Losing bulk in Tulsa

Sometimes I forget (I confess) the simple joy of the bicycle. And the benefits it can bring to folks who may never pedal from Seattle to Saint Augustine or win a road race. This guy, for instance....

The high cost of cool

Love that new electronic gadget? Here, from Spiegel Online International, is a short description of its origins.

Do we tolerate too many traffic deaths? A discussion....

One in a series of panels run in the NY Times, this one focuses on accidents and traffic fatalities in the US. I really enjoyed reading these statements from genuine experts. I bet you will too.

From Boston.com; more real estate shoppers are asking about bike facilities....

They're asking about bicycle parking/storage and bicycle routes, more than ever before. Written, unless I'm mistaken, by a real estate agent for other real estate agents, this is eye-opening stuff....

One more journalist weighs in on Landis...

and believably too. Here's what I remember: Before I met Floyd Landis, I heard nothing but good things about him. Everyone liked him. His teammates liked riding on teams with him; he kept the temperatures down with humor and a great attitude.

I met him a few times and he did seem like a great guy. David S and I had coffee with him the morning after the San Francisco GP a few years ago. We were sitting at Starbucks across the street from the race HQ hotel. Floyd walked in and sat with us. Again, I thought he was a great guy and David did too.

Now it's hard to know what to believe. Maybe I just want him to be an honorable guy, even when he's admitted that he wasn't. I don't see myself giving up on Floyd. If I'm honest with myself, maybe that's about me and not about Floyd at all.

Thanks, David S, for the link. I'm sure you're just as saddened as I am.

His first commute

Andrew Kenney of the Johnston County (NC) Herald, wrote this about his first brave ride to work - on an old Univega his father rebuilt but warned him not to trust. This charming piece will remind you of the epiphanies you experienced on your initial outings awheel.

Next to last line: "In a car, a road is just a road, but on a bike, the world becomes a place to explore again."

Why I became driven to drive

By Jane Alison, from the Washington Post. Nearly 50, never having owned a car, Ms Alison buys a new Mini. But she's not sure about what she's done....

Evidently someone believes Floyd

....because the investigating is ongoing. From today's NY Times Online. As I understand it, if the team's athletes used US Postal Service money to pay for drugs, or if athletes lied to sponsors about their own cleanness, federal charges can be brought. Stand clear of the fan, folks....

A bicycles-only community in So Carolina!

A group of brave guys has acquired land and will build a car-less development in South Carolina. If you drive there, you have to park outside and walk or pedal in. Mostly dirt trails at first. The guys know they are "jumping off a cliff;" they are starting slowly and trying to do it right.

Imagine....

From Seattle...with love - for cycling!

You will love this Katherine Long piece about Seattle cycling -- its intensity and diversity and history. It's from the Seattle Times. Note: this piece ran in the Pacific NW section of a general interest newspaper, NOT a bike mag! Hooray for Katherine Long!

Look at all those people on that ferry going to the February Chilly Hilly ride. See all that raingear? Imagine how cold it was. Enlarge the photo. Look again at all those people....

Ben Delaney of VN on Floyd

Can Floyd be believed? Can we just ignore his accusations as the ravings of a shattered man?

Fine editorial by my occasional editor Ben Delaney.

Greg on Floyd's confession and finger-pointing

Thanks to Davis S in Seattle, here's a link to Greg LeMond's blog page.

Six mos in jail, a $500 fine and some probation. Oh, and community service...

It's not that this report from Lawrence KS is so unusual. It made me wonder how many newsy articles like this one will appear this year.

Further Floyd

It's hard to come away from reading this NY Times follow-up knowing what to believe.

Floyd and other sorrows

Just to put this Floyd Landis confession/whistle-blowing into perspective, I believe this is the worst day I've seen for cycling.

The day Greg LeMond was shot was bad. The day Floyd was stripped of his Tour win was bad. The day Trek quit making/selling LeMond bicycles was bad. The day we heard false reports that Eddy had cancer was a bad day. So was the day long ago when we lost Jacques Anquetil. The Festina affair was bad too.

But this is awful on the grand scale. We should be flying cycling's flag at half-mast.

I have to believe that Floyd has been beaten down by losing so much that he is holding himself up on the ropes. I suspect that if we want to think the best of him, and I DO want to think the best of him, we must conclude that he's not emotionally together and knows not what he does.

Floyd's not dumb. Can he expect people to believe his accusations?

When we raced for water bottles and cotton musettes, most of us dreamed of watching the Tour de France. We never imagined that one or a few of us would RIDE the Tour or for chrissakes WIN the damn thing. Who'd have imagined guys making themselves rich by riding their bikes?

Now there's big money and big prestige. There's stardom at stake. And lots of men (and probably a few women) desperate for that money and fame. I wonder if some of us doped when we raced for water bottles or (if we were lucky) some dealer's oldest tubular tire. Maybe.

Maybe also my relationship with money is not so simple and transparent, but when the first guy suggested that we "follow the money," he probably spoke Sumerian. Maybe money does ruin everything.

With so much to be gained by pedaling faster than the other guy, can we look with scorn on athletes who can't resist buying themselves an edge? Can we be sure we wouldn't do the same?

The ultimate cycling close call

Very short video, repeats and repeats. Amazing.

Oh, Floyd....

If you haven't heard the sad news.... Some good comments, some cheap. One guy got Floyd's first name wrong throughout his comment. Imagine the talk in the peleton at the Giro and TofC...

Crashing, from the NY Times

Focusing on Jens Voigt, this timely piece published a day after a crash-ridden rainy Tour of California stage, is well worth reading. The writer, I feel sure, confuses kilometers per hour with miles per hour, suggesting that bicycle racers reach 70 on descents. Seventy's fast, huh?

Fifty years of Cafe Lena

"...the idea that you can sit in a small room where amplification is almost not needed and you can almost converse with the artist and sing along, that's a rare thing in the arts.''

That's the last paragraph in the Times piece about the 50th anniversary of Cafe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY. If you're an old folkie, a fan of acoustic music or curious about how resolutely un-mainstream acts found places to play, read the rest.

The Springtime of our Discontent

On Saturday, Tamar and I walked to breakfast, intending to break our fast at a trendy cafe maybe two miles from our place. We walked along a busy street on the way to the cafe and a quieter street on the way back -- after finding that the line at the restaurant was far too long to endure.

As we walked in both directions, we'd approach intersections and find that a car would come to a stop at the corner directly in front of us, blocking the marked or unmarked crosswalk. The driver would wait for traffic to clear, ignoring or pretending to ignore us standing there, and proceed just as if we had never existed.

The same thing happened four or five times: the same thing. A couple of times we waited for the car to vacate the crosswalk. A few times we walked around the car.

We were not scofflaw urban cyclists nor were we outlaws of any stripe. We were a couple walking to breakfast on a Saturday morning.

I'm sure the same thing has happened to me dozens or hundreds of times in the past, but it struck me especially that day -- it was so blatant and so frequent.

Not one driver halted his or her imperial progress to let us walk across the narrow street in front of the car. Not one driver bothered to back out of the crosswalk so we could pass.

Rudeness is the default. Defensiveness is the default. Sharing roads is a fantasy. Merely acknowledging the presence of others in "your world" is rare good manners.

Maybe this is just 21st Century human nature. Maybe it's urban America in decline. Maybe it's individual rudeness multiplied a million times. How did we get to this place?

Cycling the most dangerous road in the world...

Thanks to my friend William in Austin, here from BBC News is a story much like Into Thin Air. Why do they do it? Baffles me. You can have my place in line.

A reminder about cycling and bone health

From SFGate.com, here's an easy to read piece about cycling vs weight-bearing activity. Walking as much as I have been in recent months, I've lost my old cyclist's aversion to pedestrian activities.

When I reach middle age, I suppose I'll really have to worry about this stuff. Heh...heh.

Fun to look at....

Here, in PDF form, is a newsy item about the Roadeo, a sorta-light, lugged steel, club-ride bicycle from Rivendell. I'm not selling Roadeos but I do like the look of this one. The nice orange example in the photos is handsome despite a few homely components. How 'bout that fork, huh?

As some of you will know, Grant Petersen of Rivendell has fallen off his bicycle and broken his thumb. He is typing in a limited fashion these days -- in his ee cummings period, he says.

Even if you love your Scott or Cervelo, an occasional look at the Rivendell site will remind you that there is more than one way to do this cycling thing.

Added later: Another Roadeo, this one a bit more sanitary. If you check this one out, scroll down and look at the waterproof shoe covers...if...you...dare.

Lance, 39, says he feels 39

And in this interview, from VeloNews in the last days before the Tour of California, Armstrong says that the guys he's racing now are stronger than the guys he raced then. Remarkably frank chat with a frankly worried man....

For something COMPLETELY different

Here's an item forwarded by my friend Jim S in Colorado Springs. As I understand it, the young man in these clips has appeared on TV broadcasts in many areas, making unfounded claims about his yo-yo expertise. If you like to watch embarrassing TV, here are two clips of the Fake Yo-Yo Trickster. Beyond amazing....

None of us DO this, o'course....

We know that texting while driving is criminal carelessness, right? Here's a short reminder from the nice folks at Channel Four, right here in the Mile Hi City.

It's a NY Times blog...about the SF Bay Area

Would you believe that there is friction by the Bay between pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders and motorists? I didn't think you would....

My old friend Jim in Bisbee...on my old Honda GB500

This is Jim W of Bisbee AZ, on my old Honda GB500. The Honda is 21 years old and Jim is somewhat older yet, but both are doing fine, thank you. Jim and I became friends in 1970 or '71, when I owned a little motorcycle accessory store in San Mateo, California. We have ridden many hundreds of miles together over the years. He and his wife Irene are my oldest friends, I'd say, or certainly the oldest friends with whom I'm in regular contact.

I miss that lovely Honda but knowing that it's in the best possible hands is comforting. Before you ask, Jim is not in his riding gear. He's in his getting-photographed-on-beautiful-motorcycles gear. I feel sure he's in front of his garage in Bisbee (or Naco, to be precise) Arizona. In the background of the shot--that's Arizona. Behind the camera? That's Mexico.

Letters about sidewalk cycling to the MercuryNews

Here, from the San Jose CA MercuryNews.com, are letters to the traffic editor about sidewalk cyclists.

From CNN Living: Cyclists, motorists clash

Here's an interesting piece (called Bicycle Wars in the URL) quoting cyclists and motorists from here and there around this Great Land. The narrative begins in Brookline MA, where Tamar grew up, and ends in Denver, where we live and ride today.

Note the map, highlighting Bicycling Magazine's best cycling cities -- all are in the northern half of the country except Tucson. Perhaps a six-month riding season -- unless you're a die-hard -- adds points to your town's cycling-friendliness score.

Ah, Tucson. Tamar and I believe that Tucson's best efforts are aimed at lobbying and courting these awards, not at actualizing or enhancing rubber-on-the-road bike-friendliness. We looked carefully, as you'd imagine, for cycling friendliness in Tucson during the years we lived there.

You could say we looked under every rock, redneck and smug retired contractor from Omaha, yearning as we did for the fabled Tucson bike lanes paved with high-consciousness motorist gold. We came up empty-handed. Riding in groups was iffy; riding solo was just too scary.

The car is king everywhere in the US, and given our mentality as a nation, perhaps that's as it should be or must be. But that unthinking reliance on motor vehicles is worst, we feel, in new America, in areas where almost no one wanted to live before the advent of air conditioning.

It must be bicycle award season, huh? I wonder what these fetes are supposed to accomplish.... Do I want to pick up and move to one of the lauded cities? Would you?

More responses to Chris Raschka's piece

Here are two more letters to the editor of the NY Times.

I'm not sure what I think about this (writes your blogger), but the numbers of responses to the stopping-at-lights piece and the Times's choosing to run it last week mean that lawless cyclists are on motorists' minds - well, those few who seem to have minds.

While the cyclists are hardly more lawless than the motorists, motorist scofflawing is the default; cyclist scofflawing is new and outrageous. We seem to be taking advantage, grabbing an edge on drivers sitting in line in their incredibly costly cars waiting, fidgeting, for the light to change.

Yesterday, as I rode my motorcycle along one-way, four-lane Eighth Avenue in central Denver, a guy on a bicycle (no helmet, one gear, Brooks, backpack - you know the dude) rode in the middle of the rightmost lane.

There are bike lanes on streets on either side of Eighth; I don't know why anyone would use Eighth. I assume he uses Eighth because the side streets have occasional stop signs or lights and he has no intention of honoring them in the slightest, no intention even to slow slightly so all the drivers can be sure to see him blow by, insultingly, illegally, up the right curb through the red.

I'm a cyclist and the guy's actions and evident intent angered me. He may not even be in a hurry. He may only be leaving signs of his presence, like a dog peeing on a post. He's poisonous for cycling's PR, but as someone said on a club ride on Sunday, he doesn't care about cyclists or PR. It's all about him, huh?

I wonder if one of the drivers who watched him yesterday will write the editor of the Denver Post. Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Maybe I'll write the editor of the Times.

Birds of a feather who'd never flock together: Guys who openly carry handguns in Starbucks. Guys who ride unsilenced motorcycles. Scofflaw bicyclists. All have reasonable-sounding explanations for their actions, weak explanations they use to mask their antisocial self-absorption. They want to make an impression. A negative one will be fine.

"It's our right, guaranteed in the Constitution. Loud pipes save lives. I'm a storm trooper in the anti-materialist, green revolt."

Those of us who think about how we can "all just get along" know that we're all in this getting-along thing together. Except for that guy on Eighth Avenue yesterday afternoon.

Responses to Chris Raschka's piece: The Only Cyclist in NY who Stops for Red Lights

Here's the link to the responses. Here's a link to the article I posted a week or so ago - called Braking Away.

From Belgium - the good news (Eddy) and the bad news

British riders injured in Belgium

by VeloNews.com

Five members of the women’s British national team were injured in a collision with a car while training in Belgium, the British Cycling Federation said on its website on Saturday.

Hannah Mayho, Lucy Martin, Katie Colclough, Emma Trott and Sarah Reynolds were involved in an accident that occurred between the towns of Brakel and Oudenaarde on Friday morning.

Mayho, who came into direct contact with the vehicle, broke both her legs, her right arm and wrist and was undergoing surgery,” the cycling fedeartion said.

Colclough suffered concussion and was staying in hospital overnight, Martin cracked a vertebra and has been advised to rest over the coming weeks, Trott suffered a broken collarbone and a black eye and Reynolds hurt her hand and split her chin.

The riders were accompanied by Olympic Academy Programme coach Simon Cope.

Eddy on a stamp in Belgium!

Here's the news - from James Raia, the Cycling Examiner. On one level, so what, huh? Eddy on a stamp is not going to cure cancer or bail out bankrupt nations. On another level - HOORAY!

League of American Bicyclists' most bike-friendly cities

Here's a link to the pdf list. It includes platinum-rated, gold, silver and bronze communities as of May 2010. It is noteworthy for its inclusion of smaller communities, sometimes ridiculous choices in this blogger's view.

Should Stanford be listed as distinct from Palo Alto? Should the Presidio be listed separately from San Francisco?

After living in a southwestern city, Tamar and I are wary of the southern half of the US. We think of it as cycling-hostile "car country." So I counted the LAB-listed communities in that part of the nation. If Arlington, VA is in the lower half, and if we agree that Austin is a worthy inclusion and reluctantly agree that Tucson (bicycle-unfriendly in our opinions) is a worthy one, how many others are there? Is Columbia, MO, a southern city?

The weather's better in the south perhaps, but the car-culture climate sucks.

And we are amazed that Denver is missing from a spot somewhere high on the list. This place isn't cycling paradise, but it belongs up there. Its exclusion causes us to look at the entire project with skepticism.

Something's being sold here, m'friends.

Since communities realized they could attract fresh, talented young workers to their areas by advertising local bicycle-friendliness, these awards have become important to local Chambers of Commerce, meaning folks with money who could care less about riding a damn bike.

Another glass of wine with your dinner, Mr. Bicycle-Friendliness Judge, your honor?

If I'm wrong here, I'm sorry. If I'm right, we're being sold out wholesale by folks who claim to be our buddies. I'd rather be wrong....

Still another study from NYC

This one says that when more of us ride and walk, each one of us peds/cyclists is safer. We've always suspected that was the case, but here's proof....well, statistical proof, a lesser form of truth.

Explain this to me. I'm baffled....

We have the internet in our cars. We have GPS in our cars. We have home entertainment centers in our cars. We have electronic keys we don't have to remove from our pockets or bags. We have rear view cameras and pedestrian radar and devices to keep us from rear-ending the car in front.

But we have nothing to stop guys like this one until after the horror.

From an article about David Foster Wallace

Here's a paragraph I loved from a review of a new book about the late author David Foster Wallace, one of whose books ("Up, Simba") was a description of traveling in the Straight Talk Express, John McCain's 2000 campaign bus. Is this terrific or what?

"...nothing left anywhere but sales and salesmen."

Written by Michael O'Donnell in Washington Monthly, here's a link to the complete piece.

This magazine’s readers answered that question for themselves long ago—if not during the 2000 primaries then certainly during the 2008 general election. Citizen McCain, with his expedient repositioning, ferocious temper, and shameless cashing-in on character-building experiences, made that easy. But in addition to examining McCain, "Up, Simba" also discussed the cultural forces that both produced him and revealed him as a fraud. The key was advertising—one of Wallace’s most animating topics. McCain ran for president in an era of marketing, and his vaunted authenticity itself became a product, with catchphrases like "Telling the truth even when it hurts him politically." Which, of course, helped him politically. McCain sought, Wallace observed, to reap political gain by affecting indifference to political gain. In the face of this confusing show, one could only feel "a very modern and American type of ambivalence, a sort of interior war between your deep need to believe and your deep belief that the need to believe is bullshit, that there’s nothing left anywhere but sales and salesmen."

The Death of Embarrassment, from InCharacter.org

As we watch our neighbors having their teeth whitened in shopping malls and as we hear them carry on "private" conversations in public, we wonder if they can feel embarrassment.

Embarrassment, this piece asserts, guides us in our interactions with others. A valuable tool in our lives, it is in trouble - as we see every day. Half a dozen times this article will strike you as ringing absolutely true, as it describes us and our friends.

See if you agree that my preoccupation with riders who wave (and who do not) comes from a sense of membership in a group - "signals of the strength of our commitment to our social communities."

I believe you'll enjoy this piece. Written by Christine Rosen. Bravo, Christine.

Not the Same

I wrote this as a bicycle column but realized quickly it was neither a cycling nor motorcycling piece particularly. I lightly rewrote it and contributed it to both the Bicycle Paper and CityBike, and to Motorcycle Sport and Leisure in the UK. Because it is not a motorcycle piece, my MCSL editor hesitated a bit before running it. I haven't seen any reader responses yet, but I'm hoping for supportive ones.

This piece is about my accident in '08 and the changes it wrought in my emotional life since then.

Not the Same

As you may recall, I fell off my bicycle in August of '08, landed on a big trail-side rock, broke a femur and hurt a couple of fingers. I'm doing well, thank you: My thigh-bone has healed around a titanium rod and the two fingers allow most of their natural motion. The two knuckles remain enlarged and my left thigh is still visibly smaller than my right, but I walk without limping and hardly notice a loss of strength or fatigue resistance. I'm fine.

I say I'm fine but I'm changed from before I crashed. I have more fear. If you catch me in most situations and ask me if I'm afraid, I'll say no, or hell no. But I am more frequently afraid, more easily startled. I didn't realize it right away or even after a few months, but I sense it now. I expected to heal as thoroughly emotionally as I did physically, to be the guy I was before, but I'm not.

Just after my hospital stay, I remember riding in a car and reaching for the grab handles for security - on a one-way street at 35mph. When Tamar pushed me to a nearby coffee shop in my wheelchair, I was afraid the chair would turn over - or get away from her and roll in front of a moving car. The first few times I walked with crutches, especially downhill, I was afraid of falling forward, re-hurting my healing leg.

I thought: You just got hurt. No wonder you're afraid.

I am not haunted by the memory of pain from the crash or the recovery. I'll occasionally relive the moment when my bike's front wheel hit the deep patch of sand. The sand must have caught the wheel and flopped it to one side, sending me in a millisecond off the trail and onto large, decorative rocks, since removed. One of the rocks did my femur. I don't wince when I get that flashback but it's not comfortable, as you can imagine.

I do remember being helpless in the hospital and for a couple of weeks when I got home. Tamar had to help me over the side of the tub so I could shower - sitting safely on a plastic stool. I had to keep a jug by the bed because I couldn't get to the bathroom by myself at night. I wore shorts and my largest pair of clogs for weeks because my leg and foot were swollen ugly.

I remember being shocked by the amount of money it all cost: The ambulance, the surgery, the bed in the hospital, the meds, the physical and occupational therapy afterward, the frequent outpatient visits with my surgeon. But I got help from Medicare with the bills and help from the hospital. I paid my part of it within a year - not easily...but I did it.

When friends would visit, we'd talk about getting hurt. I was surprised how many of them had never been in an ambulance, never broken a bone, never spent a night in a hospital. I'd been hurt. I'd ridden in emergency vehicles and spent time in hospital beds.

I'd broken collarbones, falling off of bicycles and motorcycles, and fingers, falling wrong on my hand as a kid. I'd hit my head in a mountain bike crash and damaged a nerve that aimed one of my eyes. Lived with double vision for a few months. I suffered a spontaneous detached retina that had to be repaired surgically. Doctor's orders kept me from riding anything for six weeks while it healed.

But I got over each of those injuries. As soon as I could see correctly or took the sling or cast off, I was fine. Climbed right back on the bronco.

Maybe because of the severity of this injury, breaking the biggest bone in my body, or maybe because of the length of the hospital stay and the expense.... Or maybe because I'm older this time, I think I'm recovered...but now and then I act in ways I wouldn't have before the crash.

I'm uncomfortable walking on icy sidewalks or snow-covered trails. I like secure footing. When my foot slips, it isn't fun; it's a close call.

Even though I fell because of sand on a bike path, sand in the shadow of an overpass, even though no other vehicles were involved, I'm nervous now around automobiles. If someone across a narrow street remote-locks a car and the horn beeps, I flinch.

Even when I have the right of way I resist walking past stopped cars - in a crosswalk maybe. I wait and let them go. I don't like walking through parking lots behind nosed-in parked cars. I imagine their drivers backing out of spaces without looking behind them. When I walk on an urban sidewalk and cars come out of alleys or driveways, their sudden presence startles me. I want to hide behind a tree.

I'm far more cautious than I was, maybe so cautious as to be called paranoid. I'm especially afraid to fall and break a hip - surely a life-changing injury for an older guy. Maybe I think that I've been hurt and recovered enough so that I've used up eight lives.

I can't tell if I'm writing this for some sort of therapy - or if I'm reaching out to men and women like myself who've been hurt and are themselves experiencing lingering fear. Lingering fear isn't something we talk about, those of us who venture out on tippy vehicles. Maybe it's not a problem for most of us. Maybe it's just me.

If it isn't just me, if you got hurt or badly scared and you notice you're easily spooked, write me care of the editor. Or if you got hurt or scared and passed through a time of skittishness but you're done with it now, write and tell me how it went.

I'm functioning, no question, but I'm not quite the same guy I was. Especially if you got scared but got over it, please write me a reassuring note. Thanks for listening.
END

Sign the pledge

A guy I knew and liked years ago, Tim Blumenthal, runs Bikes Belong, a national cycling advocacy organization. He's trying to collect a million online signatures to show the strength of cyclists united across this Great Land (if that doesn't sound too improbable).

Click on this link if you haven't already, and sign up. You like this cycling thing, right? Help make the world, as Bikes Belong says, a better place to ride.

While reading about yesterdays's abortive Times Square bombing attempt...

I came upon this link, to a Times photo and article from 2008 about a previous NY City bomber who rode (and abandoned) an old blue Ross bicycle. As you'll read, many New Yorkers waxed nostalgic about old Ross bicycles - and we hear a word from Mr Ross himself.

Great NY Times piece: The only cyclist who stops for red lights!

Chris Raschka wrote this. He's obviously been thinking and paying attention. One in a million, I'd say.

A link to my latest Bicycle Paper piece...

on WALKING. Claire Bonin, my editor at Seattle's Bicycle Paper, a free cycling newspaper that is distributed in OR, WA and ID, graciously ran my piece about not-cycling in this month's issue.

Here's a link to the story and the paper and many archived articles:

http://www.bicyclepaper.com/articles/2010/5/try_walking_%E2%80%94_you_might_like_it