I suppose that was what attracted me to the bicycle right from the start. It is not so much a way of getting somewhere as it is a setting for randomness; it makes every journey an unorganized tour. — Daniel Behrman
I just discovered Bicyclog: Found, Used and Interesting. The site has only been active since July of this year, but Yanek (the site owner) is already doing a good job of giving us a feel for bike culture in Tel Aviv. His “found” bikes include a Tino Sana wooden bicycle (pictured above), an old Raleigh, a Gazelle, a Mercedes bike, an Indian Rickshaw, and a number of other unusual bikes. I’m looking forward to watching the site grow.
Peter Mulvey’s hitting the road on his RANS Stratus for another car-free concert tour:
From September 10-20, Milwaukee singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey will again take to his bike for a concert tour around Southeast Wisconsin. This year’s No Gasoline Tour ’08 will follow a route similar to his September 2007 tour [see video], with a victory lap planned for early October in the Netherlands (he will not be biking to the Netherlands, just around them).
Peter has calculated that by biking, rather than driving, the roughly 535 miles to the seven shows on this Wisconsin tour – with mileage ranging from 35 to 95 biked miles a day – he will save .15 metric tons of CO2. While that might not sound like much, take a closer look: a typical seven-show tour for Peter involves driving close to 3,000 miles, and/or an airplane flight, all of which ultimately emit roughly one full metric ton of CO2. Peter typically does 15 or 20 of those tours a year. So on this tour, he’s saving .15 metric tons vs. emitting one ton, so let’s go for broke and say he’s actually saving 1.15 tons by leaving the car at home.Â
Add to that the emission savings banked by the performers who will be opening Peter’s shows: Brianna Lane (Sept. 10-13 shows) and Antje Duvekot are (Sept. 18-20 shows) will also be biking alongside Peter on their show days. Peter will have other friends joining him on rides along this tour and his final day’s ride from Fort Atkinson to Milwaukee will be larger and organized to raise money for the Urban Ecology Center.
The tour is sponsored by Wheel & Sprocket, who have set Peter up with a Rans recumbent bicycle and custom aluminum guitar-carrying rack (courtesy of W&S mechanic Bob Jung). That means no extra trailer to pull this year.
Two of my favorite cycling blogs are Bike Hugger and Cyclelicious. Both are staples of my daily blog fix and sit at the top of my RSS bike feeds. So you can only imagine my surprise and excitement at finding EcoVelo on Bike Hugger’s Top-Ten Bike Blog List (assembled for Blogs.com). As if that wasn’t enough, Cyclelicious gave EcoVelo a big shout out today. I’m feeling all warm-and-fuzzy with all this blog love going around…
I’ve been a fan of David Byrne’s going all the way back to his work with Brian Eno and the Talking Heads. What many people don’t know is that he’s a long time bike rider and advocate for cycling. Recently he’s been asked to judge a bike rack design contest in New York City. Being the creative fellow that he is, he couldn’t help but join in and design a few himself. Watch the video to see what he came up with.
When I was a kid, the best thing about Cracker Jacks was the anticipation of finding the “Toy Surprise Inside”. I loved digging down in the box and ripping open the little envelope that contained the prize. Of course, the prize itself was usually a disappointment, but it never kept me from wanting another box when we went to the ball diamond the following weekend.
Panda Portraits are a little like Cracker Jacks. If you’re not familiar with Panda Portraits, they’re self portraits taken while riding a bike. Taking a Panda Portrait is pretty simple. If you have a camera that allows you to manually set the shutter speed, set it to around 1/25-1/30 of a second so the background blurs, then while you’re riding along, take a large number of shots of yourself and/or the bike from different angles. Of course, because you’re holding the camera away from you, it’s impossible to know what you’re capturing. That’s where the “Toy Surprise Inside” idea comes in. The anticipation of whether you’ve captured any good photos is like that old feeling of digging through a box of Cracker Jacks. Typically, most of the photos are completely blurred or framed poorly or show some other defect, but once in a while everything comes together and a real gem pops out. With some practice you eventually figure out what works and your keeper-to-reject ratio improves.
One of our friends from the blogosphere seems to be under the impression that we’ve given up on recumbents altogether, but nothing could be further from the truth. To prove it, here’s a photo of our Screamer tandem, our #1 touring and country-road-cruising ride. It’s still the greatest vehicle ever made for bringing out the best in a relationship (or the worst, depending upon who you talk to… LOL). It’s not much of a city bike, but we’re saving it for the day we’re able to take a tour up the coast or do some island hopping in the San Juans. In the meantime, we dust it off now-and-again and take a cruise just to make sure we haven’t forgotten how to ride it. It’s a wonderful machine.
I get a kick out of looking through Flickr group pools. For the uninitiated, Flickr is a free photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo! A Flickr group pool is a collection of photos on a particular subject (or in a particular photographic style) submitted by members of the group. A few of my current favorites include the Panda Portraits group pool, the I Carried This On My Bicycle group pool, the Dutch Bikes group pool, the Bicycle Commuter group pool, and the Ladies & Gents Roadsters group pool. If you hadn’t noticed, down toward the bottom of my blogroll in the right-hand column there’s a “Photostreams” section with links to a number of bike-related group pools. Check it out!
Aw, what the heck; here’s one more Guv’nor photo for you, this one from Loring Kohrt, the distributor for Pashley Cycles in the U.S. The bike belongs to Adrian Williams, the Director of Pashley Cycles. He rides it from Bath to Stratford-on-Avon everyday. He is at least 6′ 6″ tall.
Our mission is to promote bicycle-based musicians, bicycle culture in general, and the broader sustainability movement, through free, participatory, bicycle-based music events.
June 21, 2008 marks the second annual Bicycle Music Festival: the next evolution of the world’s only 100% bicycle-based festival. With 30 volunteers, 15 bands, 7 festival stops, no prices, no permits, Critical Mass-style bicycle party caravans between the festival stops, a 600 Watt pedal-powered P/A system, and zero use of cars and trucks, San Francisco’s Bicycle Music Festival may be the greenest music festival ever conceived.
The Smithfield Nocturne Folding Bike Race is held as a part of the Smithfield Nocturne cycling event in London. The race pits commuters on folding bikes against one another in a Le Mans-style race around the historic Smithfield Market. At the drop of the start flag, the suit-and-shorts clad racers run 10m to their bikes, pick them up and run another 10m, unfold them as fast as possible, and race 5 laps around the 1km closed course (sounds a bit like my sprint to the train every weekday morning… LOL). The 2008 event hosted over 100 entries with competitors coming from as far away as Slovenia. The grand prize for this year’s event was a Dahon Speed Pro TT folding bicycle and bragging rights as the world’s fastest multi-modal commuter.
This cool video is from Daniel Kopald over at Cargo-Bike.
Moving to a car-lite (or car-free) lifestyle can require a variety of bikes to meet all of the needs that were previously met by an automobile (not a bad thing!). Fortunately, eliminating a car can save up to $8,000-10,000 per year; the extra expense of one or two bikes pales in comparison. In our case, we’re doing fairly well with two roadsters and a folder (plus a few ‘bents for good measure), but there are times where a little more carrying capacity would be great. Right now we can easily haul up to 50-60 pounds, but we’re limited in our ability to carry large, bulky items. Our plan is to have a Surly Big Dummy built up over the summer. If it performs as as well as anticipated, it should nicely round out our fleet.
