An evening with the BTA

Had a nice evening last Monday hanging out with the BTA (Bicycle Transportation Alliance) folks at the Velocult bike shop in Portland. Velocult is a neat little place.  I'm pretty sure everyone has had this idea of combining a coffee shop with another business, or a bar and another business.  In college, I always thought it would be a great idea to combine a bar/coffee shop with a laundromat.  It would kill I'm sure.  Of course, the coffee shop in a book store is well worn territory.  Well, bike shops are not immune to this idea.  At Velocult, vintage bikes from the owner's collection line the walls.  There is a Murphy bed like stage that folds down for live music.  There's a bar with a good selection of local brews.  The bike mechanic does double duty as bar tender. The centerpiece is a large oak table in the middle of the store for hanging out.

We were there to brainstorm ideas about how to increase interest in bicycle commuting outside of the BTA's premier month long bike commute challenge in September.   There was a great group of folks representing all ages and types of bike commuter, except perhaps a hipster representative.  It may simply be that hipsters have quietly been reabsorbed into society.  But...everyone else was there.  For instance, I had a great conversation with an older lady who, at first glance seemed like the typical commuting geek you might see overdressed in excessive rain gear riding a commuting specific bike.  We ended up having a great conversation about tire width, the evolution of steal bike frames, and more.  I also shared my idea for clay-mation videos depicting common bike commuting scenarios.  Anybody know a creative type who could help me put those together?   

Summer riding, almost

Living in Portland means riding in the rain...a LOT.  It's the second week of June and still raining pretty much every day, although today was truly stunning.  But you expect rain in Portland.  Tomorrow is back to normal (meaning rain).  What you don't expect is the odd, inexplicably aggro behavior from motorists you find in many other cities.  Here's my strange motorist story du jour.  I have a favorite loop near my house that takes me over a nice little 1000 foot 'mountain' and through some picturesque wine country.  Not bad for a 24 mile loop that starts from my house.  So yesterday, I decide to go for a spin.  As I approached a stop light that is part of the few miles of suburban sprawl I must ride through in order to get to the wine country, I noticed a little blue Ford Escort that wasn't pulling away from the green.  It was just sitting there.  As I passed by in the bike lane, I noticed that two chubby teenagers, a girl and a pasty looking boy were both leaning to the right giving me the finger.  I was a bit astonished and perplexed.  They then zoomed forward and lurched to a stop at the next light a few hundred feet down the road.  This time the light was red, forcing me to stop.  I looked over again and sure enough, as we sat there, both had their middle fingers out, but this time, since they were stopped, I could see that they were staring straight forward, not looking at me, but with big, pleased with themselves grins on their faces.  Clearly they thought they were being fiendishly clever, and couldn't wait to tell their friends about their exploit with the cyclist later.  I couldn't help thinking to myself "these must be those kids who are fed too many large sugary drinks and processed food.  It mus also affect their intelligence".  Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but it seems to me that back in my day, we really WERE clever when cruising about in our cars and antagonizing others.

Here is the link to the loop.  Watch out for a blue Escort.

The 70's Cycling Boom and the Future

May is national bike month, so it moves me to muse on bicycles, motorists, and their interactions.  Like what I suspect is pretty darn close to 100 percent of all cyclists, I am also a motorist.  But this post will not be about cyclist rights or motorist rights.  Instead I'd like to reminisce a bit about an earlier time.  I learned to ride without training wheels in 1972, and shortly after got a brand new Schwinn Stingray.  I immediately began riding it everywhere.  I wasn't unusual.  Every kid in town had a bike and also rode everywhere.  In the town of 25,000 people, there were no roads in town with more than two lanes.  There were no traffic jams of any kind.  The schools had row upon row of bike rack filled with bikes.  The entrances to the city parks were filled with bicycles, with the parks themselves filled with kids of all ages in unsupervised play. That is of course an entirely different topic.  I rode my bike in that town until I left for college.  In all of that time I don't remember a single example of car-on-bike or bike-on-car aggression.  I don't remember any controversy of any kind about whether or not cyclists should be on the road.  I don't remember any motorist ever once complaining that a cyclist was slowing him down in any way.

The 70's were one of the documented cycling booms, and it hit Austin, Minnesota with full strength.  Perhaps it's nostalgia, but something ugly has happened to this country in the ensuing 40 years.  The number of miles we drive has skyrocketed.  Our roads have become gridlocked with traffic.  Our main streets have mostly deteriorated and big box stores with 40 acre parking lots milling with herds of SUV's on the outskirts of town have taken their place.  In an attempt to accommodate all of the motor vehicles, our roads have expanded to four, six, and even eight lane boulevards.  But as soon as these boulevards are built, they immediately become gridlocked.  And so we build more, and they too become clogged.  These boulevards are ugly, loud, and unpleasant places for everybody, but especially for cyclists.  People sit in their cars, stuck behind thousands of other cars.  As a participant in our society, I have spent many many hours sitting with them in my cars.  Many of the people in those cars, for whatever reason, become absolutely unglued by the sight of a cyclist.  Not the thousands of cars jammed onto the same road they are, causing them to require 30 minutes to travel 4 miles.  No, it's the one cyclist that gets them unhinged.

At times I have despaired at these changes.  But lately, I have renewed hope that it has all only been temporary, and we are beginning to regain our senses and returning to a more civil society.  Seeing ordinary people out on bicycles lifts my spirits.