The Dutch do it right when it comes to cycling. Most everyone pedals to work and around town. Their towns are a network of well-protected bike lanes. Life is healthier and roads are less crowded (with cars). So how did this happen? A culture of cycling. Here’s their queen pedaling around on a classic Dutch rig in 1967. That’s leadership if I ever saw it.
A bike shop in Manhattan decided to take a perfectly good bike, drop a Kryptonite Fahgettaboudit lock on the thing, and then take a photo every day for a year to see what happened. The good news: it’s okay to leave your bike outside overnight if you’re packing the proper lock. It wasn’t until the bike had been sitting unattended for several months that people started pulling bells, lights, and baskets off it. But once the thieves started pilfering, it accelerated quickly. Perhaps this “broken windows” example is a good reason not to pop your seat and front wheel off before locking up your bike.
Patrick Symmes became an anti-bike-theft vigilante after having two of his commuter bikes pinched from city streets. In this deeply obsessive tale of writer-turned-cyber- and GPS-equipped bike thief stalker you get to laugh — and cry — with Symmes as he baits a crackhead into stealing a worthless Huffy and learns very sad stats about bike theft in America. Example: $350 million worth are stolen every year, with 100,000 bikes disappearing from NYC streets alone. And: 95 percent of stolen bikes are never recovered. “In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency — cash, sex, drugs, and bicycles. Of those, only one is routinely left outside unattended.
Traffic lights are dumb. Not in concept, but in execution, because little technology has been added to them since the first lights came to be nearly 100 years ago. Sure, they have lights that vary timing based on traffic patterns, but most can’t tell a pedestrian from a car. Most, but not all. A new light called the Intersector, now deployed in some California cities, uses a microwave beam to measure the speed of an approaching object. If the object is slow (cyclists and walkers) it can extend the length of the green. Cars get four seconds while bikes get 14 seconds. And if you get to a light and no cars are coming it can ignore the normal timing and change red to green.
Pinkbike asked its contributing photographers to choose their best shots of 2011, and while pro shooters don’t always make the best photo editors, especially of their own work, this portfolio contains plenty of stunners. I like Margus Riga’s god-lit shot of Wade Simmons at Whistler, and Wade Simmons again at left, this time glued to moss-slimed rock on the North Shore and frozen in time by Sterling Lorence.
If bike companies sponsored real riders, then we wouldn’t have to follow the soap opera of doping scandals that are pro cycling’s constant companion. This Giant Bicycles ad is running in Australia, where the company is seeking to promote cycling to more people (and get their brand out there in the meantime). Hey, I’m all for it. Business as a change for good in the world? Sounds like a rad idea.
via Streetsblog
Yes, even the baby grand! Well maybe not, but the Gentle Giant Moving Company in Boston wants to move the contents of your abode via bicycle, not truck. The company says they avoid the cost of permits and the hassles of parking — and that a lot of their customers are cyclists who like the idea of a zero-carbon move. The company uses trailers and extra-low-gear bikes. But they didn’t invent the notion: The idea started when a local rider moved friends’ stuff by bike for extra cash, then brought the idea to a Gentle Giant, which loved it. Now they work together.
That’s according to Australian pro cyclist Chloe Hosking, who isn’t apologizing for the thoughts that led to the outburst. Cycling Australia admonished Hosking and in response she’s said she will send McQuaid a formal apology for her choice of words — but the Commonwealth Games bronze medalist maintains that the world cycling governing body, the UCI, is sexist, that the pay is inequitable, and that the leadership is flawed. While Cycling Australia’s retort was that Hosking was being disrespectful, the views expressed are hardly out of line with what’s often been said behind closed doors about McQuaid and the UCI by both male and female racers and especially team managers who find the body dictatorial and inanely organized compared to most professional sporting bodies.
With bicycle vending machines becoming more common, maybe it was only a matter of time until someone developed a helmet vending machine. This one comes from the brainiacs at MIT, and it’s designed to sell or rent bike lids at extremely low cost to users of Boston’s Hubway, a wildly successful bike-sharing system that saw 140,000 rides in just four months. Research showed that just 30 percent of Hubway riders wore helmets, compared to 72 of peeps on their own rigs. The MIT prototype machine would offer head protection for as little as $8 — and those are Giro, not WalMart, helmets.
