scenes from the bikey lane: back to the grind edition

(unfortuntately, the above does not refer to coffee grindings and such)

i hope everyone had a great 4 day weekend. mine was full of cat visiting (oh hai, i'm in urz haus), christmas tree getting and decorating, veggie leftovers, beer, coffee, and a couple of bike rides. i didn't go on the longer one i had intended...but such is life ;)

1.) lots more traffic on page. grrr. i missed it when all those cars were elsewhere.

2.) hitting the lights, for the most part. niiiice. yet i was still 6 minutes late. oops.

3.) my gears sticking & me nearly falling over at the green in front of a car and behind the bus. luckily for me, the car driver was patient and followed behind us (me and the other commuters) slowly for a couple of blocks.

4.) a bike light totally destroyed at the interestction of 5th and market. doh! i hope it wasn't due to a hit...just a bump w/ a bike light fall.

5.) me riding to jury duty at lunch. :) i serve my civic duties as needed. now if only there was better bike parking available...i must investigate civic center garage if i get called back tomorrow.

happy monday everyone!

Black & White Saturday

Wheeee!~


happy saturday, everyone!

Depeche Mode

Fast fashion. That is what is starting to happen in more and more places- bikes on trains. The fashionable use their bikes to get to the train to get across the Bay. We need more fashions like this. The kind that stick and make everything better.



Do you have a multimodal commute? What is it like?

Thanks Be For All

I have never had all four of my children on bikes at the same time. If you could see me in this shot, you would see my huge, greatfull smile : )



This is what it looked like : )

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! There is always something to be greatfull for. Feel free to share!

He He He

Hubby the Bike Man found this for me. I dedicate it to him and his cyclocross bike (which is currently parked next to the bike he is building into a fixie : )

follow the light.

happy wednesday, all! :)

"my chrome is shining just like an icicle"

"i ride around town on my lowrider bicycle, bicycle, bicylce..." -- beastie boys

lowrider bikes at the SF bike expo. orale homes. badass, ey.

a werther's original.

childhood dreams bike club, san jose chapter


i'm diggin' the chain steering wheel.


crushed blue velvet seat? yes please.

LA's first tweed ride

this past weekend, LA had it's first tweed ride and here are some photos from the ride..

Union Station

hmm.. what's today's date again? the year please?



good times!



-much love to CICLE.org for bringing the tweed ride here in Los Angeles.
(if you're wanting to see more tweedy action/ elegance.. there are tons of great pictures up on flickr :) I'll be uploading more on my photostream too! yayy pictures)

There Are Bikes At The Expo?

So yesterday was the San Francisco Bike Expo. There were lots of pretty bikes, many of them plant based.

Bamboo Mama! Not For Sale!

Can anyone tell me why you would go to the trouble of making a truly beautiful wood bike with an internal gear hub and not take the tiny bit of extra effort required to machine a horizontal drop out so a tensioner is not needed? I posed this question to a guy from Renovo and I guess they are looking at changing that. I hope so, 'cause that is way too cool a bike for something that visually lame. Much nicer to have it clean like the one below.



I am not, despite my above opinions, that fixated on actual bicycles. Most of the time they come in one of two catagories, useful or not. They are then differentiated by level of visual appeal.

There were only two reasons for me to go to the Expo. The second reason was all the people I knew I would see while I was there. I like bike people way more than their bikes.



This guy's scraper bike was my favorite bike of the whole day because it looked like him. Every spoke was covered in Red Vines!! He was super proud of it.



This guy, from the "Chopaderos Outlaw Bike Club" was so cool he had to wave his hands in the air to testify! I really want a vest with that drunk skull on the back! Anyone out there think they can hook me up? : )



My friend Lilia found us wandering around. When she jumped on this Batavus I instructed her to look "more Dutch". This is her interpretation.



This is Cali's.



I had fun watching the BMX boys show off.




Some of them are too fast for my camera!

My number one reason for going? Meli was in the fashion show at the end! They made her wear pants! I had to witness this : ) She looked fantastic!



That woman is too much, which is of course the reason I like her : )

One last happy shot of the day- a full bike valet!

a weekend bike haiku for you

slick rubber steep hill,

photo by geekstinkbreath

darkened valencia street.

three-speed fender bell.

written by sxl (98%) and calitexican (2%)

note: the main author of this haiku would like all of us to know s/he is working on improving their haikus from "american style" to its proper self contained 5/7/5 format. i, for one, am excited.

Ride Of The Sand People

I was playing around with my scarf the other day and, of course, took a picture of it. It was decided I looked like the sand people from Star Wars. Our friends over at Toronto Bike Chic took notice and declared that a panda shot while looking like a Sand Person would be called a "Sanda".

These are the results of this epic, international story of bicycle, and artistic, inspiration.

Toronto Sanda



San Francisco Sanda

I think I have the edge on this as my hair acts as a full face shield just about all the time.

Happy Friday! Send us your sanda!

mis bicis are my therapy

the most popular article in today's new york times is their well blog's "phys ed: why exercise makes you less anxious." having personally experienced less anxiety and depression after riding around, i was rather intrigued and clicked on through to the other side.

to summarize, princeton university researchers recently compared rats that run to rats that don't run. they put both sets of rats into a stressful situation: swimming in cold water. i don't know about you, but i believe swimming in cold water would be pretty stressful to almost anyone. anyway, the study found that the rats who run had new brain cells created by exercising (not a new discovery). these new brain cells, "the researchers concluded, appeared to have been 'specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.' The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm." the author noted that running is a form of aerobic (cardio) exercise, and, in theory, the conclusions should extend to cycling and swimming. also, for the exercise to start to work, it takes somewhere between 3 weeks and 6 weeks to for the difference to be noticable.

i am not a scientist or a medicinal doctor. i do, however, have a brain in my skull. this brain has been put through a lot of stressful situations. put simply, i have been both the rat that does not run and the rat that runs. and i can say with absolute certainty, that i have responded better to stressful situations after i started biking around the city. i notice i feel calmer, more ready to think rationally and in turn better cope with the stress.

for example. i am under personal stress in this picture (to clarify: the stress was not from hanging out w/ the people i was around). but...notice the smiles? i'm keeping the stress at bay, quite easily in fact.

Úna and cali kriss krossin' the bicis.

this study doesn't exactly break too much new ground, but it did get me thinking about myself and then about you guys, our lovely readers.

so what about you? do you feel less anxious after you have ridden for a couple of months? would you recommend biking as a form of therapy or medication for a friend in need? please let us know in the comments.

LA cycle chic ride

say hi to Heather's red heels :)

Proper Bicycle Fit

It's a must!

scenes from the bikey lane: tuesday is the new monday edition

-1.) the time!! i was running, oh, about 15 minutes late. grr. and i had woken up early too. :)

1.) a cop pulling up across the intersection. i make sure to make a complete stop, leaving nothing to interpretation, because i've seen cops pulling over cyclists in the a.m. rush hour traffic.

2.) a cyclist running through a stop sign and taking a left right in front of cop mentioned in #1. cop and cyclist have words. dirty looks were exchanged. everyone kept going on their merry little morning way.

3.) my favorite little traffic cop. no, that is not an oxymoron. she is responsible for directing traffic to turn from market street onto 8th street. she tends to do this in a way that is favorable to those who commute on two wheels. thank you!

4.) the traffic cop i almost hit yesterday while trying to avoid a pothole. oh heeeeey osssifer. sup? sorry about that!

5.) a silver fox of the architect-looking variety with a sense of humor. you know, he had the spikey silver hair, cool looking plastic glasses, rather large head. i do know of a bikey friendly architecture firm in the direction he was heading. it's not so far fetched a thought...

6.) said silver fox and i exchanged a smile after seeing two, um, junkies yelling at each other about how foiiiine each other is & how good it was to see them. sunny mornings are great for everyone.

7.) the time. i was only 5 minutes late. how did that happen? time slows down, in the best way possible, when you are in the saddle. even if it's just for a short commute.

happy tuesday everyone.

Newbie

She is small, but she is mighty! Our new partner in crime.







Stay posted. She is feisty! Of course, that's why we like her : )

Sheila After 20 Years

This is my friend Sheila. This is the first time she has been on a bike since 1989. This is the first day of the rest of her bikey life!



Altogether, she rode almost 10 miles, including in the street with all of us.





The big grin lasted all day : )



Now we just need to find her a bike of her own! It is aways a great feeling when someone gets excited about something you love. I can't wait for Sheila to really be able to hit the road. We have so much to show her and there is so much for her to show herself!

Do you have someone who needs to get back on a bike? Go help them get back on! You will not regret it : )

Hello Readers. Mucho Gusto.

Hi. Those rather enterprising sorts of readers may have noticed a new contributor as of this morning. Yes, that's me, calitexican.

You may have met me before on the interwebs, or not. I first appeared on this right here site right here (Texas grammar intentional), and then I popped up here. I kept bumping into Meli and Adrienne all over town and on flickr. Through our encounters, I came to believe we all share a similar philosophy on riding bikes, and how they can be incorporated seamlessly into one's lifestyle. I hope to make some of you laugh (or at least smile), and to make others of you think. Most importantly, I hope to encourage all of you to ride around over town just living your own life.

So no matter what sort of riding you do, please get to it. There's a lot of roads, trails, mud, grass, whatever and et cetera to explore.

I would like to officially shake hands with the internet for bringing the three of us to know each other. I would also like to thank Meli, Adrienne and Caryl for asking me to be a part of this venture.

Have a great rest of your day. New horizons await all of us.

Light 'Em If You Got 'Em

OK people. We changed the clocks a couple of weeks ago. It is getting dark really early and it isn't going to change anytime soon.

PUT SOME LIGHTS ON YOUR BIKES!

As much as we all like to get upset at motorists for not seeing us, it isn't a good idea to make it even worse for them (and us).




I write this because on my way home tonight I saw probably 20 cyclists on one of the roads I drove. Of them, 2 had lights! 10%! None of them could be easily seen in the dark. I was looking for bikes because it is a really popular route, but even with me paying a lot of attention there were several riders I just could not see until I was almost on them.




Lights are cheap, they are easy to install and they are important! So put them on your bike and use them!

Have Fun Storming The Castle!

: )

Regular Folk

My friends are just regular old people. On bikes : )















I kinda like 'em : )