Here's Where You Can Park Your Afterthought

I came home last night to a sign on the bike room door in my apartment building. Due to construction in the parking garage (they're digging it up and putting another apartment building on top) everyone with a bike in the bike room has to move it in the next two days. They're asking us to put them in our storage lockers (each apartment comes with a 4'X8' locker in the basement).

The bike room. Not great, but not awful.

I get that this building is so old that a bike room naturally wasn't in the original plans (bikes? as transportation? in Greber-Plan-era Ottawa?), but the underlying assumption that a bike is a recreational afterthought is so built in that I keep butting my head against it. Right now the bike room I'm using is a plywood structure built over a block of three parking spaces in a corner of the garage. It doesn't have any racks, and bikes without kickstands are leaned up higgledy-piggledy wherever they fit. At the back of the room, stacks of dust-covered bikes that haven't been moved in over a year; near the door, we few regular riders jockey for position and try to avoid getting on each other's nerves.

The first "bike room." At least there were racks?

It's not perfect, but it was an improvement over what I was offered as a "bike room" when I first moved in this winter, which was a 6x10' or so concrete room in a storage locker area, which I discovered unpleasantly was locked between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. (or whenever staff got around to locking the door). The other, larger bike room was for another building in the complex, and I couldn't get into it with my building key.

I objected, telling the landlord my bike was my main mode of transportation and it was unacceptable not to have 24-hour access to it. To their credit, the landlord sent me a key right away for the other building and said I could park in their bike room. Which was fine. I did that, and despite having to jostle with the other users it worked out. I keep two of my bikes, my repair stand, and my tools in the storage locker, and the bike I'm riding most in the bike room.

But now, that bike room is getting wiped out, and the few dozen bikes (at a guess) that are in there are going to have to go somewhere else. And the landlord suggests our lockers. They'll be leaving the locker areas open 24/7 now, because there are more security cameras, so we'll still have access to the bikes. But I still have concerns.

I'm going to guess that most of the people who have bikes in that room also store stuff in their lockers. Like, a lot of stuff, and probably too much to make it easy to get a bike in there. I planned on having my locker just be a space for extra bikes and bike gear: but lots of other people put extra possessions, bulky camping gear, spare mattresses, Christmas decorations, what have you, in a storage locker. Lockers in apartment buildings are like garages in private homes. Lots of people fill them up pretty easily.

Also, one of the bikes in the bike room is a large adult trike, and I don't think it would even fit in a locker.

And then there's accessing the lockers. Getting to mine you have to get through two large heavy doors from the garage, down a narrow hall, turn right, then right again, then left, then left again, and down to the end of the row. Then unlock the locker, wrangle the bike in, lock the locker, and head back out. Sure, it's not impossible. But it's a pain in the ass.

I want to know if this is a permanent situation: will we have parking space in the new garage? Are we just being asked to move permanently to the lockers? Has anyone even given it any thought? 

And seeing as the landlord is ripping up the whole back lawn to put in surface parking for the cars that have to move, I feel like some parking accommodation could have been thought of for bikes. A shed in the back yard, maybe? Since all we need is the space of about three parking spots, something in the large, unused, paved court next to the gym and pool building?

Like literally any of these places that are used for nothing else?

So now I get to be annoying to my landlord again, because once again they thought, at the last minute, "oh, shit, there are bikes" instead of recognizing biking as A Thing That Legitimately Exists.

Parking it in the 529 Garage

A couple of Sundays this month now, I've spent the morning down at the Sunday Bikedays on the Sir John A Macdonald Parkway, where they close the parkway to cars all morning so that people can take their bikes, skateboards, rollerblades, or feet on it. Me, though, I was there to help people register their bikes with 529 Garage.

This is a joint project between Bike Ottawa, the Ottawa Police Service, and the Ottawa Safety Council. 529 Garage itself is a non-profit that started about six years ago and is now, apparently, the biggest bike registry in the world. It launched in Ottawa in mid-May.

I first found out about this organization when Bruce Fanjoy brought it up at a Bike Ottawa board meeting (to ask if we thought we wanted to be a partner), and was blown away. You always want to look for the catch, or at least I do, but there doesn't seem to be one at all. Registry is free: Project 529 pays for itself by selling "shields" - little tamper-proof decals you can put on your bike to mark it as registered - and with subscriptions to the database paid for by cities, police services, and organizations like Bike Ottawa. The bike owner doesn't enter any personal information, nothing requiring security: an email is all, and a photo of you with the bike (if you want to include it, though, really, you should). No data mining.

You can go online to their website, or download the 529 Garage app on your phone, create an account, and register a bike in five minutes. (I was averaging between five and six minutes per bike this morning, logging people in through the Ottawa Police Service account with a tablet at our tent near Deschenes Rapids on the Ottawa River.)

Getting a photo of the serial number.

You'll want to include photos of your bike, its registration number (usually found under the bottom bracket, right underneath your pedals), any identifying details (like that sticker from a charity ride you did, or the custom basket, or unique handlebar tape, or a dent in the back fork from that time you tried to jump a culvert and failed) and the shield number if you've got a shield. Add a picture of you with the bike so people know what the owner looks like, and all that info goes into the database. You can add as many bikes to your garage as you want.

Then, if your bike gets stolen, you hit the alert button and the notification goes out to anyone who has the app in a 15 km radius, letting them know to have an eye out for the bike. If you think you see a bike that's been flagged as stolen, you can take a picture and send it in, with information about where it was. And the police have access to the database, so if the bike is recovered, they can search the system with the serial number and description, and email the owner of the bike. I have been calling it "Neighbourhood Watch for bikes."

In some cities, they've recorded staggering results. Vancouver logged a reduction in bike theft that was 30-50% depending on the part of town.

The uptake has been wild. People have heard about it, through word of mouth or social media or via the news, and they are keen to register (and to get the shields, which the Ottawa Police Service are giving away with registration for a limited time. If you want, though, you can buy one for around ten bucks at some bike shops. Also, if you're in the system, you can stop off at a couple of police stations and get a free sticker - for now. Supplies are limited).

The two Sundays I volunteered, I was there around 8:30 am, and the parkway closure goes from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. We would be flat out, three or four volunteers deep, signing people up at maybe ten minutes a person, and not have time to sit down for the whole four hours. Today, in 30-something humidex, we at least had a cooler of ice water to keep loading our own bottles from and Bruce brought chocolate chip cookies in a cooler full of ice. A steady stream of people came by, lined up, got registered, and pedaled off for four straight hours. We're well over 2500 bikes registered locally since May and managing over 100 registrations per event.

For me, it's been fun to see all the different bikes that people bring by to register, from carbon road bikes (the registration number is always easy to find on those, they're always just so clean) to forty-year-old steel frame commuters, to one lovely royal blue full-sized trike, to ebikes, to tandem bikes and trailabikes with kids on the back seats. I got to register a brand new, shining Electra Townie this morning (cream, with teal rims): the woman who'd bought it two days earlier was glowing with pride and delighted to be able to add that layer of protection.

The more people are signed on the better it works: so if you're not signed up, really, what are you waiting for?

Just like that

There's a bike cage at work. I've been parking in there because hey, it's nice to have dedicated bike parking, with a key code door and all that. And sometimes, I just wheel my bike in there and park it and walk away without locking it. Not all the time. I'm a little paranoid.

Which is probably a good thing. Because you should never assume that because a thing has a lock, it's secure. Try that lock out. Try to break it. A security system you can crack isn't a security system.

Yesterday, someone saw a man walk up to the bike cage, reach in through the wire, open the door handle from the inside, and get away with an unlocked bike:



Just like that.

We few, we happy few, we band of #ottbikeaction

It has been a bad time lately on the streets of Toronto. There are four ghost rides planned this week in Toronto, for cyclists killed by drivers recently - last Friday, for Jonas Mitchell; today, for Aaron Rankine-Wright; then June 20 for Dalia Chako and another for the man, whose name has not been released, who was killed in Markham the same day. 

So some people on #ottbike figured we should do something at the same time, here in Ottawa, to show solidarity with #biketo. The two communities on Twitter are pretty close: we talk, we share experiences, we stand up for each other, we follow each other, we put our heads together on best practices and advocacy.

So, a couple of people dug up an old hashtag - #ottbikeaction - and started using it as a space on Twitter to organize direct protest action. 

Marna Nightingale kind of took over organizing the first one, which was tonight, realizing that really all these things need is someone to say, "yes, we're doing a thing. Be at X place at Y time and bring the following items." Everything after that is comms.

So that's what we did tonight, in conjunction with the ghost ride in Toronto for Aaron Rankine-Wright. It was a little short notice, so we were a small bunch - just five of us. But great oaks from little acorns grow, right?

So we rode from the end of Laurier and stopped off at the corner of Laurier and Lyon to draw a ghost bike and write messages. Then we continued on to City Hall, where we turned the concrete barricades set up for whatever they're set up for into our own chalk mural spaces.

For the next rides, we figure something similar - pick a high-profile site in Ottawa, ride there, break out the chalk, wear black, and if there are enough of us, stage a die-in. (We decided against attempting a die-in of only five, because, well, that would look a little silly. Next ride. Are you in?)

One nice thing was the couple from England who had just moved to Ottawa and stopped to talk to us as we were scrawling things all over the sidewalk at City Hall. They seemed genuinely interested in the bike advocacy going on in Ottawa, and also apparently had a mutual friend with some members of our group, via a pub knitting night in Bristol. Who knew?

"We can take better care of each other."
"#ottbike / #visionzero / #biketo" 

"Ride like you were living in the early days of a better nation."

Taking the opportunity to talk bike advocacy with some newcomers to the city.

The path is paved!

Lo and behold! The Sandalwood Park path has been paved!

In case you're just joining us, this path used to look like this:

I took this picture in May of 2016, during a walk-around with some local residents who'd been pulled together by the Healthy Transportation Coalition to pick specific walkability issues that we might be able to tackle. In our discussion, this path had been settled on as an area where we might be able to score some gains for walkability and general improvement of the neighbourhood.

So we went down there that August, on the day of a summer "family fun day" in the park, and mock-paved the path with rubber floor mats. Then we ran around the park all day getting signatures in support of having the path actually paved, and we talked to the local councillor, and we set up meetings, and we discussed options and all the reasons the path needed paving.

It's the main route for the people in Herongate to get to the shopping area across the park, allowing them to avoid walking on Heron or Walkley, which are high speed arterials. The park is used all the time by the young families that live in the housing complex, and a lot of kids on bikes and parents pushing strollers use it to get through the park. There are quite a few people in the area with mobility challenges, as well: canes, wheelchairs.

We argued that the path should be paved to make it easier for these people to get across the park, and because it just looks nicer, less run-down. It would control erosion and dust. It would look like someone cared about this park where so many people come in the summer evenings. And in the winter, when it used to turn into a nightmarish, dangerous, or impassable skid-run of packed, frozen, ice-coated ruts and slushy puddles, it would be possible to clear the snow.

The councillor said it would cost money. Then he found money, but it would take time to schedule. Then last summer there was too much wet weather and crews were delayed. But it was supposed to go in before winter set in. Towards the end of a rainy summer and fall last year, the erosion ruts were inches deep.



I sent video of the ruts to the councillor. But it was too late in the season to start the job, because stopping mid-construction in case of snow or ice would leave things in an even worse state. We were told that construction was slated for June of 2018.

We checked back in this spring as well, and were told construction was going to start imminently. But it was still a pleasant surprise when, on my way home from work on June 1, I noticed the gravel for the base piled up in the park:

A couple of days later, the gravel had been spread out. I almost worried that something had changed and that would be all we'd get - a fresh spread of gravel and a "good enough." 

But tonight, I went by and the asphalt was down. The path was there. Looking almost like it did when we mocked it up with black rubber workshop mats almost two years ago. 

I haven't been the whole length yet to see how it hooks up with the ramp to the shopping area parking lot, though I imagine it's fairly clean. The space between where the old asphalt section stops and the curb on Sandalwood Drive is still as it was: broken, cracked, and the curb is not cut down to the street. . . but it's such a vast improvement. It's finally paved! 

It only took two years of nagging and repeated meetings and emails with the councillor's office. But that's the lesson. It took nagging and emails and remembering when they said they would have news, and asking for that news when the date rolled around, and holding them to it, and being polite, and asking for updates, and showing that members of the community were still tracking this project. I learned a lot about that from the Healthy Transportation Coalition, over the course of this effort.

And now, no one has to wrestle a baby stroller over pitted, rutted stonedust on their way to the grocery store or the drugstore or Popeye's or the mosque!

The extra mile(s)

As of tonight, I'm at 102 km in my 750 km challenge. That sounds like a lot, but I'm very aware that it's only 14% of my goal. . . and there are only 26 days to go.

And I'm realizing that an extra 50% per day works out to . . . rather a lot, really. I'm feeling it.

It might be, in part, that on Sunday I decided to bike to my friend's place to get a lift to climbing, and then come home at the end of the day, with all my rock climbing gear: shoes and harness, 10 or so quickdraws, my trad rack, a bunch of slings and carabiners, first aid kit, two litres of water, lunch, two pairs of rock shoes, helmet, and 60 metres of rope. I've got some sore muscles that might be due to the climbing, and might be due to the biking. It could also be that while I would usually, in a week, ride about 100 km. . . today, after only four days, I've gone 102.

I'm just saying: you can feel the difference when you start tacking extra distance onto your straightforward, utilitarian cycling life. All you folks who go for 177-km rides on a Sunday (I'm looking at you, Chris) - respect.

So this afternoon I figured I should do a little extra, but I was tired enough that I just tacked on an extra jig around the farm, down to Carleton, back up to Hog's Back, and then along the river to Bank Street, then home.

There is, even when you're tired, a real appeal to taking the long dawdly way around on your bike. I found myself stopping to take photos, maybe because I was taking this as a rest day and not planning on pulling a lot of kilometres, just a few extra. So I wound up on the Experimental Farm, my attention grabbed by a pool of water at the corner of a field, left over from the afternoon's thunderstorms.

Or by the cows munching on grass in the middle of the city.

Or the meticulously tagged experimental grain crops in the fields. 

I tootled past all of this, agreeing with myself that I would stop whenever it looked like a good photo, and rolled across the canal at the locks, then back over to Hog's Back Falls, which was as lovely as ever.

And along the river, where I passed a collection of Canada geese and goslings.

And then I zipped down to Bank and Riverside, got on the roads, and headed home. 

I have to say, there are far worse cities I could be doing this challenge in. And I still have about 650 km to go. . . 

(Also, you can sponsor me and my ride, or my team which also includes an adorable biking dog, right here: greatcyclechallenge.ca/Riders/KathrynHunt )

Bogart would love your support!

The Great Cycle Challenge

This month, fresh off of Bike to Work Month, I'm taking on the Great Cycle Challenge. The idea with this is that you sign up to ride a certain distance (you choose) in the month of June, and raise funds for research into childhood cancer. 

I knew about this event before, but this year I decided I was going to get in on it. This winter, my cousin's daughter, Ellie, was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She's thirteen. This is her: 

The four fingers up is because she just got out of chemo round #4. So far, the tumour's stable, which is good. She's got a lot of friends and family rooting for her. Things look hopeful. But she shouldn't have to go through this. 

Not being able to do much else to help (she and her family are in Chicago, for one thing) I signed on for the Great Cycle Challenge. Since I do an average of just under 500 km a month normally, what with getting around town, I went for 750 as a target. But going for 550 last month, for Bike to Work Month, was an eye opener. This is going to involve a hell of a lot of extra biking to shoehorn that extra 250 km into my life. 

But one thing leads to another. I signed up, and then a friend of mine decided to. Marna has been patiently training her dog, Bogart (who was supposed to be just a foster dog until the two of them fell in love) to run along with a bike, using a special leash that attaches to the back hub and clips into a harness with an attachment point on the back. She decided that the two of them should sign up, so she's only counting rides she does with him toward her goal.

We've done a few rides together, and there is a whole other post coming, here, about riding with a dog, how it's possible, and how much work is involved on the human's end. But in the meantime, here was a chance to hang out with Marna and Bogart and do good things into the bargain!

Thus, Team Hold My Beer was born. And I threw it out there: you could join us. Now there are five of us: Sarah, Chris, Marna, Bogart and me. We may also collect a friend's son, who's about seven and wants to get in on it.

Between us, we're hoping to ride 1,850 km, and raise $3,200 for cancer research.

You can support individual team members (it all goes toward our team total) or the team as a whole. You can pass along the word. You can just comment and cheer us on. Come find us on our page.