Red buoys mean keep your distance. The color of fast cars. The color of blood. Keep canoes away from the dam. Our pedals churn up and down as we ride past, water to the right on the way out, left on the return. Out and back. Pedaling. Treading water through pine breezes. Strava segment – Row River Trail
Bike racks of Davis, California
There are more bicycles than cars in Davis, it is said. It feels true. Some photos over the years.
UC Davis bike safety video
UC Davis TAPS BEEP Video from UCDavisTAPS on Vimeo. VUC Davis has a great new bike safety video. Traffic laws and campus customs are clearly explained alongside some nice visuals of campus bike traffic. When the roundabouts get crowded, they really can be intimidating, but the video explains how they keep traffic moving and less confusing than four-way stops.
Tireside Chat – poetry and prose reading next week
Next Wednesday, I’m giving a reading of poetry and prose at the US Bicycling Hall of Fame. Admission is free, and if that isn’t enough reason to check out the event, then below the flier I’ll tease you with a photo of one of the funkier bikes they have in their museum collection. Still no response from the organizers about whether I can give the reading while riding the bike around the room.
Cars were coffins to Ecuadorian poet Jorge Carrera Andrade
With a literary nod to one of my favorite cycling websites, Cars R Coffins, I give you a verse from Planetary Man (Hombre Planetario), an epic poem composed between 1957 and 1963 by Jorge Carrera Andrade. Apparently, the Ecuadorian poet and diplomat drank the same water as the Minnesota bicycle/punk crew. Long before the age of the Ford Livingroom, he could see that car manufacturers were eager to fill the streets with the creature comforts we associate with home, to the detriment of whatever else is in the way. XII Hail to the car makers Who have populated the planet With rolling bedrooms, […]
zipping around by bike, again
I noticed today that the only time I make a point of sharing a transportation experience via social media is when I drive a car. At least twice now I have posted updates on Twitter (I really can’t bring myself to say I “tweeted”) about using a Zipcar. And for good reason. Zipcar is a magical program where, with the wave of a card over a windshield, I unlock a car — and so far, a different car each time — find the keys inside, and drive off. To paraphrase their motto, I use a car when I want to. […]
Standing Start: a brief review
Standing Start from adrian mcdowall on Vimeo. Standing Start, a 12-minute documentary short-film on track bicycle racing, uses narration adapted from Homer’s The Odyssey to frame the significance of training, pursuit, and competition. Like Douglas Gordon’s Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, this riveting film from the Scottish Documentary Institute looks at the some of life’s larger questions through an intimate and aesthetic portrayal of sport. One man stands for all men through most of the film, and only in the sparse scenes of a multi-person race are we reminded that this struggle for strength, explosive strength, has meaning because of […]
Dave Wofford: Bull City Bikers
When Dave Wofford (37) tires of preventing forest fires, he designs graphics and presses letters at Durham’s finest fine-art letterpress, the Horse and Buggy Press. Originally a champion of Raleigh’s art community, Wofford has come to see the aesthetic benefits of living, biking, and now blogging in the Bull City. His Critical Mass posters (featured in the far right column) have become an icon within Durham’s two-wheeled community. A decidedly old school and opinionated fellow, he has been known to let loose on City Council as ferociously as Draplin lets loose on Blippo Bold. But perhaps because he knows that […]
Mike Halligan: Bull City Bikers
When Mike Halligan isn’t skating across frozen bridges, he’s reclaiming thrown away objects for recycling. Just last week, the Warehouse Manager at Morgan Imports rescued a Schwinn Suburban from a downtown dumpster after spotting it from a Lull forklift. He’s also an avid paddler, guiding canoe and kayak trips with Frog Hollow Outdoors. Distressed by the amount of trash in local waterways, he started collecting some of it in his down time. And from some of the photos he has shared with me, I’m speechless at the amount of debris he’s hauled out of our rivers and streams. Among the […]
a special place in hell for bike thieves
“A Special Place in Hell for Bike Thieves”Phillip Barronpublished in Urban Velo, Issue 8 (download the whole issue or read it online) A neighbor recently posted a note to the neighborhood listserv that his daughter’s bike was stolen. The bike was unlocked, leaning against another (adult) bike, which was locked. Both were on a semi-enclosed front porch; one could have determined that the kid’s bike was unlocked only if (s)he had seen someone park the bike without securing it, or (s)he walked up on the porch to find out. Either way, this is a pretty bold move for a community […]