Archive for June, 2011

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Fully-Loaded

Posted June 28, 2011 By Frank

the Brompton sits fully loadedThe weeks of planning are over; it was time for a test ride. Barbara and I had been gathering up the wardrobe for this 4th of July, 5-day train/bike trip to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, so it was easy to stuff it all in the panniers and take a test ride.

Our destination? At first we thought the Back Bay loop; it’s a great outing, mostly following a quiet bike path, but since it was a Monday the peninsula had more appeal. Why Mondays? Because during weekends the boardwalk is way too crowded for a leisurely ride, but a cloudy, cool, late morning ride sounded perfectly suitable for this maiden voyage of sorts. And there’d be someplace fun for lunch.

The bike opens up so many  opportunities for exploring; if it’s flat, and the peninsula is all that, then it’s easy to follow whatever alley beckons.

You can enjoy the sausage because you're riding your bike!We discovered Sabatino’s on the Lido peninsula some months ago. It’s well off the beaten path, in a boat yard no less, so it feels like locals-only. We stumbled upon it one Sunday for brunch and the chili & sausage omelet Barbara let me taste was the best on planet Earth! As a bonus, you sit outside under the umbrellas and can easily keep an eye on your bike. This time I had the turkey sandwich, and if I have already used too many superlatives let me just say it was sublime. This is the life! The two of us exploring new out-of-the-way places, out in the fresh air, lingering over lunch then burning off the calories on the ride home.

So what’s the verdict of this fully-loaded test ride?
We could definitely feel the weight going up the short hill near home, and lifting the bike off the Balboa Island ferry took two hands, but otherwise, the ride was a breeze. I hardly noticed the extra weight on the bike. It was so comfortable I’m going to throw in a pair of jeans to wear out to dinner in San Luis Obispo Friday night; Barbara thinks Ciopinot will be more formal than my bike shorts will accommodate, so now I will dress for dinner.

Stay tuned for more updates. We depart Thursday morning with a 12mi ride to the Irvine AMTRAK station. However it turns out, it will be memorable. And car-free. Now if I can just get my two teenagers to pack…

Read the previous posts for this trip: A Test Ride and My Summer Vacation.

Filed in Rides | Tagged:

Annual IRV-SD Ride

Posted June 28, 2011 By Frank

in Oceanside“It’ll be the easiest Century you ever do,” Elliot Gordon taunted us, “because it’s only 88 miles.”

He was speaking of the annual ride to San Diego he leads each June, for 15 years running. About a dozen of us set out at 5:30am last Saturday from the Irvine AMTRAK station. Why start there? To make it easy on the return trip home that evening; we’d ride to the San Diego AMTRAK Station and train it back.

Not everyone was riding; we had a SAG support pickup to follow along with snacks and Gatoraid, but half the group would rollerblade the route. And don’t think you could keep up with them on your bike! Elliot and his skate friends move along at a brisk pace. My trip computer showed an average 13.5mph which, for me, is a fast-paced ride.

The highlight of this cloudy, cool all-day ride? It would have to be Torrey Pines hill which leads you up to UCSD. It seems to go on for much longer than it looks; we couldn’t stop talking about it all morning. That climb must’ve come around mile 70 or so, and I remember after about 75 miles I lost any ability to feel pain. I could’ve kept going.

This was my first ‘century’ and longest ride in my 2 years getting back on the bike. This big ride put my mind at ease; as I contemplate the 109mi El Tour de Tucson in November, I can picture just how I’ll deal with the challenge.

Filed in Rides | Tagged:

Working Overtime to Torment Drivers

Posted June 26, 2011 By Frank

Maybe this is the ghost of Christmas-Future. Will cars get pushed out of American cities in favor of pedestrians and cyclists?

The New York Times’ Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in “Europe Stifles Drivers in Favor of Alternatives” how Zurich’s Transportation Planners have “been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers.” In Munich, “on street parking is vanishing”.

Why so anti-automobile?

“The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.”

“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt
cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy
and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has
been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities
relatively free of cars.”

“We would never synchronize green lights for cars with our philosophy,” said Pio Marzolini, a Zurich city official. “When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.”

Read the article here.

Filed in In the news | Tagged:

Mia Birk, “It wasn’t all rosy”

Posted June 24, 2011 By Frank

Play

Today she’s the President of Alta Planning & Design; in the 90′s she was in the eye of the storm, so to speak, as the Bicycle Program Manager for the City of Portland where she influenced city leaders, politicians and traffic engineers that eventually led to Portland becoming recognized as Platinum-level by the League of American Bicyclists. “We had to all be on-board.”

What distinguishes Platinum Portland? Lots of safe routes across the bridges, thousands of daily commuters and 60% of the downtown police force is on bikes!

How did she become such an expert? In 1996 she took a month-long research tour of European cities. She found “that 18 cities all had the same story, that they were making conscious choices to put in bike-ways, to swap-off space from motor vehicles for bicycles, to clamp down on the amount of free parking, to make car-free zones, … to reduce motorists’ speeds in residential areas, to promote bicycle transportation. I came back with a clear picture of what Portland could become.”

But it wasn’t all rosy in the Rose City, especially when it came to trading on-street parking for bike lanes. “If you go to the European cities they’ve made a very clear decision that storage of personal, private vehicles is not a function for the government.” Translation: that parking place in front of your home or business isn’t your personal property and may be transformed because the greater public good is moving more people, bikes and cars. I like that; start thinking of it as storage instead of parking. It’s a mantra of change agents – change the label and you change expectations. “Change is messy.” Mia shares her stories of managing the process that led to great improvements for cyclists in Portland.

Show #23 Listen: Stream or Flash player.

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Filed in Audio-Video | Tagged:

A Stretch Goal: Sharrows All Along the Coast?

Posted June 20, 2011 By Frank

on the deck working on strategy
Melissa Balmer, Martin Howard, Allan Crawford and Dan Murphy consider the many great ideas to come out of a half-day strategy session led by Charlie Gandy.

Bikeable Communities did a little outreach in Corona del Mar today. Several Long Beach bike advocates made the trip south to share their expertise with their Newport Beach peers. Read Advocates Meet, Plot Coastal Strategy at bikeNewportBeach.org.

Filed in City planning | Tagged:

Laguna’s L-Word

Posted June 17, 2011 By Frank

It’s a tough, uphill battle most days, so bike advocates support each other. Les Miklosy chairs the Laguna Beach Complete Streets Task Force and frequently contributes to the Laguna Streets blog. He came to my Rain Ride last month, so this week I attended his Task Force meeting.

It’s a small group, but well represented with both City Council members Jane Egly and Verna Rollinger in attendance. The issues are the same I would guess, in many built-out California cities: cars are traveling too fast as they make their way through town, choking the vitality of this beautiful seaside community.

Judith Bijlani and Ashley Johnson of the Visitors’ Center were first-time attendees; I hope they come next time, too, because it was fascinating to learn that many visitors come for just a short stay, maybe only a day, and the preferences each brings. Scottsdale visitors love to compare their experience to life back home, “they’ll start by telling you of their beautiful homes, with lots of acreage, but it doesn’t take long before they’ll tell you that they end up spending many nights at home, watching TV.” Whereas Germans want to bike ride, but it would take Teutonic courage to ride from one of the coastal hotels to the restaurants downtown, so most don’t. Plus, there’s few bike rental options in Laguna apparently. No wonder stays are short.

There’s great progress in Laguna as it relates to improving pedestrian and cycling access. Let’s start with money: there’s $300k in next year’s budget for Complete Streets infrastructure improvements. At the same time, the City Council approved a plan to study the use of Sharrows through North Laguna. Jane Egly summed up all the positive news as a “perfect storm” for improving mobility. Unlike other recent advocacy meetings I’ve been to recently, this one had some real positive energy.

Then the L-word came up: liability. In Laguna Beach liability has been used in somewhat novel ways. Apparently some legal-minded types think it’s better to leave the status quo, dangerous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists due to overwhelming automobile traffic, than to do anything to mitigate the situation. Is their strategy as callous as it seems at first glance? Are they trying to avoid liability claims against the City by pretending not to know, by turning a blind eye to existing conditions? That’s cold! I know city employees think this is the preferred approach to dealing with the coming tsunami of pension obligations – do nothing, but for dealing with safety in their streets?

In the world of early-stage startups that I work in, innovation is prized; this sounds like the total opposite. Is this lawyers run amok? I know first-hand; just bringing up the L-word is meant to inhibit further discussion of bike safety. How do you neutralize such an insidious attitude? It reminds me what I’ve heard of the civil rights movement, when inappropriate language by today’s standards, the n-word, was used during polite conversation; rights advocates at the time were encouraged to turn their heads and walk away to signal their disapproval. It was the first step in changing people’s attitudes; today such language is a pejorative, as ‘liability’ should become in Laguna.

Filed in Opinion

A Test Ride

Posted June 16, 2011 By Frank

CdM to the AMTRAK Station in Irvine
For my 4th of July vacation getaway to San Luis Obispo via AMTRAK, today I took a test run to the Irvine station.

Filed in Rides | Tagged:

Sore Knee Relief

Posted June 11, 2011 By Frank

My knees were sore and I knew why; it was my SPD pedals. I loved them for the efficiency of my pedal stroke, but I knew they were keeping my knee in an inflexible position. Then my feet started to hurt.

the Shimano SPD pedalI’ve had surgery on my right foot and like most foot surgery survivors, most aren’t that happy with the results. Biking on my SPD’s would cause me to limp around the house for the whole next day. Then I saw an ad for Speedplay pedals in Bicycling magazine. I wanted to believe the hype and talked to Will Skeeters at Two Wheels One Planet. He must be a good fisherman; he knew how to reel me in, “I’m back in the shop starting Tuesday, why don’t you bring your bike in then and I’ll let you try them”. I made an entry in my smartphone to do just that.

the Speedplay pedalIt might be hard to get a sense of the difference just by looking at the pedals, but take my word for it – the Speedplay offers a larger point of contact which provides more support. On paper I knew this could reduce some of the foot pain, but there was more to the Speedplay. It’s called float, which I didn’t get right away and Will had to repeat the term to me as I moved my hand in a lateral way to signal what I was hearing: my foot could swivel while clipped in? Yes, and again on paper, I thought this could be the relief for my knees that I sought. Just a little range of motion could possibly bring some relief.

Hey, I started this bicycle enthusiast role a little late; it won’t be long and I’ll be planning my 60th birthday party. The point is these knees aren’t the flexible, muscle-bulging knees like you probably have, mine are more brittle and inflexible. I needed some slack.

Once Will sees that I’m totally hooked on the idea he leaves me to Matt to set me up with some new shoes. Yeah, the hidden cost of these new pedals: they won’t fit my shoes, but I’m mentally committed at this point, I gotta try these pedals. Matt finds me a pair of Sidi year-end close-outs, top of the line. It’s a deal. I let Matt install the shoe mount, cause I know he knows what he’s doing; I’ll mount the pedals myself.

I’ve brought bikes in several times as I’ve tried to switch from toe clips to clip-ins, I could never get them off the bike myself. Let me assure you I’m no wimp; I can slide this mouse across my desk with ample dexterity. But twisting the pedals off, that was a different story, until I was shown how. So now I have the right tool and can easily crank them right off. All I need is that tube of grease and I’ll be all done – where did I leave that grease? I just used it the other day… Hours later, after turning the garage upside down I learn that my son’s friend Andy borrowed the tube; he could return it in just 10 minutes – mystery solved and on go the pedals. Now for the test ride.

A favorite ride takes me up the shoreline along the boardwalk all the way into Sunset Beach. It’s a serene 33-mile round trip to Fish Camp where I’d arranged to meet a friend from Long Beach for lunch. The verdict: although I’m still clipping-in clumsily, the pedals are doing exactly what I hoped for. Few things in life live up to the hype, but in my case these Speedplay pedals have instantly softened the blow from a 3 hour ride. My knees were the first to applaud; I could feel the flexibility during the ride. Just a few degrees of freedom was all it took. The foot pain? That was harder to gauge; I kept waiting for the inevitable pain, sometimes quite sharp, that followed a long ride. There was none. I felt like dancing, well as a metaphor at least.

So do the Speedplay pedals live up to the advertised claims? In this case I’m a very happy camper. There is one thing though, I’d rename them Kneeplay. 
Speedplay vs SPD
The Speedplay on the left versus the SPD. It’s obvious why I needed new shoes; the Speedplay mount is much larger, offering more contact with the foot resulting in better support, less foot pain. The Speedplay mount allows the foot to slide about 15 degrees, swiveling inside the circular mount. It’s the relief my knees were looking for.

Filed in Product Review | Tagged:

Jim Sayer, Adventure Cycling

Posted June 8, 2011 By Frank

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Ever get a hankering for the open road?

Wanna just bag it all and exercise your wanderlust? If so, you want to meet Jim Sayer: “I get to mesh my personal passion with my work-a-day life”.

Jim is the Executive Director of Adventure Cycling Association. Adventure Cycling was founded in 1973 as Bikecentennial ’76 and launched the nation’s first cross-country cycling route in 1976 with the establishment of the TransAmerica Trail. That summer, 4,000 cyclists crossed the U.S. to celebrate our bicentennial. Today, Adventure Cycling boasts 40,000+ miles of cycling routes throughout North America and it’s the largest membership cycling organization in the U.S. with over 44,000 members. Their mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle. One of Jim’s latest efforts to get more of us out on the road is a new website: BikeOvernights.org where “the whole idea is to celebrate one- or two-night trips”.

Adventure Cycling is a non-profit that relies on membership to sustain its efforts. So they get support from their members, support from those who take their tours, and cyclists who buy their maps, and they have lots of maps. Their 40,000 miles of bike routes include 3 major routes across the U.S., Pacific Coast and Atlantic Coast routes, plus they have mapped the longest mountain bike route in the world: the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, which runs down the spine of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico.

Jim describes a 1,900 mile ride that he took with his three daughters last summer. Sounds nice, but is it safe? “We were so obvious, and we were really smart; we stayed out of the door zone… It all worked out fine. So even on the busiest, most urban sections, no problem… If you are a confident rider and you learn the rules of the road, you should be fine.”

Adventure Cycling is working with several states on the US Bike Route System so that someday you’ll be able to pedal across the country on a designated bike route. And if your route ever takes you to Missoula, MT, Jim invites you to stop by the Adventure Cycling headquarters.

Show #22 Listen: Stream or Flash player.

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Jim takes his 3 daughters on a Pacific Coast tour from the Canadian border to Mexico last summer. Along the way they met with friends and advocates, like Mark Bixby and Andrea White in Long Beach, CA.

Filed in Audio-Video, Rides | Tagged:

Sharrows Advocates Fall Short

Posted June 6, 2011 By Frank

The motoring public can breath easy tonight; Sharrows in Corona del Mar are at least temporarily delayed, if not totally dead and we can thank our very own Bike Safety Committee for saving us from this safety improvement. (What’s a Sharrow? Read this earlier post.)

Ironically, if we didn’t have a Bike Safety Committee we’d already have Sharrows on Coast Hwy through Corona del Mar.

City Manager Dave Kiff gave off hints quite awhile ago. The City is ready to paint them; they know the costs. They’re prepared to combine it with other striping that’s designed to make some critical intersections safer for cyclists, but our own committee feels it’s not safe for cyclists.

“We haven’t explored an alternative route,” is Tony Petros’ confuse and deflect strategy. “I saw horrible traffic on the Memorial Day weekend, when traffic was virtually stopped in CdM,” is Denis LaBonge’s reason for protecting us from cars; never mind that slow traffic, which is what comes with heavy traffic, isn’t so dangerous to cyclists – it’s high speed traffic that’s gonna get you. John Heffernan complained about two young women riding their bikes on Bayside Drive, enjoying the Sharrows, but apparently unaware that John was in his car waiting impatiently behind them – I guess the inference here is that the bad behavior of these two justifies denying all cyclists a well proven safety feature on Coast Hwy. Here’s how the cookie crumbled tonight:

from Cheryl Schmitt, City of Santa CruzDenis LaBonge: no
Tony Petros: no
John Heffernan: no
Sean Matsler: yes
Stephen Sholkoff: yes
Barbara Danzi: absent

You can’t take Sharrows to the City Council when you don’t have a consensus from your ‘advocates’, Committee Chair, Mayor Pro Tem Nancy Gardner was quick to assess. Instead she proposed sitting on the issue for now – I suppose so it can die a quiet death from neglect, unlike going out in a fireball as I’m trying here.

Me, I’m not on the Committee; previously I was a member of the Bike Safety Task Force when I discovered the work that Charlie Gandy and others in Long Beach had done to innovate for bike safety. Yes, I know; Belmont Shore is different from Corona del Mar. It’s not a State Highway and our traffic volumes are heavier, not to mention the speed limit – 35 in CdM while the lights are timed at 6 mph in Belmont Shore. But the comparison that comes to mind for me tonight is the commitment from the top; Long Beach has it and we fell short.

In an upcoming interview with Portland’s Mia Birk, you’ll hear her boil it all down to a single issue: resistance to change. Today Portland is rated Platinum as a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Cyclists, but it didn’t start out that way. Mia joined the City as a humble bike advocate and had to deal with bigger setbacks than this during her 6 years in government. It takes time and it takes patience; it’s a game of inches.  

Everyone had their chance to speak tonight. If there had been even 20 or 30 bike enthusiasts in the audience the issue might have had a chance; instead, it went down to a quiet defeat.

Bikes in Lane sign designed by Cheryl Schmitt, Transportation Coordinator, City of Santa Cruz. See Cheryl’s interview here.

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