or European) alders along the northern stretch of Wilson Boulevard, coming visually alive in a reddening dusk. But the greatest sight was a paint-job. I noticed months ago that some jerk, maybe a ROTC type, had stenciled the Marine Corps emblem in two spots along the river trail, one near the UR Quad, the other almost at Ford Street. As an ex-Marine myself (heavy accent on the “ex”), I knew it was my duty to obliterate these guerrilla images, lest they corrupt the youth. So one night a few weeks ago, I took a can of gray spray paint and messed one of them up pretty bad. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough paint left in the can to cover the image entirely, so I said to myself that I’d have to re-arm and complete the mission later. But whaddya know? Some other anti-militarist came by and took care of it. Thank you, anonymous benefactor! This is the kind of rural pacification program that fits perfectly with the biking ethos.

I’m a member of the League of American Bicyclists, and I hope you’ll join, too. The League is running a big membership campaign and now is a great time to join.

Join the League today!

Why join? Here are a few reasons from the League:

1. We Protect the Rights of Cyclists
The League has been protecting your rights to safe and enjoyable cycling since 1880. What started as a movement by “Wheelmen” on high wheel bikes to get roads paved continues today with our Share the Road campaign to make sure cyclists are welcomed and respected out on the road.

2. We provide valuable education programs
Through our bike education program – BikeEd – we teach cyclists and motorist life-saving skills. Our national network of League Cycling Instructors set the standard in bicycle education and safety for children and adults.

3. We create better cycling environments
As the leading voice for cyclists in Washington, DC we advocate for more bicycle-friendly environments. Working with state and local bike advocacy organizations through events such as the National Bike Summit we education Congress on the benefits cycling and the needs of cyclists.

4. We promote cycling as the commuter option of choice
We introduce cycling to countless Americans each year, especially during National Bike Month and on Bike-to-Work Day. We believe sharing our passion for cycling with others is one of the best ways to create a bicycle-friendly America.

5. You can create bicycle friendly communities
When you join you’ll have the good feeling of knowing that you’re playing a crucial role in creating bicycle friendly communities. Town by town and city by city we are transforming how America moves.

6. You will receive all the benefits of membership
As an added bonus of joining, you’ll receive great benefits such as 11 issues of Bicycling Magazine and six issues of our magazine, American Bicyclist. League members also get discounts on bike shipping, roadside assistance, bike tours and more!

7. We provide a charitable deduction
The League of American Bicyclists is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Membership dues are fully tax-deductible less $3 for American Bicyclist and $7 for Bicycling magazine.

8. We will use your donation wisely
We understand the trust you are putting in us when you support us with your membership dues. We strive to maximize the amount of your dues that fund our programs. According to our most recent financial audit (2004) we spend 80% of our revenue on programs and only 20% on fundraising, management and general expenses.

Convinced? Then join the League today! Thanks!

The people have spoken and the choice is clear: 80% of you picked “RocBike.com” as the name of choice for this site. It ain’t broken, etc. Some folks asked what “RocBike” means. The name comes from “ROChester” and “ekaBIKEstrophy” (the study of spatula design).

So now Adam Durand is working on a logo, and I’m looking for submissions for a tagline or slogan. I think Julie White’s suggested tweak of the current slogan is great, but let’s see what else is out there before I engrave it on the granite wall here at RocBike Supreme Headquarters. Here’s Julie’s idea:

Traveling at the speed of sight

Nice, ain’t it? If you’ve got ideas, write them in the comment field below. (If you can’t see the comment field, click on the title of the post and you’ll be taken to the post’s own page, which contains the comment section.) Thanks for making RocBike.com the people’s cycling site!

RocBike reader Gary sent me a link to an article by former Rochester historian Blake McKelvey titled “Accidents And Their Prevention: A Revealing Phase of Rochester’s History.” The article was published in the January 1955 edition of Rochester History. It traces everything from buggy accidents to drownings to trolley car collisions. It also includes a passage on early cycling accidents:

Another cause of accidents which aroused great concern, although few fatalities resulted, was the bicycle. When these machines first made their appearance on the city streets in the early eighties their number was small, but after the perfection of the “safety” bicycle at the end of the decade the number of wheels and the number of accidents mounted rapidly. By the mid-nineties, with nearly 20,000 wheels in the city (and doubling in number by the end of the decade), accidents were being reported at the rate of 100 a day and the threat of $5 fines seemed to have little effect. An ordinance banning cyclists from the sidewalks was hard to enforce, though not as difficult as the 6-mile speed limit. To make the regulation more enforceable the limit was raised in 1895 to 10 miles an hour (8 in the central district) and bicycle police were sent out to catch “scorchers” who violated the rules. Scarcely a day passed during summer months without at least one arrest, and of the many injuries to pedestrians or cyclists at least a dozen proved fatal.

Many cyclists resisted the adoption of regulations requiring the use of lights at night and the installation and use of bells and brakes, but many likewise joined with great enthusiasm in the move to develop separate bicycle paths along the principal highways. Rochester was soon equipped with the most expensive array of side paths in the state,
greatly reducing the pedestrian hazards, though head-on crashes between racing “scorchers” continued to occur, and the danger of a broken wheel and a painful injury from an unexpected rut in the poorly tended cinder paths persisted. Cycle accidents began to decline only as the bicycle was abandoned for the automobile.

You can read the entire article at the Web site of the Rochester Public Library.

If you’ve only got time to read one, check out Less driving is more cash, which is not about how bicycling saves riders cash, but rather about how it saves municipalities cash. Thanks to Paul Dorn for the link.

From The Bike-O-Sphere

• Love that dirty water
• Less driving is more cash
• A new cycling hazard?
• Hoss Technical Gear clothes for your commute
• Stripealiciousness
• John Boyd Dunlop
• Trek World Report: Part III
• random bikes about town
• Wonder what it feels like in a crock pot?
• Bike For Pie Ride — 8-19-07
• FIX pix
• Don’t Let A Little Rain Keep You From Riding Your Bike
• Three Options, One Choice
• Birdman or Birds?
• My Beloved Beater Bike
• Make It Stop! Cycling In A World Gone Mad
• The Electric Frankenstein of the Apocalypse
• The wheels on the bike go round and round
• Feeling fat and out of shape

In The News

• Connecticut Governor Rell: Bicycle Racks Installed on CTTRANSIT Buses in Hartford Increase Mobility in Region
• Bicycle Film Festival Rolls On
• End of the road for bicycle thief from Moldova
• Bicycle ban in precinct
• Bicycle Coalition of Maine receives grant
• Giving Abandoned Bikes New Life So Students Can Ride
• Cycling in Malaysia

Fritz over at Cyclelicious turned me on to the art of “baiku” — haiku poems about bicycles. I used to really enjoy writing haiku in English (I was never brave enough to try them in Japanese), and thought I’d step into the circle of poetry with this entry. Enjoy.

Old Motobecane
Feels like gliding on silk wings
Now I see the point

From The Bike-O-Sphere

• Hammer time
• getaway
• Still Dre
• Link dump
• Close But No Cigar, Part VI: Dug’s Tragedy
• Slime Out Of Mind
• Trek World Report
• Trek World Report: Part II
• Never a dull moment when I’m on my bike
• Bicycle Commuter Bill
• Leadville 100 Pictures from the Bottom of the Columbine Climb
• Design For Development
• Pedicabs in Downtown Los Angeles
• The BSNYC Used Bicycle Buyer’s Guide
• Commute 101: Riding at Night
• Fast Boy Fenders
• County Fair Valet Parks 200 Bikes
• San Francisco cyclist photos
• For Those Who Are About To Rock…
• The fist annual Big Jonny Didn’t Die Sale
• “My first bike as an adult…”
• På vej hjem
• I Want to Ride My Bicycle, I Want to Ride My Bike

In The News

• Kenya: Levies Threaten to Push Bicycle Taxis Off the Roads
• 30 bicycle rental stations established in Beijing (with video)
• Bicycle and foot bridge is burned: Fire looks deliberate, says a parks official
• One bicycle gets stolen every week (Jason’s note: This article is a must-read because it contains both a town named “Winklebury” and a use of the word “twig” I wasn’t previously aware of.)
• Newly formed bicycle club continues to grow
• Point: Show respect for bicyclists | Counterpoint: Two sides to bicycle issue
• Thomas Schlenker: Drivers’ fake stopping puts bicycle riders at risk
• Cruzbike puts an even healthier spin on cycling
• State of Cycling
• Cycle of angst
• BIKING EVERYWHERE : Locked in a nationwide battle of wheels, bicyclists strike back
• The Outcast: Floyd Landis
• A Bike Race With a Mission, Plus Cigarettes
• Thank God, This Will Only Get Worse

From The Bike-O-Sphere

• Cool Cycle Chica
• Made it to Portland
• NYC traffic taming
• Overland Park transportation and bicycling
• Summer rain baiku
• Our bikes have a new home

In The News

• ‘The Bicycle Man’ needs help to buy building
• Corvallis couple treks to Wisconsin on a bicycle built for two
• Bicycle auction was an unpleasant scene
• Bike theft suspect rides from Osaka to Shizuoka
• Denver’s bike trails wind through urban chic and pastoral pleasures
• He’s helping to make bicycling connections: Greenway project will tie N.H. to rest of the East Coast
• Riders hit the streets of Tuscaloosa for Hot Hundred