Bikes as Transportation

On September 6th, 2008, Richmond, Indiana will have maps printed for a network of recommended bike route map developed by experienced cyclists The city government endorsed and supported  the project but was unable to fund it.

You can preview the front and back of the 17x22 map online.

Over the next several posts I'll detail how I led that effort. I hope that by sharing may experience in this project it may guide other motivated citizens who would like official bike routes in their towns, but don't want to wait until their cities have both the time and the money to produce them on their own.

If there's a quick summary to process, it's this: Anyone is welcome to design and print a map, and it is experienced cyclists, not city bureaucrats, who are most qualified to determine what recommended bike routes should be.

Complete table of contents: A Guide to DIY Bike Route Maps

longtail bike at work, originally uploaded by Mark Stosberg.

Kurt made custom pouches for the custom longtail frame he built. The material used is what you usually find in fold-out couches-- super sturdy! The top of the rack is plywood. Here's he hauling two printers, a scanner, a keyboard and various other supplies.

Right now the two sides of the pouch are just tied together with string. He may upgrade those connectors with small caribiniers. The current design also lacks a frame to hold the pouches away from the wheels and derailler. It's working OK without them, but wil also likely be evolved.

If you are commuting by car right now for 5 miles or less, you can afford a bike to make the same trip on. The reality is that gas has gotten more expensive and the savings of riding a bike even for short trips adds up.

Let's look at some numbers.

The Supplement Scenario: Here we assume that a bike supplements a car that you plan to keep and drive, and that the savings of riding a bike will come purely from saved case. Using an online calculator, you can quickly estimate your annual fuel cost for a trip. If you travel 1.5 miles each way, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year (you take some vacation, right?), that's 750 miles per year, spent on that short commute. If you get 20 miles per gallon and gas cost $4.00 gallon, then your cost of gas for that commute is $150 for one year. For five years that's $750.

Updated August 23rd, 2008. See corrected math and discussion in the comments.

I was recently asked: "How can get around town by bike without going up and down so many hills?"

Avoiding hills is often not an option, so I have to re-frame the question in order to answer it: "How I can be comfortable riding in hilly terrain?".

For a cyclist used to driving, there may be an adjustment about what to expect. A car may (unnaturally) travel the same speed up a hill, across the ridge line and back down it.

Bikes tend go much slower up hills and much faster down them. I've come to appreciate this. It's participation in the natural rhythm of gravity. It makes kicking back with cruise control and watching the world through a screen seem all the more eerie.

Another grocery trip by bike, originally uploaded by Mark Stosberg.

It's common that when someone sees our bakfiets they comment that "you could haul your groceries in that thing".

 
See the complete tour journal of our  bicycle tour from Richmond, Indiana to Clifty Falls State Park and back.

There's been increasing press lately about bicycling as transportation.

The difference between riding for recreation and transportation matters a great deal for the construction of the bikes, although few bikes focused directly on transportation are seen the US.

Here's a quiz of sorts to show how recreation vs. transportation attitudes lead to different bike designs. Follow along and see which style of bike matches you!

At the end if the quiz, there are some photos and details highlighting some features available on transportation bikes.

Today was our first Saturday with the bakfiets, and we kept the bike busy haulin' and transportin' from 8 am to 5 pm.

My wife took it first, riding it to Jazzercize and then to the farmer's market. She had trouble leaving with her cargo of sunflowers due to all the people asking about the cargo bike. Questions from strangers are common with the bakfiets.

Around 11am, I used the quick release to raise the seat from her riding position and started on the next trip. I loaded the bike up with over a 100 lbs of yard waste and headed to the local landfill to drop it off. Wrapping the garbage bags in a tarp kept the bucket extra clean.

Someone commented about my new bakfiets cargo bike this morning that "now I could I haul groceries on the bicycle".

I had been getting groceries fine on my "normal" bike fine for some years. But you couldn't tell that from casually looking the bike.

I never once made a trip where I couldn't bring home everything I wanted. Usually just some saddle bags were used for the hauling, but occasionally a trailer was used to fetch a large bag of dog food.

But on most trips the saddle bags and trailer are left at home, so the carrying capacity isn't visible.

The importance of the bakfiets in the US now is that it is obvious that the bakfiets is built to haul. And it does in fact haul a lot. I believe it's rated to haul about 250 lbs of cargo or kids, plus the weight of the driver. (That's 175 lbs in the bucket, and 75 more on the rear rack).

The name for bags that hang off the side of bikes seems to officially be "panniers" in English. "Panniers" is in-word in bike subculture that most United States folk don't know.

That makes it harder for me to talk about functional bicycling with folks. "Panniers" is a foreign word that makes carrying stuff on a bike sound, well, foreign.

Motorcyclists often call these "saddle bags". That's much more evocative. People generally know the words "saddle" and "bags". It's not a big leap to put them together and visualize what that looks like.

Cyclists who would normally refer to them as panniers would also readily understand "saddle bags", so there's not much of a need to use different terms for the subculture and the broader culture.

I want using a bike as transportation to seem normal. Easily comprehensible. So from now on, if you ask me about hauling stuff on my on bike, I'll tell you I have saddle bags. Like a motorcycle. Or a horse.

This was my first week-long self-designed tour. In the past I had added my own extensions to Cover Indiana and GABRAKY. Unfortunately, on both of these organized rides, I experienced some knee problems, and the fixed distances and schedules left me feeling locked into the event schedule.

By organizing my own trip, I had the flexibility to redesign the trip on the fly and use a more personally meaningful route-- riding from my home to visit family and friends in central Kentucky, about 150 miles away.

Today I tried a cheap nylon jacket for rain protection. Like, "ten dollars" cheap. The jacket I wore is from Eastbay, and is discounted from $40 to $10

It kept me completely dry for a 10 minute bike commute through the pouring rain. Ten minutes is enough time for cotton clothing to get drenched. It's also enough time for me to get from home to grocery or from the office back home. It's enough time for a $150 Marmot Oracle rain jacket to begin to leak through the pockets.

That's precisely why I'm trying the backup jacket-- I'm sending in the Marmot jacket for what I believe is a design flaw and which I expect they'll take care of through the warranty process.

I was so surprised by the performance of the Eastbay jacket, I went online to check to see if it made any claims to be waterproofing. The jacket does not even classify itself as a rain jacket, but simply "water repellent".

From what I've learned about what "water repellent" means, a chemical was probably applied to the nylon, which causes the water to bead-up and roll off, rather than soaking through. Over time, this feature will work less and less well. They are spray-on solutions than can be applied to later to rejuvinate the effect, but from what I've read they often don't work as good as the original repellency.

This also means that had I taken a longer ride, I'm sure the jacket would have eventually soaked through, which a waterproof jacket should not do. Further, waterproof jackets have taped seams, and sometimes have special waterproof zippers, while this jacket does not.

What I'm saying is that the Eastbay jacket is not a magic alternative to the quality of a waterproof/breathable jacket. However, it may just be "good enough" for some around town trips, despite perhaps being less durable. At $10, or even $40, it's certainly worth a shot for staying comfortable in the rain.

My solutions for comfortable clothing and dry gear.

I was afraid of the rain. The car used to protect me from it when I got around. After several years of being car-free, I've been able to replace this fear with an understanding of how to stay comfortable when bike commuting in the rain.

What I've learned along the way that is the staying comfortable in the rain takes an all or nothing approach: Repel it or enjoy it.

Here are my strategies for both cases.

I recently wrote about Bicycling Mittens for Five Degrees. That's a solution for an extreme, so today I want to Back the Truck Up, and describe the gloves that I find work best for everyday bicycle commuting in cooler whether.

The qualities I find are important are:

1. Wind Protection. This is the primary purpose.
2. Light Insulation, to take the edge off.
3. Comfort. Not too tight.
4. Functional, so they don't get in the way of braking.
5. Compact. Easy to carry when not in use.

Two years ago I was diagnosed with a herniated disc in my back. This caused my sciatic nerve to be pinched, which caused great pain in my legs when I was sitting or standing. I spent a lot of the next two weeks lying flat on my back. After standing for just a few minutes, the pain would become intense again, and I'd need to lie back down.

I'm the sort of person who resists taking medicine, and I found myself taking up to eight ibuprofen a day just to cut the pain and get through it.

Yes, having Sciatica sucked.

The cold wind pressed harder against me as the bike accelerated down Bridge Avenue. Despite the freezing wind chill, I remained comfortable behind my wind shield.

The key things I've learned about keeping my head warm on a bicycle are 1. The comfort of my face contributes a lot to my overall perceived comfort. 2. In cooler temperatures, blocking wind is the key to a comfortable face and 3. A lot of the wind I'm blocking is generated from pedaling itself.

I eased out the alley and navigated through Fairview neighborhood and onto the greenway. Accelerating as fast as I could down the light grade, the computer reported speeds accelerating to 20 miles per hour, with a air temperature of 32 degrees.

My new overmitts were being put to the test. According to a parka website, I had just generated an effective temperature of about 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

This hadn't fully clicked for me before: moving through space on a bike in cold weather generates significant wind chill.

With the sun rising in the distance, I found myself staring at a golden bicycle, abandoned by a dumpster. I'm not talking about a standard golden paint job. This was an all-over, no holds barred spray paint job. The seat was golden. The tires were golden. The water bottle cage was golden.

I stood there contemplating it, awestruck and contemplating it's story. Was this an Earlham "Community" bike, a re-habbed free ride, intentionally ugly to avoid theft? Perhaps it was stolen, painted gold to mask it's true identity. Or It could have been an art project. One last golden hurrah before the junk pile.

This post is available as an audio clip.

This is the story of why I traded in my car for a bicycle.

It's not that many people have asked about this. Rather I have sensed that people wonder about this unusual lifestyle choice and do not ask.

My story isn't going to be about lifestyle comparison or counting karma points. I want to convey the emotional parts of this transition.

I had some selfish reasons for wanting to get rid of my car. I don't particularly like driving them or riding in them. I don't know how to fix them if they break, and I'm not interested to learn. I didn't like car down payments, car insurance payments, car gas payments, car breakdown payments and car break-in payments.

 "Let's Race!"

I challenged Ehren to a three mile crosstown race. I would ride my bicycle (as fast as I could!), and Ehren would drive his Volvo, taking a normal route and traveling average speeds in his car.

The destination was slightly uphill from us.

 "Go!"

Soon the routes we chose to follow diverged, and I didn't see Ehren until the destination.

He pulled in about 30 seconds after me, complaining about traffic.

I banked my bicycle towards the sign labeled "International Circus Hall of Fame". On the outskirts of Peru, Indiana Hopi and I pedaled down the rural road looking for something that would live up to the name on the sign.

I thought we were close when we passed what appeared to be flying trapeze rigging sitting in a field in front of two large barns. Still, nothing looked active or open.

I paused in front of a plain trailer with a small window labeled "TICKETS" on one end. As a dog barked nearby, I was working up the courage to knock on the door of what increasingly appeared might be the wrong building.

Read the complete tour journal.

It was immediately clear when they arrived tonight that they looked fairly normal and fit very well, but the hidden super powers needed to be tested. Conveniently, the kitchen floor needed mopping as well.

By the 40-mile morning rest stop in Willisburg, I was about ready to give up again, and my bike was making a strange creaking noise at times. Scott, our ever-present mechanic from Pedal Power was there to help. Meanwhile, I snacked on Clif Bars and Advil and rested.

A small screw on my brakes was stripped he said, and he didn't have the part to replace it with him. This was necessary to hold my back break on.

I ate a banana, drank some water, and let him tinker some more, half hoping a mechanical failure would be my excuse for not completing the day. Already, all but the slowest two riders had come and gone from the rest stop.

But dropping out was not my fate. A few minutes later Scott had jammed a wire cap perfectly into the stripped hole, and promised a full brake kit replacement that evening. He just happened to have parts for the exact model in stock.

So I was back on the road again now with no riders in sight ahead or behind me. At least one hill was too much for my knee before I got to the lunch stop. I got off and walked the bike up it.

Read the complete tour journal.

Early May, 2005

I got several positive looks and comments as I pulled my full loaded recumbent bicycle out of town. With the trailer and bright yellow pannier covers, it was hard to miss.

"What did you pay for that?"
"What IS that?"
"NICE BIKE!"

Along the route, I got the opportunity to try out a loose dog defense technique I'd read about. I squirted the barking booger in the face with my water bottle when he got close enough. The dog did in fact stop immediately, as confused as anything else.

I wanted to follow the pattern of Rans V-Rex Commuting Weapon by adding an additional water bottle mount to carry a light system battery.

That's what the picture above is. There's also a large version. Here are some notes on how this was created.

 After spending hours poring over Arkel's website, I've just purchased my third Utility Basket bag from them.

Today I'll share some of the hidden features of the 2005 Utility Basket which make it suitable for touring as well as day-to-day commutes.

One part was no surprise. As a recumbent, it was definitely a more comfortable ride. The only part of me that was a little sore coming home was my legs.

The ride to Whitewater was a little disappointing. I just wasn't keeping the speeds that I wanted to. The terrain was some of my favorite-- the rural gently rolling hills of Indiana, with peaks and valleys that are often only 10 or 20 feet apart in height.

I did notice suspiciously that each new peak seemed a little higher than the last. When I arrivied at Whitewater, my average speed was lower that I would have liked: about 14 mph.

I had not been to 'downtown' Whitewater before that I recall. As I ride through each of the small towns around Richmond, I have almost always discovered a new General Store or cafe that I hadn't noticed before.