Take the Lane

Spend your lunch watching Bicycle Portraits

If you made plans for lunch today, cancel them. Take your bagel, sit in your cubicle and watch this TedxTalks video of Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler, two South Africans who spent 20 months riding 6,000 kilometres around South Africa, filming and photographing people on their bicycles.

It's worth the 19 minutes to see the pictures -- of the Brooks saddle propped up with a wooden block, of the Peugeots, Cannondales and Colagnos in unlikely places with unlikely riders -- and hear the stories -- such as the homeless man whose greatest possession is his bike, but who keeps being evicted from his "home" under a bridge because of the presence of the nearby bicycle lane.

One of the two said that "when you take a bicycle journey, there are things in between," and their telling of the things in between -- the not-yet published Bicycle Portraits -- will be a good book.

Positive buzz from regional bike share meeting

There was a full room today for the Region of Waterloo Bike Share brainstorming session. One hour of discussion, ideas and sandwiches as the University of Waterloo Sustainability Project's Active and Community Transportation working group tried to push the idea of a regional bike share to the next level.

Good turnout, with councillors, planners and reps from the Region of Waterloo, City of Waterloo, Grand River Car Share, the Kitchener Community Access Bicycles initiative, Research In Motion, students, cycling advocates and lots of ACT volunteers.

Josh Joseph, who has been spearheading the ACT initiative, outlined the next steps: establishing a stakeholder committee, creating a survey for the viability of a pilot project likely to include UW, Wilfrid Laurier University and the environs, and launching a feasibility study for a larger regional project.

Five ACT teams did a detailed analysis of policies, health benefits, economic benefits and other factors that would support (or hinder) a bike share program. I'll be posting details from their study later.

In all, very impressive and encouraging. What they need now is some group, business or agency -- and likely not the City of Waterloo based on the reaction of one of the councillors there -- to take a leading role in the stakeholder group.

Once again, cycling needs a champion. 

Velo-city online registration is open

The online registration forms for Velo-city Global 2012 Vancouver are now open.

At $1,000 a pop for delegates and speakers, this is a significant financial commmitment; the hope is that participants will come away with more than $1,000 in ideas, innovations, data, connections and enthusiasm for cycling options for thier communities. (See earlier post)

 

Fundraiser to benefit family of Jenna Morrison

The loss of young mother, yoga instructor and cyclist Jenna Morrison in Toronto earlier this month to a right-turning truck is unbelievably sad.

Her death has been the focus for public grieving (a ghost ride last Monday and a packed church for her funeral that night) and public action (MP Olivia Chow's private member's bill calling for truck side guards).

Morrison had a Waterloo Region connection through fellow yoga instructors at Blue Skies Yoga & Eco Store in Kitchener, who have decided to host a fundraising open house next Sunday, Nov. 27, to support Morrison's partner Florian Schuck and their five-year-old son, Lukas.

The open house will be held from noon to 4 p.m. at 55 Victoria St. N., Suite G. There will be free treatments in shiatsu, acupuncture, massage therapy, classes in Qi Gong and restorative yoga, a silent auction and a bake sale. All donations and proceeds will go to Morrison's partner and their son.

There are more details at the Waterloo Cycling Club website.

 

Invasion of the fatbikes

I'm starting to see fatbikes everywhere.

The first one was this Salsa Mukluk 2, in the window of Braun's bicycles in Kitchener.

A sweet bike, and surprisingly light considering it has 3.7 inch balloon tires on the thing.

So the next day, I see someone riding something similar along the bottom of my backyard, and then another one on the street. Yeah, it was snowing today, but not long enough to make you put your road bike away, surely.

Patrick Verriet at Braun's says there's a lot of interest in the fatbike (not fat tire bike?) for winter riding, since you can ride with a low tire pressure and essentially have a snowshoe's worth of traction connecting with the road. And bumps? Icy washboard is no problem, although Patrick says he sees the Mukluk as appealing more to those who want to ride the hydrocut or a snow-slicked mountain bike facility.

Remember when ski resorts said they would "never" allow snowboards to mix with skiers? It won't be long before all of them are offering mid-winter ski-hill trail packages for cyclists. Money talks.

Martin Leonard has let his Fatbike Alaska blog go fallow, but there are some good posts there about the challenges of winter fatbiking, and some links. Guitar Ted posted earlier this year about fatbikes at Twenty Nine Inches.

While I like the notion of bike tech that will get more people riding in the winter, the skinny-tire guy in me is a bit revolted by the rubber on these fatbikes. I feel like the old fart rider who says, "If ordinary winter-studded tires were good enough for me pa, they's good enough for me."

These pinup calendars are safe for work, if you work with cyclists

You can get the usual cycling calendar of Tour de France wannabes doing training rides, or you can try one of these.

Copenhagen-based Cycle Chic has come out with its 2012 calendar of long shots of short skirts, and the CyclePassion Calendar 2012 is out, to show that such pro cyclists as Liz Hatch (her photo was taken with Veronica Andreasson, both dressed in corsets and short skirts on a 2011 TdF downhill . . . I don't think I've ever seen such inattention to the road on the part of the pack, the escort motorbikes or the support vehicles. See the film on YouTube), Pauline Ferrand Prevot, and Hannah Klein are more than powerful legs and determination. There are numerous videos of the CyclePassion women on YouTube, of which this one of Klein is only one.

Then there's the fun Chicago-based TyK (Thought You Knew) cycle chick pinup project, where various female recreational cyclists mug for the camera to show that you don't have to have a racer body to be part of the global cycling community. They were trying to raise $5,000 through KickStarter. That they raised $1,000 more than they needed suggests that hundreds of cycle fans get it. That they raised a fuss when it was rumoured TyK is leaving Chicago shows how important the group is to the cycling community in that city.

 

Velo-city Global 2012 extends deadline for papers

Although I had recently posted that the Velo-city Global 2012 final deadline for their call for presentations was Tuesday, Nov. 15, I was not apparently the only one who thought that the timeline from announcement to deadline was a bit short.

I just received an email from the organizers saying that the deadline has been extended to Friday, Nov. 25.

Velo-city Global 2012 is the world's biggest and most diverse cycling planning conference. There will likely be delegates in host city Vancouver between June 26 and 29 from every continent (OK, not Antarctica -- can penguins cycle?) who will come to talk about and to hear about cycling plans, cycling advocacy and cycling infrastructure.

The call for presentations is to bring advocates and researchers out of the woodwork.If you know someone who's a good talker or is elbow-deep in cycling research, send them to the call for presentations page.

As for registration, the online forms are still not ready.

 

Cycling can be hell in Britain, too

In case you thought that North America is hell on Earth for cyclists and Europe is some kind of enchanted bicycle forest where cyclists are venerated, here's a U.K. website, carbuzz.co.uk, which addresses the car-bicycle animus that we all know so well.

Written by cyclists and motorists, the web article "What drivers can do to be more cyclist aware," is a succinct retelling of what you'd tell your driver buddies over drinks, and what cyclists should remind themselves. (It's Britain, so do think about what they mean when they refer to approaching from the left or right). The article puts on the onus on the driver: "It's your responsibility to avoid hitting the cyclist, not the resonsibility of the cyclist to avoid getting hit by you." A good message to have posted in police cafeterias in Ontario.

The one unexpected reference was to bicycles being legally entitled to "sneak up" and pass a stopped car at a light, and urging motorists to double check their blind spots before making a left turn.

Seems to me it would be smarter to ask cyclists to pull up behind traffic at a light -- taking the lane -- and turn or continue once the traffic flow resumes.

Cyclist finds stolen bike and steals it back

Kudos to Kathryn Lucas, of Denver, who saw what appeared to be her stolen bicycle on Craigslist, went to meet the seller, realized it was her bike, convinced him to let her take it for a test ride and then just rode off with it.

Oh, and she called the police and the guy was arrested. Here's the report from the ABC news website.

Victory over bicycle thieves!

Double Danny news: vote MacAskill as 2012 adventurer AND he's coming to Canada to film

Double big news from the National Geographic. The lineup for the magazine's 2012 People's Choice Award for Adventurer of the Year, includes urban street skills cyclist Danny MacAskill among the skiers, surfers, climbers, hikers and others.

You can read about the contest and vote here. There's a link on the site to MacAskill's latest video, Industrial Revolutions, a Q & A with MacAskill, and a couple of photos.

Most interesting bit from the Q & A is that MacAskill has some Canadian cycling venues in mind, and is coming back to Canada to film his next video. Oh Danny Boy, the back country is a-calling ye.

Voting closes Jan. 18, 2012.