los angeles on $100 a day via nytimes

you guyyyyyys, the frugal traveler (seth kugel) went to LA and discovered that to be able to do LA on $100 a day, the best option was....(everybody now) RENT A BIKE.

a lil excerpt (emphasis mine):

WHEN I told people I was visiting Los Angeles for a week without setting foot in a car, one word came up more than any other: “impossible.”

There is the fact that the county covers more than 4,000 square miles. That it has seemingly endless, overlapping multi-lane highways versus a tiny number of bike lanes. And oh, yeah: that it is bisected by a mountain range.

Taken together — not a great place to get around on a bike.

But what if you can’t afford to drive? What if, in fact, you wanted to visit the city on about $100 a day?

so, go on and read more from the frugal traveler! so happy this article exists about el lay in the nytimes. :) i think i may just have to check out this bike in la business very soon. perhaps i can bring a partner in bici dingding crimes. ;)

It's All Greek To Me, Part 1

I am getting mighty sick of the myths surrounding bicycle riding. As I am not in the mood for diplomacy tonight I am just going to go out on a limb and call "bullsh*t" on the whole lot of them. For the sake of something to do other than watch TV or scrub my sink out I will now present several instances of why these myths are simply myths and why they should all be chucked in the rubbish bin.

For the next few days, I will present, in no particular order, the counter to several of the stupid myths that many people labour under. These myths prevent all of us from having better conditions and keep people from improving their everyday lives.

#1 Some people are too weak/old/handicapped to ride.

OK. Having spent over a decade treating some of the sickest and most debilitated people you could possibly imagine, I will concede that there are people in the world who can not ride. You would be surprised to know how few of those people actually exist.

This is the back of my step-father, Richard. I took this picture just a couple of months after he had a bi-pass. The bi-pass was performed to repair a previously bi-passed vessel that had collapsed repeatedly over the 13 or 14 years since it had been placed along with three others. I stopped counting how many joint replacements he has had two years ago. He has hearing aides in both ears. He was recognized as Permanently Disabled by the state several years ago because of these and other health issues.

On this ride, his first since before the last surgery, he rode 23 miles across the San Fernando Valley.

Richard can no longer ride a standard two wheeled bicycle because his balance is compromised. To compensate for this he has switched to a recumbent trike. He isn't as fast as he used to be and taking hills requires patience. But he rides. Does he do it exclusively? Of course not. He gets tired and has to conserve his energy, but he uses his trike when he can and tries to do his local shopping and small errands by pedal power.

He is also working to get better infrastructure in his town of Chatsworth, CA. Just because he can't use it all the time doesn't mean that others can't and he wants them to have better than the currently do.

This girl looked to me as though she may have Down's Syndrome. Her mother had to walk quite quickly to keep up with her. How amazing would it be if San Francisco had a bicycle network that was developed enough that this girl could ride around her neighborhood with her Mom everyday instead of just when we close the streets to traffic. She obviously has the ability to ride, she just requires the opportunity to do so. How much would that add to her life can only be guessed at, but I am reasonably certain it would be significant, for her and her family.

Bicycles are adaptable, much like people. We can add wheels, move pedals, change gearing... many of those who can not walk can, with simple accommodations, ride a bicycle in the same way that those who are considered "able bodied" can. I know for a fact that it would be easier for this woman to ride her adapted trike along the Waterfront than it would be for her to try and get on Muni in a wheelchair to go the same distance. Don't believe me? Try it.

Can't take a walk with you wife? How about a ride?

Don't tell these people they are too old to ride.

So there you have it. People in San Francisco who have mobility challenges can, and do, ride bicycles. I am quite sure they would all like a better bicycle plan to make sure they can continue to do so.

Myth further debunked here and here and here. and here

Can You Name The Theme?

Brownie points if you can guess the common thread here.

picture by Baudman

picture by rudyluciani

Take The Lane Or Make A Better One?

In many cities across North America, bicycles are making a comeback. This is an amazing thing, in my book. For the first time since the 1960's people in the United States, Canada and Mexico are truly making an effort to live life less destructively. Unlike the Hippie movement, today's crop of social experimenters look like everyone else (there is most certainly a lot less patchouli, thank goodness) and choose to work from within the system instead of dropping out to create a new one.

The public hallmark of the resurgence of the bicycle is the bike lane. We lust for them, we beg for them, we cheer them when they are finally painted along the side of the road.

As much as I love seeing them, I have to admit that my feelings about most bicycle lanes are mixed. While many of the newest lanes in SF are well placed and very much needed to get people on the street on their bicycles, much of what we have is substandard by any measure out there. The above lane is fantastic for showing all road users where they should be to move in certain directions and has made this stretch of bicycle route a whole bunch better to ride on. In spite of this improvement, the lane is still either squeezed to the right of, or smack dab in the middle of, 30 mph traffic. No measure of traffic calming was employed here, no reduction in traffic speed, no physical separation of bicycles and cars (there is a buffer zone on the straightaways, but that can feel a bit flimsy when there is delivery truck straddling it). During rush hour, when this stretch is packed with people in cars who are late-late-late, you have to be pretty centered with a healthy dose of trust in the ability of others to drive in a straight line.

This next picture is of Valencia Street. The three most prominent bicycle routes in San Francisco are The Wiggle, Market Street and Valencia. Of these, Valencia St. has experienced the greatest change recently with huge traffic calming and reduction planning, removal of parking and turning lanes, widening of sidewalks and conversion of unused bus stops into bike corrals. These measures have helped to increase the number of cyclists greatly in the last few months and every time I ride there I see more and more people cruising along to get where they are going. Every inch of bike lane on Valencia Street is planted firmly in the door zone and while it is a showcase of new bicycle infrastructure for SF it is also some of the most popular double parking and cell phone space in the City. Having a large police station and many parking enforcement officers to monitor the meters makes no difference either as no one ever issues any tickets.

This lane is on Cabrillo Street and is one of the oldest lanes in SF. It is a fantastic lane as it is firmly established outside the door zone and is striped on both sides to clearly show this to riders and parkers alike. There are many out there, like myself, who wonder why the new lanes are not planned as well as this. We also wonder what will come of this in the long run.

New riders who do not have a great deal of experience on the road frequently see bicycle lanes as a promise of safety from traffic. They don't have the experience to recognize the door zone or the reflexes to dodge doors while not getting hit by passing traffic. Or better yet, be comfortable enough to be able to recognize the cars with the potential to have a door open into them. New riders think they have to stay in the lane to be safe and then become targets for the dreaded right hook. They frequently do not know how to get out of the lane to either get around right turning vehicles or to merge with traffic to make left turns themselves. Many people feel uncomfortable taking the lane because they feel they are getting in the way (not a problem I have) and will not come out of the bicycle lane even when they recognize it at as substandard.

A lot of energy goes into discussions of how bicyclists should behave. There is a lot of discussion about the need to stop at signs and not ride on sidewalks and be polite... and while I agree that riding predictably and with the needs of others recognized makes for a much more pleasant experience for all, unless we address the true problem, total lack of infrastructure that makes it impossible to ride in something other than survival mode, we will always have unpredictable riders.

Between doors and pedestrians in the bike lane, even pedicabs have to take the lane.

If delivery trucks and people checking their GPS systems insist on doing so in the bike lane then we will have to resign ourselves to cyclists darting into traffic to get around them.

If bike lanes are placed in the door zone then we will have to resign ourselves to more aggressive riders because they can not safely use the space that has been allotted to them. Want to see a really frustrated driver? Then watch them get upset when they get stuck behind a cyclist who has to take the lane instead of using the substandard bike lane that has been given them. Who will get blamed in that situation? It won't be the institutions that put in the badly planned lane, it will be the cyclist who is trying to keep from getting doored.

If the only standard of street planning is moving the most cars as fast as possible then we can not complain when some cyclists behave in what feels like aggressive or erratic manners. The lack of infrastructure is the cause, the cyclists are just the symptom. If you maintain a road system that encourages drivers and cyclists alike to behave like the Running of the Bulls then you can not get angry at the users for doing so. There will be those who take the part of "the bull" and those who take the part of "let me get the hell out of the way".

When bike lanes work, people are happy.

If we want to stop the "bad behavior" we need to start building like Portland. If we want new cyclists to join the ranks then the need for articles like this or today's article at Streetsblog need to be eliminated by building better bicycle accommodations.

Of Thrift and Thinking and Bicycles

My home is tiny. One thousand square feet with 3 kids, a husband, 2 cats, a bird and way too many hobbies for our own good. As a result I have a firm rule to keep the clutter down to a level that makes having guests over a possibility (although we are nowhere near the minimalist ideal one finds in magazines : )

One in, two out.

Whenever one of us gets something new, two things have to leave the house. It is interesting to see how this changes what you bring in in the first place, as every acquisition requires sacrifice from someone in the family (unless you are lucky enough to have clothes or shoes that do not fit, and then it is easy to get rid of something). Because of this rule, I make a lot of runs to the Salvation Army to drop off old toys, clothes, dishes...

The only way I go to the Salvation Army is by bicycle, so even if there is a large backlog of stuff to get rid of, it has to fit on my bike. Couple that with the fact that my local Goodwill only carries new with tags or high end designer clothing, I decided to start documenting my thrifted existence.

Thus, this last couple of times my panniers have been over stuffed. In the picture above I have 40 pounds of stuff jammed into or bungeed onto the rack. The clothes I am wearing were all thrifted- the skirt is Evan Picone and had a style of price tag on it that Macy's stopped using in the early, early 90's.

This second picture was taken just a few days later. It was the result of having to make more donation choices because I had found the fantastic skirt I am wearing at the thrift shop after donating everything in the panniers in the first picture. The panniers have about 20 pounds of stuff in them and the skirt is the exact one I used to sell to rich debutantes for $250 back in 1989.

"So what?" you say. In the last few years I have spent a bit of time trying to find different ways of doing things. Something about letting go of the artificial dependence that excessive car use causes in us makes embracing so many other things a great deal easier. Once I discovered what was possible in my life without my car, it was easy to start changing other parts of my life. Everything from how I eat to how I shop to how I dress and how I read changed when I discovered that all I needed to get just about anywhere I wanted was my bicycle, a water bottle and a topographical map. Somewhere along the thousands of miles I pedaled I discovered I don't need most of the things I used to think I did.

I don't need to move out of San Francisco to buy a house. Living somewhere where I can not ride my bicycle to do my shopping or go to the movies or get to work is not an option any longer.

While my love of tomatoes is enormous, I don't want them if they came from Mexico or Arizona or Oregon... I found jam the other day that is made locally and delivered by bicycle and that makes me happy in a way that a jar of Smucker's never did.

High end fashion has been a love of mine since I was a child. Over the years I was able to pick up a few things, but they were so expensive I was afraid to wear them. Now, because everything looks better on a bicycle I have embraced my favorite designers in an all new way, mostly in second hand shops that I ride my bicycle to. A double whammy of eco-goodness!

The best part of all of it, though, is this- All of these things that make me feel better about me make my place in the world less damaging to those around me and I discovered (or reinforced) it all because I chose to open my life to riding a bicycle. Who knew?

Green Up Your Ears

Streetfilms comes through again with this short film about greenways and bicycle boulevards in Portland. I got to ride this stretch of road back in September and it was a really nice experience of what simple changes, like changing the direction of stop signs, can do to make things easy. I would love to send copies of this to every street planner in SF (or anywhere, really) and have it burned in their memory- it can be done, we can have bicycle infrastructure that works and brings people out on their bicycles. It is being done now.

Time to catch up every other city in the USA!!

Portland's Bike Boulevards Become Neighborhood Greenways from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

The Tribes Unite

This article is cross posted at Vélo Vogue.

Saturday was the San Francisco Bike Expo. A one day show of all things bicycle. While its primary goal is commercial, you can buy just about anything you never knew you needed for a bicycle, the big attraction for me is always the people. If it is self propelled and on two wheels you can find the person who brought it there at the Expo.

It is natural for us to form into groups of those who are like minded. To be the odd man out can be tiring on a daily basis, so having social groups that look like us is to be expected. Just as we prefer to ride with people who match our cadence, we look to groups that compliment our personal choices of expression- BMX, cyclocross, fixed, utility, vintage.... Most of the time, we delude ourselves into believing that each of these groups is nothing like ourselves, but then something like the Expo comes around and allows us all to mingle and gawk and admire one another and simply enjoy life on two wheels.

There was, of course the fashion contingency at the Pedal Savvy show. Many of my friends were featured in it (Meli above, KT below)

The men were represented, as well.

While the bike appropriate fashion paraded its way along the cycle track, the cyclocross was in full swing. I can not tell you how much I want to try this (never mind that I do not have the equipment for it and I am NOT buying anymore bicycles after the purchase of one in Portland that will arrive very soon for your consideration).

I love that cyclocross is as popular with woman as with men in most of the places people participate in it. I love that it isn't just about going fast and that those who compete have to utilize all of their physical abilities. I love that the men frequently dress in drag when they compete!

Winding through the whole thing were the Scraper Bike guys.

This group makes staying out of trouble and using the talents that the good Lord gave them fun and educational. Every kid in the program has to have a GPA of 3.00 or higher to be in the group. They design and build their own bicycles and ride together as a group to show the world what a little wrenching, some spray paint and a few people who believe in you can do.

I wish I could show you the dirt jumping competition. My camera died by the time we got to the outdoor area, which is a shame because some of the jumps that we saw were worth documenting (not to mention the pump track my friends at SF Urban Riders built so the kids could get good and dirty). Seeing people get bikes 50 feet in the air while spinning them around and then landing and doing it again was astounding.

Of course, the point to this post is this, the fashion show crew was in the audience cheering on the dirt jumpers who were talking to the scraper guys who were cheering on the cyclocross racers who went and checked out all of the cargo options... For one day, we were all just people on bicycles and there was no difference. We didn't bitch about the road conditions or getting cut off by cars or how no one has lights on their bikes. We were just a bunch of people enjoying all that bicycles have to offer us if we just open ourselves to the possibilities.