Unconventional Sources

I admit it. I love the bicycles by Madsen, because they’re pretty. I love the lines of them, and the colors seem nice… wait a minute. The colors of the web site are nice, and the people riding on the bicycles are pretty, but what about the bikes?

The bicycles are pretty expensive actually, ranging from 1,000 dollars on up. Of course, these bicycles include the trailer parts, built in. Bicycle trailers are expensive in and of themselves, so maybe the Madsen bicycles aren’t so expensive.

But then, the Madsen bikes are awfully long, what with the built-in trailer portions, and that extra length doesn’t appear to be removable when one isn’t hauling kids or cargo. That’s kind of awkward.

I’m of two minds about these Madsen bicycles. Does anyone have any information that would sway me one way or another?

Last month, I wrote about Bikely, a web service that helps people share their preferred bicycling route through Google Maps. Today, I found out about a similar service, Map My Ride. Map My Ride uses MapQuest instead of Google Maps, which means that the interface isn’t quite as pretty, but it’s easier to find nearby businesses. It seems that there are many more routes on Map My Ride as well.

A note that makes me wish I were in California – and that’s a rare thing:

May 11-15 is California Bike Commute Week this year. That means that you’ve got less than two weeks to prepare for that week of bike commuting, so maybe you want to get a bit of practice in – a day or two of bike commuting between then and now.

Map out you route, and take a bit of extra time, and enjoy yourself. You’ll be saving money and helping the clear the air in the process.

I am in love with Bikely. It’s a simple web site with a simple idea that makes life for bicyclists a lot more interesting.

Imagine Google Maps, but on a site dedicated to the sharing of good bike routes all around the world. That’s Bikely. I’m trying to plan a bicycling trip out of London right now, for example, but I really don’t know the roads. Bikely has been extremely helpful in my efforts.

The bike paths are shown on the maps, but show are the little points along the way, with directions and sites worthy of remark showing up as you progress from point a to point b.

The only trick – I can’t imagine actually navigating while on a bicycle in this way. How can a service like Bikely be integrated with on the road needs? Perhaps that’s where an iPhone would come in handy.

As the economy gets worse, what we do not need more of is posturing by the national leaders in photo opportunities like the G20 summit. What we do need are strategies for learning to get by with less. Whether it’s by Bush or by Obama, stimulus is clearly targeted to help big banks and corporations. The rest of us are just supposed to live off the trickle-down kibbles from the fat cats’ banquet.

Here’s one tip: Leave your car in the driveway – or even sell it. Instead of burning up expensive gasoline every day, try using your muscles to move. Walk. Bike. Heck, skateboard.

Remember, your legs are designed to enable you to move, not just to tap acceleration and brake pedals.

While you’re at it, visit the National Center for Biking and Walking, and keep up to date with their activities in helping people promote a stronger place for pedestrians and cyclists in American communities.

It’s not just for our human economy that we need to learn to move again. Our planet’s biosphere is becoming a dangerously filthy place to live in, thanks to the pollution that comes from fossil fuels.

Get back on your feet. It’s a better way.

Well, you have a long time to prepare, it’s in September. But, I just love, love, love this idea, and I can’t wait that long to write about it.

The Bike Commute Challenge has a great strategy for encouraging people to take bicycles to work instead of driving. It encourages groups of people from the same workplace to sign up for the challenge, and then compete to see who can do the most commuting by bicycle.

“For health. For the earth. For fun. For glory.”

Glory be. The only problem I can think of with this web site is that it has a bias in favor of people who live further, rather than closer, to work. Maybe it could measure trips taken instead of miles ridden… except then it would have a bias in favor of people who live closer to work, and have an easy ride, instead of those who are really working hard to make a longer trip.

Well, these details miss the main point: However long you have to ride, please, just take your bike to work!

It’s a small service, really, but blogger Paul Dorn is assembling information from other sources at Bike Commute Tips. It’s a bit heavy on the quotes from other news sources, in my opinion, but useful nonetheless.

What I can’t believe from there is the article on how easy winter bicycling can be – from a newspaper in Boulder, Colorado, where the air is so dry that there’s hardly ever much winter precipitation – easy for them to say. It comes with a photo of the difficult winter conditions they have to deal with in California – fog. Have mercy!

For a more realistic, if not less adventurous, perspective on the matter, go take a gander at the winter biking tips from IceBike. That’s more like it.

I’m glad to see the bike commuting promotional site Bike Commute Week, which seems to be connected to another site at the address of MayIsBikeMonth.com – but isn’t really about May being Bike Month at all. That second site is just a commuter club site for the Sacramento area.

A little quibble about the Bike Commute Week site too – it doesn’t say when the Sacramento area’s Bike Week actually is. Small detail.

On to the positive: What I love about this site is its inclusion of this one fact, from the Sacramento Air Quality Management District, on the air quality impact of last May’s bike-to-work program there:

“The number of commute and errand miles ridden last May saved 366,551 pounds of global-warming CO2 and 5,092 pounds of other air pollution from our atmosphere. The cyclists also saved 18,854 gallons of gasoline (worth about $65,047).”

366,551 pounds of CO2 not pumped into the air just from one city’s efforts in one week. That’s a good confirmation that if we could have a sustained transition to a bike commuting lifestyle in the USA, we could save ourselves an awful lot of trouble.

Something I’m starting to notice about bicycle commuting web sites: They’re mighty heavy on the ads – and not just ads either, but some maybe-not-so-ethical relationships with bicycle manufacturers as well.

Take as an example the Bike Commuters blog, which has some really good writing about bike activist events, but then they’ve got articles like a review of a bike by Dynamic Bicycles, which just so happens to have supplied the writer with a free sample. I don’t know if I can really trust that review. I’ll have to go elsewhere to find some other opinions that aren’t so gifty-biased.

I think I’ll try to read their articles on actually commuting, while ignoring the flashing ads and disregarding their product reviews.

I’ve given some rather half-heartedly enthusiastic recommendations about the bicycling sites I’ve found so far, because they’ve been about the recreational side of biking, rather than the practical, day-to-day way of a bicyclist’s life.

I’m happy to pass you on, therefore, to Commute By Bike. I’m particularly grateful for their Beginner Tips – because in a world like ours, where people regard driving a car as a more natural activity than even walking, it doesn’t hurt to have the car-free bicycling lifestyle spelled out in a very simple form.

Also, if you’re not prone to fits of despair, read their article on the 10 worst cities in which to commute by bicycle – but Washington D.C.? What about their Capital Crescent Trail?