Cut and paste

This is a direct cut/paste from the Baltimore Spokes daily email newsletter. If you live or ride in the Baltimore area you will probably be interested.

Title: Assault while riding?
Author: The human car
Date: Tuesday, September 23 2008 @ 02:25 PM EDT

Part of the City's Bike Master Plan we are trying to track incidents. If you have been assaulted while riding if you could email the following information to the City's Bike/Ped Planner "Evans, Nate" <Nate.Evans@baltimorecity.gov>:

Date of assault:
Time of assault:
# Of Assailants:
If the bike was stolen:
Owner's name:
Street Location:
If police report was filed:

Thanks for your assistance in helping make Baltimore a better place to live.

I will also note feel free to contribute a story here on Baltimore Spokes. Our mission is to help promote biking in the city, whether its problems to be fixed or sharing positive experiences, whatever it is we are all part of a community that is out to help one another.

Read the full article at http://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20080923142506744

Away

I probably won't be posting much for the next couple of weeks. I'm wrapping things up at my old job and packing at home. I hope to be back to writing after the move.

"But the waiting is the hardest part"

With apologies to Tom Petty.

A few days ago I got notice that my racks (Nice Racks, in fact - yeah, I had to go with Surly for the Surly) for the Trucker were on their way from Bikeman in Maine. Now, everyday when I get home the first thing I do is scan the door, mailbox, and stoop to see if there's a "we missed you" tag from UPS letting me know the racks are here.

No luck yet...

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Making the rest of us look bad

I will never claim to be a saint when it comes to cycling. I'm not a 100% VC guy, I drift through both stop lights and signs, I only signal turns at a few spots...you get the gist. There are a few things I avoid at almost all costs: I don't ride on the sidewalk, and I don't ride against traffic.

Today I was walking to my car (meetings make me drive) and was almost hit by a cyclist. This guy was:

• in full spandex
• going the wrong way on a one-way street
• riding on the sidewalk
• using a gear that would have been more at home scaling Alpe d'Huez than riding on level ground
  

He made a slight noise that might have been "Left" as he went by, but I only figured out what he said as I saw him going past me. I'm not a narrow guy, so it was a tight fit for him to get by, and I had a wall on the other side. About a block after passing me he went into the street, sliding around the parked cars, and kept on going - apparently playing chicken with any oncoming traffic.

These are the cyclists people remember. His bright red jersey, the spandex shorts, and riding the wrong way and on the sidewalk. No matter how many of us ride the right way, no matter how many of us ride civilly, it's the guys like this people remember whenever there's a discussion of bike infrastructure.

And we wonder why we usually lose those votes...

Trucker, fully loaded

I've been riding the Trucker for my commute for a couple of weeks now. (I will repair the rear of the Schwinn, someday.) Over the weekend I decided to finally get off my duff and move some of the accessories over to it.

First I moved the OYB bag. It hangs on a nifty no-tool bag mount that Velo Orange had for sale as NOS for a little while. I thought it might not fit because of where the brake cables emerge from the bar tape, but there was no problem. I also transferred the Polar CS100 computer over. Unfortunately, in order to get the wireless cadence sensor to work, I have to put the computer on the top tube. I discovered on the first ride with this set up that the angle of the stem is such that it obscures the computer. This may be a good thing (no watching the time/distance on longer rides) but I doubt it. Finally, I moved the essentials - the pump (Topeak RoadMorph) and lock (Kryptonite Evolution).

Finally, after too many months, the Trucker is almost complete. Next come racks and bags, then an overnight.

Surprisingly, the government gets worse

The new plan? Gas stamps. Think food stamps for your car and you have the right idea.

Gas stamps would work like traditional food stamps, which some Americans have collected since the 1930s. They would be used, however, to pay for regular unleaded instead of meat and potatoes.

Under one version of the proposal, a person earning up to $31,200 or a family of four earning up to $63,600 could receive government payments totaling $500 for gas.

Because the only way that any of us can get anywhere is by driving a family car. Somehow, the congresscritters in favor of the idea (Dems trying to shore up their appeal in the heartland based on the article) are comparing the pricey gas we have now to the war-imposed gas rationing from WWII, when you were only allowed a little at a time and had the stamps to allow you to buy more.

The idea for fuel stamps was first proposed by maverick Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Income Security and Family Support subcommittee, who remembers his family using gas stamps when he was a boy during World War II.

“If you had to drive to work, you got to buy more gasoline than if you just drove your car on the weekends,” he said of the wartime policy.

Who knows how much time and eventually money will be blown on this. Making gas appear to be cheaper (and it will only be on the surface, after all, it will take higher taxes to provide a new service) does nothing to resolve the real problems. On the other side of the aisle are the GOP members claiming that opening offshore drilling will take care of everything. Again, at best this will add a fractional amount of new crude to what we already use and will not fix the systemic problems.

Is biking more the solution for everyone? No, but added to public transit and walking it would reduce the demand within the US to the point that prices would come down. Beyond that, people need to make it clear to manufacturers that they want cars that go farther per gallon and are willing to pay for them. None of this requires government action, it requires lazy-@$$ Americans to do something, which means it won't happen.

And I thought I've had some rough commutes

Most people who bike commute have to deal with a simple and similar set of problems:

• drivers who ignore you (or are actively antagonistic)
• pedestrians who wander out into the road without looking
• buses and other large vehicles that drift into the bike area
• getting doored

And then there's this:

Teacher OK after crashing into bear on a bicycle
A middle school teacher suffered some bruising and a big scratch on his back after he struck a bear while riding his bicycle to school.
Jim Litz said he was traveling about 25 mph Monday morning when he came upon a rise and spotted a black bear about 10 feet in front of him. He didn't have time to stop and T-boned the bruin.
He tumbled over the handlebars, his helmet hit the bear's back and the two went cartwheeling down the road.
The bear rolled over Litz's head, cracking his helmet, and scratched his back before scampering up a hill above the road.
Litz's wife drove by shortly after the crash and took her husband to the hospital. He hoped to be able to return to teaching science at Target Range Middle School on Friday.

OK, that trumps anything I've had to deal with.

Also covered at:

• Missoulan.com
• Cyclicious
  

Just because...

...every other bike blog I read has something on it, here is a listing of stories about The Return of Lance.

News:

• Armstrong says he's coming out of retirement - Baltimore Sun
• Contador would welcome Armstrong - BBC News
• Armstrong Plans 2009 Tour de France Return - The Guardian
• Armstrong Will Ride Anticancer Message in his Return - NYT
• Riders welcome Armstrong's return - Reuters Africa
• Armstrong Confirms his Retun - WSJ
  

Cycling:

• Et tu, Ulrich? - Bicycle Spokesman
• Comeback Confirmed - Bicycling Magazine
• Reactions from Europe - Bicycling Magazine
• Don't Call it a Comeback: Lance Returns - Bike Hugger (LL Cool J - FTW)
• Bike racing may be hard, but it's easier than growing up - Citizen Rider
• Lance Armstrong in Vanity Fair - Cyclicious (includes video)
• Endurance Buzz Round-up - EveryMan Triathlon (links to a couple of Lance stories)
• It's Official: He's back for 2009 - EcoVelo
• Exclusive: Lance Armstrong Returns to Pro Racing (Plus Insider Reactions) - Fat Cyclist
• Lance Armstrong: video statement - quickrelease.tv
  
• Lance Armstrong Rides Again - Urban Cyclist
• In case you've been trapped in a well - Wash Cycle

Other:

• Lance Returns - The Monkey Cage (a primarily political science blog)
  

Two things - these all came from my RSS feed (I didn't go looking) and the blogs have much better titles than the news sites.

Downsides to cycling in kit

I've mentioned before that I don't commute in a lot of bike-specific clothing. That has shifted a little as I have gone to the Trucker as my commuter of choice. I've had to go back to bike shorts (mountain shorts with a removable liner - keep me from looking to Fred) and wearing gloves.

The shorts are a necessity, not for comfort (Brooks B17, is there anything better?), but because the leather of the saddle was coloring my normal shorts. (Note - no lesser an authority than Sheldon Brown indicates that the reason cycling shorts are black has to do with leather saddles - 2/3 down, "Breaking in a leather saddle"). That means I'm back to having to remember all of the necessary underthings for when I change.

The gloves are more about comfort than the shorts. The bar tape is soft and padded and undoubtedly will be great when I start touring, but it can also be a little gummy in the humidity. Wearing gloves helps avoid this. The biggest problem with that is I end up with glove-funky hands, which for some reason even repeated washing doesn't seem to ease. Guess it's a good thing very few people come to visit me.

A final, not overly related issue with wearing cycling-specific clothes comes at the end of the work day. I hit leaving time and want to just go. I'm so brain-burned that even the effort of changing seems like more of a hassle than it's worth. Yeah, too lazy to change but looking forward to a ride home, how addicted am I?

More bus problems

Anyone who has read more than a few posts here knows how I feel about buses. Today I had another less than pleasant encounter with the brain trust that is the MTA.

For reasons I haven't bothered to figure out buses in Baltimore seem to always be stacked. It is rare that I come upon a single bus on a route. Most of the time there are two and occasionally three or more. This morning I somehow managed to end up between two, so I had one breathing down my neck (at one point it had pulled close enough behind me that my shadow on the road was obscured by the bus') and one belching soot into my face.

Thankfully I had some movies to drop off at the post office and I dumped off the road a little early.

Bike freedom

When I decided to stop annoying my friends with bike-related nonsense and start a blog I chose "Liberation Cycling" because it captures a number of things about me. I realized that I never really fulfilled a semi-promise from my first post, which was to explain the name, and since I've been thinking about it recently, why not?

This week I've had to drive to work. Yesterday specifically drove home the freedom that you lose driving (when you should/could be riding). I got stuck on a road where a delivery truck for a construction site had blocked off one of the two lanes of a major commute-direction street. This led to a significant back-up stretching through two lights. As I sat there all I could think about was that I could be dodging the whole thing on my bike. The freedom of cycling.

Another aspect of it for me is the clarity of mind that develops, primarily on longer rides, when you can settle into a cadence and ride. No shifting, little effort, just riding. I miss that here, since there aren't easy places to take longer rides that aren't crowded MUPs, and can't wait to get back to CA and have the backroads I know available practically at my door.

The last aspect of liberation that I get from a bike, or at least the last significant one, is the freedom of movement. Not just freedom in commuting, discussed above, but true freedom of movement. Bikes allow you to go anywhere, and with a little preparation (or a high-limit credit card) you can go everywhere. Getting around town is easier on a bike, taking a vacation (touring) isn't necessarily easier, but it is certainly more open to changes of whim. There are very few barriers that can stop a person with a bike.

Those are a few of the ways I see bikes as liberating. There may be others for you, and there are some other, smaller ones for me.

Another bike quote

This one, from the great Elden "Fatty" Nelson, is specifically bike-related (not like the previous, political, one) and is a little too close to home:

I was training very seriously, and was trying to get down to racing weight (i.e., the weight at which my knees no longer squoosh into my belly on the upstroke).

Ah, how well I know that feeling. In fact, one of the things I love about my Schwinn commuter is that the upright posture of it completely prevents the squooshing from happening. The last week plus that I've been doing the commute on the Trucker have forced me to acknowledge that the belly is still there, no matter how much I avoid looking at it.

Thank you Fatty, for giving me a great new term for the unpleasant (and occasionally painful) impact of knee to gut when riding in the drops, as well as a way to use "racing weight" without making myself laugh.

Random, but fantastic, bike-related political quote

I've mentioned my politics before, so there's no reason to beat you over the head with them again. This morning, as I was reading my feeds and getting caught up on what the world did while I was asleep, I came across this line:

Yes, that's the problem: It's not that Palin's record as a reformer has proven as durable as an oragami mountain bike.

(emphasis mine)

That was quoted from the reason magazine Hit & Run blog, in an article written by David Weigel about Sarah Palin. The whole post is available here.

Stepping back from the politics, I think that's at once the greatest political use of a bike in a non-bike-related discussion, and just a fantastic metaphor, one I plan on using often.