Rocky relationship

I began this blog entry thinking I'd come up with a pretty clever angle on my perspective on cars. My starting point was going to be the familiar phrase, "Americans' love affair with the automobile."

To accurately refer to the origin of that phrase, which I thought was from a 1960s TV commercial, I Google'd it and discovered that my angle was not original.

Katharine Alvord and Stephanie Mills recently wrote a book entitled "Divorce Your Car!: Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile," which I now intend to purchase as soon as I can bike down to the local book store. For now, however, let me share my own reasons for the divorce before I can be accused of plagiarism.

First, if you're married to your car, you've probably realized he has a serious drinking problem -- gas, oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, anti-freeze -- and admit it, you're an enabler. Doesn't it seem like every time you turn around, he's ordering a drink? As a cycluter, I smell it on his breath every day. It's so bad it makes my eyes water.

And talk about high-maintenance! Isn't he becoming more and more demanding and difficult to support as the relationship goes on? How much money are you spending on him every year? Add it up. (Don't forget that insurance policy you have on him.) He's not exactly a cheap date, is he?

Sure, maybe he holds you tight and keeps you warm on cold winter mornings, but that's only if he wakes up when you turn the key. Sure, he takes you where you want to go, but you get lazier and more dependent on him all the time all the time. He needs you to take care of him, and you need him to take care of you. Can you say "co-dependence?"

Think about it. Should this relationship be saved?

The search for bicycle-friendly cities

Bicycle-friendly cities in New England. Just about any dedicated cycluter knows that term is as oxymoronic as “dry wine,” “controlled chaos” and my personal favorite, “Congressional ethics.”

I really can’t blame city administrations in my part of the country for not doing more to accommodate bicycles. I’ve been told many roads in New England started as cow paths back in the days before Henry Ford invented his nightmare on wheels. Many New England downtowns, I think, are so cramped for space on their narrow byways, it’s impossible to imagine squeezing in bike lanes. Most of my cyclute takes me through Salem, Mass., where there’s barely enough pavement to fit the cars of its citizens, much less those of the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit every year.

I recently fantasized about the possibility of constructing elevated bikeways or underground bikeways but, well ... I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. So my thoughts turn to relocating in a city where bicyclists enjoy easy passage and maximum safety. In America, Portland, Ore., comes to mind. Internationally, Amsterdam, Holland, seems to be the place to go. Since I’ve never been to either one, can somebody vouch for their reputations as bicycle-friendly cities?

Or can anyone nominate any other cities, foreign or domestic, where bicyclists can feel more at home than in New England? I’d be easily convinced to rent a truck, pack my bags and leave New England behind.

A new generation of cycluters

Here's my pal Maureen Bagge Fowler, the environmental engineer at Framingham State College, talking about cycluting to students. The [gently used] Cannon bike at right was raffled off during the second annual Bike Extravaganza.

Our goal was to promote biking to the campus, located in Framingham, Mass. About 500 to 700 students, staff and faculty live less than 10 miles away and could easily bike to campus.

Maureen has been busy ordering bike racks and finding indoor storage for bikes on campus. Anyone can use the showers at the campus health facility, so that removes another barrier.

Another barrier is a lack of a bike. To remedy that, I collected 48 pre-owned bicycles from friends, associates, and through the help of the media. Doug Shepard, a dedicated cycluter who goes 27 miles each way to work regularly, contributed 13 of those bikes. Doug collected abandoned and neglected bikes and improved them.

Frank's Spoke 'N' Wheel [http://mysite.verizon.net/bizoesyh/westboro.html] provided expertise to fix up the gaggle of bikes as well as displayed a new commuter bike.

We sold all 48 bikes, some of which were from the the late 1960s and 1970s. Students preferred the odd colors the best, as well as the classic 3-speeds. The bikes that got the most bidding activity in our live auction had the best paint jobs- whether it was a 1980s bright yellow-ducky 10-speed or a modern mountain bike painted in purple and blue.

We made a lot of new bike owners. Maureen reports, "The bike racks are full." Our goal is to create a bike culture at Framingham State College, one cycluter at a time. The more people who do it, the more normal it is. I saw some people on bikes that day who hadn't ridden in 30 years. I hope they keep it up.

The final barrier is MENTAL. Most people just don't think about biking. They drive one-quarter of a mile to work, or drive a mile to a remote parking lot and wait for a shuttle to take them a mile to campus. This is nonsensical!

The Bike Extravaganza got them thinking and acting differently. Hopefully, the students will take their new habits with them when they graduate.

BTW- the beautiful Cannon moutain bike that was raffled off came from a local police department shed. It had been abandoned.

--not your typical cycluter

Cycle + Commuter = Cycluter

Shakespeare was fond of inventing words. According to a posting by library weekly [http://shakespeare.about.com/library/weekly/aa042400a.htm] Shakespeare "invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original."

Some of those words include compromise, dwindle and frugal, to name a few.

Following in Shakespeare's footsteps, Bill Wooley, aka Wordsmith 1953, a former journalist and devoted bike commuter, and regular contributor to Bay State Cycluters, invented the term "cycluter" to condense and elevate the term "bicycle commuter."

To ensure adoption of a new word, people and the media must start using it. Cycluter rolls off your tongue. Cycluter must be seen online and in print, and heard to be adopted. One person , one group, one website can fuel a movement.

Cycluting is rolling on its way. A journalist, Nan Shnitzler, wrote a story about bike commuting and editors headlined it with her recommendation, "They Call It Cycluting."
http://www.wickedlocal.com/bolton/news/lifestyle/x1213268204/They-call-it-cycluting

The MetroWest/495 TMA website is using cycluting to describe bike commuting.

Cycluter. You heard it here first. Now spread the word.

--Not your typical cycluter

See the Wheel Boston by Bike -- Urban AdvenTours

Boston has the Duck Tours, Freedom Trail Tours and Trolley Tours. Now it has Urban AdvenTOURS -- a bike touring company.

Thanks to a sister TMA [transportation management association that cares about bike commuting, reducing congestion and improving air quality] the ABC TMA in Boston, I went on an Urban AvenTOUR last week by bike.

We met at the Charles River Plaza -- near Whole Foods on Cambridge Street -- and went through the North End, under the Zakim bridge, and finished at Old Ironsides -- the USS Constitution in Charleston.

As we puddled along and navigated through post-rush hour traffic, I marvelled that I had never had the courage to bike in Boston traffic and enjoyed the view from two wheels. I noticed things I'd never see from a car, such as the architecture of old buildings, pocket parks I'd never noticed, the speed of biking VS. idling in traffic, the number of pedestrians on the street, and the weather.

It was fun touring in a bike caravan, something I'd not done since my four children were young enough not to have been embarrassed to have been seen with me in public, on a bike.

Our affable guide never went too fast. He stopped to provide information and tell stories, including the location of the Great Molasses Catastrophe, a location we all have driven by a hundred times, but not realized it was the scene of a great disaster.

Biking under the Zakim bridge and around the locks for the Charles River showed me an aspect of the city I had never explored. I'm definitely going to recommend AdvenTOURS to other Boston visitors and locals. You can bring your own bike or rent one of theirs.

http://www.urbanadventours.com/

18 minutes make all the difference

What a difference 18 minutes makes!

I blew the settings on my alarm, yesterday, and woke up about an hour later than usual. I skipped the customary three snooze alarms, scrambled out of the sack, and started biking to work from my apartment only 18 minutes later than usual. No big deal, right. It was a pretty good recovery, I thought.

Anyway, I quickly discovered that the 7:44-to-8:09-a.m. world is a very different place from the 7:26-to-7:51-a.m. world with which I’ve become so familiar.

More cars. Higher speeds. Less courtesy. Way more anxiety for me.

Because I tend to quickly turn observations into theories, here’s my latest. I’ve always maintained that certain times of the day or week are more dangerous than others, like when schools let out, and at the end of work on Fridays when people are rushing to get ready for date night, happy hour, or whatever other event that makes them feel entitled to nothing less than a full police escort.

Now I’m adding the top of the morning rush hours to that list: 7:45 to 8:15 and 8:45 to 9:15. My theory is that most people start work at 8 or 9 a.m., often flirt with tardiness and, thus, drive more recklessly to try to show up on time.

The closer the big hand is to the 12 on weekday mornings, the more mtorists are on the road and the more reckless they become. I feel a lot safer biking to work when the big hand pointed in a southerly direction.

Have any evidence of your own to support or debunk that theory?

--Wordsmith 1953

Bikes are no longer kids' stuff

I read it in a magazine last week. It’s satisfying news for anyone, like me, who has ever had a bicycle stolen.

According to The Week magazine, “Toronto’s most prolific bicycle thief has finally been arrested.” A seedy-looking used-bike shop owner, the aptly named Igor Kenk, was busted when police used a couple of new bicycles as bait and did a stakeout on a city street.

The planted bikes weren’t grabbed, but they spotted Kenk and an accomplice ripping off a couple other bikes nearby. Police later raided Kenk’s warehouse and found about 3,000 stolen bicycles ... along with “large stashes of cocaine, crack and marijuana.”

No, I’ll never see my 1963 Sears or my 1995 Trek again, but I took great satisfaction in knowing that stolen bicycles are no longer seen as just an occasional cause of childhood sadness, nothing more than a harsh lesson in life for children.

Bicycles have been big business for years. My local shop owner, as well as several of fellow shop owners in my corner of the world, are saying they’ve done about the equivalent of four years’ worth of their normal business in only the 12-18 months since gas prices started climbing.

Some people are routinely buying bicycles, these days, for as much as I paid ($2,000) for my first brand new car – a Ford Maverick in 1971. Bicycle theft just isn’t kid stuff anymore, and it’s about time police start getting serious about it.

-- Wordsmith 1953

There's no such thing as cold weather, just inadequate clothing

Forgive me, Mother Nature, but as much as you’re going to try to dazzle me with your splashy hot colors over the next couple of months, I won’t be seduced.

I’ll never fall for fall because it marks the beginning of a slow layering-up from T-shirts, shorts and sneakers to sweatshirts, jeans, parkas, snow pants and boots. Before long, I’ll be yanking on my ski mask, goggles and gloves before I head out for work on two wheels.

Fall is the season I begin fantasizing about what it would be like to be a cycluter in, say, Daytona Beach, Austin or Malibu. It’s also when I start hearing mainstream New England media invariably present stories predicting hard winters by reporting on the number of rings on wooly caterpillars, the bushiness of squirrels’ tails, or the shape of persimmon seeds.

Spare me.

I know, I know. I can hear the comments now. Native New Englanders typically get as angrily defensive about their autumns as rednecks get about America when faced with war protestors. “Hey, if you don’t like it, buddy, get the h*ll out!”

As a cycluter in New England, maybe my relationship with Mother Nature is just bound to be one with a cycle of abuse.

She’ll beat me up me every winter ... and I’ll put up with it, year after year ... but only because I know how sweetly she apologizes in spring.

--Wordsmith 1953

The Zen of a Road Bike

I’ve recently begun to use two simple words put together, two words that make me happy – road and bike. That’s right, road bike.

For the last dozen years, or so, I’ve ridden a fat-tired mountain bike to grad school classes, jobs, and even on assignments as a newspaper reporter, all the while coveting the bike messengers and serious city cyclers on their road bikes.

While vacationing in Maine this summer, I rented a road bike and was instantly hooked on it, like a drug. The young bike shop employee -- a seriously trained musician, blaring complex jazz tunes throughout the shop from old, boxy speakers -- talked me into the purchase of a used road bike right then and there.

The light-framed, orange dream-cycle with the curved handle bars originally belonged to a fellow north-of-Boston tourist, and rolls effortlessly along city streets and country lanes.

In Maine, I learned the Zen that comes with riding tires of a more narrow width, the exhilarating whoosh past dramatic landscapes and beneath a canopy of shimmering green trees.

Back in Salem, I’m learning to appreciate the early-morning glide past cars that sit idle, stunted and polluting in the 7 a.m. traffic. I’m now a bike commuter, riding three mornings a week from my downtown condo to Salem State College to teach an 8 a.m. class, and then back downtown to my next job.

In my car, the commute can take up to 20 minutes, but by bike, it feels almost instantaneous. I roll out onto Derby Street, cross the Congress Street Bridge, pedal through The Point Neighborhood and then out onto Lafayette Street, lined with Victorians ... and traffic, simmering in a standstill, drivers fuming and futzing with their cell phones and radios.

Sure, there are drivers who honk, shake their heads and rev their engines to growl at those who dare to bike rather than drive a car. Because they have trouble evolving beyond the great American pastime of car commuting, they will never notice details like the sunrise glinting off the harbor, tree-lined streets, children walking to school or the new fall chill in the air.

As children, bicycles featured greatly in most of our lives. We knew no other way, accepting pedal power as our only option for transport. No matter the width of their tires or the weight of their frame, those who understand the art of bike commuting seem to somehow belong to an exclusive club, a quality-of-life-seeking subculture, a serenity-seeking tribe. There is no official handshake or card to be carried in the wallet.

It takes only a bicycle, a stretch of road before you, and the musical strains of another morning unfolding all around.

--Dinah

This one's for you

What are the most memorable events that occurred when you were on a bike?

Once when climbing a long hill on a hot day in the summer, someone driving by handed me a cold beer, they said I looked like I needed one.

It was good.

Nowadays, I’d be afraid to drink something a stranger handed me. That’s OK nowadays the drivers seem less hostile, during that period of time, more than once, I had people throw fireworks at me as they drove by.

--Bike Chemist

Are you working for your car or the reverse?

How much does the average person work so they can own a car?

One author puts it at about 8 hours per week (http://www.bikecommute.com/moving_at_the_speed_of_life.html)

That’s 15 to 20 % of your work week, not a problem if you are a gearhead and cars are your passion. For many of us, in spite of the auto industry’s efforts to make cars the central focus of our existence, a car is like a refrigerator.

Of course cars are needed for other things too, but if you could make the tradeoff and not use a car, you could retire at least five years earlier if the car expense was invested instead of consumed in transportation.

--Bike Chemist

Bike to School targets Freikers -- frequent bikers

According to an Aug. 11 New West article, "Seeking a way to encourage his own two boys to bicycle to school, software entrepreneur Rob Nagler three years ago created a system that would record the students' every ride, and award them a series of prizes based on the number of two-wheeled school trips.

"Today that system -- now powered by an ingenious sensor technology known as the 'Freikometer' -- is going nationwide, with a sponsorship from the leading U.S. bicycle maker Trek.

Now in use at schools in three states, the Freiker system (the name is short for "frequent biker"), will have TREK SUPPORT TK. "'My kids were complaining about riding their bikes to school,' recalls Nagler, the founder and CEO of Bivio software, in Boulder. 'And we lived a whole half mile from the elementary.'" --From Centerline, a bike/pedestrian e-newsletter

It is SAD that "kids today" get rewarded for doing something so basice as taking responsibility to get themselves to school. Three cheers to their parents for eschewing driving them a half-mile in the SUV to school with their sugar- and fat-laden wake-up drinks in hand, in front of the in-vehicle screens. I hope they have a water bottle on their bikes. I'm sure they couldn't make it a half-mile without some kind of libation.

--Not your typical cycluter

Bike to Work events crank up new cycluters

Commuters in Eastern Massachusetts were invited to take part in Bay State Bike Week from May 12-16. Convoys, prizes, support, cheering and refreshments were offered to entice people to try one day of cycluting.

Here's an unsolicited statement from a 40-something, father of two, yoga-loving, scuba-diver, tennis player who used Bike to Work week the motivation to make his first bike commute, 8 miles from Belmont to Boston.

"I have to confess that the Bike to Work Week really did push me over the edge to at least first TRY biking, which scared me a lot before I actually tried it. But the biggest difference was pairing up with a friend in my neighborhood. She gave me the routes and confidence to keep it up. Now, I think I am hooked, for once or twice a week anyway."

You can set up a bike to work event at your workplace or join in the national event, usually held in May. If you cyclute, people probably know that. You influence others by your example. You can heighten that influence by encouraging potential cycluters, providing expertise, extra equipment, moral support, and information about gear, weather, facilities -- like showers, routes, bike laws, and anything else.

The "thinking about it phase" is the pre-behavior change period. People have to THINK about trying something new. The first day is momentous, because they've broken through the pre-change phase.

Remember when you prepared for a big event, like quitting smoking, going on a diet, or changing a job? Trying cycluting requies planning, equipment and effort. You have to want to do it, and mentally psyche yourself.

--Not your typical cycluter

Virtual bike touring from a self-professed geek

As much as I enjoy biking to work every day, it can still feel like a grind sometimes. After all, I’m biking to work day after day, not the beach.

One year, to shake things up for myself, I called the good people at the Automobile Association of America (AAA) and asked for one of their “Triptiks,” with a route entirely mapped out from my home in Beverly, Mass., to San Francisco, Calif.

My daily commute to work, back then, was a 12-mile round trip, so every day, I used the Triptik to see where I’d be if I was riding my bike across the country, a dozen miles every weekday.

Not only did I want to see how long it would take me (I think I reached the Golden Gate Bridge in about 10 months), every time I reached a new city or landmark on my way west, I did a little online research to “Websitesee” and learn a little bit about where I was.

Pretty dorky, huh? OK, guilty as charged.

But I had a lot more fun taking an imaginary bike ride across the country over the span of almost a year, than biking to my cubicle farm one town over, day after day. Maybe next year I’ll head for Alaska!

--Wordsmith 1953

The Goldilocks Excuse

When discussing the possibility of commuting to work by bike with uninitiated, car-commuters frequently make the Goldilocks excuse: Either it’s too far or it’s too close to ride a bike.

Just what is the perfect distance to ride a bike?

It must be something approaching 6.27589 miles ± 0.0000001 mile, because obviously no one lives exactly this distance from work.

Lance Armstrong once said something like anything less than 60 miles is not a bike ride. That’s setting the bar pretty high for most people.

--Bike Chemist