The Incidental Cyclist

It's always the big black pickups.

2012-02-14T13:13:00.001-08:00

So I needed to get across the road this morning, just near Saint Margaret's on Montreal Road. I'd been working on the south side of the street, and needed to get to the north side to ride downtown. I walked the bike down to the corner and pushed the button for the crosswalk. Waiting for my light to change, I spotted a big pickup, across the street, apparently waiting for the light to turn left. I think I noticed him because he was edging up, anticipating the light. While waiting, I got on the bike: why not?

When the walk sign came on, I started across the crosswalk, and the truck started his left turn, at speed, as though I wasn't even there. I looked up and saw its huge grill coming for me. "Jesus, buddy!" I yelled, as I swerved to try and stay clear of him. He gunned it through the intersection - I got enough of a look to see his dog looking out the open window at me, so this time, just this once, I can assume the driver heard me yell.

I got across the crosswalk and pulled up so I was parallel with the curb, ready to head west, waiting for the light to turn green. "It's one way," I heard someone saying behind me. Not sure what he was talking about, I didn't answer. So he walked up to me, and repeated himself. "It's one way, there."

"What is?" I asked, totally confused.

"That street's one way," he said, and pointed at the street whose corner I'd been standing on waiting for the light. Now, partly I was annoyed that he felt like it was his place to justify the truck driver's assholish behaviour, but also that he had only looked up when I shouted, had no idea what had actually happened, and still thought he'd scold me for something I hadn't done.

"I didn't come from there. I was at the crosswalk." The guy didn't seem to understand, so I gestured at the clearly painted crosswalk. "He saw me waiting. I was never on that street." The guy shrugged, in a what-the-hell, I-don't-care kind of way, and the light was green anyway, and I pedaled off.

I guess it bugged me because the guy assumed he knew what had happened ('stupid crazy cyclist ignoring the rules and just riding wherever she wants.') And also, sure, legally I shouldn't have ridden across the crosswalk, although I'm pretty sure the truck driver would have pulled the same shit had I been on foot. But it really rankled that this other guy thought that, even if I was in the wrong, it was okay for someone to 'teach me a lesson' with an F-150. That someone in a truck that size is allowed to think, "Well, I'm supposed to be driving here, and if you get in my way it's your fault."

I really wish I had the courage, one of these times, to just stop in the middle of the intersection when someone is driving like a bully in that way. Just stop. In front of them. But of course I don't: I scurry out of the way of their great big powermobile. And I bet they love it.

I want one!

2012-01-31T07:44:00.000-08:00

So, some nice folks in France have sort of achieved the Better Mousetrap of cycling: a folding helmet. It doesn't pack down as tiny as, say, the Hövding, a collar-mounted inflatable 'airbag' helmet. But, to be honest, even having seen all the crash test footage, I'm not sure I would totally trust the Hövding. Plus, this foldable number looks pretty cool.

Scratch that. Really cool.

What also interests me is that in both cases, one of the first things people note as an advantage is the bike share scenario. People using bike share programs don't necessarily plan ahead for it, or want to carry helmets around with them. Hell, I don't particularly enjoy it: finding a place at the restaurant to discreetly stash my helmet (and gloves, and removable headlights); clipping the chin strap to the back of my backpack and having it bounce about back there; dropping the helmet in my shopping basket and then having to stack my groceries in around it. No, it's not a massive problem, but it's an inconvenience. This helmet actually packs down small enough that if I put it in my bag, there would also be room for, gasp, other things. Want one.

Another 'why' post

2012-01-24T20:12:00.000-08:00

I blew a tire, some days ago. (So badly, not even The Goop could save it: in fact, The Goop oozed unpleasantly out through the gap at the base of the valve when I did change the tire.) And between not really finding the time to fix it and the hideous set of winter storms that descended on Ottawa, turning the streets into, alternately, epic giant Slushies or treacherous ice rinks, I spent a few days taking the bus.

And I was reminded, a couple of times, why I decided not to go back to riding the bus, three winters ago. Once, when I accidentally caught a 144 instead of a 114 and wound up in the furthermost bowels of southern suburban Ottawa, ending up about two hours late for a party. Once, when I was running a little late for my radio show, the bus I was hoping to catch didn't appear, and I spent a quite unpleasant thirty minutes playing the guessing game about whether to get off the bus and take my chances with finding a taxi, or to risk not making the next connection. Which bus to take, and what route my chances would be better with. Once, on Saturday night around midnight, when my feet were killing me after helping to run a fundraiser for about 7 hours, and my iPhone was telling me I'd missed the last direct bus home and would have to walk another 20 minutes or half an hour from Walkley Station, carrying a ballot box, in bad shoes. (I didn't miss the bus: turns out the OC Transpo website is no help for figuring out when the last buses are. Trust the posters in the stations. The posters are more or less accurate.)

But yesterday evening I replaced the tire. And today, I was reminded, not of why I stopped taking the bus, but why I didn't stop riding, three winters ago. I rolled the bike across the caked ice on my building's front step. I put it on the pavement in the driveway. I swung a leg up over, and pedaled off into the street.

What a wonderful feeling biking is. It becomes sort of second nature, so you don't really realize it, but when you stop to think about it, it's pretty damn cool. I've been running three days a week lately, and maybe that's also part of why it felt so good to get on the bike. When you run, there's that jolt as your feet hit the ground. You move forward only as fast as your legs can take you. I, personally, feel most of the time as though I'm lurching along when I run. On the bike, I could feel the amplification of the force from my legs driving the back wheel, floating me along. That comfortable circle of my feet on the pedals. Going faster than my feet could take me. I think I felt for a moment what the first 'wheelers' would have felt like: this machine is sheer magic.

Bikeverse forgive me, for I have sinned.

2012-01-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

It's been at least a season since my last confession. Today, I rode on the sidewalk all the way home from work. To be fair, it was dark, and my taillight had burnt out, and I figured I was probably better off riding illegally on the sidewalk than invisibly on the icy street. I did stop whenever it looked like I was even close to making a pedestrian step aside, and I called out "Passing on the left!" whenever I needed to. I waited at the crosswalks, and yielded to cars. But the sin still stands: I rode on the sidewalk.

I let my taillight burn out. I know, I shouldn't have. I have batteries in the kitchen drawer, I swear I do.

I have also, at times, ridden through stop signs, only slowing up a little and looking to left and right along the intersection. I know it's wrong. But acceleration takes a long time, and I worry that while I'm stopped a car will arrive and then no one will know what to do exactly and there will be that moment of "you go; no, you go; no, it's your right of way;" which is confusing for both sides... so if there are no cars coming, well, I ride through the stop sign.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I've even run red lights - but only at T intersections when there are no cars coming and I'm not turning. Or at lights that signal only pedestrian crossings, when there are no pedestrians. I always feel bad immediately, though, if that helps.

Bikeverse, forgive me; once or twice I hopped onto the sidewalk to pass stopped traffic on Main Street at rush hour, when there were cars sitting idling with their sidewalls six inches from the curb. I didn't wait, like a virtuous member of traffic, in the clouds of exhaust, behind them. I tried hard not to do it for long, and I always dropped back onto the street when there was room, but I did pass on the sidewalk. I also tried not to draw attention to the fact that I was moving and they weren't, because I know, Bikeverse, that smugness is also a sin, and makes drivers hate us and call us "self-righteous elites."

I also jumped on and off the sidewalk one summer day when I was putting up posters downtown. It was wrong of me. I know that. But it was a beautiful day and I was feeling free.

I have used the pedestrian crosswalk to make a left. The cars were just too many, and too fast, and merging left across two or three lanes gave me the willies. I've even, I have to confess, thought to myself that the rule ought to be that bikes do that all the time to make lefts: as they do where there are "bike boxes."

I usually cut through the parking lot at Cambridge and Somerset, beneath the Chinatown Gate, to go to a friend's house. It probably isn't even any shorter. And I don't always signal right turns. Sometimes you want both hands on the handlebars, and right turns are really less of a shock to motorists than left turns, right? I do always signal lefts. (When I don't use the crosswalk, that is.)

And sometimes I don't take my lane: sometimes I let the cars crowd me nearly into the curb. I am heartily sorry, but some days are bolder than others. I hope you can understand this, Bikeverse. I don't mean to do these things (mostly.) I just wanted to get it off my chest, because all these things ran through my head, today, as I rode home on the sidewalk, wanting to stop and explain to everyone who saw me that it was really, honestly, because my taillight was out, and I'm not normally like this.

So I just thought you ought to know. I've got a bike chain I could use as a rosary if you want to assign me penance. But you know we do all do this stuff, right? I just wanted to come clean. I feel better now.

What am I thinking?

2012-01-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, it wasn't quite this cold today.

"What am I thinking?" I asked myself yesterday, as I trudged across campus in the freezing wind with the tears that were being squeezed from my eyes crystallizing and sticking my eyelids together. I wasn't on my bike because I'd only just flown back from New Brunswick that morning, and I needed to be at work right after arrival, so had cabbed over from the airport. And I was thinking about the fact that I'd just told my coworkers that I'd be riding in to work the next morning.

But it was cold. Really cold. -29C with the wind chill then, and people were telling me it would be even colder the next day. I stopped on the way home to buy windproof gloves, knowing I'd want them in the morning, and asked myself again, "What am I thinking?"

Up before dawn this morning, I listened to the radio people telling me that it was around -27C out there. I dug my Icebreaker tights out of the dresser, asking myself again just what the hell I was thinking, and pulled on tights, merino shirt, pants, sweater, and coat. Hat for under the helmet, and a huge scarf a friend made for me tied around my neck. Overheating and clumsy with all my layers on, I pulled the bike out though the door. What the hell . . . I thought again, and, sweating, went downstairs.

I set my bike on the road and realized my tires were a bit squishy - good for traction on the icy roads but not so great for speed. I tried to look behind me to merge left, and the hat, scarf, jacket, sweater and everything else made it look a bit like Michael Keaton's Batman trying to look behind himself. Full upper-torso twist. The sides of the road were icy and the traffic didn't seem to slow up much, and my breath froze on my glasses till I got up speed enough that my breath blew behind me, where it formed a white rime on the scarf.

I got to the left turn off Bank onto Cameron, which is usually a separated lane for a few feet. The separated lane did not exist. I made the left and found myself on the plowed sidewalk instead. At the nearest opportunity I got back into the road, planning my "yes, officer, I know but..." explanation for why I was going the wrong way down the cars' side of the road (the contra-flow bike lane was buried.) What was I thinking, when all the bike lanes are buried in snow?

And then I was on the iced-over path through Brewer Park heading for Carleton, and I saw the only other cyclist I'd seen that morning, coming along the path toward me, face half hidden in a black scarf, crunching over the frozen snow. I waved as he got close: he raised his fist in a "right on!" sort of gesture.

And I grinned all the rest of the way to work. That's what I'd been thinking.

Nothing says DIY like a cut up pop bottle

2011-12-16T18:40:00.000-08:00

It rained on Thursday. It was actually pretty gross. But I was on my way downtown to meet a friend for lunch, so I got myself kitted up in my rain jacket and rain pants (even with a hole worn in the butt after a couple of winters, they're keeping me dry) and got on the road. And as I was cruising down the long, downhill bit of Bank Street between Heron and Riverside, I realized that what I really dislike about riding in the rain isn't the cold, or the wet, or the slow seep of the damp through my left boot (the one I keep down when I'm coasting.) These things I can shrug off, with my bright red rainjacket and black rainpants on. No, it's the Evil Fountain that I really dislike.

The Evil Fountain is created as my front tire goes through a puddle, or, increasingly as it gets colder, a pool of slush. It throws the dirty water up across my chest in a cascade of grit; it spatters the skin under my chin, chucks sand and salt and probably bits of dead squirrel into my mouth, and flings droplets of water up under my glasses and into my eyes, forcing me to squint and blink. It also coats my glasses in a layer of cold water, which, combined with the condensation from my breath, makes it a toss-up for me whether I leave the glasses on and peer through the distortion, or push them down on my nose and try to look over them with my astigmatic natural vision (which is not great.)

I know, I should just get a front fender. The problem is that I often - more often in the winter - am offered rides home from late night poetry shows and meetings, and frankly, I'm usually inclined to take them up on it. Particularly if it's started to snow. And in that case, I usually wind up having to pop off my quick-release front wheel in order to stash Mike in the back end or the trunk of my friend's car. And the last time I tried that with a fender attached to the front fork, it didn't end well for the fender. So I gave up, accepting that my rear fender might defend my back from the skunk stripe, but my face was going to have to look out for itself.

And then, riding down Bank Street on Thursday, I realized that I didn't even have to buy a fender. I could thwart the Evil Fountain all on my own. I even had an empty tonic water bottle waiting at home to be DIY-ed. And this is what I came up with:

It might be hard to see, like trying to photograph a jellyfish, but what I did was to take the pop bottle, cut it apart, slice out a section of the side that was about 10" or so long, round off the corners, and then poke holes in it right where the mounting braze-ons are for your average bottle holder or U-lock mount. Then I just poked the screws through the holes, and bolted a piece of cut-up plastic bottle onto my bike in a position that I think (I haven't tested it yet) will defeat the Evil Fountain. At least mostly.

And, as I pointed out to the friend I was having lunch with, not only is it free, but it makes Mike even less stealable than he was before. Hardly anyone wants to steal a beaten-up, elderly, road-weary $50 mountain bike with mismatched crank arms. How much less desirable is the same bike, with a chunk of plastic bottle bolted to it? I win.

Assuming this thing works to keep the water, slush and squirrel bits off my face.

Winterizing

2011-12-12T15:49:00.000-08:00

I know it won't last, this stretch of time where the streets are more or less dry, and the air's clean and crisp, and the snow hasn't taken over the bike lanes and edges of the street, but I have to say I'm enjoying it. I know the snow will come though, and lately I've spotted a few things online that almost make me look forward to it, if only for the chance to get my hands all DIY dirty.

The idea of 'zip tie snow tires' has been making the rounds, and I said today on Twitter that I was looking forward to trying them. Then remembered: I've got your garden-variety rim brakes, which means the ties would get in the way of brakes, of course. Duh, and drat, I thought, there goes an opportunity to be all clever.

But never fear! You can also, if the idea doesn't freak you out too much, stud your own tires: if the thought of having screw heads up against your inner tube ready to pinch it freaks you out, you could always do what I did when my sidewalls wore thin a year or so ago: build "boots" for the tire, by duct-taping a strip of cardboard in to keep the tire safe from the screw heads. (I once lined most of a sidewall with duct tape as a stopgap measure when my inner tube was actually peeking out through the tire in one place.)

Then there's the step-by-step chain maintenance recently posted at Cyclopunk. It's part one of a series of winterproofing tutorials, and it's thorough. The diagram of the chain parts, in particular, I found really interesting: I'm now planning to take some time out, take my chain apart, and get ready for the grit and salt onslaught. I'm gonna need a chain tool. But it's about time I took my chain apart anyway.

Animated

2011-12-06T08:16:00.001-08:00

Thanks to my friend Pearl, who sent me this video: more bike art! And this one's quite gorgeous . . . The artist's idea was to create animation that could be filmed in realtime (for a dissertation project - he's studying animation.) So he turned a bike into a Phantakistoscope (I just learned that word! It's like a zoetrope, but flat.)

While it's also just plain beautiful (and I like things that make art with bicycles; it reminds me of how simple a machine, and how elegant, a bike is) it's also making my brain boggle with the design of it. Apparently you have to film this to be able to see it: the human eye just sees a blurry mess. Once you add the frame rate of the camera (25fps) the separate parts of the image resolve into the animated image. And only (as you can see) when the wheel is rotating at a particular speed.

How cool is that?

Boiling a frog

2011-12-02T15:01:00.001-08:00

There I was this morning, heading along a slush-filled bike lane on the first properly snowy ride of the year, blinking snowflakes out of my eyes and cursing my steamed-up glasses, with a small fountain of slush being cast up onto my chest, neck, and face by the front wheel (I lost the fender the last time I tried to take the wheel off to put the bike in a car.) And I thought to myself, this is it, finally. Winter cycling. How did I get here again?

I ride year round. This will be my third winter doing it. And I was talking to a friend at lunch today about the mentality. Sure, when people see me and my bike in the elevator of my apartment building and say things like, "Wow, you must be very brave," I do feel a little badass. And when I wheel the bike out, put it on the street, wonder what the hell I think I'm doing, and then find myself warming up a few minutes into the ride, I feel kind of badass. Even when I'm cursing and spitting salty road grit out of my mouth, I'm also thinking, somewhere in my subconscious, that I'm a badass.

But in reality, when it's summer and I'm cruising along the bike paths with my shorts and sandals on, and I even think about winter, I feel something akin to panic. I clench up just thinking about the extra waterproof pants and the hat under the helmet and the cold fingers, wrestling with the handlebars in the snow, the narrow slippery streets, and the grit that gets into everything. I don't like the idea at all. Yet here I am, at the beginning of December, with damp gloves and slush all down my front, and I'm not really all that miserable.

The thing is, riding in the winter is like boiling a frog. No, really. When I said that to my friend at lunch, I swear she nearly dropped her spoon. But here's the idea. They say - because of course I've never tried it - that if you drop a frog into hot or boiling water, it will jump out (or, at least, it'll try... I'm trying not to evoke any really nasty mental images here.) But if you put the frog in cool water, and gradually raise the temperature, it will just swim around, not noticing, until it eventually expires (once again, trying to avoid the mental images.)

It's the same with winter riding. The first year, I just failed to set a date after which I would stop riding. Some people stop when it starts getting dark too early. Some people stop when the snow stays down. I used to stop on November first, when I'd buy my first bus pass of the winter. But once those cut-off times are gone, it's a gradual thing, like the water around the poor doomed frog.

At first, you notice when the shorts are no longer possible, and you have to remember to tuck in or clip your pant legs. And then there's the moment when you find your gloves, and get the windbreaker out. And then there's switching the windbreaker for the winter coat, and then comes the day when you have to find the winter gloves because the fall gloves are too thin. Then you see your breath, and remember to try and breathe in such a way that it doesn't fog up your glasses. And before you know it, you're looking for the hat you wear under the helmet, and stashing the waterproof pants somewhere you can easily get them out, because you're going to need them most days. And by the time you're used to all that, a little extra snow and slush just seems to be business as usual. And voila, poor boiled frog; you're cycling through the winter. All because no single change in the weather was big enough to make you hang the bike up.

The most annoying comment

2011-12-01T15:26:00.001-08:00

I know I shouldn't read the comments. It's the cardinal rule of using the Internet, really: Don't Read The Comments. It's guaranteed to do nothing but annoy or frustrate you, or convince you that really, after all, the species probably isn't worth saving.

But I do read the comments. You probably do too. It's a sick fascination. It's like stopping to watch accidents or couples fighting in public. And then I find bits of those comments - at least, the ones on articles about cycling - circling my brain as I ride along on my bike, in lieu of snatches of music. One of them has been particularly persistent recently, and I feel I have to get this out of my system. You've probably seen something like it posted on some cycling article somewhere:

"Bikes and cars don't belong on the streets together. Physics will win every time."

Okay, I have to ask. What does that even mean? It's trotted out in the comments with odd regularity, with a sense that the author is nodding sagely as he or she types, and it makes about as much sense as "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve." And its sheer meaninglessness has caused it to get stuck in my head worse than the jingliest of tunes.

It feels to me like it's dressing up a hidden sense of superiority - cars are bigger and more powerful and I drive a car therefore I'm bigger and more powerful - in the guise of concern for the cyclists. Because, apparently, Physics Will Always Win.

Well, then, folks, Physics is out to get us, and the human race is screwed. I mean, if Physics Will Always Win, then we have no right to put ourselves inside vehicles that travel in excess of 80 km/h (I'm talking within the city here) because Physics will be a bitch and a half when it catches up with us. Not to mention cars shouldn't be anywhere near large stationary objects like buildings and concrete bollards, because Physics will eat them. Not to mention - since Gravity is probably in league with Physics - we shouldn't have tall buildings with balconies, because if we were to fall off, Gravity - and Physics - would just outright kill us. And then there are airplanes. . . which are sort of like a clever human trap dreamed up over drinks one night by Physics, Gravity and Meteorology.

In fact, Physics is shaping up to be Public Enemy #1. Never mind the cyclists, we're all in the line of fire. Physics is out to exterminate the entire human race. Maybe even all life on Earth. I say we fight back. Down with Physics!

(Seriously? Physics isn't the problem when cyclists and cars share the road. People are.)

Space hog? Hell yeah.

2011-11-14T13:27:00.001-08:00

I was riding down Bank Street this morning, on that long hill between Sunnyside and Riverdale. There are quite a few parked cars along that stretch, and you get up a pretty decent speed. I came through the Sunnyside intersection under the yellow light, but I'm pretty sure the pickup behind me had to have run the red. But hey, that happens all the time.

Lately, of course, I stay the hell out of the door zone, always aware of how much more dangerous it is than traffic. Especially at the speeds you can get up to on that hill. The street's two lanes wide, so I pulled out so I was riding at the far right edge of the inner lane, and zipped down the street. I noticed the truck behind me (noting that it had probably run the red light, with slight amusement.) I actually appreciated the fact that the driver wasn't crowding past me, although he could have pulled out to pass me at any point, it wasn't that busy.

It wasn't until the bottom of the hill, though, that I heard the engine rev and the truck pulled way out across the yellow line and passed me, with lots of space, which I also appreciated.

It was the annoyed honk of the horn that made me shake my head though. For a moment I felt a half-twinge, thinking, "that driver's cursing 'those damn cyclists taking up space on the road' right now." But I couldn't bring myself to feel bad about it for all that long. The truck had room and I wasn't slowing him down all that much, really. I was out of danger, and it was a lovely day. One honk didn't really do much to wreck that. I made a sort of sweeping gesture taking in the wide, quiet street and a sort of mild exasperation with the driver, and continued on my way home.

Riding in Memory

2011-10-18T15:13:00.000-07:00

This morning was the tribute ride for Danielle Naçu, the cyclist who was killed last week when she was hit by an opening car door and thrown into traffic. I was expecting a crowd: I certainly wasn't expecting the hundreds that showed up. One policeman I spoke to afterward said he thought there were about 500 people walking or riding down Queen Street (where Danielle was killed); the folks at Spacing Ottawa think they counted more like 700 (in this video of the ride setting off from Bronson and Queen.)

I was somewhere toward the front end of the group, by virtue of having been inside at the Christ Church Cathedral hall till nearly ride time: they'd opened the hall and brought out coffee and muffins for the riders, and my friend Steve was there volunteering, so I popped in for a cup of coffee and to give him a hug.


Steve manning the coffee table.

The ride set off a bit after nine, led by Danielle's family, her brother carrying a huge bunch of yellow balloons. From the 'dozens' predicted on CBC Radio that morning, we were already up to hundreds and more joined the ride along the way. (CBC's Ottawa Morning show was playing an update about the ride every half hour from about 7:00 AM this morning, and correspondent Giacomo Panico was at the starting point by 8:00, about half an hour before I got there.)

Setting off.

"Jordan L" (@supposedly_fun) posted this on Twitter: the ride as seen from an office block on Queen.

The weather stayed lovely: about 10 degrees, with the sun trying to break through and very little wind. I was riding alongside my friend Kevin, trying to remember how to ride that slowly - I caught on after a block or so. Hundreds of bike bells ringing meant we rode along in a bubble of chiming sounds. People stopped at the side of the street in respect, or took pictures of the stream of cyclists and walkers. We wound to a halt at the ghost bike installed on the north side of Queen, where Danielle died, and Danielle's brother Brent climbed up onto the bike (which was already nearly buried in flowers) to speak to the crowd, and everyone burst into applause (and the ringing of bike bells.)

That was when I started getting choked up. He released the balloons he was holding, and we all watched them drift up and away. Then Brent thanked everyone for being there, talked about Danielle's love of the city, and said that it was the support and warmth of people in Ottawa that had been helping them get through.

Sam McGavin, who had organized the ride, was a tiny woman, who was lifted up onto Brent's shoulders so she could speak to the crowd as well. She said that she heard about Danielle's accident when her partner called her, frantic to know if she was all right, and that it was probably the same for a lot of us. "For a day, we didn't know who she was," she said, "only that one of us had died, and it could have been a friend, or a sister, or a girlfriend, or a mother, or a daughter." She called on everyone to share the road, and on the city planners to take cycling into account when they design roads, build public spaces, and plan streets, and told everyone to be cautious - "not afraid," she said, "but cautious and aware."

Looking around, I was amazed at the size of the crowd. It stretched back at least a block, probably more.

After Sam stepped down, the crowd slowly dispersed, with a number of people waiting to place flowers that they'd brought on the already buried ghost bike, and the media interviewing a few people, as well as the Naçu family. I stayed for a moment, not wanting to simply ride away, and then, of course, I did: down blocked-off Queen Street and onto Bank, where all the cars and bikes were rolling along as usual, but, I imagined, a little more somberly.

(Photo: Pat McGrath, The Ottawa Citizen: The story, with photos and videos, is on the Citizen website.)

Tribute Ride tomorrow

2011-10-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

(Cross posted on Spacing Ottawa)

The ghost bike on Queen, Sat. night.

Tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM, hundreds of cyclists and allies (non-cyclists are welcome to walk with the group) will be meeting at Bronson and Queen for a tribute ride for Danielle Naçu, the cyclist who was killed last week on Queen Street. Christ Church Cathedral, at Bronson and Queen, will be serving coffee from 8:00 AM, and supplying shelter in case of rain. Anyone participating is encouraged to wear yellow if possible, as a symbol of the ‘ray of sunshine’ that Danielle was to those who knew her. The ride/walk will travel up Queen Street with a police escort (also on bikes), stopping at the ‘ghost bike’ installed at the place where Danielle was struck. The flowers from the funeral home are due to be moved to the ghost bike tonight: if the number of flowers piled on the bike two days ago are any indication, the bike should be completely buried by tomorrow morning. Members of her family will speak, and other members of the cycling community are welcome to say a few words, regardless of whether they knew her.

And thanks to Spacing Ottawa, here's a gorgeous little piece by Belfast journalist Malachi O'Doherty, who I had the real pleasure of meeting a few years ago at the Writers Festival: worth watching, in memory of any cyclist killed on the roads.

Reason #462

2011-10-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

... that drivers should give cyclists a little elbow room:

Sometimes there are surprises. Like large chunks of inexplicable concrete sitting there at the edge of the road.

This was on Main Street, in front of Saint Paul's University, where, believe it or not, a cyclist often finds herself squished that close to the curb (it's a narrow, fast street with a serious pothole problem.) I'm baffled. And glad I had space to swerve. And considering starting a catalog of the odd things I've had to swerve to avoid.

Cyclists do it too...

2011-09-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it was, but today seemed like a day where I kept running into traffic problems, not with cars, but with other cyclists. At one point I was heading along the bike lane when a man on a commuter cut lazily across from the opposite bike lane, pedalling away, and drove slantwise across the oncoming lane and into the bike lane, where he wound up heading straight for me, the wrong way up the bike lane. I dodged, and said something like, "Watch it!" as he arced left onto a side street and continued on his way. I guess merging with traffic and slowing down to make the turn at a sharper angle would have cramped his style.

Then a few blocks away, I was waiting in the left turn lane at a pretty big intersection when a man rolled up beside me on his bike, and glanced at me with a vague sort of expression. I was too busy wondering why he'd pulled up on my outside to be particularly social, and when the light did turn green, he did just what I'd been worried he was going to do: he headed out into the left turn beside me, which meant that when we finished the left turn, one of us would have to hit the brakes or we'd collide as we both headed for the outer edge of the road. I shouted, "What are you doing!?" but he didn't seem concerned. I pedaled faster just to get away from him in case he did anything else wonky.

I know, I know. In those bike-flotillas you see so often in videos of Copenhagen that make it look like cyclist heaven, I'd have to put up with more jostling than this. But I also wouldn't be putting up with the added factor of adjacent motor traffic. And I figure if we're all vehicles together, we should all try and act like it.

Appalled by Nepean High School

2011-09-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

I had been trying to avoid even looking at this story over the last couple of days, but I finally couldn't ignore the churning feeling in my stomach. I mean the story about Nepean High School student (now ex-student) Mykal Baytaluk chasing down a freshman in his car as a hazing ritual. His friends threw eggs out the window of the car at the other kid, then Baytaluk chased him along the road, and finally ran over the bike and drove away.

What repels me about this isn't that it happened. People do stupid things. People do stupid things with cars. In high school and out of it. (I myself have done stupid things with cars while in high school.) But the outcry supporting his moronic behaviour from his fellow students is just appalling. And the fact that he said he would "probably do it again" and thinks it's 'unfair' that he was expelled is also pretty repellent.

I don't have much of an opinion about hazing, except that it didn't happen at my high school, and if it had I would have been as far from it as I could possibly manage to be (I avoided all the 'frosh week activities' in first year university, too.) Come to think of it, maybe I do have an opinion about hazing, which is that it reinforces the superiority of the ones with social, psychological, and emotional power, and anyone who doesn't like it is forced to participate. Maybe it's bullying, maybe it's not. Apparently these kids - the ones protesting - think it's all in good fun. But the fact remains that a 17-year-old kid got behind the wheel of a car and pointed it at another human being, and his fellow students are okay with that.

That leads to people that think it's okay to bully and harass cyclists and other drivers. People that think that because you feel like you're in control of a car, you are (things can go wrong - gas pedals can stick, you can misjudge, hell, you can sneeze.) Throwing eggs at a Grade 9, whatever I may think of the practice, is nowhere in the same league as running them down with a car, and it scares me that these kids don't seem to know the difference.

What the hey?

2011-08-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

My friend Marty posted this picture today on Facebook; the Bixi rack at the Musuem of Civilization.

Melbourne?

And then, not twenty minutes after I saw this, came the answer, from CitizenCycle. Apparently there's a bit of a foreign-exchange program going on at Bixi. To demonstrate that there are Bixis all over the world, these bike ambassadors are hanging out in the Bixi networks of various cities. Mystery solved! (And, I might add, it's a kind of endearing answer.)

Project Aura

2011-08-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it: this is pretty cool. It's funny how some ways of lighting up your bike at night come off as dorky and others don't: I think what really appeals to me about this is the way it also indicates when you're slowing down, and does that intuitively, using a visual language that would be (one hopes) totally instinctive.

Project Aura: Bicycle Safety Lighting System from Project AURA on Vimeo.

I would buy this! Even with my blinking tail light and Mike's googly white eyes in front I still worry that I'm invisible at night. Even when I've also got my panniers with their (I know, because I've seen it) blindingly reflective orange patches on the back.

No, I swear, it's *not* the same as getting spinners. Or those purple undercarriage lights people put on their cars. It's not! It's cool!

R.I.P. Jack Layton

2011-08-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

Adding my voice ... I can't really focus today because I'm suddenly, and totally by surprise, gutted by the loss of Jack Layton. Among many, many other things, he was a proud cyclist: and I just (thanks to Spacing Ottawa) found this absolutely moving tribute on Flickr - his name written in chalk on bike lanes in Toronto.

The Citizen's cycling blog just posted a series of pictures of Jack and bikes, too: one of my favorites:

It sucks that I'm coming back to this blog after a long hiatus for such a sad reason. . . I've been extremely busy this summer - general life-related chaos, which I hope is beginning to settle into shape and will give me more time for blogging.

But right now, I'm just mourning the loss of a man who stuck to his guns, fought hard with a smile on his face, and will leave a gaping Jack-shaped hole in Canadian politics.

Maybe it's just me...

2011-07-19T19:19:00.000-07:00

I got home tonight, switched on my computer, and spotted the following two posts on Twitter, both by someone named @taybridge:

Tweet the First: "#ottbike - Dear bonehead. Passing on the shared path with inches to spare and almost clipping me and a runner is stupid. Smarten up."

Okay, fair enough, can't argue with sharing the multi-use paths. But then he follows it up, literally less than a minute later, with:

Tweet the Second: "#ottbike - One more thing about the path. The parkway has two paths. Why, during rush hour, stupid cyclist, are you riding on the road? Argh"

Well, I didn't answer either one (although I almost answered the second. But 140 characters isn't enough time to explain that sometimes you wind up on the parkway because the path isn't going where you need to go, etc. etc.) I'd like to mention, though, that these two comments, hard on each other's heels, are a bit depressing to me. To this guy, bikes shouldn't be on the path, because they're dangerous to joggers and walkers, and shouldn't be on the road, because they should be on the path.

Circular much? What you're telling me, @taybridge, is that bikes don't belong anywhere. And that's why I'm not getting into it with you.

Spike Bike (a little healthy escapism)

2011-07-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't read the comments. I know this, and yet... and yet I keep reading the comments.

I mean, of course, the comments on any article about cycling, or bike lanes, or sharing the road. I know I shouldn't look, because I'm just going to run into an ugly stream of vitriol, anger, and threats of violence. On both sides. Cyclists will be accused of being smug and self-righteous, and the cyclists in turn will proceed to prove those accusations right by telling drivers that they're fat, lazy, and polluting the planet.

But then, I came across a comment thread that was getting the full back-and-forth flame treatment (you've all seen the kind of thing that gets said by anonymous jackasses) and someone, bless him, said something along the lines of, "Alright, I submit here the only possible response, for your reading pleasure," with a link to this archive.

Spike Bike. "In the year 1998 [this was written in 1989, on one of those old BBS boards], one man fights the tyranny of the automobile. . ."

It was just what I needed. Hilariously overblown Mad Max ultraviolence. A little fantasy fulfilment that takes the whole us-and-them hyperbole that always erupts in these comments, and extrapolates it. Here's your 'war on bikes,' and your 'war on cars.' Besides, it has a wry sense of humour that really endears it to me somehow. It catches the lunatic feel of 80's road warrior movies, and just in case you've ever fumed silently and helplessly as some jerk cut you off or buzzed you or hollered out their window trying to startle you into falling... this is guaranteed to be way more violent than anything you might have pictured yourself doing. And it's funny.

The paragraph that won me over:

My weekly raid on the old Joliet Arsenal yielded what I
 needed:   a bazooka and a couple of crates of armor-piercing
 rockets.  As usual, the morons the  Army  has  watching  the
 place  didn't  see  anything.   All  the  approaches  to the
 arsenal are pretty well guarded, but nobody expects a guy on
 a  mountain  bike  sneaking up from the river bank.  I slung
 the bazooka over my shoulder,  stuffed  all  the  rockets  I
 could  carry  into  a  set  of  panniers and a backback, and
 slipped away unnoticed.

Back in the garage, I set about converting the  bazooka
 and  some  old Reynolds tubing into a bikezooka.  When I was
 finished, it looked pretty  much  like  any  other  fat-tube
 bike,  except  your  every-day Kleins and Cannondales aren't
 capable of firing antitank rockets out both  the  front  and
 back  ends.   The  bike handled a little funny, but I wasn't
 going to do any criteriums on this baby.

If you have a moment, it's worth it for the chuckles. And the bikezooka.

A bike kennel in Fredericton

2011-07-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

My dad sent me this picture a couple of days ago: secure bike parking in my home town, Fredericton, NB.

I don't know for sure how it works (do you need a key to the 'kennel', or is there staff, or what?) but it struck me that I don't see these in Ottawa, which is arguably a more bike-friendly town (and probably has a higher rate of bike theft too). Not that Fredericton is huge, or hostile to bikes, but I don't remember ever seeing a bike lane there, and it is built on a great huge hill, which was definitely a deterrent to me as a kid, when I entertained the notion of bringing my bike in to town to get around on. But, lookee here, public bike parking. Which I would love to have access to in Ottawa (when I got a job recently on Elgin Street, about the third thing I asked my new boss was if it would be okay for me to bring my bike into the store and stash it in the staffroom. I've had too many headlights stolen to feel safe leaving him outside at night...)

Slow news day?

2011-07-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

I was walking down Elgin this afternoon and I spotted this headline in the Ottawa Sun box. I had to stop and take the picture.

"Bike-lane changes would strip motorists of stoplight rights!" it says, there, underneath the screaming "RED ALERT."

I had to laugh. And get annoyed. And shake my head. All in one. Which made me look very silly, I'm sure, standing there on the sidewalk. Actually, crouching so I could snap the photo of the box. Anyway, I posted the picture to Twitter, with a comment along the lines of "Seriously, Ottawa Sun? Those nasty bikes are going to take away our god-given right to turn right on red? OH NOES!"

I appear to have struck a nerve, anyway - quite a few retweets, most in agreement. One, apparently in favour of the headline, pointing out that the bike lanes are inside all right turns regardless of whether the light is red or green. (I still don't see the problem, as bikes have to stop on red too, but hey.) What really amazes me about this, and about the headline from yesterday saying that the new Laurier lanes are going to impede emergency vehicles (I also tweeted about that, with a similar amount of scoff) is that it's got to be a slow news week or something if the media is having to invent controversy over the lanes. Which open Sunday, and with luck these stories will fade into history once they do.

Please note: I'm not expecting the earth to move, the sun to go dark, or cars everywhere to raise their mechanical little voices in despairing screams on Sunday, either. I just expect to see more bikes inside the concrete barrier, once they remove the pylons.

One right (and one left) make two wrongs

2011-06-29T16:29:00.000-07:00

(Mostly posting this because I thought of the title and it amused me.)

As I was on the way to work this afternoon, heading north on Elgin Street, there was a car waiting to turn left. The car behind it cut me off (not sure if he was even aware I was there) to duck out around him. I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting the side of his car as he did so, and said something loud (a sarcastic "Nice!" I think it was.)

He then proceeded to turn right, once he'd cut me off, and paused for a moment. Switching his turn signal on - which was entertaining - at the exact moment he completed the right turn and headed off down the side street. I rolled my eyes and continued to work.

Coming home from work, south on Alta Vista, I came up to the left-turn lane onto Heron Road. Signalled, merged over into the left-turn lane. Didn't get the advance green, but the green light was still on. There was a car ahead of me making a left. I pulled up behind him and, seeing another car heading toward me, decided to wait till it came through the intersection before turning left. I started to roll forward toward the intersection, though, in preparation to turn.

At which point a truck appeared from my left side, having run the length of the through lane, passed me on the outside (hi! illegal!) and then cut over, turning left in front of me so he could gain that precious half-second of time.

Sigh. I rolled eyes. Continued riding. No point in trying to decide whether the drivers are impatient, or just blissfully unaware. Not sure which I'd rather.

Happy Monday

2011-06-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a little video for anyone who rode or is riding to work today. Happy Monday: enjoy.

Get scared or get stubborn

2011-06-22T21:10:00.000-07:00

A car blew past me today so close I could feel the shockwave on my hand. A foot, maybe, off my handlebars. Too damn close, and going way too fast (it was on Heron Road, and the speeds there are a bad fit with how narrow the road is.) I shouted; I couldn't help it, just an inarticulate shout that came bursting out of me as the car passed.

And it had been such a nice ride, otherwise, too. I had a split second where I could have gotten terrified, or mad. I got mad. Which is a sign of how long I've been riding. I can remember times when I screeched to a halt when that kind of thing happened. Now, though, by the time I'd processed what was happening, I was looking to see if the car was going to hit the red light ahead and if I could catch up. I wanted to tell the driver that he'd been far too close, dangerously close, and if we lived somewhere with the one-metre rule, he would have been illegally close. So I started pedaling like mad to catch up.

But I didn't catch up. The light changed, and he went on ahead without knowing how angry I was. Although maybe he heard me. I can hope that the Doppler effect didn't steal my shout as he flew past me. By the time I got to the traffic light it was red again, which was not such a good thing, because it gave me a minute or so where the delayed adrenaline - and the short breath from my sprint - kicked in and I started shaking. Mad and about to cry all at once. So I sat there, calming myself back down, until the light changed, and then I set off again. Just as I got back into my stride, another van came past - not as close, but it was a van, and so its sheer size startled me.

Okay, fine. Fine, I thought. And again I kind of surprised myself: I got mad, and I got defiant. If they were going to keep blowing past me, then I was going to get out into the lane and make it impossible. So I came out about a metre into the lane - where, technically, I should be, but way further out than I usually ride - and I stayed there, determinedly ignoring the sounds of cars coming up from behind me. Or at least, not ignoring them, but not letting them push me sideways. I was absolutely done with being intimidated by cars.

A couple of things about that. One: I not only knew, but had internalized, the idea that the further out in traffic you are (within reason) the safer you actually are. I stay a long way over to the side out of courtesy for drivers, but if you want to be visible, and to avoid drivers thinking they can squeeze by you, you take up space. Two: I have a lot more confidence than I used to, about a lot of things. And I thought, as I rode the rest of the way home, about my Amazon friend's insight about the relationship between being femme and biking (or any kind of non-mainstream-ism and biking): that you have to take up your space, stop shrinking to the side to avoid being 'in the way,' stop trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Unobtrusive is sometimes way too close to invisible.

Spinning in Almonte

2011-06-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

A couple of weekends ago, my poetry/storytelling performance group, the Kymeras, got to open for Evalyn Parry and her fantastic show 'Spin.' A celebration of the bicycle (and in particular the phenomenal changes it created in the lives of women), this show is a little hard to describe. Part musical show, part documentary, part one-woman-and-a-guy-playing-a-bicycle show, it was moving and mesmerizing and surprising. Personal and political.

Evalyn's songs and stories and snippets of theatre take us, mostly, through the 1890s and the bicycle craze, when bikes became not just ubiquitous, but also, serendipitously, propelled a good chunk of the women's movement. She tells tales of rebel entrepreneurs, suffragettes and the Ladies' Christian Temperance Union, and interweaves them with her own relationship to bicycles - your bike is a part of you - and the rich metaphors you can wring out of this simple machine. "The past is behind us / the back wheel is the power / the front wheel freewheels / hour by hour . . . "

I was riveted. As well as giving us the songs and stories - Google 'Annie Londonderry' sometime! - Evalyn was joined on stage by Brad Hart, who played a vintage bike mounted on a mechanic's stand. I think I heard him say there were fourteen separate pickups mounted on the bike, so he could play the tubes and fenders with drumsticks and brushes, whack on the seat for a bass line, spin the pedals, ring the bells, use a bow on the spokes, and rattle drumsticks on the spinning wheels. Add to that a set of looping pedals, and the bike sang. It was an absolutely constant presence in the show, a third character, the main character. Your eyes kept drifting to it where it hovered on the stage.

Sean, in the audience, just before Evalyn's show. And the bike.

The Kymeras - well, three out of four of us, since Ruthanne was at a storytelling conference and couldn't come - lucked into this gig. We'd been out to Almonte last year as part of Mississippi Mills bike month: arts organizer and poet Danielle K.L. Gregoire knew that I was a cycling blogger, knew the Kymeras, and asked me if I thought we could do a show about bikes. We did - to a small crowd, admittedly, but it was a fun gig, and this year, with a star like Evalyn coming in, Danielle thought of us again.

So we came out to do a bike-themed Kymeras set, to open for Evalyn. I don't think any of us really realized how big it was going to be until we got to the Almonte Old Town Hall for sound check and saw the seating. There were going to be about 170 people in the audience at this show.

Sean and Marie doing a sound check. Me getting artsy with the camera phone.

We did a very quick sound check and went for dinner with our host and Evalyn and her band, then headed back over to the Town Hall where people were starting to fill in the seats.

We went back to the green room to munch on the lovely bowl of fruit the hosts had put out, run through our poems and stories one more time, and get dressed in our performing getups. Yup, we had a 'look': coloured summery t-shirts and black pants with one leg rolled up (to stay out of the gears.)

Sean and Marie: fashion icons.

And then it was time to go out! I have to admit to being pretty nervous, but the audience was not just big, they were warm, responsive, receptive, and a joy to perform for. I had brought my poems on paper (as the 'page poet' of the foursome, but also because I don't have Sean's confidence for memorization) and as I read, out of an embroidered notebook I'd bought and copied the poems into for the occasion, I could feel the audience coming along with me. It really breathed a whole other life into the words I was performing. The same thing happened the last time I performed in front of a really large audience, in January at the NAC. I could feel my performance getting kicked up a notch. I highly recommend the sensation.

Marie anchored our set with a pair of stories, about love winning over a bicycle, and then about a bicycle winning over love. I came between the two stories with a trio of poems about childhood bikes, about the one I have now (which changed my life) and about taking up my space on the road, and then at the end of the set Sean did a couple of his own poems - which echoed mine in their themes of love and summer and freedom and nostalgia - and then ended with a Mary Oliver cover, "Summer Day."

And then we were done, and giddy, and happy, and we headed down into the hall to watch Evalyn's show, which was, as I've said, totally mesmerizing. Watching Brad play the bicycle was a whole lot of fun, and Evalyn was a complete chameleon on stage, becoming a half-dozen different characters as she recreated the 1890s, and then took us through her own stolen bike and the bits of her life that had been tangled up in it. She got a standing ovation at the end: I was one of the people on their feet first, I think. Jumped up.

And I was so darn happy to get on my bicycle the next morning.

Bike as Muse (and Musical Instrument)

2011-06-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

Two great tastes that taste great together (isn't that the old line?)

This weekend I'm getting to combine enthusiasms. On Saturday at 8:00, my performance group, the Kymeras (spoken word, poetry and storytelling) will be opening for the amazing Evalyn Parry and her show "SPIN", in Almonte, as part of Mississippi Mills Bicycle Month. The show celebrates the bicycle as muse, musical instrument, and agent of social change. Yeah. Musical instrument.

I'm really looking forward to this show! And yeah, I'm a little nervous. But it's going to be so damn fun.

ClickShift

2011-06-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Just had another piece posted under my ClickShift column over at Spacing Ottawa! This one's about the stuff that surprises me about Bixi... and has a link to a very nifty animation of bike use at the Ottawa stations.

One thing I didn't mention in the article, because it's not a surprise, it's an annoyance: why is it that when you enter ottawa-gatineau.bixi.com into your browser, you are automatically rerouted to the Montreal Bixi page, with no clear way of getting back to Ottawa? Grr, Bixi. Grr.

Another hollaback

2011-05-28T22:18:00.000-07:00

I did actually shout back, this time. But it's still pretty frustrating that when things like this happen, there's nothing you can really do about it.

I was on my way down Bronson Avenue this morning on a fairly wet, misty day. Bronson was jammed with cars - I guess because of construction in the Glebe forcing cars off Bank Street - and I was rolling along trying to strike that balance between staying to the right and trying not to hit the potholes. And around Carling this carload of young men - somewhere in their early twenties - rolled up past me, and they did that thing where they shout out the window to try and make the cyclist jump. Maybe even - hyuk hyuk - fall over. I looked up, but I pride myself I didn't really flinch that much, although they did keep making barking sorts of noises out of the car at me. Traffic was slow enough that they couldn't just speed past, and before I knew it, I was saying, in absolute disdain and annoyance, "Oh, fuck off." They laughed. I have to point out that if you were casting actors to play young, stupid jocks in an SUV, you would have cast these guys. Blond, short-haired, muscular, stereotypical football-team types listening to techno and smoking out the windows of the car. Right out of a high school movie.

They laughed, and you know just what their laughter sounded like, and kept sort of leaning out the windows to look at me as I pedaled along and they paced me in the car, for about two blocks. Just when I was about to look up and point out to them that if they kept driving along right beside me like that, I was going to call them in for harassing me, they pulled ahead: I caught up to them again at a light (refusing to let them intimidate me into changing course or avoiding them), and they leaned back out the windows, looked at me, laughed and talked among themselves, but didn't actually say anything. They did, however, wait for me to draw even with them, and then paced me, again, for another half block, at which point I said, "Just keep rolling, guys," and they did pull away, although it probably wasn't because of me. It was probably because they were holding up traffic.

What bugged me about it was that I didn't get the license plate. My phone was dead anyway. And there was no real way to respond to them that they wouldn't have been amused by: anger would amuse them. Fear would amuse them. Even my "Oh, fuck off" probably amused them, although the ease and disdain with which it came out made me feel a little better. There is no way to win. I shouldn't even waste the energy on being annoyed with them. But it is hard to accept the existence of idiots.

Here, guys: here's a song for you.

Volunteers Needed

2011-05-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Hey folks - just got this message from Capital Vélo Fest and thought I'd pass it along. They're looking for volunteers for their Tour la Nuit night ride... if you can give them a couple hours, please get in touch!

Capital Vélo Fest, on Saturday June 4^th, is almost upon us!

After months of planning and hard work by many individuals, the inaugural event for Ottawa’s annual bike festival at Ottawa City Hall is set to go. Everything is in place for the Bicycle Rodeo from 11am-4pm, with several local bike stores contributing expertise for educational workshops and prizes for festival goers.

The Tour la Nuit, from 7pm-11pm is also ready to go, with 7 bands lined up to provide live music and Mayor Jim Watson committed to providing some welcoming remarks and starting the ride at 8:30. However, we are currently short volunteers to help close the streets, which is jeopardizing the event and may require us to shorten the distance of the ride.

If you are an advocate of cycling in Ottawa and if you are available to help on Saturday June 4^th from 7pm-10:30, please sign up on line to volunteer today at www.capitalvelofest.ca as a Road Safety Assistant. Depending on how many people can be recruited in the next few days, the call will be made early next week on how to proceed. You can also help by forwarding this email to your family, friends and professional contacts with a personal message for assistance.

Thank-you in advance for any assistance you can provide to make this inaugural event a success.

Dick Louch

613 680 4061

Mercy Killing

2011-05-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

I pulled up at Billings Bridge this afternoon while I was out running errands, and went to lock my bike up against the sign post because, as usual, the bike racks (those irritating on-the-ground ones) were pretty much full. An older man who was just unlocking his bike offered to let me use the spot he was just leaving, and I declined, telling him I actually preferred to use the street sign. Then the conversation shifted to the damage those racks can do, and the lone naked (and bent, and rusted, with the tire long since gone) wheel still chained to one rack, and the blue kids' bike that, I realized, had been sitting there for well over a year.

The deal is, as I discovered a while back, the owner of the property has to call 311 to get abandoned bikes removed, and something tells me the owners of Billings Bridge Shopping Centre just don't really give a rat's arse that the bike has been sitting there rusting through two winters. This means that no one, really, has a right to complain if anyone comes by with bolt cutters who isn't employed by the City.

So I stopped and took a picture. Here it is. Free to a good home, or at least to anyone with the wherewithal to cut a U-lock. Put this bike out of its misery.

Blessing of the Bikes

2011-05-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

My friend Steve just pointed me at this. . . I probably would never have heard about it otherwise, but Steve's studying theology at Saint Paul's, and has his ear to a different ground than I do. In this case, though, our different grounds coincide in a kind of odd, off-kilter and - well - touching sort of Venn diagram.

This notice was posted on the website of the Church of the Ascension, an Anglican(ish) church on Echo Drive (conveniently, right on the Canal rec path.)

Sunday, May 22 at 12:00 noon: Blessing of the Bikes
Come as you are; all ages -- and faiths (or lack thereof) -- are most welcome!

There is a blessing for yourself and your bike, a moment of silence to remember those cyclists we’ve lost in the past year, and a chance for everyone to ring their bicycle bells in celebration of cycling. Come early for fair-trade coffee and soulful jazz!

You know, regardless of where you stand on blessings in general, there is something about a church holding a Blessing of the Bikes that is ear-to-the-ground community-based. With a dash of humour to go along with the outreach. Your bike is a part of your life, right? A part of your psyche? Then of course, any institution that exists to look after your psyche should take time to recognize it. It's like how Steve's church has a Blessing of the Animals each year, a holdover from rural churches, where people bring their pets. (Steve brings his guinea pigs.)

They also linked to a short film from the 12th annual (!) Blessing of the Bikes at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City:

Sympathy for Bronson

2011-05-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

(photo yoinked from westsideaction.wordpress.com)

I was going to write a post to say I hate Bronson Avenue. But it’s actually kind of hard to hate it. I don’t like riding on Bronson, no. When I was first in Ottawa, as a college student living across Bronson from Carleton University campus, I developed an unshakeable conviction that one day Bronson would kill me. I remembered that conviction with immediate and crystal clarity, as I was biking down Bronson to a friend’s house last Sunday morning. It’s narrow. It’s fast, and the pavement is so unbelievably bad as to make it almost impassable for a cyclist. There are parked cars at the sides of the street, infrequently enough to be inconvenient. Where there are bike lanes (only around Carleton), they begin and end awkwardly.

But I can’t hate Bronson. Bronson is like the hard-luck cousin of Ottawa streets. The fact that its hashtag on Twitter is not #Bronson but #RescueBronson might give you an idea; the street grinds along through life, rusty, dirty, broken and cracked, the curbs crumbling, the sidewalks sloping and collecting mud, clumps of grass and water, and the asphalt slowly decaying into truly epic potholes. It doesn’t even get the more or less frequent patches that my other high-pothole zone, Main Street, gets. It feels, as you rattle and swerve and swear your way down Bronson, as though everyone has just given up on it as a bad job. Bronson feels unloved. And then there’s the matter of those spooky, garish painted children mounted on utility poles as decoration, in an attempt to create a sense of community among the elderly brick houses, shop fronts and poured-concrete apartment blocks. I tried to hate Bronson; I felt like I’d snapped at a kicked-around dog that was still trying to wag its tail.

But one of these days I will have to ride down Bronson with a camera and get pictures of the appalling state of the pavement. Last weekend, as I was biking to my friend’s, and home again, I spotted a bunch that would be great candidates for a Gallery of Awful. Some, to use my Pothole Rating System from earlier this year, would count as Intensity 10. At one point a foot-wide, at least 6-inch-deep circular hole had been drilled around some sort of cap – pipes, or something – and left there, in the middle of where bikes need to be. (I came across that one after dark: exciting.)

Around Carleton, as I said, the bike lanes appear and disappear uncomfortably; I come up the ramp from Heron onto Bronson, where there are Transitway lanes, major ramps to major arteries, and where there is no bike lane and you have to be in the far left lane if you want to continue on Bronson and not be forced onto Riverside. After that, it’s a matter of getting past Carleton in a bike lane littered with the sort of high-speed obstacles you might expect – I’ve seen carriage bolts, dead animals, chunks of tire, sheets of rusted metal, and broken glass – and with the occasional off-ramp, like the one onto Colonel By just past the canal, that forces you to figure out when and how to cross a right-turn lane to merge into the suddenly appearing bike lane. But then the bike lanes peter out entirely and you’re on your own through the west end of the Glebe, where the pavement dissolves into defeat.

Underneath the 417 overpass, you dive into a dark tunnel with potholes so frequent and varied you’re forced to run over them, because you can’t be certain the drivers can or will swing out to give you room. Coming up to a light, with cars just to the left of me, I was forced through a pit in the pavement at least three inches deep – there was nowhere to go to avoid it. Avoiding the holes involves putting your head on swivel mode and trying to watch in front and behind at the same time: and sometimes having to hit major holes head on because of a truck rattling past too close for comfort. Arriving at my friend’s house, I was rattled in bone, body and mind, with a thumping headache beginning in my jarred skull and my adrenaline levels spiking. “God,” I said as I gave him a hug, “I hate Bronson."

But I’m sorry, Bronson. It’s not your fault. I didn’t really mean it.

E-bike ban

2011-05-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting one: the NCC is considering banning e-bikes from the multi-use paths. (E-bikes, as I found myself explaining to a friend yesterday, are those little mini-scooters that use an electric motor. I find there's an increasing number of them on the paths, and I've been startled by them more than once, because although they have a motor, they're virtually silent.) Here's the Government of Ontario's FAQ on e-bikes, for a definition.

I can kind of see it. E-bikes fall into this muddy area between motor vehicles and bikes. According to the Highway Traffic Act they are considered "motor assisted bicycles."* They have pedals but no one uses them: well, once I saw a guy pedaling an e-bike, on those teeny-tiny vestigial pedals. I assume the bike had run out of juice. It was a pretty funny thing to watch, I have to admit. I probably would have got off and walked the bike, myself.

They can get up to around 30 kph - the bike paths' ostensible speed limit is 20 - and after a few years of dodging small children, clotheslining dog leashes and/or the dogs themselves on the MUPs, I can see why a speed limit is a good idea. And a small, selfish bit of me thinks, "oh, get a real bike," when one of them zips by on the path or - heaven forfend - on the sidewalk where they really shouldn't be. But I know that bit of my brain is in the wrong. Motor-assisted bikes are great for people that want to bike but for whatever reason can't. Say you have a physical disability or something. They're also great for people that don't want to bike, and don't really feel the need to get their pulse up on their way around town, but also don't want to have a car or burn gas. Valid reasons to have one of these bikes.

But are they motorized or not? That's really at the heart of this, I think. They're too slow to be motorcycles, and they have those little pedals making them 'bicycles,' and so they're a new kind of beast. I also have to say that their sheer silence makes them spooky for me, when trying to share the path with them. I won't hear one coming up behind me to pass, or approaching an intersection, and then woop! there it is.

So, I'm not yet certain what I think about banning them from the paths. They're another green form of transport, which is good, but there's just something about how people think about and use the paths that isn't really compatible with a motorized vehicle. . . yet, what about one of those electric-assist bikes with the generator for climbing hills? would they also be banned? Where's the line?

I'll keep watching. Maybe I'll figure out where I stand as the NCC mulls it over.

*Want the official description? (quoted from the HTA):

“motor assisted bicycle” means a bicycle,

(a) that is fitted with pedals that are operable at all times to propel the bicycle,

(b) that weighs not more than fifty-five kilograms,

(d) that has an attached motor driven by electricity or having a piston displacement of not more than fifty cubic centimetres, and

(e) that does not have sufficient power to enable the bicycle to attain a speed greater than 50 kilometres per hour on level ground within a distance of 2 kilometres from a standing start.

Capital VeloFest

2011-05-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

This is new! Just spotted a link to this - Capital VéloFest: a bicycle festival for Ottawa. Seems brand new (incorporated only last March.) They've got a mini-festival on June 4th (a 'bicycle rodeo' and night ride on closed streets) as well as (starting this month) a Vélo Rally which will post instructions for riding along bike routes through the city, with questions to find the answers to along the way. Looks kind of like a bike scavenger hunt. And it also looks like they're planning ride-in movies - like Centretown Movies does outdoor movies, but with the encouragement to ride your bike to the location.

Okay. I have *got* to do one of the bike rallies just to see how it goes. I'll let you know as soon as they post a route! And check out the site or hook up with @CapitalVeloFest on Twitter to keep up with what they're doing!

All in the Wrong

2011-04-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

Sometimes - maybe because I read too many comments on news articles - I make a mistake (miss the yellow light and wind up accidentally running the red; wind up in the wrong lane; go at the wrong time at a stop sign) and I imagine the drivers around me thinking the sorts of things I see in the comments: "cyclists are out of control," "they're a danger to themselves and others," "why are these crazy cyclists allowed on the roads when they just disregard the rules," etc., etc., etc.

It drives me nuts to think that, because most of the time I'm pretty obsessively conscious of sharing the road. And because I hate reinforcing anyone's misguided stereotypes.

So what happened was this: I was heading to a friend's. I was tired, and shaking off the last of a cold, and maybe a little less alert than I could have been. I wound up at an intersection where I needed to turn left. You might know the intersection - at Bank and Kitchener.

So I pulled up at the red light, facing Bank Street. Across from me was the entrance to the parking lots of the LCBO (right) and Home Depot (left). But it gets a traffic light because people can continue straight through from Kitchener into the parking lots. There's a left turn lane on Kitchener, which I was in. But when the light turned green there was a car facing me, with turning signal on indicating the driver was turning left. I was also turning left. But I guess I have been in too many situations where a car facing me, when we're both turning left, has been visibly freaked out by not knowing what I'm going to do, so I hesitated before heading into the left turn, not able to figure out why the other car wasn't moving. Then saw the driver was waiting for a pedestrian to cross the road.

Then a car behind me honked, and pulled out to pass me, on the right side, although he'd been behind me in the left turn lane. So I turned to try and figure out which way he was going to go - worried that he was going to try and make the left turn around me, and possibly into me - and he pulled out, turning right onto Bank across the through/right turn lane, while a delivery truck behind him took the opportunity to pull past me on the other side and turn left, pausing long enough to yell something out the door of his truck that sounded to me like "... mumble something going straight something something cut off..."

Helpful, buddy.

I shouted, "He's turning! I was waiting! I'm turning left!" but by then he had driven off, having illegally passed me and cut me off for the turn, and the other driver having illegally passed me and cut across a lane to turn right.

I realize that in fact, if the car facing me was turning left, then what I was supposed to do was just continue with my turn. But since I didn't know what he was going to think of a bike heading into the intersection toward him, and because I was a little fuzzy-headed with a cold, and I momentarily forgot what my right of way was, I hesitated. Then the drivers behind me honked, fumed, and each did their own version of 'the wrong thing' to get around me - which they would not have done had I been in a car, hesitating in the left turn lane.

And I'm now bothered by the fact that I may have been taken for a 'stupid cyclist who doesn't know the rules.' Yup, I had a momentary brain fart. Sure, we were all wrong. But the end result of the whole incident was that my moment of insecurity was made infinitely more dangerous by the reactions of the drivers around me.

It's things like this that make me hate left turns with a burning firey passion.

Ride of Silence

2011-04-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

I just spotted this listing in Culture Magazine, thought I'd repost here as an FYI. Not sure if I'll be able to make it but I'll report if I do.

Ride of Silence - Gatineau
Date: May 18, 2011 Time: meet at 6:30 pm
Location: Maison du Citoyen, 25 rue Laurier, Gatineau (Hull sector)
This annual event started in 2003 in Texas in memory of cyclists injured or killed on the road. The ride now takes place in over 320 cities worldwide on the third Wednesday of May.

The Ride of Silence is like a funeral procession. We will be riding at around 15 km/h. No talking is allowed, as silence is how we can remember our deceased sisters and brothers. Black arm bands will be worn in memory of the deceased, and a red arm band will be worn for those injured or intimidated by motorists. A bicycle helmet is mandatory, and red and white flashing lights are a good idea to be seen.

We also take this opportunity to raise the drivers' awareness that we are here.

For more information consult website: http://tourdusilencegatineau.com/RoS/

Ride of Silence main page

So how much do you know, really?

2011-04-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

I just took a quick skim through Transports Quebec's cycling site. Partly because I'm working on a piece about cycling and traffic laws (which are, basically, provincial, so the rules change a bit when you cross the border.)

I'm actually rather impressed by Quebec's cycling policy: check out their site and have a gander for yourself. But what entertained me most was their set of quizzes. You can go through them (four questions each, I think) and pick your answers, get a score, and if you get one or two wrong (which I'm willing to bet you might) it will tell you how many are wrong, but not which questions, so you have to rethink your answers and try again. I learned some things!

Check it out for yourself. I bet you learn stuff.

Bike lanes for Wellington!

2011-04-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Sure, I bike on Wellington downtown. I don't *like* it. It's not fun to ride along a street with your knuckles whitening on the handlebars. Your hands fall asleep from all the tension and the adrenaline gets you all jittery. But I do ride down Wellington. I'm not at all surprised, though, when people ride on the sidewalks. For one thing, if you're trying to get anywhere other than just straight along Wellington - if you want to turn off the street anywhere between the Rideau Mall and, say, Lebreton Flats - then may the Force be with you. There are so many weird intersections, oddly spaced lights, double turn lanes and nasty leftward merges that I tend to give up and use pedestrian crosswalks. And even if you're just going east or west down the street, you're dodging buses (lots of them, OC Transpo and STO alike), taxis, and cars. Oh, and the buses are weaving in and out of the far right curb - you can't really pass them on the left or the right without running serious risk. No wonder people are on the (wide, spacious, built-for-postcard-pictures) sidewalks.

And if you want to get through that part of town on the riverside multi-user-path ... well, may the Force be with you then too. I've never managed to find my way through the maze of paths that run alongside the river without sooner or later winding up stranded, somewhere near the War Museum, on a sidewalk, with no clue where the next bit of the path picks up.

So when I heard about the NCC's plans for a segregated bike lane on Wellington, down near the Library and Archives, a few weeks ago, I was pretty happy. And it's all official and stuff now - it's on the news! I'm particularly heartened by the comment from Richard Daigneault, the NCC's project manager for the lane: "Up to date, we've always worked on pathways, more the recreational end of things. But now it's a matter of how to connect this network into the city."

Yes, yes, and yes. Yay.

My new least favorite intersection

2011-04-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Least favorite intersections are like favorite bands: they change and morph, depending on what sort of emotional and physical place you're in at any given time. Right now, my least favorite intersection is - predictably, and perhaps aptly, since it's the time of year when these kinds of intersections become part of my life again - one of those places where road meets bike path.

I've started taking Smyth, and Main Street, to get downtown, like to the Market, lately. It's quick and direct, if gritty. And Main Street is pothole hell, but that's not the part I hate. The part I hate runs from the intersection of Main and Hawthorne under the Queensway, and ends at Colonel By Drive.

Heading down Main, you first have to make it through the little jog that Hawthorne does. That's not so bad. But then on the other side of the intersection you're suddenly in a right-turn lane. Like most right-turn lanes, I tend to stay right on them, and try to shoulder check and move across them into the through lane as I'm coming up to the intersection, rather than ride the block or so with cars passing on both sides. It just seems to freak the drivers out to have me in the centre lane. (I know, legally I should just be taking up my space in the centre lane. Tell that to an aggressive driver.)

So, once I've negotiated that block, my next problem arises. Assuming I've managed to get into the centre lane, I'm now faced with this ickiness.

Heading toward Colonel By, you have a choice. If you don't want to go with the flow and just keep right onto Colonel By (and how many times have I heard drivers complain about bikes on Colonel By when "there's a perfectly good bike path along the canal"?) - if you want to get onto the bike path, that is - you wind up having to move to the inside of the centre lane - along the yellow line - and then ducking off the road and onto a sidewalk/multi-user path/bit of Echo Drive, just before an island that separates the two lanes between Echo Drive and Colonel By. And you have to duck across the oncoming lane, where there is virtually no marking, crosswalk, or indication of what anyone, car or bike, is supposed to be doing.

Then the task of getting onto the multi-user path is only half over. Now you're stopped on a grassy median between Echo Drive, which is barely a street anyway, and Colonel By, staring at the bike path across the way, helpfully paved to the edge of Colonel By as if to say, "here, hop on!" However, you have two lanes of traffic - traffic that hasn't seen a stop light since Ottawa U campus in one direction, and god knows how long in the other - to brave before that happens, and no crosswalk, light, or signal. You can even see in the satellite picture, and in this one, where exit ramps have been paved up to the edge of Colonel By from the path.

I cursed this intersection at several places the other day. I know, I could have taken the easy road, and hung a right straight onto Colonel By. And given how many people were out walking, jogging, and cycling on the canal path that day, it might have been faster, if more harried, to take Colonel By as well. But that just results in more unpleasantness further down.

Again: these spots, where you have to somehow get from streetside riding to the NCC's beautiful network of rec paths, are far more annoying than they really should be. I'd take a ramp and pedestrian bridge, I would. Like the Corktown footbridge at Somerset, only over the parkways too. That would be awesome.

IHollaBack (or not...)

2011-04-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

It happened again Sunday night. I don't know how often this happens to anyone else, but for me, at least, it's every few months. A car will be passing me (usually as I'm chugging up Bank Street, somewhere near Ohio, on that hill south of Billings Bridge) and a guy will shout, loudly and suddenly, out the passenger side window as they pass me. Presumably in an attempt to see me jump, flinch, jerk the handlebars, or otherwise look startled. Apparently this sort of thing is a laff riot with a certain demographic of youngish males.

It doesn't bother me that much, I suppose (it's never actually caused me to have an accident, although I guess there is that risk), except that there is no recourse for me. I can't shout back: by the time I can react they've passed. And shouting back would just amuse them more. All I can do is what my mom told me to do back in elementary school: ignore them. But if you ever tried that tactic in elementary school, you know that even if you know you have the moral high ground you also can't help feeling a little foolish, a little powerless, and a little pissed off while you're ignoring the idiots. And there's no way I can have a conversation with them about why it's not a great idea to race past a cyclist and deliberately try to make her fall. For one thing, it would be pointless: for another, they're already a half mile away.

So I shrug, call them names in my head, and continue on my way. The same when someone cuts me off, buzzes too close, or tries to play "chicken" at an intersection when I've got the right of way. Or yells "Get out of the road!"

There's been a lot of news lately about the website IHollaBack.org getting an Ottawa branch... it's a website where people can post incidents of street harassment. I know that sexual harassment can be way more serious than the kinds of things that happen to me on a bike, but you know, there are similarities. In the worst cases, a cyclist can feel very threatened; in some road rage cases people can even get killed. Although in most of the cases I've been aware of, I just felt angry that the person yelling, driving aggressively, chasing, tailgating, or cutting off the cyclist, felt they had the right to do what they did. The video blog Bike View in Ottawa - because he has a camera mounted on his bike - is like a treasure trove of those kinds of incidents for cyclists (and, also, to be fair, of the joys of riding and good things that also happen.)

Not that you want things like this to happen at all. But it is really nice to know you're not the only one. Because as I'm cranking along, I know I, for one, do not hollaback.

Arnie on a Share Bike

2011-03-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

Just spotted this as it popped up in the Twitter feed. Arnold Schwartzenegger (he of the multiple Hummers, yes, but also he of the proposed electric car infrastructure) riding along in London, with Mayor Boris Johnson, on "Boris Bikes" - their version of BIXI (actually Barclays Cycle Hire.)

Just saw Arnie and the Mayor of London ride past, on "Boris Bikes" - Imgur

Gotta say the Governator looks pretty good on a bike: wobbles less than His Mayorship at least. And 6000 bikes in London is pretty good. Makes our 100 look kind of sad. (Then again, having watched the Top Gear cross-London race, I don't know if I'd want to take one of these through central London's traffic. Eek!)

Surprising Statistics

2011-03-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

I just came across this article: a list of the 15 most bike-friendly cities on the planet. Prepare to be surprised (at least, I was):

According to the article, Ottawa claims the highest percentage of bike commuters in North America, beating out Portland, Boulder and San Francisco. (Come to think of it, why are most of the USA's accepted 'cycling Meccas' in mountainous regions? I know that hills are fun - for the athlete-cyclist - but they're a serious deterrent for some friends of mine trying to take up cycling for fitness. In those initial months when you're not yet in shape to tackle them, hills can really discourage a person from sticking with cycling. At least here in Ottawa, so much of the city is pancake flat that you don't actually have to expend any extra energy to keep rolling, just touch the pedals a bit to keep the momentum going.)

While the article doesn't give numbers for Ottawa, it does claim that Portland's bike-commuters make up 10% of the population, which is the highest proportion in the USA - so that would mean that Ottawa boasts more than 10%. This in the national capital with the highest temperature extremes in the world.

Seriously? So I decided to do some intensive research on the subject. (That is, I Googled "Ottawa Cycling Statistics.") The page I found on the City of Ottawa's website claims much different numbers. They admit we have more bike commuters than any other Canadian city, but report that only 2% of the population bike to work. On closer examination, though, I found that these numbers came from the 2001 Census. . . 10 years ago. Is it possible that in 10 years, bike commuting has jumped by 8% or more?

So, more poking around the City website ensued. This is the City of Ottawa's Cycling Plan, published in 2008. By then, apparently, Ottawa was already considered to lead the country in cycling, and to have the highest bike share of travel on the continent. In 2004 an article in the Citizen (quoted in the Plan) put the percentage at nearly 3% - 900,000 people. Then I ran into the difficulties of statistics. In the 2008 Cycling Plan, the "modal share during afternoon peak period" for cycling is reported at 1.7%, with a stated goal of getting it to 3% by 2021. "Modal share" is defined as "percentage of person-trips," so I gather than the peak period modal share is different from the percentage of people actually commuting by bike. (Hm, I think to myself: so cyclists are more likely to commute at off-peak hours? Is it that it's often quicker to travel by bike than by bus at odd hours when fewer buses are running?)

Still not more than 10% though. And the survey that the Cycling Plan cites for its statistics dates from 2003. It also has a few fascinating tidbits: 73% of Ottawa households have at least one bicycle; of the 'utilitarian' cyclists, far more use their bike for errands, visiting, and shopping than to go to work (I assume because of the notion that you can't ride in work clothing.) The City's 2010 Cycling Accomplishments Document claims that between 2000 and 2009 160 kilometres were added to the cycling network, and that in 2010 alone, another 115 kilometres were added, including the bike lanes on the Pretoria Bridge and a number of multi-use paths. Which is a pretty impressive leap for one year.

But still, I don't see the number of cyclists quintupling over the last two years. . . over the last eight years, though? I can't find current statistics; the most recent numbers I found were from 2003. Is it possible? I wouldn't think so, but... you never know.

Femme Biking? Femme Attitude!

2011-03-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

Just reposting this link from a friend's blog, in which she discusses the connections - the parallels - between cycling boldly, and being boldly feminine. I hadn't made the connection myself but now that she has, I find myself sitting back and applauding. I also know the cyclist she's talking about - the 'femme cyclist' - and I've watched her firmly and confidently take the space she needs to take - riding smack down the right tire track in the middle of a snowstorm, when the roads were buried in snow and even the tire tracks were dodgy.

Femme Biking? Femme Attitude! (AKA: What is Femme – Part II)

It's true, that cyclists shouldn't have to feel like they need to apologize for being there. As long as they're obeying the rules (and really, that just makes sense: that way everyone knows what to expect from everyone else), cyclists shouldn't constantly feel that they're 'inconveniencing' drivers. Yet we do. At least, I do: when I ride in the through lane, not the rightmost, right-turn-only lane; when I have to come out into the street to avoid potholes, drain covers and roadkill; when it takes me longer to make that left turn than it would a car. I feel like I must be annoying and holding up all the drivers around me, and I feel that I should be ... acting more invisible, rather than less. Squeezing over dangerously far to the right. Not taking up my space. This post reminds me not to feel like that.

Look ma, I'm on TV! (Sort of)

2011-03-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

So, as promised, here's the CJTV report on potholes that appeared in Centretown News Online. And Mike actually gets his name mentioned! He's very pleased. I can tell by the glint in his googly headlights.

Just for fun

2011-03-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

Today I got to head out for the first strictly recreational ride I've done this year. While I do ride through the winter, it's not exactly what you'd call 'fun' most of the time. Enjoyable, yeah, I suppose it can be: that cold air on your face and the way the bike can just swoosh over a thin layer of new snow. But generally, even though I do kind of like the winter rides, I don't go out of my way to go anywhere just for the ride. And, a lot of the recreational routes are buried under snow in the winter, meaning that your winter rides are sort of grimly purposeful at times, clotted with cars and traffic lights.

But then comes the first day of spring, and a nice, bright, above-zero one at that. So I had to go for a quick ride.

One of my favorite short rides is to Mer Bleue Bog. It's basically a massive wetland in the middle of the city, sandwiched in between Anderson Road, the Navan Road, and the Trans-Canada Highway. From my place in the South End it's a fairly short ride down Walkley Road, past the 417, and then into sudden, startling bucolic rural farmland on Russell Road. I can basically decide I want to do this ride on a whim and not need to, say, get an earlier start or pack food and water.

The first bit of it is a bit hairy, down Walkley Road and across a set of off-ramps to the 417 that scare the pants off me. But once past those, you're suddenly on a tame rural road. There are farm houses and barns, pleasant-faced Appaloosas looking over white fences and highway signs warning drivers to watch out for turtles.

You turn on Ridge Road fairly soon after the Walkley/Russell corner, and then that winds along until eventually it's a gravel road (watch out for the erosion dimples, which can be pretty large.) There are a few parking lots along the length of Ridge Road, and trails that lead (purportedly) to the bog, but I found, when I tried using one of them, that they're usually about a half-foot under water in the summer. (That was a long, tiring, fun, but very muddy off-roading experience.) I don't know what they're like in the early spring: I'm guessing they're under a few inches of corn snow and mud.

Ridge Road takes you to the bog, where there's a couple of picnic tables, some "interpretive signage" about the bog, an environmental art installation (new since the last time I was there), and a boardwalk that takes you for about a kilometer through the bog.

So I locked Mike up in the parking lot, walked along the boardwalk, bumped unexpectedly into some friends, walked back with them, and then got the bike unlocked and headed back to the city.

Short, but quite satisfying, for the first 'just for fun' ride of the year. Happy vernal equinox, everyone.

We Are All Brothers/Sisters In Pothole Pain

2011-03-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

I got contacted this afternoon to do an interview with some journalists for Centretown News about potholes and cycling. We arranged to meet outside my apartment, where there is a bumper crop of hideous potholes (if you want to see them you'll have to wait for the piece to come out at Centretown News Online, probably before the weekend.)

As I wheeled Mike along the pavement, I saw a van with the hazards flashing, and thought it might be the camera crew's vehicle. But, no - they were piling out of a hatchback just beyond the van. The van, alas, had just broken an axle.

The owner was gracious enough to give an interview. In fact, when the tow truck driver arrived and saw the cameras turning to film as he towed the van away, he also stopped and leapt out of the truck to cross the snowbanks and say, "This is the twelfth car like this I've picked up today!" to the camera. He was blocking the entrance to the parking garage, though, so had to pull the truck up and out of the way. But then came back to do an interview (all the while filming the interview on his own cell phone.)

At least by the end of the whole encounter, the poor driver of the van had a smile on his face from all the journalistic attention.

This isn't very bike related except to say that yowch! potholes affect us all.

Bike VS Boat VS Car VS Tube

2011-03-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I've been told about this episode of Top Gear before, but I hadn't seen it till just this evening (thanks for the loan, Paul!) Top Gear's terrific: I'm not even a car person and I love this show. They're hilarious. And they do shit like this ... because they can. This clip, if you have ten minutes, is worth watching.

London Calling: the Top Gear guys race across London by car, transit, bike, and boat.

This is an abbreviated version of the race from the show (it misses a lot of the phone calls back and forth, and the others' slightly gleeful speculation of whether Hammond, on the bike, is still alive), but still really entertaining. Even if it's just to listen to Hammond swearing at the buses. Or his line "Cycle lane! One... two... three meters of it and now I'm back under that bus..."

Gotta say I wouldn't want to have to cycle in London, although, given how congested the traffic is, at least you'd know the cars wouldn't be moving particularly fast.

Road Rage (or, my jaw's still on the floor)

2011-03-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

I was horrified, earlier today, by this Ottawa cyclist's account of what happened to him on Thursday, when he was stalked, threatened, deliberately sideswiped and struck, then physically tackled by an angry motorist.

I haven't heard much more about the case except that I understand when the issue was raised with Police Chief White the response was quick and courteous (in contrast to how the officers on the scene behaved.) Still, the precedent is scary as all hell. For one thing, the police telling the cyclist that he had a responsibility to stop at the scene of a "collision" is - in my opinion - nonsensical. The driver struck the cyclist in order to get him to stop, or to get out of the way at any rate, and had he stopped, the driver would have continued on his way, mission accomplished. Leaving the cyclist with no recourse.

Sure, maybe the idea is that a bike, as a 'vehicle,' should be subject to the same rules as all other vehicles. Which I am all for in most cases. But in a car/bike collision, a whole lot of things are different from a car/car collision. For one thing, face it, most of the reason anyone stops and gets out and talks to the other driver is insurance. Damage is incurred on both sides, and you get out and exchange the names of your insurers. That just doesn't happen with a bike, because, well, most bikes aren't insured, and the culture of insurance isn't built into people's concept of bike ownership. Besides, the damage is very likely to be one-sided. (As an illustration, I accidentally rear-ended a car, with my bike, a couple of weeks ago on Montreal Road as I was trying to get into the left-turn lane and my brakes slipped. She didn't even notice.)

The power difference is huge between a bike and car, as well. When a driver behaves aggressively, the aim is to scare the cyclist out of their way. Maybe it goes the other way, too, maybe some extremely bold cyclists are out there biking with the intent to frighten drivers, but I can't quite see it. An angry cyclist cutting into traffic suddenly, or whacking someone's hood or threatening to - what? - key someone's car? Sure, that would be damaging, and criminal, and reprehensible, but it's got nothing on trying to hit, or nearly hit, another person with several thousand pounds of high-speed metal. It certainly isn't going to scare the driver out of their way.

The power discrepancy is such that when a driver decides to use their vehicle as an extension of their anger, it often (usually) works - the cyclist coming away from the encounter shaken, if not actually hurt, and the driver just speeding off - and that just reinforces the behaviour in the already maladjusted driver. And the police letting this driver just walk away from the scene reinforces that behaviour as well. Aggressive driving like this is assault. With a deadly weapon.

Vandalism

2011-03-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

I left VERSeFest last night and found Mike locked up to the rail as usual... but with the right handlebar grip missing. Someone had gone by and just decided to - hyuk hyuk - pull it off.

Seriously. Who does that? I've learned not to leave the headlights on after losing them - twice - to someone who walked by and decided it would be hi-LARious to - hyuk hyuk - take them off and pocket them. So now I take them with me.

And I know that in fact, it would be way worse if someone decided - hyuk hyuk - to take off the saddle, which is also removeable.

But it's just insulting to have someone take something as petty as an aging, rubber handlebar grip. Leaving the handlebar beyond the grip shift bare and sticking out. Why do I feel like it would almost be better if what they took had some vague value? It would certainly be less senseless, or thoughtless. Not that I didn't need to replace the grips anyway but come on, people.

Epic snow

2011-03-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

Everything seemed fine when I left the house around 5:00 last night to go to VERSeFest at the Arts Court. I'd checked the weather report and everything looked pretty tame. (They lie!)

On the way downtown, I was reminded why you just shouldn't take the Queen Elizabeth side of the canal. For one thing, there's construction that's torn up the multi-use path for a few blocks near the creek. For another thing, I reached the underpass of the Pretoria Bridge and my tires went splosh into an ice-lined, built-up puddle of trapped floating slush puppy, and I came to a grinding halt.

The interesting question is: how do you put your feet down to move the bike without soaking them?

I did manage to get myself out of the puddle without getting my feet wet (what was I thinking, wearing my combat boots? Oh, wait, yeah, I was going to a poetry show.) And the rest of the trip was pretty easy, although the ice on my brakes was a little unnerving.

I got to Arts Court, around behind the Rideau Centre, and locked Mike up to a rail on the stairs. (It bothers me that there's no bike parking around Arts Court. Given that it's a centre for so much independent art, and there are a lot of bike-riding artists and art fans, you'd think they'd put in a bike rack. But they don't. And in fact, even the street signs are a little sparse and dodgy - and short: you could lift a locked bike up over most of them. Arts Court. Get bike racks.)

But that's beside the point. I went inside, had a great night with a lot of great poets, and round about 11:00 pm the show was over and it was time to go home. When I picked up my helmet to head out, a few people who had arrived halfway through the night said things like, "Are you cycling? Are you nuts?" Apparently, I learned, it had been snowing for the last five hours.

Mike looked like this.

But, I wasn't the only one leaving the event on a bike. And local writer and generally impressive urban individual jwcurry, who knows whereof he speaks, said, "It's beautiful for cycling tonight! Whoosh," he added, and mimed gliding silently along. He also advised me just to bike on the canal instead of the path, although I wasn't so sure about the possibility of slush hiding out under the few inches of accumulated snow.

He was right, you know. It was beautiful. It was hard work, but it was quiet and there were hardly any people on the path. As long as I didn't make any sudden moves or stops my balance was okay, even with the layer of glassy ice that was underneath the snow. I stayed off the streets though - something about the texture of snow that's been compressed by car tires is just unpredictable and greasy.

I got to Pretoria Bridge and had to stop to take pictures. I've always liked Pretoria Bridge. It's actually a lift bridge; the centre portion can be raised to make room for boat traffic, and I really enjoy the moments when I arrive at this bridge in time to watch the mechanisms cranking up the central section.

The bridge looking unearthly.

Looking back toward the 417 overpass and the Hawthorne skateway entrance sign. I loved what the falling snow did with the coronas of light.

You'll note, too, that there had been another bike through, ahead of me. I felt a strange sort of cameraderie with my unseen companion in stormbiking.

Along the canal path the going was okay. Hard work, as I said, but except for a couple of patches that had been puddles before the snow came down and were now slushies, I could crank the gears way down and more or less swoosh (slowly, and with much effort) along. And it was silent.

The trees and huts are still up on the Skateway, even though it closed last weekend.

But.

Once I got off the pathway, at the Lansdowne Bridge, it was another deal. My brakes had lost almost all grip, and like I said before, snow that's been smooshed around by cars isn't much fun. Climbing the ramp to Bank Street from the canal level involved some shouting on my part, and a lot of sliding around on sheets of buried ice under compressed snow. And the back tire skidding uselessly when I tried to get moving again. But, god bless the City snow clearance crews - the little sidewalk plows had already been out on Bank Street. I don't know what I would have done without that. There was still a good inch and a half or more of snow on the sidewalks, but it was flat and smooth underneath and - oh yeah - everywhere else there was a lot more snow. It was still snowing, by the way, and blowing pretty hard too. Drifts were forming. I got myself onto the sidewalk - since the streets were pretty treacherous - and edged down the slope through Old Ottawa South (which was tricky, since my brakes were iced up.)

Brakes? What brakes?

Coming past Billings Bridge shopping centre, around 11:50 pm: cleared sidewalks, for which I was almost pathetically grateful.

The uphill run from Billings Bridge was hard, and I learned that if you run into a drift and stop, it's going to be really hard to get rolling again. I learned that quite a few times. And pushing uphill against that much snow takes a lot out of you. Especially at the end of the night, when you started the whole thing hungry. But I made it as far as Heron Road, on the semi-cleared (and rapidly filling) sidewalks, puffing and panting. I was soaked with sweat at this point too, which meant I really didn't want to stop for long for fear of getting chilled.

... and then I realized that Heron's sidewalks hadn't been plowed yet...

Oh, Heron Road. Uphill from Bank, and the sidewalks hadn't been cleared yet. The drifts were formidable. I wound up walking/shoving the bike through the snow up the steepest part, which was cold, in combat boots. (Again, why did I wear my combat boots? Oh, right. Poetry show.) It was after midnight by now.

As the road leveled out, I bullheadedly got back on the bike and started trying to forge my way ahead through the snow. It was hard work, but stopping meant trying to get started again, so I tried to avoid stopping to puff and pant. Couldn't avoid being thrown sideways and nearly off balance by the drifts though, skidding to a stop, kicking the pedals, getting back on, trying to get traction with the back wheel. Making more loud shouty noises.

I was really starting to feel it by the time I took the first actual fall of the night: at the corner of my street, no less. You can see the slaloming trail of epic disaster leading to Mike's sadly fallen form:

But I picked him and myself up, walked across the intersection, and - hooray - the sidewalks on my street had been cleared an hour or two previously. So I rode, defiantly, the last block.

By the time I got home, the journey from the Rideau Centre had taken an hour and a half. Mike's back end looked like this:

His front end looked like this:

And I looked a bit like this:

(Oh, yeah, and then when I got into my apartment building, the elevators were on the fritz again, so I got to carry a snow-covered, dripping, heavy Mike up nine floors to cap it all off. By the time I got to sit down and have some toast and a cup of tea it was almost 1:00 a.m. and I was trembly-tired.)

But what's a winter without an epic?

That's it.

2011-03-03T14:45:00.000-08:00

I am officially done with winter. The honeymoon is over, the bloom is off the rose, it's been swell but the swelling's gone down, it's been fun if your definition of 'fun' is 'something overly protracted, uncomfortable, inconvenient, and really not particularly fun at all.' That's it, winter, you're cut off, adios, BUHbye now, don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. Have a nice life.

I'm sick of gritty rutted and uneven patches of ice at the side of the road, of potholes, of puddles of dirty, salty runoff that spray up onto my clothes. Never having clean clothing. Having to find places to stash armloads of grimy, salty, grit-shedding waterproof gear when I go out with friends. (Where do you put a pannier, set of rainpants, gloves, helmet and jacket, in a pub or a theatre or a booth at Zack's Diner, without taking up someone's seat? For that matter, how do you gracefully shed a pair of rainpants when you arrive at the social event you were heading to? "Excuse me while I bend over, unzip my ankles, and ignominiously wriggle out of my pants, looking like I'm about to strip in front of all your guests...") I'm sick of trying to juggle helmet, gloves, hat, groceries, and my wallet, at the grocery store. Of wearing so damn much clothing all the time. Of having to carry around wet-wipes so I can clean my face off when I get where I'm going.

I'm sick of sniffling my way along the street, or the bike path. I'm sick of there only being one bike path I can use.

I'm tired of being shoved out into traffic by the snowbanks. Of having to decide whether to worry about the oncoming cars or the upcoming slush-ridge. Of my hood, or coat, blocking my view when I try to shoulder check. Of the patches of slush that accumulate at the edge of the road. Of puddles. Of potholes. Did I mention the potholes? Of having bits of my bike gum up with crap and malfunction, when replacing them will be kind of pointless before spring. Of having to watch that my pedals don't catch on the chunks of semi-solid snow that have calved from the dirty snowbanks and are lying in the middle of the bike lane. Of boots. (God, am I sick of wearing boots.)

And then there's sweeping the entrance of my apartment every day because of all the road salt and grains of asphalt, not to mention the blackish puddles of water that form under my bike on the floor. That's it, that's all, I'm done. I am done with winter.

I get the sinking feeling, though, that winter is probably not done with me.

Ow. My pride.

2011-03-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

I have no idea how or why it happened. About 10:30 or so last night, I was just about to turn left into the parking lot of my apartment building. It was dark, it was cold, it was really damp out. There was a car coming out of the lot, with no turning signals on. So I stopped, unsure of which way they were going to turn. Then noticed an SUV coming along the street toward me. I stopped in the middle of the street, near the centre lane, to let them pass, tried to think who, in this conglomeration, had the right of way, and then, for some reason unknown to me, I fell as I was coming to a stop. Maybe I was trying to put my feet down and the heavy boots I was wearing caught the pedal? Maybe there was some ice underfoot, or under my tires? I don't know. Maybe I was tired (I was) and it was windy and wet and cold (it was.) Maybe my really quite extraordinarily bad balance had finally caught up with me. I don't know. My feet tangled with my bike, it slipped, and I fell over.

Quite aside from the embarassment, it is frankly terrifying to fall down in the middle of a street. With two cars pointed at you (the driver coming up the street had stopped, seeing me stopping at the centre line to try and turn.) And then the driver of another car, behind the SUV, decided that the stopped SUV was an obstacle, and pulled out to pass him - whether or not he was aware of the cyclist trying to pick herself up in the middle of the road I'm not sure. I scrambled to my feet, freaked out by the accelerating car that was passing the guy who'd stopped for me (how was I supposed to know if he'd even see me as he was getting back into his lane?) and got myself and the bike off the street as fast as I could. The SUV honked. At me? At the car who'd endangered my life by pulling out to pass? Not sure. And then the car that had been waiting to get out of the parking lot honked. At me? At the SUV, for honking? At the jerk who'd endangered my life? I choose to believe that the other two drivers were honking at the jackass who hadn't noticed the fallen cyclist. It makes the whole thing a lot less nervewracking, in hindsight.

And now I just have to nurse a bruised knee and some seriously dented pride. I haven't fallen on my bike in years. I don't know why or how I did last night. But I do know that cyclists can fall, unexpectedy. If there was ever a convincing argument for the 3-foot law, that's it. The bike you're passing may look fine. But she might hit a pothole, or a chunk of snow, or a puddle that splashes up into her eyes, or a rough patch in the road, or something. Or she might be at a full stop, waiting to turn left, and suddenly have some sort of brainfart.

Not sure which hurts more - the bruise on my knee or the one on my dignity.

The Road Crew

2011-02-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

I was on my way home from a downtown meeting this afternoon and heading up Heron Road when I was passed by a road repair truck, stinking of hot tar, and its sidekick, that truck with the flashing yellow arrow on it. I kinda hoped when they passed that they were heading for some of the more horrific potholes on Heron (some of which appeared in my Potholapalooza post a couple of days ago) . . . and lo and behold, traffic slowed up and came to a stop behind them as they pulled over to tackle, well, this one actually:

So, I ducked onto the sidewalk (rather than try to pass, on the left, a lineup of about four cars plus the repair trucks), and as I passed the two repair guys I stopped the bike, caught the eye of one of them, and called out, "Thank you!"

He grinned, and I went on my way. So there you go. If you see someone out repairing the street and you get the chance, tell them thanks for me, and I'll do the same for you.

(In other good news for the day, it looks like the NCC is looking at putting in a segregated bike lane on Wellington! It would run from the Portage Bridge to Bay Street. This is fantastic: that bit of the street is just awful to bike down, but hard to avoid in some cases. Hooray.)

Missing my Ride

2011-02-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

I was laid off from my job in January.

Aside from all of the stress of not having a steady paycheck, trying to put together a freelance subsistence, and missing my old job (which was the best job I've ever had) I've discovered something else.

I miss my commute. I've been working from home, alternately job hunting and working short gigs as a marketing/social media consultant, and that means I get up in the morning, skim the paper, pour my coffee, and commute all of ten feet to my computer desk. Where once I got up and rode about 40 minutes from Ottawa South to Vanier, and that 40 minutes again back home, now I'm lucky if I get out for a mile or so to run errands in the afternoon, or out to an event downtown in the evening: and it's winter, which means that recreational rides are just that much harder to do. Bike paths uncleared, roads gritty and soggy and icy and generally not that pleasant.

How accustomed you get to that morning ride to wake you up, and that afternoon ride to wind back down and switch gears. If anything has proven to me that cycling has become part of my life, it's how sluggish and restless I feel without it. And I'm not a recreational cyclist, really. The reason I called this blog "The Incidental Cyclist" was that I felt that was how cycling got itself insinuated into my life: as an incidental thing, just how I happened to get around but not something I did as, I suppose, an enthusiast. I don't really go out just to go for a ride. But I'm feeling so lazy and sedentary these days. And I don't like it. Not one bit.

Which means that as I type this, and the sun is beginning to wipe out my screen (giving me my excuse to get out of the house) I'm thinking of getting out there on Mike and going to a grocery store several miles away, just for the trip. This - this - is how much a part of my life that morning commute had become. I miss my ride.

Potholapalooza

2011-02-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

Ah, springtime in the nation's capital; there's a bite in the wind but the snow's beginning to rot away from the bike lanes, leaving its glacial moraines of grit and broken asphalt and debris. The pavement's stained white with salt, and the springtime bumper crop of potholes begin to surface as the freezing and thawing cause the roads to crumble like a stale brownie. . .

And the following are a series of (only the most striking and/or egregious) potholes I encountered today in the space of about a mile and a half, between Alta Vista and Riverside on Bank Street. I started, as I went along, trying to design a rating system for potholes. I wound up deciding on three main factors: Intensity, Complexity, and Size. (Some potholes aren't so big, but are a couple of inches deep: some are essentially interconnected systems that can stretch over a couple of square metres. . . you get the idea.)

For example, I'd say Size 7; Complexity 4; Intensity 9.

Complexity about 3; Size 8; Intensity 6.

This one I thought I'd get a shot of for its sheer originality. One small pothole (Size 2, Intensity about 3) but with a long track into which a bike tire could fall and be captured. Complexity 5/8 (i.e., simple, but crafty.)

Intensity 8 or 9. Good thing it's not actually in the space a bike would be rolling in. And the Size rating (4) means cars might not be all that inconvenienced.

Complexity of about 8 or 9 here: Intensity is, luckily, low, probably about a 3.

Intensity here is off the scale: it's broken through the pavement entirely and begun eroding the earth underneath. Check out the hole just before the grate. Complexity, if you count in the grate, about 6: mostly, though, this one is just spectacular.

Short, sharp, and deep: Intensity 9, Size and Complexity both about 2.

As a combination I'd give these a Complexity of about 7, Intensity of 6 or so. Size? Um, 7.

And it occurred to me, as I weaved around to try and avoid these beasts, that one thing the city could do - simple, straightforward and cheap - to get people more comfortable with cycling, to make cycling easier and safer and more convenient . . . ? Just prioritize the stretches of road already designated as 'suggested bike routes' - like this stretch of Bank Street - for repairs. Send the road crews out here first, to fix the pavement. It'll keep us bikes from having to swerve out into traffic (or stand up on the pedals to avoid the painful jolt of an Intensity 7+ pothole) and cost no more than regular road repairs.

Hardcore

2011-02-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

I joked, when I bought my twin headlights, that what I really ought to do was to line a whole bunch of them across the handlebars, transforming Mike from a humble mountain bike to something resembling a post-apocalyptic behemoth, like in SF movies.

Yesterday, I saw someone who had done that. There's something just slightly Mad Max about this bike. Respect.

Geek meets practical

2011-02-15T07:10:00.000-08:00

My friend Frank (who knows me very well) sent me this link to an article on how to make your own Tron-style lightcycle using electroluminescent wire. (It's fun watching him go in circles. Observe:)

It reminded me of the guy who lives here in Ottawa, who I used to see regularly last winter along the Canal, with the entire frame of his bike wrapped in Christmas lights. Well, that's one way to make sure you're seen, and it was kind of cheery to be pedaling home from work after dark and come across a constellation of coloured lights heading up the path toward you. My co-worker spotted him - at least, we think it was him, although to my knowledge there were two bikes with Christmas lights on them last winter - down near Preston one night, and came to work the next day to tell me she wished she'd had a camera so she could show me.

But that sacrifices a certain level of . . . well, cool. Not to mention efficiency. Hard to attach panniers to a bike festooned with lights. Your legs might get in the way too.

But then I followed the links from the 'lightcycle' article. I love 'related links.' There's the impractical, massively expensive and slightly silly - yet somehow still cool - Tron lightcycle reproduction motorcycle from Parker Brothers Choppers... but that's not what I was really interested in. What I was interested in was EL wire. Check this stuff out.

Now, visibility at night is one of those things I bitch at other cyclists about. When I'm in a car and we pass a cyclist with no lights and a black hoodie on, it bugs me. But I can see how it might cramp your style to wear one of those bright orange reflector vests, and everyone has those Turtle lights, where's the individuality in that? And, well, I'm a geek. When I say I've considered putting refective tape on my helmet or the back of my jacket, I mean I've considered putting reflective tape on my helmet in a nifty - and by nifty I mean geeky - pattern. The Eye of Sauron, maybe, or the symbol of the Galactic Empire.

But that's not nearly as cool as making a Tron backpack.

(On a related note, another geeky-yet-cool innovation is the 'portable bike lane' I wrote about last year. I need more spare time. And a workshop.)

Hit on Purpose

2011-02-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

Ken Walker, who writes the blog Bike View in Ottawa, just posted this: video of his bike being deliberately rear-ended by an SUV in Old Ottawa South. (Mom, don't look.)

I'm in total awe of the guy's restraint. I would have been swearing and yelling like mad at the driver. It's a reaction when I'm scared. And although it's never happened to me I would bet there's not much scarier, in the cycling world, than having someone in charge of a half-ton of motor vehicle deciding that it's okay to strike (or, okay, 'nudge' or 'bump') you with it.

I ask: would the driver have done this to a car that was stopped in front of him in the same situation? No. The other car would be seen as having every right to be there waiting for the light. Would he have done it if the vehicle in front of him had been a motorcycle? Nope. Would he have done this to a pedestrian who happened to take that moment to cross the street in front of his grill? Again, no. What on earth gives him the idea it's okay to do it to a cyclist? And why does it seem that this attitude is not so uncommon?

"Well, move over," he says, when Ken protests. I've been down that stretch of Bank a lot. When the right lane isn't full of parked cars, it's so clogged with slush you're forced into the middle lane anyway. Besides. Traffic was stopped, what does it matter if the bike was in his lane; no one was going anywhere anyway. And, he'd already hit Ken with his mirror while he was trying to signal: oh, and look at the video. At that point the bike couldn't have been any further right.

To the driver: you are in control of a deadly weapon. Try to behave like a grownup.

To Ken: bravo. And thanks for getting it on tape. And thanks for reporting it to the cops.

STDs (Severe Tire Damage)

2011-02-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

(I stole the term from Neal Stephenson, who has devices in his novel Snow Crash that basically rip the snot out of the tires of any vehicle that crosses them going the wrong way.)

Ah, the other joy of winter riding: potholes. They're generally located off at the side of the road, or it seems that way, which is just where I'll be churning along, trying to avoid patches of ice, water, and slush, and trying not to swing out in front of passing cars. And then one of these beauties will just leap out at me, jarring my whole body as my tires run over it. If I'm really lucky it'll be lurking under a puddle of water, so I'll have no warning at all.

I hit this Mother Of All Potholes yesterday going pretty much full speed along Alta Vista, just off Bank Street.

I felt it, all right: WHUMP! But look at it - with cars coming past me on my left, there was no way to avoid this thing. The crack system runs all the way across the street, too, which means it's only going to get bigger as the winter goes on (especially with the February freeze-and-thaw cycle.)

And then this afternoon, heading down Bank Street where there was a stretch of hill and I could coast, I felt the familiar shimmy. Once you've had one of these, the feeling is unmistakable. A little wriggle that your bike really shouldn't have, too regular to be bumps in the road. Crap, I thought, and pulled over, got onto the sidewalk, picked the back end up, and spun the tire, looking for the lump. And there it was, that bulge, meaning the sidewalls of the tire had finally had all they can take and they ain't taking no more.

It's not as bad as the last one (which was pretty spectacular.) But it does mean I'm going to have to head out looking for a new tire tomorrow. I know what happens when you let something like this go. But man, is it ever a dirty, dirty time of year to be changing tires.

And, once again, I've been reminded that potholes aren't just uncomfortable. They can end up costing you your tires too. All right, all right, cosmos: I'll go back to trying to avoid them. Difficult as that can be, at this time of year.

Oh Nos! Bike Lanes! OMGWTFBBQSAUCE!

2011-02-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

(Or, Can't We All Just Get Along?)

I can't believe that the whole discussion and ruling and furor over the Laurier bike lane has gone by and I haven't said much recently. Or maybe I can believe it: it seems like there's not actually a lot to say that isn't being said, and I had a hard time keeping up with all the meetings that I couldn't be at. But I opened the Saturday paper today and found, in the letters to the editor, a desperate plea from a Laurier Street condo-dweller. They're going to remove all our parking! Won't someone think of the children and the little old ladies?

"But now the bikers come," he writes. "They are young, gainfully employed and dynamic. Most are members of bike and social clubs, and all are well organized. They are represented by city councilors who are like them, and who share their desire to make Ottawa an example of "greenness" in the province: the Copenhagen of Canada. They plan to converge on the city core to enjoy all of its benefits."

Against this Spandex-clad invasion force of apparent non-residents bent on disrupting our way of life, he pits a condo-dwelling population of frail, unorganized senior citizens who enjoy a quiet life of walking in the park, visiting with their grandchildren, and responsibly investing in their condos so as to reduce the burden on the taxpayer when they have to sell and move to a retirement home. (I'm still fuzzy on how that last bit works.) He alone, with his letter, is standing up for the rights of these dear old folks in their autumn years, because they can't speak up for themselves.

Seriously, you should read the letter. It's epic. EPIC.

Okay. Bike lanes will not destroy civilization as we know it. Parking is not a human right. People are pretty good at this adapting thing. Hey, we managed to get used to being agrarian rather than nomadic without too much of a hassle. Some of us even adapt to living in zero gravity without too many hiccups. I think a change in the setup of a street will probably, in two years, have been forgotten about. And/or worked around.

And, for the zillionth time - you just can't categorize a whole group of people - especially when you're talking city politics. This letter-writer's "cyclists" are a faceless mass of overprivileged (male) yuppies in Spandex, who oughta just stay in Kanata where they belong instead of coming in to our downtown core and imposing their self-righteous "greenness." And his "residents" are helpless frail little grannies who will be left, cut off from civilization and human contact, by the no-man's-land of a segregated lane in front of their condos.

In reality, of course, things are way more complicated. Part of the reason I haven't really felt like I can weigh in on the project that much: sure, I agree with some arguments and disagree with others, but on the whole the issue is so complex that I can't feel like I have a solid position. I really wouldn't want to work for the city's transport committee, required to listen to and consider as many different opinions as there are people involved. The bike lane will happen, or it won't, and I for one will wait and see what happens, rather than try to predict any outcomes.

Midnight in the Market

2011-01-28T22:30:00.000-08:00


My dad sent me this picture: he took it in Fredericton. Seemed appropriate.

I was out in the Market this evening for Once Upon a Slam, and went out to Zack's afterwards with some friends, leaving Mike locked to a street sign in the snow. When we got back to where I'd parked him - my friends had offered to put him in the trunk of their car and give me a lift home - I had a momentary scare: I didn't see him.

There were a bunch of bikes parked outside the Mercury Lounge, and I walked past one that seemed to have a rear fender (Mike doesn't, which explains the crazy amount of grit splattered over the back of my jacket) and to another streetsign that had three bikes attached to it, locked and tangled. "Wait a sec," I said to the friend I was walking with. "None of those are... Mike's not there..."

I had a terrible sinking moment of fear that the unthinkable had happened, that someone had stolen my bike. And then I walked back over to the one I'd passed, and with relief, realized what I'd seen hadn't been a fender, it was his back rack. It was Mike. As covered in snow as he was, I guess I didn't automatically recognize him.

So, hooray: I unlocked the bike and wheeled him to my friends' car and loaded him in the back, commenting that it was probably a very good thing he hadn't been the bike in the middle of the three attached to the signpost. And then it hit us: as they said on the way to the car, "You know, midnight on Friday night, January 28th, in a snowstorm, and that many bikes parked in the Market... that's pretty good."

Which really struck me. People keep talking about how much Ottawa needs to be made more bike-friendly. But I keep seeing evidence that it already is. It's January. It was a filthy, gritty, slushy day to be out on a bike today. Trust me, I've washed a half cup of road grit and salt off myself and out of my hair today, just from biking across town and back, and down to the Market. It was snowing, at midnight tonight, and about 10 below zero, and yet there were so many bikes parked outside the Mercury Lounge that I had trouble picking mine out of the lineup at first.

Don't try to tell me Ottawa's not a biking town.

Out riding

2011-01-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

Picture by Benedict Matthew San Juan: pictured, Eric Wu.

I saw this picture posted in the Facebook group "I am out riding today, Rob Ford," and loved it. Happy winter riding, all!

There's also a fairly exuberant article here, from Edmonton, about cycling in extreme winter conditions.

Back on the road!

2011-01-24T14:19:00.000-08:00

It turns out that there was nothing at all wrong with my derailleur. It was the grip shifter. Who knew?

It's funny, but when Mike cacked out on me a few days ago, and the grip shift suddenly wouldn't turn, I just assumed it was because of the winter conditions. Grit and grease caked up on the gears, corrosion and salt all over the derailleur, a chain stripped of lubrication by the beating the roads have been dishing out to it. Mike certainly looks the part, battered and salt-spattered as he is. And when I went to the shop yesterday, the kid behind the counter tried to twist the shifter, pulled on the cable a little and told me it was a winter bike and 'they get gummed up,' and sent me home to clean it and 'see if that works.'

After testing out a bunch of great suggestions from folks that comment on this blog (thanks folks) and still not being able to turn the shifter, I wheeled Mike back over to my local bike shop this afternoon, where the guy at the front desk was, for some reason, standing on a stepladder and on the phone. He was an older guy this time. "I'm on the phone, but just take it back to the shop and Hoang'll have a look at it," he said. So I took the bike back to the shop, where Hoang (a seriously tiny Asian dude with flecks of grey in his hair) took the bike frame he was working on off the stand, popped Mike up onto it, and set to work. I hung out to watch: this stuff is fascinating, and I find it's the best way to learn more about exactly how the bike works.

I feel perhaps inordinately gratified that after all my futzing with the back end of the bike and not being able to find anything wrong with it, Hoang spun the wheel, checked the cable, eyed the mechanisms, and told me . . . there was nothing wrong with it. And while I watched in fascination, he told me there had to be something wrong with the shifter itself, and started taking it apart.

He tried whatever he could to get the shifter to work - it had simply broken somewhere inside, and would only turn in one direction. He asked if I wanted to replace it - but only after a solid ten minutes of trying to make it work - and I said of course: this is my transportation. I need it on the road.

So he got a ladder to get down a spare shifter, put it on, rethreaded the cable, made sure it worked, ran the bike through all the gears a few times (and I got to watch the derailleur curl and coil like an articulated limb: it made me feel even more that a bike is an organic sort of creature at times), and then took a wrench to stretch the cable out - running the arm of the wrench down and down and down again putting pressure on the cable - re-tightened the cable, and sent me on my way. But not before also oiling the whole thing, taking a brake pad out to sand it, realigning the brakes, and tightening the seat and tail light. "Back on the road," he said, and walked me up to the cash, where I paid $24.99 for the whole procedure and the new part.

A couple of things occurred to me while I was watching him work. One was, once again, how elegantly simple a bike actually is. Everything makes sense: the Bowden cables are like tendons, pulling things in recognizable arcs and curves. The most complicated and baffling bit of the bike is the derailleur, and that is controlled by one simple thing: a spool that winds or unwinds the cable that then pulls an armature in or out. The brake pads can be refreshed with a good bit of sandpaper, and Hoang didn't use any tool more specialized than a socket wrench. I could master this. I haven't yet, but I could.

Another thing that occurred to me was how much I'd assumed (as I do every winter) that winter is going to kill your bicycle. Yup, it's hard on it. But if it's January, I will automatically leap to the conclusion that what's wrong with my bike is the fault of the weather: when in fact what was wrong with the bike was that the gearshift had worn out. Not a bit of the bike that's even exposed to the grit and slush. Mike's a trooper! Drive train of a bike half his age! Or something like that.

And the third thing that occurred to me had to do with Shelly's comment on my last post. The one about how you can feel, as a woman going into a bike shop. Maybe it's a bit of confirmation bias on my part, but I think this is the second time, with this shop, that this has happened: when I went into the shop a couple of days ago and was sent off to 'clean the bike and see if that helped', everyone in the front of the shop was a young man. I'm not trying to paint all young men with the same brush and all, but... when I went to the shop today, the only people in the place were over forty, and I got treated like someone who had actually come in to get some service on her bike. I didn't feel like I was being dismissed, and frankly, I have felt, at times, in bike shops, that I'm being dismissed because I'm a woman with an uncool clunky mountain bike (who probably doesn't even know how to change a tire.)

Today, though, I got treated like someone who needed to get her bike back on the road. Someone with a legitimate mechanical problem that couldn't be fixed at home with a wrench and a can of WD-40. (Because that's what it was. I'd already tried the wrench and the WD-40.) I got to watch Hoang switch from the gleaming racer he was working on to my grimy and road-weary Mike, brush his hands off, and get in there to keep him running, treating Mike like any hard-working piece of equipment.

So, as I said to a friend later, today I learned that you can't blame winter for everything, and that if you want to get taken seriously, go to the bike shop when the middle-aged dudes are on deck.

Derailed

2011-01-23T16:23:00.000-08:00

It's Mike's second winter, and the last one was pretty hard on him: looks like this one is far worse. Or maybe it's just a long slow process of abuse piling on abuse, that's finally come to a head.

On my way home a few days ago, I was climbing the hill between Billings Bridge and Heron and discovered halfway up that I had shifted into the lowest gear (well, the lowest gear of the top set: I just don't really use the left-hand shifter) and couldn't shift back. The grip shift wouldn't turn, no matter what I did. I pulled over to wrestle with it, swore a bit, and wound up biking home relatively slowly, with my feet going roundandroundandround very fast on the pedals. It was unbalancing, and nerve-wracking on the street, so I eventually dove for the safety of the sidewalk.

When I got home I tried to figure out what had happened. The rubber sheath around the shifter had certainly pretty much had it - torn and splitting - but that wasn't the problem. I flipped the bike over and tried to clean it off with a rag and a bucket.

This is where I have to mention that one disadvantage of having a bike in an apartment is that there is no convenient way to, um, wash the bike. I can't take it in the back yard with a hose or anything. I had to go out into the hallway with my bucket when I realized I was going to be sloshing dirty water all over my floor. (The hallway, at least, gets cleaned regularly and has a pretty stain-resistant industrial carpet: my floor is hardwood.)

So I slooshed some water from the rag over the gears and the derailleur, and then turned the pedals. I still didn't like the grinding gritty noise I was getting, but eventually I got it washed up (a bit) and lubricated (a lot). The gears still wouldn't shift. So, I suited up and headed out to my local bike shop.

Wheeled Mike inside and asked the guy behind the counter, who pulled on the cable a little, tried to turn the handle, and told me, nope, it was fine, the derailleur was probably just gummed up. "Winter bikes," he said, slightly dismissively, "they gum up a lot." I said something like "So, I just need to go give it a good cleaning and see if it works?" and he said yeah.

So I wheeled Mike home again, got him into my apartment. And, again - I don't have a back yard or a hose, right? So I did. Really I did. I took his back wheel off, wrestled him through the hallway to my bathroom, and I gave my bicycle a bath.

I won't get into the weird contortions and awkward angles required to get your rear derailleur underneath a bathtub tap. Or the amount of chipping with a wooden skewer I did, while sitting on the rim of the tub, to get the grit out of the back wheel's gears. But I did get him rinsed off (did he ever leave a bathtub ring) and back out to the hallway, where I greased everything back up with my bottle of bike lubricant, and got the wheel back on.

Still no shifting. And then I noticed that the cable really wasn't all right. I'm no expert, but I'd say this ain't what the gearshift cable should look like:

So, it's back to the bike shop and this time insisting that they actually check the bike out rather than give it a cursory eyeballing, plucking the cable a bit, and sending me home. This is, after all, my mode of transportation.

You never want to believe what you hear on the radio...

2011-01-17T11:49:00.000-08:00

When I woke up this morning the voices on the radio told me it was around -25, and the windchill was driving it even lower. That's not something you want to hear while you're in a very snuggly bed with a purring cat. But I rolled over, looked at the window, and saw what a bright day it was shaping up to be, and sleepily ran through, in my head, the last place I saw my merino wool tights. By the time I was up and having breakfast, I was actually looking forward to the crunchy-crisp ride across town.

When I got to the office, my friend Leslie looked up and said, "Tell me you didn't ride the bike today." To which I said, "Okay, I'll tell you that, but I'll be lying..."

It was a great ride. Bright and sunny. The snow was dry enough to keep me from sliding around too much, and aside from two moments at which I yelled at passing cars for cutting close and gunning it past me, it was fairly easy. Folks were out skating on the canal as I crunched by on my big tires. The air was super clean. And I was actually almost too warm. Sure, my fingers got painful, and my eyes watered a lot at first, but my body was toasty. I got onto the canal path, got CBC radio going on the headphones, and remembered, once again, that this winter thing is actually pretty awesome, as long as you can get yourself out the door. And the numbers you hear on the radio - you just don't want to pay too much attention to those. Sure, they sound scary. But they're really not so bad.

Sharing (and caring?)

2011-01-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

I just saw this commercial for the first time. Looked like your standard car commercial, till the last little bit, when I actually felt my conditioned cyclist-recognition-response kick in. And I think what also wins me about it is that there are two bike lanes on that street. Awwwww.

Okay, I'm sure there's a really cynical position I could take on this ad. But, I think I won't, for the simple reason that it's good to see a message like this - even if it might be ironic or manipulative or whatever - on the airwaves. The vast majority of car commercials show the cars zooming along on completely empty roads, where they never once have to encounter another moving thing. Isn't that going to, subconsciously, give you the idea that anything that causes you to slow down or divert course is some kind of affront? This commercial is like the opposite of that mentality. Bring it on. Bring on more like it.

Bungees. I need bungees.

2011-01-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

I've taken to carrying some things with me all the time. I just leave them in the panniers, and leave the panniers with Mike (even if it is a bit of a pain in the ass to take them off and carry them with me when I park: they're not really designed to be carried, and tend to bang against my leg and get unwieldy. It never used to be a problem, but then I had my headlights stolen, twice in quick succession, so now I take everything removable off, even if I'm only going in for a couple of minutes.)

But this is all beside the point. I take some things with me now. My tool kit, patch kit and tire pump, basically, and a spare inner tube. It's like that tangle of stuff in most people's trunks, where they keep the bottle of wiper fluid, the scraper, the bungee cords and jumper cables. It comes in handy: a few days ago I realized that the screws had loosened that held my tail light up, and it was drooping into my rack, blocking out the light. I dug out the toolkit and straightened it out, in the slush and rain, and was pleased that just this once, I had the tools when I wanted them, and so wasn't stuck bending a key on my keyring trying to make it work as an improvised screwdriver.

And the other day I realized that I really ought to have bungee cords. My parents sent me a package from New Brunswick on the bus (thanks, by the way, guys! And the cookies were a nice touch.) So I had to ride over to the bus station to pick it up. My panniers are pretty huge, but the citrus box they sent turned out not to fit. Luckily, I have a rack! And the box, before being taped, had been tied shut with twine. And, after a bit of possibly dodgy gingeing, involving threading the cable lock through the twine at the back and then up around my seatpost, and then clipping the closures on the panniers through the twine on the sides, I got something that actually did not shift in flight (a good thing, because a snowy South Bank Street is not somewhere you want the unexpected to happen.)

I know that cargo isn't really such a tricky thing, but I was pretty pleased with what I managed to do with what I happened to have on me. Still, I think now it might be useful to carry some bungees around in that bottom-of-the-bag space full of stuff you only ever need sometimes. Cause when that 'sometimes' rolls around, and you actually do have the stuff you need, man, do you ever feel smug.

Elite? Me?

2011-01-09T20:06:00.000-08:00

I just came across a blog post by David Reevely at the Citizen, responding to Randall Denley's piece on the perennial conversation about making Ottawa a cycling city, and arguing that decent street design, making cycling safer, is more important than teaching people to cycle properly.

The two pieces are interesting: they illustrate how complicated the question is. If a city wants to get more people cycling, there will probably be a dozen different takes on how to do it. Do you want people who are unused to cycling to feel safer? Do you want to keep bikes off the roads and provide dedicated cycling facilities? Do you want the cyclists to learn and obey the rules of the road? Just how steep should the learning curve be for newbies? Are bike lanes going to cut into the profits of the businesses along the road, or improve them? Who rides anyway? Who will ride once you change things? Can you even predict that?

But what really got my attention was his claim that "conditions for commuter biking in Ottawa are poor, such that most people consider it the province of elite and experienced cyclists who have specialized skills and a lot of courage."

I commute. Not only do I commute about seven and a half miles to work, I do it year round. But none of those adjectives sit right with me. 'Elite?' Hell no. 'Experienced'? Other than the fact that I get on a bike most days of the week and get my ass to work, and have for the last three years or so, I don't think I'd consider myself an 'experienced' cyclist. I certainly don't know how to do anything on a bike that anyone else I know can't, so along with 'experienced' I think I'd rule out 'specialized skills.' And 'courage'? Is this where I admit to the scared yelps that are a routine part of my day?

Basically, I really don't think that conditions, as they stand, are all that poor in Ottawa. I mean, in comparison to what? When I first moved to Ottawa when I was eighteen, I made the jump from recreational cycling on rural roads to making my way around a fairly good-sized city. I managed it. The city's fairly flat, so there isn't that initial barrier of hills to tire a novice out. There are beautiful rec paths. The downtown streets aren't that bad (so there's some nasty pavement, but the side streets are quiet, aesthetically pleasing, and tree-shaded.) Sure, I notice the spots where things are awkward - nothing's perfect, and you might as well fix the stuff that you know needs fixing. But I'm not elite, experienced, particularly skilled or courageous, in my humble opinion, and yet I took to cycling. In fact, I discovered I love it.

Now, about whether you're better off creating safer facilities or teaching cyclists to ride properly: my take on it is that a city can't teach cyclists. How would you do that? Offer lessons - that only some people would take you up on? I certainly wouldn't take time out of my life to take cycling safety lessons. Would you license cyclists? I can only imagine the organizational and bureaucratic nightmare that would be. What a city can do - actually do - is build facilities. So that's what they should spend their time and effort on. Educating people is a lot harder for a municipal government to do. Bike advocacy groups can do that. Bloggers can do it. Journalists can. Bike shops can. The city can create segregated lanes, put up signage, provide information, mark bike routes, make it clear where bike paths will take you, and clear bike lanes and paths of snow. But it can't teach a new cyclist not to be nervous. And that's not its job. It's ours.

Right to turn

2011-01-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, twice, I got honked at for doing something that was completely legal (in both cases on left turns: seems when a cyclist decides to obey the laws of the road, there are drivers that don't know that's what bikes are supposed to do. I've had drivers yell "get out of the road!" at me before, while I'm waiting in left-turn lanes, or making turns, even just while riding down the street.)

One of the cases I suppose I can understand. One of the only contra-flow, bike-only lanes in the city is on Cameron, a little one-way street that runs from Brewer Park (that park just across Bronson from Carleton University's Athletics department) to Bank Street in Old Ottawa South. In order to get to Carleton from my place I take Cameron, which involves a left turn off Bank at a stoplight. There are a couple of 'no-entry' signs posted at the entrance to Cameron, with 'except bicycles' tacked on underneath, and the bike lane is separated from the street for about 15 feet or so by a raised curb - after which it's marked off by a painted yellow line and bike-lane logo. Bikes going west are supposed to use the contra-flow lane: bikes coming east ride at the side of the car lane.

I've never understood the point of the 15-foot separated stretch, but as it's one of the only separated bits I know about, I sort of appreciate its fledgling status. It does, I suppose, help to keep bikes from turning left directly into oncoming one-way traffic.

The bike lane, naturally, has not been cleared of snow, forcing me to ride the wrong way in the car lane itself, but that's a whole nother gripe.

I made what, for me, was a particularly bold merge into the left lane to make my turn, got to the light, which was green, and saw that a large and elderly pickup truck was facing me with its turning signal on indicating it was turning left. As the truck started to turn left, so did I. That little do-si-do maneuver any car would have done in my place. But I realized that the truck was blocking my view of what was behind it, including any cars coming south down Bank Street that might choose to swing out around the turning truck and continue through the green light. So I stopped, waiting to get a clear view, halfway through my left turn. Again, what any car would do. Lucky that I did, too, because there was indeed a car coming down Bank. But the truck, instead of finishing its turn and getting out of my way so I could see what was coming, stopped to honk at me for being in the middle of the intersection. I edged forward, saw a clear spot, and rabbited across the street and into the safety of the segregated lane.

But it rankled that the driver had honked. It always does. And it bugged me because I had been making a completely legal move. I'd signalled my merge and I was in the inside lane - okay, in the middle of a left turn on winter roads in traffic, forgive me if while making the actual turn both hands were on the handlebars - and I was turning onto a road that was, for bikes, a two-way street. I wondered if he'd honked because he thought I was heading the wrong way down a one-way street. To be fair, I don't really expect drivers to read or notice the 'bikes excepted' signs that are on quite a few intersections, although it would be nice if they did.

In fact, come to think of it, it seems to me that 'bikes excepted' signs are a BAD idea. Why make bicycles even more unpredictable than they are? That's not going to improve relations, is it? Often when there's an exception for bikes, it means that bikes can turn where cars can't (sometimes into oncoming traffic, as in this case), or run the opposite way down a one-lane street (okay when there's a clearly marked bike lane, not so okay if, as in this case, the bike lane's obliterated by snow and ice.) And in most cases, those signs are pretty hard to see. Nearly as hard to see as the ones downtown telling you what hours of the day certain maneuvers are allowed (Hel-LO, Laurier and Elgin. There's a blinkin' textbook posted over the 'no right turn' sign. And I think there's an exception for bikes in there somewhere too. In an intersection that size? No wonder it's on the top-seven list of most dangerous intersections.)

Basically, as I keep saying, if drivers know what to expect of bikes, and bikes know what to expect of drivers, we're all safer and our blood pressures stay down as an added bonus. But every time I merge left I'm scared that the car behind me just won't know what my signal means, or won't expect me to move out into traffic. Every time I get into an intersection on a left turn, I'm scared a car won't think to look for me, or won't judge my speed properly, or will assume I'm breaking the law and try to scare me into staying on the sidewalks 'where I belong.' And I know that all around me are other cyclists either too reckless - running red lights and heading the wrong way on one-ways, or too cautious - riding along the sidewalks, with no regard for the direction of traffic, and popping out into intersections where cars aren't looking for them. And THEN they add some intersections - not all, but often the weird ones - where the bikes get different rules from the cars? It's not as though you'd put in signs saying "no right turn on red, except hatchbacks."

Black Boxes for Bikes

2010-12-22T14:27:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this blog post a couple of days ago: by a cyclist who happened to have a GPS system on him when he was hit by a car. And not just a GPS system - a fancy-shmantsy cycling training GPS system that measures every little thing, from altitude to speed to your heart rate and vital signs. This one (check it out in the post) was sensitive enough to record when the bike was hit. When it was moved to the side of the road. When he moved it to repair it afterward. It registered his heartrate spike on impact.

Okay, yeah. That's cool. I really can't see myself ever wanting something like this, or forking out the (fairly substantial) cash for it. Seems like the sort of equipment you'd only need if you were a pro cyclist (which this guy is.) Or competitive. Or a really, truly obsessive gearhead. But in this case, it turned out to be worth it, just for insurance purposes. Maybe they ought to install black boxes like this in cars too.

Because what really interested - and scared - me about this post was the blatant way the driver tried to lie her way out of her culpability: telling the police she didn't even hit the guy ... until they pointed out the dent he'd made in her hood. Then telling them that he'd been crossing the street illegally (until they mentioned that if she could see what direction he was crossing the street, then she could have seen him and stopped in time.) And it's also disturbing how little recourse anyone has, without eyewitnesses. It all become a case of 'your story against mine.' Until, in this case, he gets home and realizes he's got a record of the whole accident on his GPS device.

And what if he'd been killed? That GPS record would have made a huge difference in how the driver was prosecuted in that case.

Almost. Almost reason to get one.

The First Enforced Bus Ride

2010-12-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

I suppose I could have ridden to work today.

Yeah, I could have, to be totally honest.

But man. I woke up to fine, blowing, falling snow, and the spectacle of car after car fishtailing it down the street below my apartment building. After watching a bus slide to a halt at the stop sign - and after agonizing about whether or not to get the bike packed up for entirely too long - I decided that although I really did actually want to ride to work, it was probably not the safest or smartest thing to do. Especially since I was completely unsure about what route would be best to take: did I want to try the path? How deep was the snow out there? Would I find myself trapped at Hurdman Station, like last year? How clear was Bank Street? What about the Rideau Canal path? Had it been cleared? How bad was it out there anyway? And was it likely to keep snowing all day?

I remember this... the winter-morning decision making. Funny, that all the rest of the year I just don't work "bus" into my list of options. But a couple of centimeters of greasy, new slush and unploughed roads does make a bit of a difference, and I have to start remembering to keep bus change around the house. Raiding my piggy bank on bad mornings.

But I'm sort of regretting not riding. After all, there isn't really much reason not to be on the bike: it's slippery, sure. I'll get used to that. I'd have had to ride way out in the street and piss off a few impatient drivers, yeah. I'll have to resign myself to using my winter route (more roads, longer, less pretty) sooner or later. And dammit, it would have been a rough slog, but it would have been fresh air, blood pumping, the kind of wake-up call that I really need on grey December mornings.

I'll ride tomorrow. It'll feel good.

Near Misses

2010-12-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

I feel really bad.

I didn't get out of the office till well after sunset this afternoon. One of the advantages of winter is that although the recreational paths aren't lit, exactly, they are rendered a little easier to see in the dark by the absence of leaves in the trees overhead, and the general reflectiveness of the snow. (I'm still taking the paths, because so far my usual route is still clear, with the wind sweeping the pavement free of what snow there is.)

But, it's still pretty dark out there. My headlights cut the shadows a little, but not really that much. So any pedestrians on the path show up mostly as dark shadows until I'm pretty close. As I was making my way along the path, near the river, before the highway underpass, I noticed a figure standing in the grass at the edge of the path. I swung a little to the left to get out of her way, and was distracted by the glow of a smartphone screen reflecting off her jacket (which I hadn't noticed before.)

When I looked back at the path, there was a small terrier practically underneath my front tire. I yelped. So did the dog's owner (which is how I know she was a woman) and the dog skittered out of the way only just in time to avoid my hitting it. I didn't have time to hit my brakes. I barely had time to register that the dog was there. And for a few moments afterward, I just kept pedalling, trying to process what had just nearly hapened, and being very glad that I hadn't hit the dog. Would I have killed it? Or just hurt it badly? I would have gone flying in either case. I was glad I'd had my helmet on.

And then I realized that I really should have stopped and gone back to talk to the woman. Not necessarily to apologize, although I probably would have - really, no one was at fault in this. The dog could have had a light on it, or a leash. She could have been watching instead of texting. But I could have been paying better attention to the path ahead of me. And she couldn't have been expected to be on the alert for cyclists after dark in early December - there aren't that many of us on the paths. And I really, really, should have stopped to make sure she and her dog were okay. Now there's a good chance that in her mind, I'm one of those reckless cyclists with no regard for pedestrians, zipping along unaware and unconcerned, a danger to myself and others (and others' dogs.) But the longer I thought about going back, and the more space stretched out between me and her, the more awkward it felt to turn around and go back. After all, no one was hurt. The dog is fine.

But I feel really bad. So if you know anyone whose dog was nearly run down by a cyclist this evening, tell her I'm sorry.

Fun with Toronto politics

2010-12-07T13:26:00.000-08:00

Spotted this on Twitter (posted by @boyreporter), and was amused.

Don Valley Update

2010-11-30T09:14:00.000-08:00

More news on the sabotaged bike bridges in the Don Valley: the police are looking into it. (Thanks to my friend Frank for sending me this update, by the way.) Cyclists have taken down the damaged bridges and are watching the area - they think it's one particular person doing it, and it's ongoing: the same bridges were targeted last year.

I'm still trying to get my head around what would cause someone to do something like this: do they have some kind of grudge against cyclists using the trails, the way some drivers have a problem with cyclists using the roads? Do they just think this is funny? The fact that it's been going on for more than a year is disturbing: too methodical and deliberate to be a prank. What could they possibly be thinking?

Cyclists took this bridge down for safety reasons.

Google Bike Directions Go Live

2010-11-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

It's official! You can now get bike route directions on Google Maps by clicking the bike icon. There's a warning that they're in beta, and a link to report missing bike routes or unsafe streets, but it's up and running. I decided to plug in a couple of addresses and see what Google has to say about how to get around.

Popping in my home address and my workplace got me a very similar route to what I normally take: Hm, I thought as I scanned it, I don't normally take Pleasant Park, but that would keep me off the intersection at Riverside and Industrial... I may have to give it a try. Although, there is a bike lane all the way down Alta Vista, and not, as far as I know, down Pleasant Park. I also don't know what the proportion of stop signs is like on Pleasant Park, something else that may not have been factored in to the routing software (and really, it would be hard to do that. Although, if they can come up with an algorithm to figure out the most boring day in history, you'd think they could come up with a way to factor bike lanes and four-way stops into the route plotter...)

The site will, eventually, have different coloured routes for bike-only trails, but for now they look just like all the other streets. Except, notably, that they don't have names. Which works awkwardly in the directions text (note steps 4 and 5):

	3. Turn right at Alta Vista Dr
		1.6 km
	4. Turn left at Pleasant Park Rd
		950 m
	5. Turn right
		3.3 km
	6. Turn left
		400 m
	7. Slight left toward Montreal Rd/Rideau St/Regional Road 34
		1.8 km
	8. Turn right at Montreal Rd/Rideau St/Regional Road 34

You also don't get Google Street View to help you out at these intersections. Ah well, this will probably improve. Fire back your input, cyclists: let Google's programmers know what you need!

Another note: year-round cyclists are going to have to remember that Google Maps will be marking routes as viable even if they're not cleared of snow and ice. This route sends you down the bike trail alongside the river, which has had a marvellously slippery, inch-thick coating of ice since the freezing rain last week. I'm still riding it, precariously: but come snowfall this won't be a possibility. I'm willing to bet Google Maps will still list it as a route, though. You can't expect them to have programmed for weather.

Malicious, and dangerous... if it's true

2010-11-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

I came across a link to this warning on Twitter this afternoon - I know I don't live in Toronto, so the state of the Don Valley mountain bike trail isn't really high on my radar, but this struck me as a particularly infuriating class of assholery. Apparently someone decided to walk in and sabotage the wooden bridges by sawing through the support beams. According to the person who posted this, that entails a nine- to sixteen-foot fall if the bridge were to break. (He - or she - posts a few more pictures of the sabotage as well.)

It just strikes me, if this is true, as a really malicious thing to do. What reason could they possibly have? And does anyone have any idea if this is true... or if it's one of those razors-in-the-apple stories?

A November cycling haiku

2010-11-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

Which would I rather?
Wet morning's slushy soaking
Or hard evening ice?

Getting around

2010-11-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

The City of Ottawa has a cycling newsletter? When did this happen?

Yesterday, I got an e-newsletter from the city, with an announcement that a new bike lane's been opened on Lyon Street - another step toward developing an official, workable cycling system downtown. It runs down Lyon, from Wellington (which is pretty much the northernmost edge of the downtown map) to Arlington, with sharrows marking off where the bikes are suggested to be from Wellington to Queen, and then a full painted bike lane from there on.

I haven't given it a try yet, but I'll have to go down and have a look. It looks from the pictures as though the lane is only on the southbound side: so it's only good for getting you south. But I seem to remember Lyon being one-way anyway, and I have a problem with contra-flow bike lanes, so that's okay.

And kudos to the city for moving forward on this bike infrastructure project. There's a presentation planned for tomorrow night, 6:30-8:30, in the City Hall Rotunda, to present what's happened so far, since the East-West Segregated Lane Pilot Project was announced earlier this year. They've chosen Laurier Ave W. for the lane, and this meeting will involve consultation with the community about things like design and construction (i.e., will the lane be separated by parked cars, a concrete barrier, posts, flowerpots, what?)

My question, which I would pose if I could be there (I can't: prior commitments) would be: is any thought going to go into making it more comfortable for bikes to get over the bridge and across Elgin? All I'm asking for, I think, is a marked, painted bike lane that continues past the ramp from Queen Elizabeth and gives a cyclist some breathing room at the lights, where we have to stand between the traffic coming through and the right-turn lane. In fact, what I want there is a bike box, so if we are turning left we can get over to the left. As it is, there is no way to turn left down Elgin without feeling like you're taking your life in your hands. Not to mention it's one of those intersections where you're only allowed to turn left between certain hours, which information is posted on a sign that's too small to read. Gah.

Oh, yeah, and my other question would be - how much does it cost to add a bike lane, versus how much it costs to keep the bike paths clear through the winter? And are there any plans to do so? The Canal path gets plowed (which is the major reason I can bike year-round) but if the others were cleared too it would help get cyclists out of the way - and out of harm's way - in winter, when real estate at the edge of the streets is at a serious premium due to snow buildup.

But, again - thanks to the city for taking cycling seriously. Seriously enough that Ottawa just hosted the announcement that Canadian cities will now be getting Google's Bike Directions, and is one of the first seven pilot cities. Awesome! The feature will be launched later this week, apparently, and will allow cities to include designated bike lanes, bike paths, and roads that are safer for cycling, as well as allowing you to plot for things like shortcuts and topography (you can pick the least hilly route, if that's the sort of thing that excites you: it's not so much for me.) It's user-contributed, too: so cyclists will be able to flag and suggest routes. Can't wait to give it a spin once it's live! Nice to know Ottawa will be among the first cities to get this service.

Slowly but surely, it's getting easier to get around.

Seven Things Evan Thornton Learned About Ottawa

2010-11-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

Spacing Ottawa is one year old, and Evan Thornton, the editor, posted a piece about the things he's learned about his city since the site's inception - and my story on abandoned bikes from last winter got a mention! Have a look and click around - there are some neat little bits of information about what rob mclennan calls "Ottawa: The Hidden City..."

It begins...

2010-11-19T08:47:00.000-08:00

This picture was snapped for me by my friend Marie (who has a cell phone camera with a flash incidentally, how cool is that?) as we left the Barley Mow Pub last night around 11:00. Yup, that's snow. And this morning it was -8 out. Here we go . . .

Bikes on Bronson - the impossible dream?

2010-11-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

I just came across a wonderfully detailed and thought-out blog post on the blog Images of Centretown, outlining where and how Bronson Avenue fails as a bike route, and what could be done to fix it. The author is involved in the Rescue Bronson project: and to be sure, Bronson is in need of rescue.

I often find myself on Bronson because it's a direct route to Chinatown and the west end of downtown: one of my regular climbing partners lives on Bronson, and if I'm heading to Sushi 88, Raw Sugar, Umi Cafe or the Shanghai Restaurant, it makes sense - given that I'm not that squeamish about major roads - to take Heron down to Bronson, cross the river above Carleton, and then brave Bronson the rest of the way downtown. It's also a good place to hook up with Carling if I'm on the way to Westboro or Hintonburg.

But I understand that my tendency to stick to major automobile routes is a strange one. If I had any actual sense, I'd work out ways to get north/south in Ottawa without being stuck on Bank or Bronson. In particular, trying to take Bronson downtown is a terrifying experience: there's a bike lane past Carleton where the traffic often hits speeds of 100 km/h, but it vanishes as you enter the Glebe, depositing you on a narrow, fast road with some of the most abysmal pavement in the city. From there on in, it's a nightmare, the worst point of which is probably the underpass at the Queensway, where you're stuck in a dark, rotten-asphalt corridor underneath the highway, hemmed in by concrete and a little too close to the highway on-ramp.

The suggestions and observations in this blog post make a lot of sense to me. Putting Bronson on a 'road diet' might be step one: decent pavement might be another: but making it more intuitive, and easier, to take one of the side roads, such as Percy, should also be a serious consideration.

Bright? I think it's brilliant.

2010-11-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

Out of the soup of information online that I'm usually semi-immersed in (honestly, it's part of my job) comes this link from Bicycles 4 Humanity, to a Ghanaian organization called the Bright Generation Foundation.

I found a picture of a bamboo bike a while back and posted it here: at the time I thought of it as a high-end, performance bike sort of thing. It looked cool, and certainly lightweight, and all I had was the picture, with no back story or anything. I hadn't seen anything about where the bamboo frame had come from: turns out it was one of these, produced in Ghana. The Bright Generation Foundation runs a project that manufactures bamboo bicycles because bamboo is much more abundant and cheap to use than any other materials, and there is a lot of bamboo in Ghana. It grows fast, is cheap to grow, is renewable, and produces tough, inexpensive bikes for use on Ghanaian roads (and I've already written about the advantage of bikes for people in rural parts of Africa.) Production of the bikes promotes bamboo growing as a cottage industry and provides employment as well as affordable transportation. Plus, they're looking into exporting the frames to North America, through the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and reinvesting the proceeds into anti-poverty and environmental groups back in Ghana. How awesome is that?

The organization also provides organized sports for social change among youth, trains women in organic farming, and runs a women's microfinance project.

Ah, it's things like this that remind me how much bigger bikes can be than just a form of transportation. There are so many groups out there using bikes to do so much more than get people from place to place.

More on the downtown segregated lane

2010-11-14T17:58:00.000-08:00

I wrote a while back about going to the public consultation on where to put the proposed downtown east-west segregated lane; looks like they've gone with Laurier Avenue for the pilot project. Thinking about it, I suppose I do use Laurier most often as a way across town, and it could stand with being a little more bike-friendly. I just got the following email, and I thought I'd pass it along:

Public Meeting #2

East-West Downtown Segregated Bike Lane

Pilot Project

Thursday November 25, 2010

6:30 to 8:30 p.m. (Presentation at 7 p.m.)

City Hall – Rotunda

110 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa

What is this meeting about?

The City of Ottawa is finalizing a study for an east-west segregated bike lane through the downtown. A segregated bike lane is an on-street bicycle lane that is separated from motor vehicle traffic through the use of physical buffers (curbs, planter boxes, parked cars, etc.). This second public meeting is to gather feedback on the preferred route (Laurier Avenue West) and functional designs.

Why attend?
The purpose of this meeting is to:

· Present the route evaluation criteria and analysis;

· Present the preferred route (Laurier Avenue West) and
functional designs;

· Provide opportunities for you to become involved in the identification of local issues and
the development of the facility.

Need more information?

If you are not available to attend the meeting or would like additional information, please visit the project website at www.ottawa.ca/bikelane or direct your comments and questions to the project manager listed below. The presentation material for the meeting will be available on the project website after November 25, 2010.

Colin Simpson MCIP RPP
110 Laurier Avenue West, 4^th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 1J1
Tel: 613-580-2424, ext. 27881
Fax: 613-580-2578
E-mail: colin.simpson@ottawa.ca

Rush Hour

2010-11-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

Encountered a bit of a traffic jam on the way to work this morning. I thought they'd all have been gone by now: by the time I need to buy a toque for under the helmet and break out the gloves, I sort of expect the migratory birds to have left. But, apparently, no.

These folks are just one of the road hazards of November. There's their poop - it's gross - and the fact that a bird this size feels no need to flee before an oncoming bike. They just gaze at you sideways, like they're daring you to violate their personal space. But there are other hazards on the roads this time of year. . . for one thing, I also notice more roadkill in the late fall. I'm not sure why: maybe animals like squirrels are slower at this time of year. And it's mostly squirrels. (There are more disgusting things to accidentally roll over with your tires than one of those sad flattened patches of fur in the bike lane, but not many.) But it's also birds - seagulls, mostly, although there are pigeons too.

Then there's the pack of wet fallen leaves. The undercarriage of my bike gets plastered with shredded leaves on wet days: and I have to remember to clean and oil the gears more often. I start worrying about the drive train, and whether it'll make it through the winter. (And if not, is it worth replacing it now, or waiting till spring so I don't have to worry about destroying a new set of parts over the winter?)

Ah, the hazards of fall cycling. It's not all grim, though. The bite in the air feels great in the mornings - cleaner in my lungs. I get wide open stretches of the path with no one else on them. As I get warmed up, I can feel the heat flushing through my chilly fingers. And the tingle in my face when I get to work is great, and flying along the bike paths by the grey river over carpets of yellow leaves makes my afternoon.

Now, shove off southwards, geese. Get out of my way.

How cool is this?

2010-11-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

This here is the Hövding. Just when I think I've found the most extreme, most ridiculous-yet-somehow admirable example of bike-innovation design (I still kinda lust after the handlebar-mounted flamethrower and deployable front ski of the BOND Bike) I get something like this brought to my attention (thanks, Shelly!) and the bar is raised once again.

This thing is, essentially, an airbag for your head. When you're involved in a collision, gyroscopes and accelerometers in the collar determine that it is in fact a collision, and trigger the helium that inflates the collar. All before you hit the ground.

(Listen for the stifled snicker when the bike flips end-for-end in the last test. It's cute.)

Yeah, you may say, but that's a bit iffy, isn't it? You can do lots of things while you're wearing this collar that might look to the sensors like you were in an accident. Like suddenly looking over your shoulder - POW! Airbag! Or leaning over to check your panniers - POW! Airbag! Bending over to tie your shoe - POW! Plus, what if you just weave into the curb and topple over (I've done it: I'm not proud of it, but I've done it, back when I was first on the road and got between a bus and the curb)? That's a pretty gentle accident, but you could still whack your head - would the sensors know in time to deploy?

Apparently, though, they've tested for all that, the two Swedish industrial design students - Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin - who designed this as a masters thesis. They've run it through tons of variations, using both dummies and (very brave) stunt people. Plus, this thing learns. It connects by USB to a "black box" that saves the last ten seconds of data before your crash and stores it for later prediction. (It also uses the USB port to recharge.) No, really. Come on, how nifty is that?

And what I admire about it is how much effort and talent and thought went into making something only because it looks cooler than the existing technology. I don't know if I'd go to that much trouble, just to not need to wear a traditional helmet. Not even sure I'd trust a helium-filled bubble more than my good old-fashioned foam-and-casing helmet. But someone did, and that's pretty cool. That's a whole lot of engineering in order to be bleeding-edge stylish and still ride a bike. Trust the Swedes.

It happened AGAIN.

2010-10-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

So, I was having a pretty lazy day at home, having just finished with the busiest part of my season (Writers Festival wrapped up last Wednesday) and it's miserable out there today - hovering a little above zero and drizzling. But I needed to get some groceries, so I gambled that it wasn't really raining that hard and headed out, without my rain pants, which often make it a little hard to shop.

It was cold. Pretty awful, actually, and I don't have gloves yet this year so my hands were freezing. But I bumped into a friend by complete accident, which was cool, and decided on the way home to swing by the LCBO for a bottle of wine. I parked outside, went in, spent a grand total of maybe ten minutes, most of that standing in the Hallowe'en-party lineup.

And when I came out, my headlights were gone. Again. I left the bike for ten minutes, in broad daylight, in the pouring rain, way the hell out on the south end of Bank Street, and someone took my headlights.

Interesting that my reaction was the same as the last time this happened: I went back into the building it happened outside, to tell someone. I don't think I had any idea that anyone would be able to help, or would even care, but I wanted to tell someone, rather than just get on my bike and pedal away from the scene with the headlights gone. And true, no one in the LCBO cared. They told me I couldn't leave my bike in the entranceway and shrugged when I told them what had happened. Which was no help at all.

I used to sometimes just pull the bike up and park it at the rack, without locking it up. (Catch me ever doing that again.) But that I can't leave Mike alone for five minutes without taking the lights off and bringing them in with me? That's so damn depressing.

Who does that? What earthly good could those headlights do them? What makes them walk past a parked bicycle and simply stop, take something off it, and walk away? Who does that?

All Hail the Goop!

2010-10-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

I admit: I was skeptical. I might still be, a little. But when I got my flat tire last weekend, and went out looking for an inner tube on Tuesday - not having time to hit an actual bike shop, I stopped at the Zellers in Billings Bridge Mall - I discovered that the bike 'section' in the Zellers only had one 26" inner tube left, and it was a "Mongoose" self-healing inner tube. Claimed to be puncture proof. Filled with liquid goop that would, if the tube was punctured, seal the hole.

Here's a description of the sort of thing I mean: essentially the tube is filled with a sealant that flows around inside it, until it's exposed to the air because of a puncture. Then it sets and self-creates a patch on the inside of the inner tube.

It sounds like sorcery to me.

But I bought the tube, brought it home, and put it in. Then rode it to work, unfortunately with the nail still in the tire; with the result previously described. And had to leave my bike overnight at work, again, with a sadly deflated tire. So today, I stopped on my way in and bought a new tube, but I did harbour some nagging little hope that maybe, just maybe, the magical and mysterious goop that was supposed to be in the tube I'd already purchased and installed would have done its thing. After all, I did manage to ride my bike to work with a nail through the back tire, without noticing.

And I'm still not sure I believe what happened. I got to work, and started working, so naturally it wasn't until about 1:30 PM that I decided to try pumping up my sad deflated tire. I did, and then left it for a bit to see if it would leak air (and if it did, I was going to have to replace the tube, in time to make it to a poetry show I was covering at 4:00.)

It didn't. In fact, I then rode the bike 5k downtown, parked it outside the show for a couple of hours, then rode it the rest of the way home, with no discernible loss of air. I kept pausing at red lights to look back at my back tire and bounce a little on the seat, trying to see if it had sunk any. It hadn't. So I pulled an inch-long nail out of my tire yesterday, then let it sit, immobile, for nearly 24 hours - not really giving the goop a chance to slosh around in there and find the hole - and then simply inflated it and rode off.

I'm in awe. All hail the goop.

More lessons

2010-10-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

This isn’t so much about biking as it is about me, I suppose. Why is it that whatever lessons I learn, I seem to have to learn them the hard way? Things that, in hindsight, make perfect sense, somehow only occur to me when I’ve come face to face with the cold hard consequence of not thinking of them.

Take, for example, a flat tire. In retrospect, it seems like it should be second nature to check the tire, while replacing the destroyed inner tube with a new one, for whatever object might have caused the flat in the first place. You know, cause it might, like, still be there.

And it might, you know, rip yet another hole in your brand new inner tube, but in such a way as to leak slowly while you're at work, until you discover the damage a couple of blocks after you leave the office. On a day when you need to be somewhere.

At least this way I get to test out whether the inner tube I bought is, in fact, “puncture-proof.” It’s supposed to be full of some kind of liquid that self-seals holes. I’ll find out tomorrow when I try to inflate the tire: I had to hop the bus again tonight, though, because I needed to be at the Mayfair for an event and didn’t have time to repair the flat and get there, especially if I couldn’t be certain the tire would hold.

And yeah, I feel pretty dumb right now.

Lessons (hopefully) learned

2010-10-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

One thing about flat tires: they are never convenient. Somehow, they manage to happen when you're as far from home as you can be, when you're as far from a bus route as possible, and if they can contrive to happen so as to derail your evening plans, they'll do that too.

I was leaving the office this evening with every intention of joining some friends for a pint at the Royal Oak on the Canal. I wheeled Mike out of the garage, into the driveway, got on, and actually pedalled out to the street before realizing that something felt funny. Lo and behold, I looked down to see the dreaded floppy back tire. I got off, and the slow realization dawned. This was going to kind of suck.

I work out of a home office in Vanier, and I live in Ottawa South. The nearest bus routes to the office are the #5, #7, and #1. The nearest bike shop is on Saint-Laurent near Hemlock - a bit far to walk a bike that's rolling along on its rim - and it was 5:30 (and most bike shops close up at 6:00.) And - of course - I didn't have my toolkit with me, which still does contain a patch kit.

Lesson one, kids: always pack your toolkit. The day you don't will be the day you need it.

I called my boss (whose house it is) to ask where the nearest bike shop was. He told me. I realized I wouldn't get there in time. I asked if he was likely to be using his bike this weekend (I didn't think it was all that likely) and he said he wasn't, and if I needed to cannibalize it for the inner tube I could. I went back in the garage, pulled off his front wheel (hooray for quick release) and got it out to the driveway, only to wrestle with the beads for a while and realize that without my toolkit, I couldn't get the tire off to extract the inner tube. Dang.

So, I put his wheel back in the garage, put my rear wheel back on, and started wheeling the bike the four or five blocks to the bus stop, in hopes of finding a bus with a bike rack. A couple of blocks down, I gave up on trying to wheel it, worried I was further damaging the tire, and hefted it onto my shoulder (on the wrong side, as it turned out: my jacket now has a large swatch of chain grease smeared on the left flank.) When I got there, I called OC Transpo to ask if the #1 or #7 had bike racks. "Very few," said the guy at OC Transpo. "The next 7 with a bike rack will be passing at 10:30 PM."

It was a bit after 5:30. Yeah. That's a five hour wait.

"What about the #9? I could walk to Crichton," I said.

"The #9.... next one with a bike rack is at 9:40."

I almost said, "You have to be kidding." But I knew he wasn't. So, I realized that if I wanted to get my bike home, to where I have tools and a patch kit, I would either have to wait four hours, or walk it downtown to the Transitway.

Lesson two, kids: the Rack and Roll program is not for use in case of emergency. (Of course, I learned that last year on a cold March evening, when I got a flat on Montreal Road and wound up walking the bike all the way to Bank Street, only to find that the Rack and Roll program hadn't started yet and I couldn't expect racks on any buses.)

Giving up, I walked the bike back to my office, stashed it there, and headed back to the bus stop to ride home without it, hauling my unwieldy pannier with me. I'll have to go back tomorrow with my tools and patch kit to get it back on the road. (And put Sean's front wheel back on properly. I couldn't be arsed at that point.)

Lesson three? Learn that it's okay to leave the bike behind sometimes. I was so determined to bring it home with me. It was like the idea of going somewhere without it was just unimaginable. Which is kind of funny, and kind of cool. Even the idea of taking the bus, with or without the bike, felt like a last resort to me (and it was interesting how foreign the bus felt: they've changed things since I've been on one. Like that automated stop-call system. And the fare, again.)

Oh, yeah, and lesson one, again, just because it seems important - always pack your toolkit.

Bike Boxes in Toronto

2010-10-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

My friend Frank just brought this post on BlogTO to my attention: Toronto is giving a new kind of bike infrastructure a try - the bike box.

I saw one of these in Edinburgh when I was there this summer. It was painted red with a white bike icon in the middle, and I didn't know what it was. I asked my sister, who's been living in Scotland for nearly two years, and she explained. I thought it was brilliant (and it went into the mental file of reasons Edinburgh came across to me as a particularly bike-friendly place, along with bike lockers in the parking lots, actual bike lanes - unlike the half-lanes I saw in Aberdeen - and bike parking all over the streets.)

What bike boxes do is provide a clear space for bikes at intersections so they're more visible, and allow them to go first when the light turns green. Bikes stop at the forward stop line, while cars stop about ten feet back at a secondary line. Yeah, this does assume that cars obey stop lines. And if you watch any intersection long enough you'll see cars pulled up across the crosswalk, with the stop line somewhere under their back end: they're one of the least obeyed traffic signals. But assuming the drivers know what the bike box is (which they'll learn, given time and enough exposure) and obey the lines, the system works. Bikes get a little protective air around them to stop, wait, and start again, and the boundaries are that little bit clearer.

This is especially welcome to me in the case of left turns. I do merge across lanes to turn left, when and where I can do it safely, but in some cases it just can't be done and I wind up using the pedestrian crosswalk, which is technically illegal. With a bike box, I could bike up along the right side, cross to the left in the bike box while the light is red, and be all set to make my left turn when the light changes. It also gives bikes a little more space and time to accelerate, which I find a little uncomfortable in traffic at times - on a hill, or when space is tight, it's unnerving. If you're going to wobble at all you're going to do it while starting up and gathering speed.

So far there's only one bike box in Toronto: I think it won't be easy to tell how well they work until more are put in and people learn how to use them. A public information campaign would also be fantastic: but then, I think a public information campaign on cycling and cars in general would be a great idea. And I can think of a few intersections in Ottawa that could really use a bike box: Elgin and Catherine for one. Alta Vista (which is an official bike route) and Heron. That insane intersection just below the war memorial (although, maybe it doesn't need to be any more confusing than it already is.) I'd love to see this tried out here: I'll keep an eye on the Toronto boxes and see how it goes.

They're talking about me! Or are they?

2010-10-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

Somehow, even though I know it's been a growing focus for the local media, I'm still pleasantly surprised when I hear a story on cycling pop up on the radio or in the paper. Hey, I think, they're talking about me! Which is what I thought when I heard Kathleen Petty talking to an urban planning expert from Copenhagen this morning on CBC's Ottawa Morning about bike facilities in the city.

Not that either of them said much that I didn't already know. "Your bike paths are beautiful," said the woman from Copenhagen, "but crossing the Portage Bridge was the scariest thing I've done in my life." There was the usual conversation about how healthy biking is - every dollar spent on cycling infrastructure gains back something like $1.80 in saved health care expenses, or so they claim - and how good for the city, with businesses along bike routes gaining something like 10% profits (tell that to the Somerset Street BIA, who put the kibosh on the proposed test route that would have run east/west along Somerset.)

And there were the usual observations about the state of cycling in Ottawa: which is improving, I have to say, but could still use work compared to some other places (cue the golden light, quick audio clip of a choir, and the word "Copenhagen.") Sure, the infrastructure here is still clunky, since most of our facilities were built for recreation, not for getting around town on errands. And sure, in Copenhagen over a third of the population commutes by bike, while here, apparently, only 2% do. (I'd heard 5% a while back - but the fact that I'm quibbling over 3 percent tells you something.) And that observation came with the refreshing sound of dialogue that did NOT assume that because only 2% of the population uses bike facilities, there's no point in building them. No, instead the underlying assumption of the conversation was that the city needed to figure out how to raise that number; and of course raising that number can only be done by making cycling more convenient, safer, and more comfortable.

All this is stuff I know. So it was kind of gratifying to hear this piece on the radio as I munched my breakfast and got ready to pedal off to work. But in retrospect, maybe they weren't really talking about me. Sometimes these media spots make me wonder if I'm more unusual than I feel I am: they talked about how to change people's perspectives on cycling so that it wasn't assumed to be for "people who already lead a very active lifestyle (i.e., young men in Spandex)," how to get more women on bikes, how to make it easier to get from point A to Point B, with the usual female-cyclist benchmarks of picking up kids and doing the groceries. They talked about how cycling year round was only for "the truly dedicated."

Sidebar: As I stare down the ugly face of winter, remembering what it's like, feeling that chill in the pit of my stomach, that was a point that particularly drew my attention. But then I thought about it a bit more. Whenever I hear someone say, "Well, in Europe people cycle year-round because in Europe it doesn't snow six months of the year" I get annoyed. It does in Denmark, people. Take a look at the relative latitudes of Ottawa and Copenhagen. And in fact, last year the snow didn't actually stay down, or cause any real biking problems, till December 9th, and I was back on the River Path (which was once again passable) by Saint Patrick's Day. Three months, folks. Three months. But in Denmark, they don't think of biking as a recreational activity: and when people here are talking about cycling, there's usually this underlying assumption that it's "healthier" or "an alternative" or "nice to do when the weather cooperates."

Not an alternative for me, any more... it's just how I get around. And as for the claim that "right now the majority of people cycling are young men in Spandex," I actually have to disagree. Out on the long-haul rec paths, and some of the major streets like the arteries running in from the suburbs, there may be more men. But in the main, the people I see biking around are male, female, young, old, families. I see 50-year-olds on recumbents, parents and children on tandem bikes (those tandem-seat extensions are catching on.) I see, especially downtown, young women in skirts, men in their forties in suits. There's a wide range of people out on bikes. Apparently they're not all carrying a change of clothes and requiring shower facilities at their offices.

Am I - a female cyclist who travels a bit over seven miles to work and bikes year-round, rain or shine, and does it in jeans and a T-shirt - that unusual? I don't think so. That's not to say that I don't agree with what they said in the interview - cycling needs to be made more convenient and more comfortable to get more people doing it. And it seems pretty clear that more people doing it is a good thing, for the city (although it'll clutter up my commute, but sacrifices must, I suppose, be made.) I'm still glad to see cycling issues getting covered, and things have, generally, been getting better around here. But the cycling community is already a lot more diverse than the news pieces will have you think.

The Bike Song

2010-10-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

My sister sent the link for this video to me today: unfortunately the link didn't work because I'm in Canada and "this video contains content that belongs to Sony Music Entertainment and is not available in your country."

Not one to be discouraged, I went off in search of the video somewhere else. I tried getting to YouTube via Anonymouse.org, which a friend helpfully pointed out to me as I complained to my sister (on Facebook) that I couldn't see the video. That also got me the same warning (but in German.) So, I Googled the keywords and found the video posted on another site entirely: which, lo and behold, also provided embed code. Take that, YouTube.

And it's true what my sister said, this is bike nerd cuteness. I post it here for the edification of my Canadian readership (who can't get the video on YouTube, probably because someone decided Canadians are pirates.) Here's a happy bike song for a Monday. Enjoy!

The Bike Song
Uploaded by rockohoward. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

A Thing of Beauty

2010-10-02T21:47:00.000-07:00

I was on my way out of the Royal Oak on the Canal on Friday night with some friends, and saw this beauty parked against the rail of the patio. My friends are, by now, used to me stopping to take pictures of bikes, so they were fairly understanding, but we were also all on our way to another party and they wanted to organize drives and cabs, so I didn't really have time to stop and truly admire. But I did take this picture.

I should have stopped to get detail shots: the tooled leather seat (one of those wide touring seats.) The muted, brown-and-blue biker flames painted on the chain guard, the fenders, and the down tube. The cup holder. Yeah, the cup holder - a plain metal ring, attached to the left handlebar. The chrome front fork. The smooth, 2-inch street tires. This gorgeous creature was like the bicycle equivalent of a Bentley. Sadly, it was dark, and late, and it was hard to get any details in the picture. But I hope this photo at least gives some sense of the lovely lines of this bike. I have no idea what make or model it is. But it's gorgeous.

Innovations: the good, the bad, and the just plain silly...

2010-09-30T08:07:00.000-07:00

Once again, I am pointed at something that is beyond awesome in bike-dom by my friend Katie Malkovsky. She just posted a link to this bike: the B.O.N.D. Bike (Built Of Notorious Deterrents) takes those fantasies all cyclists have at some point (my personal fantasy being the quick-release ballpeen hammer on the handlebars for judicious driver-punishing: scythes on the wheels are another) and, well, just exceeds them. Totally. Check this out:

Wow... Okay, so it's not really for sale. To be fair, the flamethrower might make it a bit too risky to put on the open market. But it's just so much awesome. There are more details about the bike here, including some notes on the building of the thing: it was constructed as a stunt, basically, by a bicycle insurer in the UK, ilovemybike.co.uk - apparently they took a poll of cyclists, asked what annoys them most about cycling, and invented the ultimate response.

On another note, and also from Katie: she spotted someone in Toronto actually using an ElliptiGo. Her comment was that it looked "totally dorky, and totally fun." I'd have to agree: of all the modifications and alterations from your standard bike shape and mechanics, this one actually looks like it might work, and might be really fun. If, admittedly, dorky.

Not nearly as dorky as the Yike Bike, which strikes me as a strange crossbreed of a bike and a Segway (but cuter, with a sort of cartoon-robot aesthetic. Makes me think of one of the more endearing Transformers):

Granted, you can't fold a Segway. And the way it folds up is really quite slick. Not slick enough to get me on one though. I just wouldn't be able to do it with a straight face.

The ElliptiGo, though, has a certain swooshy grace. And there are things about it that make sense. It has the advantage of not having a seat: anyone who's been on a long run, or gotten on a bike for the first ride of the season, knows that sitting on a bike seat is probably the most painful part. All those folks who use recumbents could use an ElliptiGo for the same reasons: back pain, shoulder pain. But it's certainly not intended to carry any cargo. I know that it's not really being proposed as a replacement for the traditional bike, it's being sold as a cross-training device for marathoners: you run hard, then follow up the run with something that's still cardio but low-impact, without having to give up being outdoors. I don't think the novelty quite justifies the $2200 USD, though: but then I'm not a runner.

And I can't help being reminded of this hilarious video I discovered a little while ago, just to round off this "Captain Video" installment of The Incidental Cyclist:

But you know? I still haven't seen an improvement on the construction of a standard bike. Recumbents kind of scare me (I like being high up enough for cars to see me.) Tricycles are great for stability and cargo, but they're bigger and harder to get through city streets, and I wouldn't take one off the pavement. The spokeless wheels I've seen seem like engineering challenges rather than practicalities (the instant any grit or dirt got into the gears the bike would be out of commission.) There really is a simple rationality to the standard bike. A triangle for strength. Two wheels the same size. The physics are as simple as possible, which is why most people can learn to maintain and repair their own bikes. It all works.

A flamethrower and ejector seat would still rock, though.

Someone stole my name!

2010-09-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, they were actually here first. I've known about this for a while, but was reminded when once again today I typed only "the incidental cyclist" into my browser bar and got (just below me on the hit list, which is new) a blog based in North Carolina, also called The Incidental Cyclist. And here I thought I was being so clever.

I remember cyclists in North Carolina. The ones I saw traveled in packs (I know, they're called pelotons or something like that), wore a lot of Spandex, and were just desperately courageous as far as I could tell - none of the roads I saw in NC had much space for bikes, I saw no bike lanes, and everyone else (and I mean everyone else) was in a car. Public transportation was baffling and scarce in Raleigh, where I was staying, and there were no sidewalks anywhere. It was drive in your airconditioned car, or stay home in your airconditioned house. I also recall all the roads being separated from the subdivisions by stands of trees, so that you never really knew where you were: all you could see was forest on either side, and the occasional brick gate announcing the entrance to "Peachtree Heights" or whatever the subdivision was called: no houses. It was actually pretty disconcerting.

And in the midst of all that, these not-so-huge roads with not much shoulder and certainly no bike lane managed to also support packs of cyclists. The friends I was staying with called them "the Spandex Menace" because they held up traffic, and also, I think, because it unnerved them to have to manoeuver around the bikes. At the time I wasn't a regular cyclist, so I didn't think much of it, but looking back, I think they must have been pretty committed, to be out there in that heat, that humidity, and on those roads.

Which reminds me of a set of other observations I made this summer, about Aberdeen, Edinburgh, cobblestones, and blue paint: but that's another post entirely.

Thanks, NCC...

2010-09-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

(I'm still mad at you about climbing access to Gatineau Park, but I do have to admit, you make my cycling life easier.)

This sign just went up at Parc Riverain, just off Montreal Road. Note that not only does it say "Don't feed the birds," but the bird pictured is ... yup indeed ... a Canada goose.

I can't count the number of times I've come swinging down the little slope from Montreal Road on the bike path, happy to have cleared the awkward crosswalk and dodged the riders waiting at the bus stop and the random skaters or bladers or other bikes that tend to behave erratically at that intersection, only to have to come to a screeching halt because there's a flock of goddamn Canada geese wandering across the path, being fed by some well-meaning family, usually with small children who are also wandering across the path. I know it's not a huge inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, but between dodging goose droppings (which are large, green, and disgusting, and litter the path throughout the summer) and worrying that one of these days a goose will duck the wrong way and I'll hit it, and worrying that one of these days someone's kid will dart out into the path unexpectedly and I'll hit her, a cyclist can start to get a bit frustrated.

How many times have I thought to myself, if you must feed the ducks or the geese or the pigeons or the seagulls, can you at least not do it standing on the heavily traveled bike path?

I note that there are no Canada geese on the path these days anyway: think they've already headed out. Funny how you can have them all over the place one day, moving in great landbound flocks all over the grass looking a lot like a herd of dinosaurs, and the next the whole park is empty. And this sign went up just as the geese left - to give people a chance to get used to the new rule? Maybe. Will it be enforced or obeyed? Maybe.

It made me happy to see the sign, though, and I stopped and came back to take a picture. Here's hoping this will eventually discourage the geese, and I'll have to worry less about who would come out best in a collision.

Happy Car Free Day!

2010-09-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

Photo from Time: European Car Free Day. Whoa.

It's that time again: World Car Free Day! Now somehow, I remember Ottawa doing more for Car Free Day a few years back: I remember having a booth at an all-afternoon info fair on Marion Dewar Plaza, where I was selling the jewelry I used to make out of bits of broken windshield. (Really.) And I remember seeing advertising around town. I even got a Car Free Day T-shirt (it was ugly, but it was.) But this year, it's been pretty quiet. I didn't really know if there was anything going on in Ottawa, which I suppose is a bit of a surprise: what with the NCC's focus on cycling, and the Ottawa Citizen's new policy that 'no cycling story is too small' you'd think more people were thinking bikes, whatever the tone is in City Hall itself. But I didn't know if there was anything planned until a quick Google this morning got me a listing on Planetfriendly.net for a series of events, including a couple of presentations, a parking lot something-or-other at U of O, and a celebratory ride into downtown at - get this - 7:30 a.m. this morning.

Hi, organizers? Just because I ride a bike doesn't mean I want to get on the bike at 6:30 in the morning to meet up with you ten miles from my house at Tunney's Pasture. (And once again I run into the assumption that people who bike are like people who jog: joyful to be up at the crack of dawn and 'pumping that adrenaline.' Remember, cycling is also for us roll-groggily-out-of-bed, stumble-around-looking-for-coffee, hit-the-road-feeling-sloggish-at-nine people too!)

Ah well. It's Car Free Day, and it's a chance to think about how awesome it would be if there were more bike lanes, more and better public transit, and fewer cars. It would be nice if this was a day when you'd actually notice a drop in traffic because people were choosing some other means of transportation, but I didn't really: things seemed pretty much the same as usual. You can't expect miracles, I suppose. In fact, I had the bike path pretty much entirely to myself, maybe because of the misty rainy morning. Have to admit, I enjoyed that. Zipping along over the wet pavement and flattened leaves and dodging puddles, all by myself. Why wouldn't you be car free, when you can?

To Whoever Stole Mike's Eyes

2010-09-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

To whoever stole my headlights from outside the Mayfair Theatre last night:

Seriously, what the hell? They were worth $12.50 each when they were brand new more than a year ago. I'm trying to imagine you as some desperate, shaking junkie for whom those headlights would mean the difference between spending a night in racking DT agony and getting through the next day. But I know that's probably not the case (especially since I can't imagine there's a huge trade in black-market ten-dollar LED headlights.) Chances are, you were just being opportunistic.

Because the bike was still there, and the back tire was still there, even though it's a quick-release and wasn't locked to the frame like the front tire. Even the seat was still there. But what really gets me is it wasn't just a whim. A couple of months ago I was coming out of my writing group at Mother Tongue Books and a passing guy, with some of his friends, reached out and switched my headlights on as he passed. I guess he thought it was funny. I called out something like "Gee, thanks for switching those on for me, it saves me so much effort," just to let him know that the bike's owner had watched him do it. It didn't seem to have much effect. But at least I called him on it.

But this isn't that kind of whim. Because you didn't just take the headlights off; slide them out of their housings and walk off with them, the way you might if you were a little drunk and saw the opportunity and thought it was a good joke. Nope. The mountings were gone, too: so you actually had to use a screwdriver to get them loose and remove them.

And you had to stand on Bank Street, in front of a movie theatre, in the streetlights, to do it. And wasn't there anyone walking by? It was (I think) something like 10:00 at night. So that means you actually thought, well, if anyone sees me they'll just assume it's my bike if I'm taking the headlights off - if I take anything else they'll realize I'm a thief. So at least I know that you know what you are.

What does it take to stand on a sidewalk and blithely remove something from someone's bike? With a screwdriver? I know, I'm lucky it wasn't a set of bolt cutters and I still have my bike. I'm lucky you didn't decide to pop off the seat, or take the back tire, while you were roaming Bank Street looking for random bike parts to steal. I still have Mike and I'm very grateful for that. But this, and you, are still so petty. So damn small.