Change Lots Of Lives. Build A Bike!

One of the most interesting things about blogging, to me at least, is getting the chance to see where our readers come from.  I use a stats program that can give me a world map of readership over a specified period of time.  When the world map comes up, there are little dots for where each visitor's general area is.

Today, when I looked there were dots in Finland, New Zealand, Rio de Janeiro, Ghana and Turkey all within the same time period.  What a global spread!!  It got me to wondering what kind of information I could easily find about bicycling in some of these places, starting with Turkey.

There isn't a lot of easily findable material from a first person perspective about bicycling in Turkey.  There are a few stories about people having a bicycle vacation in Turkey, but I didn't find (with a very limited search) anything written by a Turk about riding in Turkey.  I have to admit, I was a little disappointed.  Lucky for me, I wasn't disappointed for long!

In my search I found this story about De Fietsfabriek, The Bicycle Factory, in the Hurriyet Daily News.  It turns out that De Fietsfabriek was started by a Turkish immigrant to the Netherlands, Yalcin Cihangir.

"Cihangir discovered that he liked fixing bicycles and wanted to make his own bikes; after six months, he started his own business in Amsterdam. Teaming up with a local colleague in 2004, he started the Bicycle Factory (www.defietsfabriek.nl)."*

The best part of this story is that Cihangir has his parts manufactured in his small hometown in Turkey.

"Bike parts are produced in Büyükcamili, creating jobs for almost 30 men in a small place in danger of being abandoned. Cihangir opened the factory in his home village in order to give something back. People working at the factory have reasonable working hours and get a decent salary, between 1,300 and 1,700 Turkish Liras. Next to the bicycle factory, an atelier has been created where women make special clothing that is sold in the Netherlands and returns the revenues to Anatolia.

Cihangir is also financing a local agricultural project to grow products in an environmentally friendly way. His final goal is to make his home village an attractive place for young people to stay and make a living."*

Here are some of the people who make his bicycles in Turkey

and here is a wonderful little documentary of the opening of his factory. It is in Dutch and Turkish but you will get a very good idea of how big a deal this factory is and just how much good it is doing.

I have never met Yalcin Cihangir and I probably never will, but I would be very proud to own one of his bicycles.  He proves through his actions that there is so much more to bicycles than any of us think of when we jump on them to go to work or play.  Bicycles can save your home town!  Maybe Flint and Detroit, Michigan should get on the bandwagon, too.  After all, Henry Ford built and sold bicycles before cars and now Michigan is suffering the after effects.  Maybe those same bicycles could help repair some of that damage.  I know I would buy an American made bicycle like we used to be able to.  

I would certainly buy a De Fietsfabriek bicycle.  I may not be from a tiny village in Turkey, but it doesn't mean I can't help one out!

*excerpt from "The Turkish Bicycle Factory" by JOOST LAGENDİJK and linked to above.

Bikes Around The World

Knowing full well there is a world outside of San Francisco, I decided to put up some of the recent shots from around the world that have been posted on our Flickr group. We get some fantastic pictures from all over the globe. Every kind of bicycle imaginable, ridden in every conceivable way. Visual proof that there is no one way to ride a bike other than just getting on one and going!

image by RocketDog at A Pic A Ride (UK)

image by Greg Raisman (Portland, OR, USA)

image by rperks1 at Ocean Air Cycles (Ventura, CA, USA)

image by Claudio Olivares Medina (Chile)

image by Iam Sterdam (Netherlands)

image by a.pic.a.day

image by Chris.0917 (Maple Springs, New York, USA)

image by AlainG (Montreal, Canada)

image by y.hayama (Japan)

image by Ian of Slow RPM (Melbourne, Australia)

The World In Review

Time now for a peek at what bicycling looks like in your neck of the woods-

One day I am going to get there! I am going to get to Amsterdam!

From Amsterdam and Amsters@m

Now that the trees are starting to turn I am ready to hit the road again. There is something about the colours that gives me wander lust.

From Washington State, USA and papahazama

Do you ever wonder where people are going? There are so many of them and they all must be going somewhere.

From Amsterdam (again) and Iam Sterdam

Alone in the crowd is just fine if you have what you need.

From Chile and Quiltro Elemento

Yeah, yeah, yeah.. it's getting cold outside. That's what clothes are for!

From Toronto, Canada and Xander

The title of the picture was "Behind Every Great Man..." You know the rest.

From Singapore and jeremyhughes

More Autumn!! I can not sit still!

From Bristol in the UK and Rocky IV

I wonder if I could get Hubby the Bikeman to let me hitch a ride? I don't think so. Maybe Greg can tote me around the next time I am in Portland?

From Portland, Oregon, USA and gregraisman

Thanks to all who have contributed to our Flikr pool! It is always a treat to see what the rest of the world looks like on a bicycle. What does your town look like? Show us!

Snapshots Of The Bicycle World

Bicycles should all come with cameras. The two go so well together that I am sometimes surprised when I see one without the other. Some, of course, take truly wonderful pictures of the world of bicycles and our Flickr group has some fantastic examples of those shots. Every now and then someone sends us some pictures that really stand out, and this week, that person goes by "macfred64".

I love how all of these pictures feel like a really nice dream. These all make me want to get out and ride my Batavus. They also make me wonder how so many of us fell for the "cars are better" farce we have been operating under for so long? How did we let anyone convince us that fresh air and independent power were undesirable?

Macfred, with his beautiful photograhpy, reminds us all that we haven't lost anything. All we have to do to get it back is get out and ride. And take our cameras along to help us remind others.

Be A Kid In A Bicycle Store

How was your weekend? Did anything you do make you feel like this?

photo be Amsterdamize

Or this?

photo by Patrick Barber

Did you feel like a kid with an ice cream cone?

photo by Dustinj

You had to grow up, but did you have one "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" moment this weekend?

photo by Giorgio Vianini

Time To Flip The Script

The internet is an amazing place. It is not on a map, but it is most assuredly a place, and that is the strength of it. All people, from all places on geographical maps can gather in this electronic land and discuss what is important to them as a group. My firm belief is that these conversations are what will ultimately change our world for the better, not legislation or politicians or bailouts or any "ism" we can come up with.

That being said, I reposted a piece from last year over the weekend. I highly suggest you visit the comments section and then come back to this post. The conversation there is, currently, between Mexico City and Australia (Canberra and Brisbane) and Arizona and is about whether or not the current trend toward "cycle chic" is one that adds to or takes away from the total conversation of "bicycle culture".

photo by Richard Masoner of Cyclelicious

Looking at the picture above, I can see it from a few different perspectives, not all of them my own. There are those who feel that so many pictures of young, beautiful women on bicycles isn't much different than endless pictures of young men in spandex pounding the hills of France. In both instances, there is the perception of exclusivity and judgment of those who do not fit these molds. It is felt that because the woman in these pictures don't look like the "average" person that they no longer "represent" the "average cyclist". To make that claim though, there has to be consensus of just what the "average cyclist" is and if that is even relevant. Do we need more of what is currently the "average" in most parts of the Western world? Isn't that what has brought us, in part, to where we are today- that "average cyclist" has become something other than the cute girl next door out for a little fun on a Friday night.

Some would say that in those places where helmets are mandatory, that the idea of a "chic" cyclist is not possible. The helmets make cycling seem too dangerous, and thus, not attractive to people not already on bicycles. While I make no secret of my personal dislike of helmets, I do not believe that they have all that much power to deter and that the problem, instead, is the rhetoric around them that makes cycling less attractive to some. There is no doubt that in places where helmets are mandatory that cycling numbers have dropped tremendously, it has been shown repeatedly (go Google it). However, how often are people shown in helmets actually portrayed attractively?

If more people saw images of what wearing a helmet could look like, in situations that do not involve speed, steroids or jerseys, I suspect that helmets would become less of a deterrent (and yes, infrastructure is what really counts, but we are not talking about that here). If we stop focusing on the fact that the woman in the picture (our own Meligrosa) is young and on a road bike and fashionable and oh-my-god-I-could-never-look-like-that what we could see is a person who has chosen to embrace her surroundings and ride her bicycle her way and not the way we see people in bicycle catalogues. I know I will never look like this on my bicycle, but it shows me that I can look my way, even with a helmet.

photo by Iam Sterdam

The chances of the woman in the picture above being out and about in Denver, Colorado are pretty slim. People who ride bicycles for transportation in the vast majority of the US just do not look like this (people who ride bicycles for transportation in the vast majority of the world don't look like this). It is easy to dismiss this as "cycle chic" and leave it at that. More is required to see it for what it could be- not a judgment about what we each wear but a reminder that we can ride our bicycles with authority and confidence even in heels. There is nothing here that says you have to look like this to ride, only that looking like this doesn't mean that you can not ride.

photo by bitchcakesnyc of Bitch Cakes blog

When looking through photographs, I picked this one out specifically because it is a bit over the top. We have both ends of the spectrum here- chic/lycra, cruiser/road bike, heels/clipless... each rider completed the Tour de Queens (40ish miles). If they can ride together, then all those that fall in the spectrum between them can do the same. Each can just be who they are and ride.

The rest of us just need to start seeing in a broader perspective. When we worry about "chic", who has the best "infrastructure", hipsters, bicycles without brakes, high heels, vintage, carbon....we forget that the common denominator are the people who ride all those carbon, mixte, speed machines from 70's era Amsterdam. We can continue to worry about what the people look like, or we can celebrate all of the wonderful new people on bicycles, no matter how they got there. At least, it seems to me.

Addendum: I was just about to re-write this post because it wasn't coming across the way I wanted it to. But then I saw The-Most-Stupid-Bicycle-Article-Ever (two words- titanium chainguard) and some of the silly comments that accompany it and decided to keep it as is. 1 Girl, 2 Wheels probably puts it all together better than I do.

Orange With Pride

I was brought to the world of modern, urban transportation cycling after reading about the joy that is bicycling in the Netherlands. This week, the Dutch were in San Francisco, in a manner of speaking.

It isn't an accident that our local baseball team sports Orange (or maybe it is, but for this post it isn't).

San Francisco is the hometown of the United Nations. We love flags from all countries!

Spain won. Oh well. We shall cycle on with our heavy duty front racks in tact!

B&W International

From France.

photo by Strivv

From America.

It's black and white. Life on a bicycle is glorious!

Driver To Biker

All of us here at CYLRAB are the same in one respect- we LOVE opening our email to find stories from the people who read this blog! We started "Change Your Life. Ride A Bike!" with the express purpose of creating a forum for people to share their tales and spread the message that bicycles are simply the best way to get around.

This latest submission comes to us from Mexico thanks to Leonel Altamirano.

In Mexico City many years ago, there was a desperate driver, who every day journeyed in his car 10 miles, from his house to his work, taking him him up to 45 minutes, sometimes longer, sometimes less; over the years, it keeps taking longer; for example when there are manifestations in the streets, it can take up to two hours.

He found a solution to this problem with a folding bike, If he could have owned one, the problem of leaving the bike in the parking lot would be solved (also paying for the parking).


Since he has to go on the subway and then into his office, he could carry it with him. He looked in various places for one of these extraordinary methods of transportation. And he found a 28 pounds, one made of aluminum from Mexico, with Shimano gear shifts.

Now two or three days a week he travels on his bike from his home to the subway one kilometer in seven minutes. When he arrives to the entrance of the subway he folds the bike, and enters with it. Once inside the subway car, the folded bike is so compact that it fits under the seat.


When he arrives at the station where he gets off, he takes his bike out and he leaves the subway, then he unfolds the bike to ride the last and short stage of his trip to his office on the bike.where it leaves it under its writing-desk.

In this way he saves almost half of the time of the trip subway-bike in comparison with the car. “to be or not to be in the transit”, is the question.

Now, the desperate conductor is a gladder being and satisfied one, since he arrives earlier at its work and at its home, he coexists more with its family; and by the way he does a little more exercise, contaminating less.



Unfortunatelly, is forbiden to pass your bike in the subway from monday to saturday, but with the spread of this history, we can push authorities to make a change in favor the health.

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DriverToBiker

Do you have a story to share? We want to get it out to the world! Every story touches someone and offers the opportunity to help another person change their life.

Bike To School

Bike to School Day is almost upon us (April 15th). Like last year, I will lead a bike bus to school. I see more kids being taken to school by bike than ever these days, and I know that more will come in the days to come, but it gets me wishing nonetheless.

Other places get that cars and kids don't mix, so they do something about it. In Japan women ride their kids to school in droves (it is illegal to drive a child to Kindergarten there).

In Ontario, Canada they have started a public school where it is against the rules to drive your child to school except in very specific circumstances. The kids either walk, bicycle or take a school bus to stop cars from building up around the school (story via Treadly and Me).

Of course, there is the Dutch paradigm that we all wish we had. This video from David Hembrow shows kids traveling from one town to another to get to school. Now, before we get into the discussion of "we can't do that here! There isn't room" I would just like to say that my stance is "yes we can do this, if we choose to" and I am sticking to it.

Mostly, I just wish people would think about what they can do to get their children out of cars and into the world. There has become such a culture of group think about how dangerous and horrid everything is that we are all believing are own hype. Our children suffer because of our unevaluated fears and paralysis in the face of change.

I wish we would all just get out there and ride our kids to school! You know you can do it. Really, you can.

Art In The Street

Don't you love finding things in the street? I do. One of our Flickr group members, Majortaylor68, likes to find things, too.

"While riding my bike to work on this cold morning, I noticed something in the road ahead of me. As I got closer, I saw that it was a canvas laying face down. I rode past it but I knew if I didn't stop and look at the other side, I'd think and wonder about it all day long.

Here is the artwork after I flipped it over. A piece of art by Noelle. "

"I didn't think that Noelle's artwork deserved the indignity of being run over by cars. I moved it to a safer place. Here it is hanging on the wall at the entrance to the subdivision where I found it.

Hopefully, Noelle will enjoy having having her work where everyone can see it. "

I am pretty sure Noelle will be very happy to see her work so carefully taken care of!

Food For Friday Thought

A homework assignment for you all this weekend! I want you to each imagine what your part of the world would look like if more people used bicycles for transportation. After you get that picture in your head, try to think of one thing you can do to make it happen. Next, share it with us here! We need to start giving each other ideas on how to create the world we want.

In the mean time, here are some pictures from our Flickr group to start you down the path of inspiration.

image by Iam Amsterdam in Amsterdam

image by Xander 'n Dante in Toronto



image by Bart Omeu, in Barcelona



image by Bikes By The Sea, Southern California

image by Baudman in Melbourne



image by Ibikenz, from somewhere in New Zealand

Waltz Of The Bikes

This is a little movie put together by Mike Rubbo over at Situp-Cycle.com. He is the man that did the films about Sue Abbott and her fight to overturn a ticket she received while riding helmet-less in Australia. What I love about this film is the sheer mundane nature of it. No one in it is remarkable. Each person lives next door to each of us. There is absolutely nothing in it that could not happen anywhere in the world, if only we chose to have it be this way. Everything is only as hard as we make it, so maybe watching this will help us all to try to make things easier and nudge us to just get out and try a new way of living. Enjoy!

All In The Family

When asked what I think would get people out on bicycles I always say you have to get the Moms. If you want urban bicycling to catch hold and really make a difference in how we all live you have to get the moms on bicycles, preferably with their kids. But really, the idea extends to families, period. If you get families to ride the rest will fall into place.

image by Amsterdamize

To do that we will all have to demand safe space for our kids to ride.

If parents feel that their children are safe then they will put them on two wheels to get where they are going.

image by Bike Pilot

When kids can travel under their own power, everyone benefits.

If it is safe enough for our families then it is safe enough for everyone and then everyone has the opportunity to ride.

The time has come for all of us to create the world we want to live in. Find a way to get involved in your city. It isn't always easy but it is always worth it!