Tag: transport cycling

Over on the European Tribune, where I crossposted a couple of these bike blogs, asdf asked:

If bikes are the most efficient way to get around–at least for distances up to a few km–then why do we not have proper bikeways? Smooth pavement, gradual hills, and COVERS to keep the snow/wind/rain off? Imagine a countryside with little bike tunnels going here and there, with cozy, dry riders efficiently making their daily trips…

This is a lovely image. Indeed, a system of bikeways of this could even qualify as a dream.

However, if we start to dream it, we have to be careful that we do not fall into the familiar bad habits of the fading age of Auto Uber Alles … which is to use bikeways as a mechanism to get those pesky cyclists off the road.

If a system of bikeways is done right, then it will create far more bikes on the road of most cities, towns and suburbs of American than we have ever seen … indeed, than most of use have ever imagined. Which means, directly, that any system of bikeways intended to get those pesky bikes off the roads will be bikeways done wrong.

See you over the fold … and remember, as always, this is also a general cycling open thread.

Anyone get a Bike for Christmas?

Could it do this?

This is a Transport Cycling Open Thread: if you didn’t get a bike for Christmas, and don’t cycle in the winter, share what your first cycle trip of the new year is likely to be.

Yesterday, I did something different …

… I decided that I would Take the Long Way Home

… as that Tom Waite^{NB} lyric says at the beginning:

Well I stumbled in the darkness

I’m lost and alone

Though I said I’d go before us

And show the way back home

There a light up ahead

I can’t hold onto her arm

Forgive me pretty baby but I always take the long way home

{NB. No, that is not Tom Waite singing the song. Good eye!}

Now, I wasn’t literally lost. What I did was decide that, with four days off coming up, I could take the long way home, which ought to be very pretty this time of year. Instead of going down the county highway to turn left onto the township highway to turn right onto the main county highway that goes straight to my (current) home town …

… I decided to turn right to go past the Quarry, then cross the state route to go along the Lake road then the bike trail that runs to my home town.

And I was glad I did, because it was a terrible route, and I set me thinking about bikeways versus freedom to ride.

OK, so I just back from a trip to the store.

Well, let me set the scene, courtesy of the online weather report for this part of NorthEast Ohio …

NOW … AREAS OF HEAVY SNOW … AND A MIX OF SNOW … SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN WILL CONTINUE THROUGH 8PM. THE MIX PRECIPITATION WILL BE ALONG AND SOUTH OF A MARION TO CANTON LINE. A INCH AN HOUR SNOWFALL WILL BE FROM AROUND MANSFIELD TO CANTON. UNTREATED SURFACES AND ROADWAYS CAN BE ICY AND SNOW COVERED AND SLIPPERY.

… indeed, my mum was trying to talk me out of my little trip, first downtown to the bank (like, eight blocks) and then down main street to the bargain supermarket, then back. Not far at all, and in the fall simply a pleasant little excursion.

But … oh my, oh no, there was sleety snow falling down! Oh my!

Oh … did I say joy? The joy, after the fold.

NB. Picture gleaned from the Intertubes … not taken by your humble scribe. Indeed, since it comes from Peninsular Far West Asia … Amsterdam, to be precise … and I’ve only been on the southeastern edge of that massive continent, it could not possibly be taken by your humble scribe.

I was riding my bike hard on Wednesday, before Thanksgiving, and despite leaving after 5:15, managed to get to work around 6:55, in plenty of time to get off my bike commuting gear, and get onto the clock before the horn sounded.

But maybe I was riding my bike too hard, because this last Monday, my chain went off the gear … off the large gear on the wheel side … and that must have been when I was pushing with enough force to loosen or damage something, because the chain derailed four or five more times on the way to work, I got to work late, on the way home it started freewheeling in certain gears, and by the time I was two miles from home it was shot.

When I took the wheel off, the gear set basically just dropped off the cassette, leaving less than half the bearings (I don’t know whether more than half the bearings are presently on the garage floor, or whether only a couple spilled out and the rest were lost earlier).

So after catching a lift on Tuesday and Wednesday, and swapping the 5-speed wheel from my old (failing) department store $55 special, to get to work Thursday and Friday, I am taking that wheel in to see if the bike store can fix it.

I guess that makes this a bike breaking open thread.