I’ve been refurbishing The Packet Boat (Xtracycle) recently with the help of the gang at the Down Tube bike shop on Madison. The two major changes are new trekking handlebars:

And new front and rear disc brakes:

I’m really digging both changes. Those handlebars (which I purchased from Nashbar.com for cheap) give me many new hand positions, which is a big relief on longer rides. I can also grab them down low for more climbing leverage, which I like a lot. When I reach forward to hold the shifters, I’m much lower out of the wind than was the case with my old riser bars. I’m not saying the Boat is aerodynamic, but it’s as close as something nicknamed “The Packet Boat” is likely to get.

The disc brakes, which I also purchased from Nashbar, are a welcome change. Much more stopping power than the old side-pulls, and — from what I’ve been told — more all-weather reliability. Unfortunately, I bought a front-and-rear kit from Nashbar that had a smaller rear rotor than Xtracycle calls for. I also had wheels on my low-end Giant hybrid that didn’t accept disc breaks. So I got a slightly better set of Shimano wheels and a larger rear rotor, and all was well.

Jen’s Xtracycle kit arrived today. It’s going to be built this weekend by the fine folks at the Down Tube bike shop on Madison Avenue.

The bicycle facilities at the Stewart’s convenience store on Osbourne and Sand Creek may not be that attractive…

…but they do have a cherubim watching the bikes, so there’s some extra security.

Documents early days (2000) of Xtracycle LLC, makers of the FreeRadical hitchless bicycle trailer — http://xtracycle.com/ . Shot mostly in San Francisco, where inventor Ross Evans and musician-president Kipchoge Spencer introduce the product to sometimes quizzical, sometimes skeptical, sometimes euphoric people.

I love Bike Snob NYC for many reasons, one of which is writing this good:

But as cruel a fate as that may be, he knew perfectly well when he swung a Docker-clad leg over that gel saddle, flipped up the kickstand with the heel of his Rockport, and set out on his way to the comic book store that he risked feeling the cruel sting of Anserine ire.

(Read the rest of this post.)

And lest you think I’m making fun of other cyclists, I will come clean and admit that while I don’t wear Dockers, I have flipped up my kickstand with my Rockport on the way to the comic book shop.

If you’d like even more BSNYC, give a listen to his appearance on our podcast, The RocBike Review.

I’m a member of the Parents Panel of The Albany Times-Union newspaper. That means I write a little piece for the print edition of the paper each month, and it also means I contrbute to the “Parent To Parent” blog. Recently, they asked me to write about our family’s plan to go car-free. Here’s what I’ve written so far:

• Living car-free (Part 1)
• Living car-free (Part 2)

I have finally joined the elite cycling ranks. No, not by winning Le Tour or completing Paris-Roubaix or Paris-Brest-Paris. I did it the hard way — by getting hit with a full box of french fries thrown from a moving bus.

I was on my way home from Schenectady to Albany today, riding up State Street, when I felt a bunch of little stinging sensations on my back. The next thing I knew, I was riding through a cloud of what appeared to be McDonald’s french fries as a school bus passed within inches. I could see the kid who threw them jumping back from the window into his seat.

I tried to catch up, but an Xtracyle is not a great pursuit vehicle. The bus hit five or six green lights in a row going uphill, and I broke off the chase.

To add insult to injury, I wasn’t even able to catch a fry in my mouth!

This great bike was parked outside the Muddy Cup on Madison tonight:

Bicycling and the Law
By Bob Mionske, JD

Wow. This is a book that should come with every bicycle sold. For that matter, it should come with every car sold, and you shouldn’t be allowed to drive until you’ve passed a test based on the book.

Bob Mionske has done a wonderful service to the cycling community with Bicycling and the Law. He lays out, clearly and with undeniable command of the facts, the law governing the rights and responsibilities of cyclists.

It’s important to note that every state — and indeed, nearly every municipality — has its own bicycle laws. Covering every permutation of every law in every city is way beyond the scope of this or any book. Mionske is clear to say “look it up” when you need to do your own research. But he also relies on the fact that many state and local laws are derived from the Uniform Vehicle Code, and therefore many rules and laws are the same in most places. In several sections (for example, the section on helmet use), he provides charts that compare the rules in each state. For example, in New York State, all passengers in bike seats or bike trailers under 5 years old must wear a helmet, and all bicyclists under 14 must wear a helmet. In fact, parents can be charged and fined if their under-age children ride without helmets.

Mionske also dispels quite a few myths or common misconceptions about traffic laws. At a recent dinner, several cyclists were mentioning that drivers in New York State must pass a cyclist by at least 3 feet. That’s not the case. Here in New York, drivers — and cyclists — have a “duty of care,” sometimes called a “duty of due care.” Here’s section 11-504 of the Uniform Vehicle Code, as quoted in Bicycling and the Law:

Notwithstanding any other provisions of this chapter or the provisions of any local ordinance, every driver of a vehicle shall exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian or person propelling a human powered vehicle and shall give an audible signal when necessary, and shall exercise proper precaution upon observing any child or any obviously confused, incapacitated or intoxicated person.

The rule that a person traveling upon a highway has a right to assume that all other persons using the highway will obey the law and that one is not bound to keep a lookout for others who may violate the law applies only to those cases when the automobile is being driven in conformity with the law and not in violation thereof.”

Mionske does an excellent job of clarifying exactly what all that means and giving plenty of real-world examples.

You’ll find a clear and eye-opening discussion of cyclists’ rights to the road. For example, the law says cyclists must ride as far to the right “as practicable,” and Mionske points out that this means something very different from “as practical.” You should ride to the right, but you have complete license to avoid obstacles, whether that means debris, rough pavement or the “door zone” around parked cars. Moreover, if you’re traveling at the speed of traffic — often an easy thing to do in city riding — you have every right to take the lane whether there are obstacles to the right or not.

The book also has a lot of detail about the frequency and nature of various cycling accidents, along with practical suggestions about how to avoid them and what to do if you find yourself in an accident.

If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll also find yourself completely absorbed by Chapter 5: “Cyclist Harassment And What You Can Do About It.” Mionske breaks down the various types of harassment, and asserts that it’s our duty as cyclists to report harassment if we want conditions to change.

I could go on and on about this book. Again, it’s a must-read for every single person who pedals a bike, whether for commuting or recreation. Highly, highly recommended.

I went for a nighttime ride tonight, and decided to explore our soon-to-be neighborhood. We’re moving into the Helderberg Neighborhood (near PS 19) in June. I wanted to explore Helderberg Avenue, which I’d noticed both up by South Main Street and down by Academy Road, but which, according to the map, ends at a few points in between.

View Larger Map

I started on South Main and headed southeast on Helderberg. It’s a very quiet street that runs across other fairly quiet streets, so there were few if any cars. I did see quite a few cyclists down the main streets to both sides. The temperature was perfect for a nighttime ride — cool enough for jeans and a fleece, but warm enough to not have a chill in the air.

On the map, the first break in Helderberg Avenue is just southeast of Cardinal Ave. If you’re driving a car, that’s as far as you can go. If you’re riding a bike, though, you can cross Cardinal, ride up a hill that’s also someone’s driveway, and pass between two posts and a garden onto a little paved path that leads to Sycamore Street. Easy as pie, and pretty, too. A jogger passed me on the short path and said, “Nice lights!” The path goes down a little hill to the sidewalk on Sycamore. There’s a three-way stop at this point, so it’s a safe crossing point after you hop the curb. (You can also go down the sidewalk a few feet and exit onto the street via a driveway.)

At this point, Helderberg is more like a wooded alley, with several lovely houses fronting the street. No cars to be seen.

At Pinewood Avenue, Helderberg ends again if you’re driving. For a cyclist, another path leads you through to Ramsey Place. You can continue on Heldenberg all the way to Academy Road, and then across Academy onto one of the campuses. I’m still not sure which part of which campus I’m on when I ride this way. A lot of this area is part of the Albany Medical Center, but not all of it.

In any case, I continued down a campus path to Princeton Drive, then to Holland Avenue. I turned left on Delaware Avenue and then right on one of the most fun streets in Albany — Park Avenue. This is a brick street that rockets straight down to MLK Boulevard and Lincoln Park. I had just had disc breaks installed earlier in the day at the Down Tube, so I zipped down the hill at about 25 mph and jammed on the breaks at the bottom. They worked like a charm. (Although they need to be broken in, as Eric at the Down Tube had cautioned.)

The rest of the ride was a lovely cruise through downtown, including my usual trip to the mall at Empire State Plaza, one of my favorite places to ride at night.

Then it was home to degrease and lube my chain on the screened porch while listening to John Gielgud’s 1941 radio production of Hamlet. What a great night!

One of the best parts of riding my bike is meeting cool people. I’m not a cool guy. I don’t look hip or act hip. I use words like “hip.” I don’t drink, I’m not much of a partier, and I sometimes wear a bowtie to work.

But I ride an Xtracycle with neon lights. And that makes up for a lot.

Whenever I ride around, I end up having at least one — and usually more than one — conversation about cycling. It often starts with the Xtracycle. People ask the “What is it?” question a lot. After reading something somewhere (maybe the Roots Radicals listserv?), I’ve started saying it’s a “bicycle pick-up truck.” That works surprisingly well. In some cases, we chat about the X for a few minutes and that’s it. More often, though, we end up talking about cycling. The other person’s experiences, cycling in Albany, etc.

Yesterday I was downtown for the Common Council meeting. On the way, I stopped in at the library. When I came out to unlock my bike, a guy in a BMW convertible pulled up next to the bike rack. He was probably in his late 60s. I’m not proud of this, but I’ll admit that my instant reaction was negative. Expensive car, older white guy, probably a banker or some kind of businessman who thinks I’m a hippy freak.

Then he walked over and asked me about the Xtracycle. I gave him the pitch, and he started telling me about his Fuji. “I don’t put as many miles on it as I used to,” he said. “I used to ride 1,000 miles a summer, now I ride maybe 200.” Turns out his name is Jerry, and he’s a cyclist. And I’m a jerk.

This morning, I was at the Down Tube cycle shop on Madison to finish my disc brake installation. There was a guy outside the shop waiting for it to open. He was riding a mountain bike, decked out in a leather jacket with an iPhone attached to his stem with — as it later turned out — Velcro. I had the bags and V-racks off the Packet Boat, which makes it look like a very badass chopper bike, if you don’t mind my saying so. He took off his headphones and complimented me on my bike. We started chatting. His name is Crews, and he runs Crews Hair 360, near one of the El Mariachi locations. We had a great talk about biking and bikes, and agreed to hook up again in the future.

Neither of those interactions would have happened in my car. So in addition to the health benefits and environmental benefits and blah blah blah, I really appreciate the social benefits.

Cycling: It’s Hip!

The Albany Times-Union posted a list today of many of the events happening during Capital Bike Month. They also featured an earlier story about the Dream Wheels exhibit. Kudos to the T-U for giving cycling some ink!

Joshua Poppel of the New York Bicycling Coalition wrote about tonight’s Albany Common Council meeting in his first post for RocBike.com. (Welcome, Joshua!) The meeting was attended by a half-dozen cyclists — Mary Lou, Joshua, Andrew, Tom, George and me. Mary Lou, Joshua and I each spoke during the public comment period, thanking Councilman Calsolaro for his resolution and commenting on the state of cycling in Albany.

Mary Lou talked about the job of educating drivers to respect cyclists, and mentioned several of the events coming up during Capital Bike Month. I talked about the difficulties of cycling around the city of Albany, particularly for a family that’s trying to go car-free, which means riding with little kids. Joshua talked about the importance of the council’s endorsement of bike month, which he referred to as a no-cost way for the city to encourage cycling and smart transportation alternatives.

Later in the meeting, when the resolution came up for a vote, every member of the council co-sponsored it, and three of them spoke out in detail — Councilmembers Dominick Calsolaro (Ward 1), Corey Ellis (Ward 3) and James Sano (Ward 9). All three thanked the cyclists for coming to the meeting.

Councilman Sano said he’d recently looked through his garage and found five bicycles. He said he came up with enough parts to build one for himself. “I realized that I know how to work on bikes,” he said. Then he donated the rest of the bikes to Troy Bike Rescue.

Councilman Ellis said he knew a man who’d recently found a job and who then went to Troy Bike Rescue to build up a bike so he could ride to work. A few days later the man came in again. Councilman Ellis asked him whether something was wrong with the bike, and he said that he’d been hit by a car on the way to work. Councilman Ellis called on the Common Council to work to make Albany a safer place for cyclists.

Following the meeting, Councilman Ellis came over to us and said it was important for us to show up at the upcoming meeting for the city’s comprehensive plan. As soon as I locate that on the city’s site, I’ll be sure to post it.

TAKE ACTION! Please contact your member of the Common Council and thank them for sponsoring the resolution. You’ll find all their contact information here.

Here are photos from tonight’s meeting:

[Show as slideshow]

I went to the Main Library today to pick up a biography of Laurence Olivier and a VHS (!) called The Bicycle Corps: America’s Black Army On Wheels. (Pretentious Score: 100!) When I got there, this is what I saw:

On the plus side, I also saw this:

I’ve met the cyclist who owns this bike. We chatted outside the Price Chopper at Madison and Main. I think his name is Joe. He said he found those crutches on the curb and decided they’d make his bike more useful. When he goes shopping, he hangs his shopping bags on the crutches so he carry things both inside and outside the basket. He’s a cool guy.

Appropriated lock, stock and downtube from the wonderful blog Bike, Chicago! A few of these are Chicago-centric, so substitute your own appropriate local geography. Enjoy!

50 Ways To Leave Your Car

1. Ride anywhere within 2 miles: grocery, post office, library, coffee shop, friend’s house (click here for more)
2. Take you child to school (check out some options)
3. Ride to work
4. Ride to the train if your commute is long
5. Ride to work on casual Friday
6. Pick one car-free day a month, and have your whole household use bikes instead
7. Teach your kids the rules of the road by bike
8. Work at home? Spend your lunch hour riding a bike
9. Run your weekend errands by bike
10. Recycle by bike
11. Ride to your kids’ games by bike
12. Take the kids to the park by bike
13. Bike to your workout
14. Skip your workout and ride your bike instead
15. Ride a bike on a date with your spouse or significant other; the further the restaurant, the more you can eat!
16. Bike to the movies
17. Bike to get bagels for your Sunday brunch
18. Visiting open houses? Ride a bike
19. Ride a bike to garage sales
20. Ride a bike to the farmers market
21. New mom? Get a baby seat and ride off the baby weight (baby has to be able to sit unassisted)
22. Traffic averse? Figure out places you can ride without going on a major thoroughfare
23. Ride to you hair appointment (caution: avoid updo’s since they won’t fit under a helmet)
24. Use your bike to get home after you’ve dropped your car off for maintenance
25. Ride to the Lake (there are many ways to do this while avoiding major streets; visit the Chicago Bike Map)
26. Out of cream for the morning coffee? Take a quick ride to the store
27. Bike to street and arts festivals
28. Explore some of Chicagoland’s bike paths and trails (click here)
29. Ride the lakefront path on cool spring day (you’ll have little competition)
30. Try a social ride to meet new people (click here)
31. Pick a day of the week to substitute biking for driving
32. Pick an errand you usually do by car, and switch to biking
33. Commit to a number of miles to ride each week or month
34. Show your kids it’s possible to get places without a car
35. Ride to a natural area, then relax and enjoy your surroundings
36. Park you car along the bike path, and ride bikes to Navy Pier, museums and other downtown attractions
37. Park you car along the bike path, and ride to the Botanic Garden
38. Ride your bike to an evening class or workshop
39. If you participate in community gardening, ride your bike there
40. Never learned to bike? Consider an adult tricycle
41. Looking for a new home? Get a friend, and explore new neighborhoods by bike
42. Ride a bike to get ice cream or other indulgences
43. Combine biking and walking: bike to a shopping area or other attractions, lock you bike, and continue on foot
44. Keep your bike accessible, so you can get on at a moment’s notice
45. Keep a pump handy, in case your tires get a little soft
46. Keep all your bike gear in one place to avoid running around at the last minute
47. Carry a backpack in case you find anything you want t carry home with you
48. Stash a packable windbreaker in case the weather turns cool
49. Carry a little cash for emergencies
50. Learn some basic things about your bike, so you don’t have to depend on others: how to lock up, how to fill the tires, how to remove front wheel.