You Are Welcome at the 5th Annual Memorial Day RIde

On behalf of the Spiritual Spinners, I want to invite everyone to the 5th Annual Memorial Day Morning Ride. The ride starts and ends at Fuquay-Varina United Methodist Church. We ride out at 8:30 and finish about 10:30. This gives you the rest of the day for family and barbecues. We offer different paces which I like to describe as barely moving to what was that? More specifically all rides are no drop.  There is an in town route and Group E which are both at a pace all riders can achieve. Then there are groups D (12-14 mph), C (14-16 mph), B(16-18 mph), A(18-20 mph) and A'(20+ mph).

Come out and join us to get your Memorial Day started outdoors with a little exercise.

More details are available on the Facebook event page.

NC Bike Routes

In the 1970s the State of North Carolina created a series of bike routes throughout the state. If you go to their site you can order paper maps of the routes, but all you get are crudely photocopied pages they are very difficult to read. And another issue is that traffic levels have changed in the 40 years since they were created. So a great system was in need of an update.

Fortunately the NC DOT agrees. They have hired Alta Greenways to revamp the system. I don't have too much detail on the timelines and plan, but they are currently soliciting input from the public via the North Carolina Bike Routes web site.

I find myself pretty excited about these routes. I have been researching the Cape Fear Run route from Apex to Southport roughly along the Cape Fear River. There are chance for camping along the route and a couple of battle fields and related museums for visiting. I would love to see a web site dedicated to planning rides on the routes, similar (but hopefully better) than the C&O Canal Bicycling Guide.

I'll be following the progress and result and keep you informed.

- Pedal For Fun

Sad Story

I hate that a tragic story has moved me to resume blogging, but I wanted to have this blog cover cycling issues in the Research Triangle Park and this story certainly fits.

On Wednesday July 4, Steven Jordan, the Director of the North Carolina Division of Mental Health Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services, was killed when he was hit from behind by an empty logging truck.

The driver of the truck, Clifton Paul Ellis, struck Steven Jordan from behind. Evidently Ellis could not move farther left because of traffic. I will save my comments for later.

This is a tragic accident and I will bring more information. I am waiting for the police report to be available online. Also I have been looking at Google maps and street view. I hope to show details of the area. I will also be reporting on what I can find on the process and decision from the Wake County District Attorney's Office.

Cary Versus Portland

Information Signs at Major Points

Portland is known as the having the strongest bicycle culture in the USA as well as some of the best infrastructure for cycling. But recently I saw an article on Bike Portland about new way finding signs on the off street paths known as the Intertwine. They look informative but no more so than Cary's greenway signs. Plus Cary's signs are way more attractive. So at least in one bicycling attribute a Triangle community has one up on Portland.

Portland Intertwine Way Finding

I really like the Cary signs. The information is great and the signs are attractive. When I first decided to commute on the greenways I spent a Sunday afternoon exploring the routes. The only signs just said the greenway closes at sunset. There are lots of side trails and discontiguous sections at road crossings. Figuring out which way to was very much a trial and error process. Now Cary has signs at the intersections of greenway trails like these. The post is on one side of the trail and the arrows are oriented according to the way you are facing. One the other side of the trail is a larger sign with more information about destinations and the distance from your current spot.

Looking toward Northwoods Greenway

Looking down Black Creek Greenway

More Information Across Trail

Ride On Washington

Leading up to the National Bike Summit was the Ride On Washington. This ride was organized by Tim Johnson, of cyclocross fame, who wanted to get more professional bike riders involved in the Bike Summit. This year there were 20 people doing the whole ride from Boston to DC. They used the ride as a Bikes Belong fund raiser. The had various sponsors including Volkswagen who published this video.

VW and the Tim Johnson's Ride on Washington from Bikes Belong

They had a plan for people to join the ride as thy came through DC. Since I drove to Arlington and then rode my bike into DC. I rode the Ride On Washington route backwards and panned to meet up with the group. I found a group waiting for the ride and decided to wait with them. It was fun riding in. The first part was a two-way bike lane on the side of 15th Street. Then we turned onto Pennsylvania Ave which was bike lanes in the middle of the road. It all went very smooth and I chatted with some of the local riders as well as several people who had riden all the way from Boston.

It was a good prelude to the Bike Summit. I learned my around the part of DC I needed for the Summit and started feeling some of the excitement. One of my favorite parts of the week was being around people who liked talking about bicycle issues and even bicycles themselves.

Some of the riders in front of the Capitol

The crowd wasn't all spandex and carbon fiber as shown by these two photos.

Gunnar was ready to ride

Ivette from Bikes Belong

National Bike Summit

I am heading to the National Bike Summit this week. Watch this space for reports with a North Carolina perspective.

Tuesday: Hopefully joining the last leg of Ride On Washington
Wednesday: Getting on message with the Bike League and others
Thursday: Visiting Capitol Hill
Friday: Ride with staff, Congressmen and Senators

Fall Flowers - I Love My Commute

Today I stopped and took a few quick pictures on my way home. This is one of the reasons I love to commute on the greenways. These fall flowers are so much more enjoyable than a bunch of cars.

Get a local bike map, pull up Google maps and find you a good route. The fastest way is not always the best.

Witnessed a Bike Collide With a Police Car

On my ride home today I witnessed a bike collide with a police car. I looked up the location on Google maps and added some visual aides. The green line is where I cross on my commute. The blue rectangles are two police ars that were in the parking lot. The red line is where the cyclist was riding on the side walk. It is downhill had he had picked up some speed. The police car rolled forward like you would to see around the wall and bush on his right. His front bumper moved into the part of the driveway that would intersect the sidewalk path just as the cyclist arrived. He hit the corner of the front bumper and took a spill in front of the car. 

An officer got out of each car and checked on the rider right away. He seemed a little stunned but OK. He had a scrape on his shoulder and elbow. He was not wearing a shirt or a helmet. He said he was 18. If the collision had not involved a police car I suspect he would have gotten up riden away. But the police insisted he wait for the ambulance. The officer asked if I had seen what happened and when I said yes, he asked me to stay and talk to his supervisor.

Before the supervisor arrived, a fire department vehicle arrived. Three guys got out and started attending to the rider. Then an ambulance arrived and the rider received more attention. Next a fire truck arrived, I guess just to make sure enough traffic was blocked. Finally the supervisor arrived and took a statement from me.

This was the kind of incident that shows why it is dangerous to ride on the sidewalk if you are not a child. This rider was moving fast and on the sidewalk where he was moving toward traffic. The spot is a blind one. I don’t think you can see a car pulling out because of the wall and bush and the car can’t see the sidewalk for the same reason. The parking lot is also downhill from the wall which makes it even harder to see. It is not up to me to decide fault, but it is clear a rider moving quickly down the hill on the the sidewalk is taking unnecessary risks.

Bike To Work Indonesian Style

I ran into this video at Taking The Lane. It shows a grassroots organization, Bike To Work, that has 50,000 members. It shows a 6 hour time slot when the main streets were closed to cars named Carfree Day. The daily traffic looks very heavy and any extra space the bicycles can use is shared with scooters and motorcycles as well. As too often happens, when a bicycle path was built it doesn’t go anywhere that people want to go and is used less than planned.

The video certainly shows a range of modern bicycles being used.

Bikes on Big Brother

It has come to my attention that this summer’s Big Brother TV show on CBS has a lot of bicycles used as decoration for the house. Actually I have to confess that it comes to my attention because I actually watch Big Brother every summer. The bikes don’t seem to have anything to do in the show. After all the people are trapped in a house and yard for weeks on end. There is not enough room to really ride them. I wonder if they will get bored enough to ride them anyway at some point. They mostly seem to be part of the decor. It does speak to bicycles being used more in popular media.

I found some pictures showing some of the bikes, but they are not the main subject of the pictures. Does anybody recognize any of the bike models? These kind of TV shows are big on product placement, but if these are all the same brand it is very subtle. They are all what are often called transportation bikes, not racing bikes or mountain bikes or even hybrids.

Just outside the door were people exit when they are voted out is the bike in these two pictures. A nice city bike with fenders. You can’t see it in this picture but it appears to have an internal gear hub.

Then off the kitchen there are two bike racks. The one in this picture has two bikes in it. The other one faces it just outside this picture has one more bike in it. These appear to be the ones that could be ridden.

In the last picture and this next one you can see some partially disassembled bikes mounted on the wall.

Here is another nice city bike hanging in the yard as decoration. This looks like it could be the same model as the one outside the door.

I have also seen a tandem hanging above the door to the Head of Household room, but I didn’t find any pictures of it. By the way, my wife just sees me noticing the bikes at all as just another sign of my obsession. I have been married over 20 years and I know enough not to disagree with her.

100 Miles of Nowhere

On Saturday, May 28, 2011 I road the 100 Miles to Nowhere. This is the first time I have ridden this event even though it is the 4th time FatCyclist.com has organized it.This event was evidently dreamed up by Fatty after a bad batch of burritos and some Utah mountain cabin fever. The good part is that you get to make up your own version. The original features rollers and I don't ride inside. Instead I spent some money on enough winter clothes to ride through the winter. Of course our NC winters feature a lot less snow than Utah.

But I didn't need any winter clothes this late in June. In fact I won my division finishing with temperatures over 90 degrees. My division was the 60 lap, multiple 20th century bikes (no carbon
fiber), 50 to 55 year old division. So if anyone else that age rode exactly 60 laps to total a 100 mile and road more than one bike made between 1900 and 2000, let me know and we can compare times.

And when I say multiple bikes, I don't mean I have 4 nice road bikes to switch between. Here are the bikes.

87 Cannondale I call Alfred. Read more about Alfred in Old Enough To Drink. Alfred does have the distinction of being ridden in a century or longer 14 months in a row and counting. Some of those definitely involved the winter clothes I mention before.

87-88 Cannondale special edition MTB setup for my wife to ride. She likes this crazy bench seat. I can't say the seat is uncomfortable but it does feel kind of strange.

90's Trek Mountain Track converted for commuting where I do about half my yearly miles. While not fast this was easy to ride since I am so used to it. It is setup for a twisty path and keeping your head somewhat up.

90's Huffy single speed beach cruiser that I restored for my daughter. It is really not my size and there were enough hills on the ride to make it a challenge. The handlebars are swept back so much you can't get much leverage when you stand up to climb. It does cruise nicely along the flats it was designed for.

The loop was 1.66 miles and winds through two neighborhoods. The start, finish, bicycle swaps and all rest stops were at my house. I have ridden lots of well done charity rides, but I will say this one had the best bathrooms.

The Best Laid Plans

Scottish poet Robert Burns said the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. So was the case of my plan for a Sunday bike ride in Pune, Maharashtra, India.

I was planning to ride on little sleep but I figured it would help adjust to the 9 1/2 hour time difference. Besides I figured it wouldn't be any worse than the last 100K of the 300K I rode last month.

Fog on Friday morning in Chicago started the break down of the plan. Chicago O'Hare is the third busiest airport in the world after Atlanta and Beijing. Once they are behind it usually takes until the next day for them to catch up.

I had a business trip to Pune and had asked a co-worker from the Pune office if anyone in the office was a bicyclist. He said none of them where but he had a friend who was. He put me in contact with his friend and the planning began. He borrowed a bike from a friend, planned a route, and shared advice about what I would need. We were set for a 5:00 am start to avoid both traffic and heat. Some of our planning was about water. I packed two bottles and a Camelback with the intention of filling them with bottled water at the hotel before leaving for his house. We were going to ride 60K or maybe up to 100K depending on how the ride went.

The plane we were meant to take from NC to Chicago just flies back and forth. It was delayed leaving Chicago and we watched our departure time get later and later. In the meantime the schedule for our flight from Chicago to Delhi remained unchanged. Eventually it became clear we were not going to make the connection. They rebooked us for the next day, we went home and our extra day in India was lost.

The next day (really 2) after 33 hours of travel, 6 hours in the hotel (maybe half of it sleeping), we headed to the office Monday morning.

But the goal of riding in India was not dead. But more about that later.

Dopers Suck

While I follow bicycle racing, it is not what this blog is about. And I don't intend to go off on a rant about doping, but I am going to sum up my feelings. Dopers suck.

And I guess I am not alone, because Sock Guy sells socks saying the same thing.

And Twin Six as well.

Enough said in this forum.

A Friendly Wave

There are a lot of kinds of cyclists out there. They ride different bikes, different styles and with different attitudes. I would be among the people who detest the race face when you are not even in a race. You know the face, the rider is concentrating so much that they can't even acknowledge your existence. Is the race in your mind so important that you can't give a little wave to build camaraderie with other humans? Do we really want to see this (in fairness maybe he just forgot his chamois cream)?

 
Rather than this?

Even this cyclist, who should probably be worried about unseen holes in the road, has time for a wave.

Wave training starts young with your very first bike.

So give a friendly wave and maybe a smile whether you are alone

or in a big group.




By the way, I don't even want to admit how many tries it took me to spell camaraderie even close enough for the spell checker to find it.

Stayin Alive

Maybe you can't remember when Saturday Night Fever was the number one album. You could be too young or just have blocked it from your mind. But I am not going to write about the Bee Gees. I am going to write about being safe on your bicycle.

As I started thinking about this, I realized there are a lot of things that go into being safe. So instead of one really long post, I decided to start a series. So far I plan to cover safety issues related to equipment, skills and awareness. Like most things, everything I will cover is common sense but sometimes we don't see the obvious. In fact the longer you have been riding, the more chance you might have started ignoring things that you know better than to ignore. But that is human nature.

So watch for a series of safety posts around once a week.

Take A Seat

There is a new TV show coming on tonight that I feel is worth mentioning even though I haven't seen it yet.

In 2006 Dominic Gill took a fully loaded tandem and a trailer to Alaska and rode it to Chile. Notice I didn't mention another person to ride the tandem with him. Dominic invited people along the way to ride with him. Sometimes they rode for a few miles and other times a few days. This adventure is documented in the book Take A Seat.

But that is not what the TV show is about. The show is 10 episodes documenting a ride across America again on a tandem, but this was planned with a partner, Ernie Greenwald. Ernie is a 74 year old cancer patient. But the plan required changing when Ernie's condition worsened. So the extra seat was filled by a serious of people. But not just your ordinary cyclists, but people with various conditions which makes riding a different kind of challenge. Dominic's partners include blind riders, as well as people dealing with Parkinson's, MS and other conditions.

To me this is reality TV worth watching. It is on Universal Sports which in my area is shown on the second digital channel of the local NBC station. Search this out, it should be well worth it.

Looking For a New Bike

I am giving up on keeping my 15 and 24 year old bikes going. I thought about going old school but I can't really afford enough tweed outfits to really pull this off.

Then I started thinking about all the shoes around my house. I have two kids who were cross country runners, so there are plenty of old sneakers.

So then I looked at some more modern frame designs. This one was interesting but in NC I really need a water bottle in the summer.

So then I thought, why limit myself to just two wheels? But this one doesn't really have a place for panniers.

So I moved on to something that would give me an advantage on my commute. Maybe I should get up above the traffic?

This design is even better than an e-bike to give a quick boost up a hill. Plus the jet exhaust flame would keep the cars from following too close.

Or maybe it is not too late for me to train for the 2012 Olympics.

Hope you enjoy April 1st.

May: Bike Month

The League of American Cyclists is once again promoting May as National Bike Month.



They have lots of information on events and how to promote them in your area.

Some of my favorites are:

(1) refresh stations
(2) ride with the Mayor
(3) guided rides on local routes

Where I work in Cary, NC there are various signed bike routes and a system of greenway trails. I think it would be great to have ride leaders to take small groups on the routes. This would show people some nice places to ride and let them discover some routes that could work for running errands.

What kind of Bike Month events are being considered in your area?

30 Days of Biking

Ah, surfing the web and listening to podcasts have something in common that addicts me. I discover interesting things hidden among the rest. In this case I was listening to the Bicycle Radio podcast and came across 30 Days of Biking.

Founded by @patiomensch and Zach Amon, both of Minnesota, the idea is pretty simple: ride you bike everyday for 30 days. In their own words:

The only rule for 30 Days of Biking is that you bike every day for 30 days—around the block, 20 miles to work, whatever suits you—then share your adventures online. We believe biking enriches life, builds community, and preserves the Earth. This is the second year, and third round, of 30 Days of Biking!

I really like this idea and so I am promoting it here. You don't have to be training (but you could be), you can be slow or fast, you can ride far or to the end of the driveway to get the mail. All that matters is that you ride.

The upcoming 30 day challenge is for April 2011. You can get more information on using the #30daysofbiking hashtag on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo. This challenge is setup to be a social media event, but don't update Twitter while riding!

For me personally, I will have 2 very challenging days to ride in April. I have a business trip to India and that involves a whole day in travel. I leave on a Friday and arrive near midnight Saturday night. I can do a ride Friday morning but Saturday is going to be tricky to have any chance to ride. I am planning to ride the Sunday in India and hopefully during the week as well. The return trip has a similar problem, but the time difference helps cooing back so it is less challenging. Still I am going to sign up and do my best to find a way to ride.