Take the Lane

Got lights? How good are they?

Ride at night? Got lights? How good are they?
I'm wondering about my own bicycle lights after coming home from work last night. There are several cyclists among us, and we don't always leave at the same times. I was in the car last night, and left at the same time as two cyclists, and had the unusual opportunity to be a motorist both in front of and behind them for a while.
And they were really hard to see.
The flashing rear and front lights looked OK in the parking garage, but get out on the street, where the riders fade into the gloom and the lights get mixed up with the store signs and street lights in the rear-view mirror, and I thought one of them had vanished.
I'm going to pass on my observations to my fellow riders, but it made me wonder if I shouldn't ask someone with a car to follow and precede me at night, and give me an assessment of just how visible I am.

More about the Toronto Cyclists Union

Dave Meslin sent a note asking to spread the news about the February 2008 Ultrasound Newsletter for the Toronto Cyclists Union.
You can download the newsletter at http://www.bikeunion.to/Ultrasound_February.pdf
Info in this issue about the fleet of bike trailers to be made available to members for urban haulage. A great idea worth copying in other cities.
Or get involved with the bike union (solidarity, forever!) at http://www.bikeunion.to/signup.htm

U of G students conquer one-handed braking

Here's a cool story from Canadian Press:
Four University of Guelph engineering students won a national design competition today after developing a single-handed bike braking lever.
They were inspired to act by a nine-year-old girl, named Lauren, with a malformed hand. 
The girl couldn’t use standard hand brakes, so Micha Wallace, Katie Bell, Anina Sakaguchi and Andrew Morris designed a system that can be operated with one hand.
CP quoted Micha Wallace, 23, as saying, “We came up with a bike brake lever that combines both the front and the back into the same lever handle using linkages.’’
The competition was sponsored by the James Dyson Foundation, set up by the inventor of Dyson vacuum cleaners. The winners receive $5,000, and the design is automatically entered into an international competition for the James Dyson Design Award.
“The award recognizes young designers and engineers that demonstrate the ability to think differently, persist through setbacks and create functional, innovative products that improve the way we live,’’ said a news release from the foundation.
Wallace told CP that the hand brake was specifically designed so that it could be used on any bike. “It uses the same brake cables as any other bike,’’ she explained. “And actually it would be very easy to integrate it to any bike — just take the old handle off and connect the cables into the brake lever, and away you go.’’ The students are looking for industry partners to produce the brake lever. Their design could be useful for bike couriers, police officers or anyone else who might need to take a hand off the handlebars.

Fond memories of the Flying Pigeon

I looked outside to realize with a bit of shock that it was four years go this week that I was in China, riding a Flying Pigeon bicycle through the streets of Tianjin and the hutong of Beijing.
When I talk about bike lust (see last post), it extends to such monsters as the Flying Pigeon, too.
The Flying Pigeon is 45-plus pounds of steel. The ones I rode, rented at train stations and hotels, had just one gear, push-rods instead of cables (check out the closeup of the push-rod brakes), built-in kickstands and locks, rattletrap baskets and came in one colour (black).
But in the dead-flat environments I was riding them in, they were the perfect urban bike: no gears to fuss with, rugged enough for crummy streets, too ugly to steal. (That's me on the right, parking my Flying Pigeon before going in to a Tianjin eatery for some rice and beer.)
Darned uncomfortable seats, but it wasn't like you were going to be in the saddle all day. Although a lot of the day was spent in the saddle, wandering up and down streets, getting lost, finding my way again, watching old men play checkers, buying oranges at a hutong fruit stand, stopping for a beer and rice and suddenly noticing that the day was winding down and it was time to head home.
Back in the day, the Flying Pigeon was THE bicycle of the working class Chinese. In 1986, Flying Pigeon sold three million bikes. The transition to an export focus, and the coming of electric-assist bicycles pushed Flying Pigeon into the background, and in 1998, the company sold just 200,000 bicycles. It bounced back, with different types and even different colours, but in the railway stations and the hotels, it was the beat-up old black ones, with the maladjusted saddles, that were available for the tourists. And I did develop an affection for them.
Would I ride one around the drum and kettle landscape of Waterloo Region? Not on your life. But it would still be fun to have one.

Bicycling's Buyer's Guide

There are things about Bicycling magazine that I don't particularly like. The frequency of car ads, for instance. I acknowledge that cars are necessary -- mostly to carry you and your bike to places you couldn't otherwise reach -- but I am still annoyed by ads for "small" SUVs (isn't that an oxymoron?) and ads showing SUVs running along stream beds (oh yeah, that's environmentally friendly).
But generally I can skim over that stuff to look at what really matters: bicycles.
The 2008 Buyer's Guide just arrived in the mail and I have that bike itch again. I still regret not getting that Specialized Roubaix Comp I test-rode in Toronto. It was a sweet extension of my bicycle fantasies.
But I know it's wrong to be be bike greedy. I have one for the winter commute, one for the non-winter commute and one in case the weather during the non-winter commute is cruddy. This should be enough for any person.
And then comes the buyer's guides, with their tarmac-tearing road bikes, techno-tuned off-road bikes and urban cuties like the Townies. And I just go to pieces. The only thing between me and a new bike is the storage space. Oh, and my partner's reaction. Oh, and the several thousand bucks. Really, not much...

The Encyclopedic Sheldon Brown

The prolific and wry bicycle mechanic Sheldon Brown, of Harris Cyclery in West Newton, Mass., died this month, but his encyclopedic collection of tips, musings and prank articles still lives on at the Harris website.
You can connect with the articles by Sheldon and others at  http://www.sheldonbrown.com/articles.html
Brown was a character of the highest order (and what is it about the bicycle biz attracts these independent and occasionally loony people?). This comes out in some of his work, esp. the April Fool articles (you mean the Bayonetz Bar Ends aren't for real?), but also in such pieces as his take on "Evil Bicycles," which riffs on conspiracy theorists by examining the messages, both overt and less-vert, contained in the names of some bicycle models (surely the Immaculate Suspension is blasphemous!).
The cycling landscape is less interesting without him.

It's Tour de Grand time

Yeah, it's cold and snowy, but it's never to early to think about the Cambridge Tour de Grand.
I got the first notice from the organizers last week. If you've ridden before, you know it's a fun event and a great way to spend a Sunday with family or friends. If you haven't ridden before, this is your year. Sign up for the 10K, 15K, 25K, 50K, 100K or 160K (for those who want to do an imperial century).
The 11th annual ride will be held on Sunday, June 8. The website (www.cambridgetourdegrand.com) still has last year's info, but it should be updated soon.
Registration forms are going out in April.

For further information call Don Pavey at 519-622-1087 or email Bob Scherer at r.scherer@rogers.com

Comment on B.C. cycling plan

If you like to do things at the last minute (I know I do!), then you may want to squeeze your two cents in before the Feb. 29 deadline on the cycling routes plans for the British Columbia Cycling Coalition.
If you have ever ridden in B.C. (or plan to), you might be interested in the proposal for province-wide cycling routes to encourage tourist cycling.
The working title for the proposal is Soaring Eagle Cycling Routes.
Quebec's La Route Verte is the inspiration for this, and for the Cycle Ontario Alliance cycle route plan, (which will be unveiled at the Toronto Bike Show in early March). The time is right, it seems, for some major cycle-route thinking in Canada.
Hans-Jurgen (Jack) Becker, president of the B.C. bike coalition, is asking B.C. cyclists (and frankly, anyone with cycling interests) to speak to the proposals, which can be seen at http://bccc.thecyclistwebhouse.com/Soaring%20Eagle%20Cycling%20Routes%20Proposal/Index%20-%20SECR.htm
There are three areas for consideration: circular routes within the wine country of Kelowna, from Vernon on the north to Osoyoos on the south; circular routes on Vancouver Island from Nanaimo south to the San Juan Strait; and from the George Strait through Vancouver up the Fraser Valley to Hope.
If you like the plans, feel free to lobby B.C. Premier Gord Campbell at premier@gov.bc.ca or the B.C. transportation minister Kevin Falcon at kevin.falcon.mla@leg.bc.ca. 

Bicycling resource site

Here's an unusual website for advocates of cycling, and of alternative transportation communities: http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/index.htm
The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center was created in 1999 and is hosted by the University of North Carolina as a clearinghouse of information about and for cycling advocacy. An unusual angle of the site is the free photo archive: need a photo of a senior cyclist and youth cyclist interacting on a bike path for your blog? They've got a downloadable image, free of charge.
It's actually interesting just to cruise the photo archive and look at the different ways that bike lanes and bike ways can be handled.
Worth a look.

About Collin Cureatz

Way back in July 2007, in a post Are We Asking To Be Hit, I mentioned the case of University of Guelph grad Collin Cureatz, who was struck and killed on the Trans-Canada Highway near Canmore, Alta. At the time, I noted that there were two witnesses to the event (other than the driver) and that with all the charges lined up against the motorist, it appeared "that justice will be served."
Apparently, I was so very wrong.
Stephanie Park, a friend of Collin, has alerted me that the most serious charges against the motorist have been dropped.
Although the original story was carried in the Calgary media, the followup was carried only in the local weekly, the Banff Crag and Canyon. (Thanks to Larissa Barlow of the Canmore Leader for flipping me a copy of the December article.)
According to the article, the 57-year-old motorist, Joseph McDermott, is out on $5,000 bail. He had been charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, but those charges were dropped. What remains are one charge of careless driving and one charge of driving a motor vehicle while disqualified. While a roadside breath test showed he had been drinking, he didn't blow over the legal limit and was not charged with impaired driving.
Because this is his first charge of careless driving, he faces only a maximum fine of $402.
What blows me away is that, according to the Crag and Canyon, this guy has a driving record as long as his arm. From 1973 to 2000, he was convicted five times for impaired driving, four times for driving over the limit and once for failing to provide a breath sample. From 2003 to 2006, he has received seven 24-hour driving suspensions, including one for leaving the scene of an accident.
How many times have you heard of someone like this, and the conventional response is: What does he have to do to get put away, kill someone? So, this guy did kill someone. What else has to happen?
Stephanie Park is devastated that justice in this case has been so easily swept aside. She wrote that, "Although we could not have asked for a more 'open and shut' type of case . . . it did not turn out that way. All criminal charges have been dropped. The remaining charges won't be tried until Fall 2008 at the earlier, and we really aren't holding our breath."
There's an election on in Alberta right now, and elections are funny things. The right issue can really get people wired up. So here's what I suggest you do. Email the Alberta Justice Minister Ron Stevens at ron@ronstevens.ca (it's his campaign address) or call 1-780-299-0580 (his campaign HQ) and give your two cents worth. And then, contact the NDP Leader Brian Mason, at BrianMason@AlbertaNDP.ca or at 780-474-5355 and suggest that the inability of the current government to successfully prosecute dangerous drivers is a safety issue for all Albertans.
Stir the pot a bit.