No? Stay tuned. The story involves:
You’re on the edge of your seat, aren’t you?
…is to do the tests on the back of an Xtracycle while someone else pedals! Here I am giving a ride to Chris, one of my classmates:
(Don’t tell the League of American Bicyclists, OK?)
I’m heading to Voorheesville, NY, today for a poetry reading. It looks like it may rain, which is exciting. Why? Because for Father’s Day this year, my parents got me rain gear. I’ve never had any actual rain gear, which means one of two things has always happened to me when it’s rained, either:
So today I’m hoping for rain. And in case you’re interested, I’ve got this rain cape and these rain pants. I’ll review them if it actually rains.
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Bike Snob NYC, the bicycling blogger who regularly skewers that which needs to be skewered and celebrates both the beauty and the absurdity of riding a bicycle.
In recent years, it’s become fairly common for bloggers to publish books, often just slightly modified collections of their blog posts, apparently under the assumption that folks would like to carry the World Wide Web around with them in physical form. Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling
First and foremost, the book tells us what we already suspected: At heart, BSNYC loves, loves, loves cycling. All his potshots and sideswipes and finger-bang-highlighting-posts are nothing more than a long love letter to the bicycle as a vehicle and to bicycling as an activity.
This is actually a book, not just a hard copy of BSNYC’s blog. It flows, it’s beautiful to look at, and every page sings with the joy of riding a bicycle. From a practical point of view, Bike Snob contains possibly the best commentary I’ve read on the perceived-versus-real danger of cycling, and it also contains one of the most intelligent sections on helmets that I’ve read.
Riding my bike reminds me why I love to ride my bike. Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling
NOTE: I interviewed BSNYC a few years ago. You can listen to that interview here.
Walt Whitman famously wrote of “Blue Ontario’s shore” and just as famously never saw that lake outside of his endlessly colorful imagination – but by the goddess, he should have been biking with us along true-blue Erie’s shore. I’ve never seen the second smallest (in surface area) of the Great Lakes in better hue. It’s a testament to the success of the clean-water laws and programs that were inspired by Lake Erie’s moribund condition forty years ago (some say it was actually dead, except for algae, etc.) and sideshows like the combustion of one of the lake’s most infamous tributaries, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland.
It’s not just the blue water, though, that makes for beauty. The shoreline between Fort Erie and Point Pelee is verdant, slightly rolling (unlike the back country here, which is quite flat), and festooned with new wineries, apparently prosperous small farms, and patches of hardwoods. hardwoods, including deep-rooted old oaks, were taken down by microbursts and tornadoes recently; the towns around Leamington are still dealing with cleanup, and it’s remarkable how selective the wild winds were: you’ll see a few acres of trees devastated, and acreage nearby almost untouched – hardly a twig torn off.
There are far too many lakeside cottages cluttering up the fringes of beach, but still enough openings to preserve the viewscape, that sometimes underappreciated part of the public domain. Speaking of views, Ontario and regional municipalities here have been installing wind farms at a rapid pace. Parts of the region reminded me on northern Germany, with white-shafted and _bladed windmills dominating the skyline. They look a lot better here than they do, say, in the hilly Southern Tier (NYS) town of Cohocton, where they seem like vertical insults on the ridgelines, and banks of intrusive red warning lights at night. (You might have guessed my support for wind development is qualified.)
One thing’s beyond debate: the Ontario windmills should presage the long-awaited shutdown of coal-fired electric plants like the one at Nanticoke, a major source of ground-level ozone, etc., that plagues a wide swath of points east, including Toronto, Buffalo, Rochester, and the rural areas between. I seem to recall that Toronto now gets more than 100 ozone alert days per year, thanks not just to Nanticoke, but to other obsolete, poisonous coal plants like Huntley in Tonawanda and the Dunkirk plant on Erie’s south shore. So the US is doing its part, too!
Nanticoke is also ugly as sin. What a contrast it makes with so many other features of the north shore.
Next post: I’ll finally get to the US Social Forum and its biking connections – not to mention the eminently bikeable city of Detroit and its eco-transportation potential.
-Jack
(Cross posted at sewgreen These tips may be obvious for experienced bike commuters, which probably describes many Rocbike readers, but I thought I’d share for any newbies reading!)
And, with the rise in gas prices and the recent tragedy of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, many people are turning to cycling as transportation to minimize the use of fossil fuels.
Well, there is a definite need for public policy advocacy in terms of the issues surrounding the oil spill, but that’s a topic for many other blogs. I thought I would address one of the perceived barriers for people who would like to commute to work by bike: what to wear.
Specifically, I have found I really have to have a system for what to wear on the bike, and what to wear once I get to work. Some people have jobs where dress is not an issue, and others are comfortable wearing business attire while biking. That’s not the case for me, though.
First of all, like I said, biking is hot! Even when it’s relatively cool outside and I’m going a short distance, I sweat. So, for the ride, I wear comfortable clothing. It doesn’t have to be bright neon lycra and spandex, but light-colored clothing is helpful in terms of visibility. Generally, I wear what I would wear for a walk, except that I pretend the temperature is about 15-20 degrees (Fahrenheit) higher than it actually is, and dress accordingly. (I tend to get warm very quickly; your internal thermostat may vary.)
I carry lunch, clothing, and anything else I need for the day in 2 rear panniers on my bike. I recommend ones that are waterproof, as you never know when a downpour might come. (I’m looking out the window at one right now and hoping that it stops before I have to bike home!) Two panniers are better than one if you carry much of a load at all, as they allow you to evenly distribute the weight.
As a case in point, yesterday, I biked to my first meeting of the day, at another campus of the college where I work than the one in which my office is located. I have biked there several times, and I have a favorite bike rack and big bathroom where it’s easy to change. I got there, grabbed one of my panniers with my clothing in it, and changed for my meeting. I should have gotten there a bit earlier, as it was a muggy day and frankly I was still bright red when I got to the meeting. Fortunately it was a fairly casual group whom I know pretty well. I try to have about 10-15 minutes of cooling-down time before my meetings on hot days, but I just didn’t have the timing right yesterday!
Yes, commuting by bike takes some planning, but once you get in the routine, it’s much more carefree than driving, dealing with traffic, and circling for parking spaces.
I was so busy sweating and churning (aka pedaling) that I neglected to report daily or even weekly on our BikeIt group’s westward progress. But here it is in a bunch of nutshells.
If you haven’t ridden the canal trail from Rochester to Lockport, do it asap. 70 miles of absolute flat – not even a lock to break up the elevation – but great for cruising, unless you hit a big headwind. (Way out west they call the wind Mariah; in Western New York, we call it lots of other names, unless it’s at our back.) The group had a couple flats, but generally it was an easy go. I bypassed the beautiful, historic Lockport high locks, but after 70 miles I was ready to get to pt. B as fast as possible. We took Bear Ridge Rd. down to Tonawanda Ck. Rd. N., where I checked out my Uncle Ed and Aunt Eleanor’s old place (childhood memories aplenty) and told Liz a bit of family lore as we rode. Then came the Buffalo Riverwalk, starting in the city of Tonawanda – about 12 miles along the great Niagara River (some call it a strait, but never mind) to the Queen City. The next day we crossed the Peace Bridge with minimal bureaucratic delay, then found the lakeside trail that leads west from Fort Erie – natural bliss again, though I have to emphasize my love for Buffalo and its bikeability.
More later…
Here I am a at usual destination on a Spula-style bike-trip: a bar. Yes, sipping a pint of local pale ale lubricates the blogging process better than teflon oil does a drivetrain. The bar, as luck would have it, is around the corner from the BiketIt tent city, and folks here are very positive about the Social Forum, and attitude not universally reflected in the local media (the ironically-named Detroit Free Press recently published an extended insult by some local columnist, who referred to, among other things, the aromatic quality of Social Forum participants – and he wasn’t talking about Chanel No. 5. But the low-income neighbors here off Woodward, the main arterial, are more welcoming; I’ve had several good conversations at the fence with folks who are trying to weather the economic storms that have hit southern Michigan especially hard. Today is check-in day the Forum itself – I realize now I don’t have the right armband to get back into Tent City tonight – so I gotta rush down to the extravagantly capacious Cobo Center and get my credentials. The tent city is definitely a work in progress: showers going in (solar, of course), more tents going up on plots reclaimed by mulch infill. Quite a project – and even the Detroit MSM are taking notice! More later, Rocbikers… The Forum officially kicks off in an hour or so, and I’ve still gotta find a shower and a clean shirt.
-Jack, from Motor City
A message from the New York State Bicycling Coalition and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign:
(June 21, 2010) — In Albany, bicycling advocates are working overtime to help assure the passage of a Complete Streets law—sweeping legislation that will create more livable, bikeable and walkable communities across the state. This proposed law would direct the state Department of Transportation to consider bicycle and pedestrian accommodations in the planning and development of state, county, and local roads and other transportation facilities. NYBC is working closing with the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, AARP and other groups to get this legislation passed.
On June 17, the Senate passed the bill 53-3. Unfortunately, Assemblyman David Gantt of Rochester has amended the Assembly version of the bill in a way that would render the legislation useless in its impact.
The only way to get this process back on track is if we can get bicycling advocates — particularly those in Rochester, where Assembly Gantt is based — to make their voices heard!
Visit NYBC’s Take Action! page to learn how you can help secure the passage of this bill.
That’s the updated version of the old Erie Canal song text: today most of the traffic is bikers, walkers, etc. on the towpath. And among the bikers yesterday was our stalwart BikeIt crew, headed to Buffalo via Lockport (and soon on to Detroit). It was great getting to know this energetic crew from Ithaca, Binghamton, and other Upstate locales – though as usual, I’ve been slow in learning everybody’s name. There are old folks like me, a couple of pre-teens, and a large group in between, and different levels of experience on a bike, to match. We did get strung our along the 90-mile route we chose (I mean strung out geographically, not emotionally), but the ride, under the capable facilitatorship of Claire Stoscheck, kept together pretty well. Luckily, the infamous west wind, which of ten makes the westernportion of the canal trail a challenge if you’re going in the “wrong” direction, was gentle yesterday, though the sun was strong. I was hoping to see much wildlife, but not a single water snake or migrating snapping turtle crosse my path. Nary a heron – but lots on Canada geese – and two chipmunks. Maybe other riders had more good fortune in this department. We had pleasant stops, too, for snacks and conversations with support vehicle drivers. Just flat tires – one of them mine. I stopped in Tonawanda at Dick’s bike shop (not to be confused with megastore of similar name) and got a replacement tire before the next flat could arrive. Lesson to all- make sure your wheels and tires are in mint condition before you leave on a 400-miler. Well, more later… We’re working with the Massachusetts Ave. Project in the city of Buffalo today (check them out online), then off to the Peace Bridge and beyond tomorrow. Here I can take the opportunity, too, to thank my brother Richard, who lives very strategically near the bridge entrance – great to be cloase to family members (emotionally as well as geographically)!
