Shirlington - Officially "Bike Friendly"

New sign on bike trail near Shirlington - that one in the middle

A crew appeared today and installed the sign stating this is a "bicycle friendly community." (I realize I don't know if those signs stating the distances to various places were there before or not - I don't think so.) The sign faces the bicycle trail, as this picture mostly makes clear. There are several problems with this:

* The ones who need to hear this kind of thing more are the motorists in the sense of, "hey, don't run over the cyclists; this community is supposed to be bicycle friendly!" Ironically this sign is posted right at one of the worst crosswalks for cyclists in Arlington. Arlington is bicycle friendly, and by the way try not to get hurt crossing this street with cars zipping off 395.

* I suppose pointing this sign celebrating the League of American Bicyclists' designation of Arlington as a "bicycle friendly community" is fine but in the end, it's deeds not words. We aren't going to think, "oh yeah - Arlington loves cyclists because they put up this sign. We are going to think that because of useful things that the County does for cyclists (and their safety), which does not include the layout of this particular intersection (from a cyclist perspective).

It reminds me of socialist realism to have a sign proclaiming the glories not of today's reality but tomorrow's shiny future.

Washington Monument on Bike Commute

During my morning commute -

As a result of the earthquake, apparently climbers were going to rappel down the Washington Monument to inspect it; as a result, camera crews came early to get positioned to shoot video and stand-up news interviews. Around noon they were still there . . .

Bad Street Crossing for Bikes

Hoping traffic clears, then he'll finish crossing

This kind of thing is crazy - this cyclist, having seen this intersection before, assumes that the traffic pattern is the same every day. The cross traffic has the green light. Traffic from the left clears and then, usually, traffic from the right. So if you go out as he has done and wait in the middle, it should be possible to get across once the traffic from the right clears (without waiting for a green light, that is).

But what are motorists to think of this? They have the green light, and there you are in the middle of the road. There is no center island. And sometimes the traffic pattern doesn't work out and traffic ends up coming from both directions at the same time, and there you are, in the middle of the road with no place to hide.

Belgian Bicycles, 1910s (Photo)

Newly added to the Library of Congress Flickr collections online

Taken near the Belgian town of Diest, presumably during World War I. From the Bain News Service collection. As presented by the Library of Congress on its site, it isn't possible to "pull out" the images with bicycles much of the time, but users add tags in Flickr that help with that.


"France - Cyclists of Army" - another Bain photograph


The Austrians had some bikes, too.

Team 7-Eleven, by Drake & Ochowicz (Book Review)

Team 7-Eleven:  How an Unsung Band of American Cyclists Took on the World - and Won is a new book about the 7-Eleven sponsored cycling race team that was active in the 1980s. The blurb description of the books is as follows:

Founded in 1981 by Jim Ochowicz and Olympic medalist Eric Heiden and sponsored by the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores, the team rounded up the best amateur cyclists in North America and formed them into a cohesive, European-style cycling team. As amateurs, they dominated the American race scene and won seven medals at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. As professionals, beginning in 1985, the team went to Europe and soon received invitations to the Tour of Italy and then the Tour de France, putting Americans on the podium in landmark victories that would change the face of American cycling forever.

Prepared with the enthusiastic cooperation of the team members and co-authored by the team’s founder, Jim Ochowicz, 7-Eleven is not only the most important missing piece in the story of American cycling, but the book that American cyclists have been waiting for ever since the 7-Eleven cowboys snagged that first yellow jersey.

The two authors are respectively a journalist who wrote about Team 7-Eleven (way back then) and Ochowicz, the team founder and manager (among other roles).

I am not an expert on pro cycle racing history, so I will confine my comments to fairly obvious stuff.

The book takes the obvious (and sensible) approach of presenting the story chronologically. The beginning focuses on Ochowicz and Eric Heiden - in the early years of establishing the team. Heiden's role was probably more important than Ochowicz since he was so supportive of the team and was a publicity and sponsorship magnet. The critical piece to launching the team was securing sponsorship from the Southland Corporation, which is described in some detail. (It was connected with Southland sponsoring building of an Olympic velodrome for the 1984 Olympics.) Finally in chapter 5 (of twenty) Ochowicz starts hiring and building the first U.S. 7-Eleven amateur team. The next several chapters describe the highlights of the amateur team's racing before the professional team was established, and the most prominent riders, such as Heiden and Davis Phinney. Chapter 12 segues to the building of the professional team that would compete in Europe starting in 1985 - it is the activities of this "senior" men's professional team, primarily when in Europe, that occupy the remainder of the book. Most of the narrative describes key team developments and critical race successes (and failures). The most well known race successes are covered in some detail, such as Andy Hampsten's Giro stage victory in the snow storm.

The two authors clearly know the subject extremely well and had the cooperation of most if not all of the important team members. Since this was Ochowicz's team, it is probably not surprising that certain more unpleasant subjects are not really covered - in reading this I was reminded of military regimental histories prepared by unit historians. Generally everything covered is given a positive spin - not to say that failures or bad days aren't covered, but . . . One technique is to have negative commentary attributed to other parties - it isn't the authors saying that in their early European racing the 7-Eleven riders were crash happy cowboys; no, that was what the other riders were saying about them. And not to worry; after a few years the 7-Eleven riders matured. Some controversial subjects are simply left out, most notably the almost complete absence of discussion of use of drugs in pro cycle racing.

Whether because of the "authorized history" approach or for other reasons, the description of events is fairly flat; the examples of "wildness" are not very wild, and so on. Bob Roll, for example, is described as "eccentric" and the "team clown" but the included example of his idea of humor rather tame, particularly since one can read far more outlandish stuff about him elsewhere.

Who is this book written for? I'm not a big pro bike racing fan, but I know enough to understand basic tactics (about as much as I know about American pro football, I suppose) and it seems the authors are assuming at least that level of knowledge. For example, at one point a 7-Eleven rider manages to win multiple jerseys in the Tour de France on one day, including a "combination jersey" for best standing in all categories (different than GC) - since this category no longer exists, this is explained, but the subtleties of the other categories are assumed to be clear to the reader.

The book includes a fair number of both color and black and white photographs, chapter notes, a good index, a the senior men and women's team rosters for the years the team was active (otherwise there is little said in this book about the women riders), and a "where are they now" epilogue updating the lives of the main (men) riders.

In some descriptions of the book, it is noted that Lance Armstrong started with the successor team, Team Motorola, that took over this bicycle team after Southland ended its sponsorship - but wanting to know more Lance-history wouldn't be a motivation for reading this; he is only mentioned a few times in passing.

Closing Four Mile Run I-395 Underpass

Approaching underpass to I-395 from Shirlington side, Friday commute

After considerable amounts of rain overnight, Four Mile Run apparently flooded the bike path underpass for I-395.  By the time that I arrived on my commute, around 7 am, I think the flooding was already gone but I chose not to investigate and rode around (the old way, over 395 on the pedestrian bridge and down Martha Custis).

In the evening the barriers had not been "officially" removed but someone had pushed them aside.

The Wheel-Spam Comment Game

Example of a "comment" linking to a commercial tire site from Prolix

Apparently because bicycles have tires, Prolix (and some other identities that I think are the same person) regularly post "comments" that feature links to several different automotive tire sales sites. Because this blog is pretty low-traffic (900-1,000 page views per month, most from Google searches) it seems an utter waste of time for this person (or bot?) to be doing this, but we're only talking about my removing 2-3 comments per week, typically.

Does someone get paid for this? Presumably not on the basis of how many links are placed but rather according to how much traffic it creates. How boring.

Here the syntax is OK and the comment more or less makes sense (although this is the fourth or fifth time I've read "my very first comment on your site" from Prolix) but given the wording of some of the others, I'm doubtful the person doing this has English as his or her first language. Not that it matters, but it seems that much more crazy that somewhere in the world some person is searching for tire-related blogs in a foreign language to place phoney-baloney comments for car tires in Florida in order to make a living.

Cyclists with Guns Chase Car (Washington, DC)

Short Washington Post article titled "Bicycles open fire near Capitol Hill" - "Two people on bicycles fired shots as they pursued a car late Saturday in a Northeast Washington neighborhood on the edge of Capitol Hill, authorities said."

The police admit no understanding of the motive, but divine that "it did not appear to be a random attack." Their solution? "Officers will patrol the area and will give special attention to people on bicycles as well as to enforcing traffic regulations, police said."

The attention grabbing "near Capitol Hill" does not mean they were riding around the Capitol itself shooting guns from bikes - they were more than a mile from the U.S. Capitol.

Bicycles to Africa

Once again, my Google news alert brings in an interesting item, a story about a Danish bicycle approach to providing developmental assistance through bicycles to Africa. There are various approaches to this that I am familiar with. In an earlier post about an article about the "Team Rwanda" cycling team there was mention that the attempt to provide bicycles suitable for that country was hindered by the high cost of getting the parts there.


The Baisikeli Company in Denmark - "Baisikeli" is "bicycles" in Swahili

The Baisikeli company has a model that does not give the bikes away but sells them.

Baisikeli works towards developing the bicycle industry in the developing world. Bicycles are important in poor areas because with cheaper and better transportation opportunities, people living in poverty can increase their income and get access to education and health care.

In Denmark, Baisikeli collects used bicycles and ship them to Mozambique and Sierra Leone where they are repaired and sold. All expenses in Denmark are financed through the two bike shops in Copenhagen; so all the money earned in Africa can be reinvested in developing the workshops into producing their own bikes.

This is quite different than a model that gathers cast-off bicycles, ships them to Africa, and gives them away. Also, since they are (I think this is correct) primarily shipping bicycles that they have themselves used in their businesses, the types of bicycles sent to Africa are of fewer different types.

Baisikeli - cykler for et bedre liv from Henrik Mortensen on Vimeo.

Alas, there is nothing in this world that is perfect - in looking around on Flickr for photos related to Baisikeli, they seem to have gotten into a problem with a Dutch company that claims they copied one of their cargo bike designs for a bike that is rented to businesses in Denmark for three years and then will be shipped and sold in Sierra Leone and Mozambique.


The (apparent) Baisikeli copy of the Workcycles bike

I am sympathetic to the Workcycles complaint that "the unique frame geometry and structural elements have been copied to the millimeter, while about a dozen cosmetic changes have been made to dodge legal protection" but put off by the remark that "it also happens to be very crudely made, unlike our real Fr8." If the Baisikeli people could have gotten permission to use the design that would have been a better approach but one doubts that a bike built to the Workcycles standard would be useful for this business model in Africa for various cost-related reasons.

Hmmm.

A Better Kickstarter Bicycle Product Proposal

In two earlier posts, I looked at three other Kickstarter proposals for new bicycle products. Most recently, I looked at a proposal for a self-inflating bike tire that I thought was silly - are people that lazy that they need this produce?? (Also, they are trying to raise $250,000 - WOW.)

Before that I looked at two safety-related bicycle add-ons both based on the "biking is dangerous - let's make it safer" way of thinking about cycling.

There is also a proposal for Flipphandle, a product that simplifies bicycle storage by making it easy ("at the push of a button") to turn the handlebars 90 degrees from center so that they line up with the bike frame.



I like this idea a lot, although I have a few problems with its presentation in Kickstarter. For one thing, the video and photos always show a straight handlebar bike, which would be the kind that presumably benefits the most from this device. But what about bikes with "traditional" handlebars? It would seem that they would benefit somewhat too, but the Kickstarter come-on should either show the produce with this kind of handlebars or clarify that the product is only aimed at part of the bicycle market, those with straight handlebars. (My assumption is that the drop-handlebar crowd would not want be interested in this feature even if there was some small benefit.)

Really though I wonder about the audience for this - do they expect to sell this through bike stores and the Internet as an aftermarket product? Because I don't have a sense that most people invest like that in their bikes. What would be great is if a bike company with "urban" bikes with straight bars would add this to a bike or bikes they sell, if only as an option.

In the Flipphandle comments it says that they are looking to develop folding pedals as well. This makes a lot of sense as a tie-in with the folding handlebars if you are thinking of this more as a solution for walking a bike in tight situations and less as a solution for storage. For one thing, anyone who walks her or his bike much, particularly with standard platform pedals, has had the unpleasant experience of banging some part of a leg against a pedal, which considering the design of many such pedals can be painful. A bike with folding handlebars and folding pedals would be much easier to maneuver in a subway car as shown in the video than one with just folding handlebars.

For whatever reason, they don't seem to have much chance of raising the necessary money at the rate they are going. And I certainly don't need one - I have three bikes with drop handlebars and one mountain bike used 3-5 times a year to ride in snow.

More Kickstarter Bicycle Improvement Possibilities

Kickstarter is "the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world" (they say) and it turns out, some of these opportunities are for new products to make cycling safer or easier (and hopefully more popular). In a previous post I looked at a couple of modestly scaled money raising endeavors for safety lighting proposals. Thanks to tire that inflates itself as you ride. They only need $250,000 (yes, a quarter of a million dollars) to get this under production!



It's a clever idea - there is a small tube that runs around the entire tire right in the middle of where the tire contacts the ground and as the bike compresses this tube, air if forced through the valve into the tire until some previously set limit is reached, then it stops. If the pressure goes down, it pumps it back up.

Of course there are many clever ideas that are patented that don't enjoy commercial success for one reason or another. What about this idea?

The problem that the inventor is trying to solve is simple enough - bike riders should be able to jump on their bikes and ride off knowing that the tire will soon be inflated to the right pressure if some air has escaped since the last time the bike was used. It is not an anti-flat system that would say pump the tire up fast enough to keep ahead of a lead created by a nail (for example). It also solves the problem of having your tires always at a consistend pressure as you ride since I don't think anyone has ever argued that the small amount that this happens is actually a problem for anyone. Therefore your user is the person who is tired of pumping air in her or his bike tires once in a while before riding.

Are their many such people, really? One wonders. For one thing, while it is not a good thing, many people who ride even relatively frequently (for Americans) are rather lax about their tire pressure, based on conversations I have had. Those people who do care about it, it seems to me, are not likely to feel a desire to turn this activity over to an automatic system to do it for them.

Efforts to keep air in the tires or avoid having flats have been proposed (and patented) since the development of the safety bike in the 1880s, so attempts to simplify cycling by reducing interactions with tires are not new. For example, below is an 1896 patent for a "self sealing" bike tire.


Patent 551,408, the self sealing tire

Why didn't the self sealing tire succeed? Well, because it was a layer of complexity and cost on top of what is the best thing about bicycles - that they are pretty simple devices. And also that they introduced a new failure "opportunity" rather than just getting rid of the old one. And of course you have to pay more for it.

This particular idea is quite elegant (in a way) but the Kickstarter proposal fails to suggest what the price point is that they have in mind for these fancy tires that inflate themselves. While in theory anyone would say, "sure I want a tire that keeps itself at the right air pressure" I suspect when they see the relative cost they will wonder if operating the pump occasionally is really that inconvenient (for that portion of the cycling public who care about their tire inflatiion situation other than when the tire is more or less flat). That, in the end, is the issue - are people (Americans - I assume a Dutchman for example would guffaw if he saw this product) so lazy that they will pay $$$ more for a high priced tire rather than fill it with air occasionally themselves? The product developers don't argue that it is a safety issue, unlike that yellow light in your Ford Explorer so you don't tip the thing over with underinflated tires.

And I'm pretty sure, notwithstanding their remarks in the FAQ, that this approach does introduce new problems to manage. They claim that a "little filter" will keep dust and dirt from interfering with the intake of air to inflate the tire, but given where it is (down practically on the ground) and the small sizes, presumably then the issue is the "little filter" getting a lot clogged. Also, as shown in its development phase, this pressure gauge limiter thing that rides on top of the inner tube valve looks like trouble with a capital "T". They admit in their FAQ that in production this thing would ideally be a lot smaller and perhaps not angled straight out from the rim but rather along the rim somehow, or supported by a spoke. Well - yeah. Because a weak point in every inner tube is at the valve, so putting that big monster thing on top of the valve is begging for trouble. They don't need just their own tire, I think, but their own wheel-tire combo.

Finally, the tube (they call it a "lumen" which apparently is a biology term for a tube-like structure) that is compressed as the wheel turns and does the pumping runs on the outer center of the tire where the greatest wear is on any bike tire. However thick the wall of that lumen (tube) is is how long your tire lasts. If you get a little cut through that lumen - well, so much for the self inflating feature and the tire is ruined (which they admit in their FAQ). So, for a given style of tire, this self inflating tire costs more but lasts a shorter period of time and has a risk factor for the failure of the feature that you paid extra for.

Industry statistics don't say how many bicycle tires are sold, but presumably the best result for the inventors would be to get a nice urban bike equipped with these tires as standard equipment. Perhaps they'll get lucky.

Anything that makes riding a bike easier can be considered, if you are in the cycling camp, to be good for society (more green, more exercise, etc.). This is something that replaces one small inoffensive task (that many are a bit inattentive to, but with few serious consequences) with unnecessary complexity and cost, and then claims to be easier. I guess it depends how you define "easier."

That's enough Kickstarter bike projects for today.

Knack Cycling for Everyone - Book Review

Cycling for Everyone - A Guide to Road, Mountain, and Commuter Biking by Leah Garcia and Jilayne Lovejoy (Knack, 2010) is lovely to look through and reflects considerable effort, but I'm not sure that it is "the ideal new resource for anyone looking to get introduced, or reintroduced, to today's world of cycling" (as it says on the rear cover).

Amazon has a "look inside" link for its page for this book so you can get a fairly good sense of what the book is like.

What's good:

* More than 400 photographs - it must have been a major effort just to figure out and produce all of these; it's a fun book to page through.

* Certainly introduces at a high level many issues connected to cycling.

* Presents some topics quite well when the book's format (that seems to be part of the Knack series) provides the right amount of space.

What's not-so-good:

* Typically one photo is all that is provided for any particular issue, even for the description of maintenance activities where a sequence would be more helpful. In this regard, the extremely structured format of the book works against it.

* The highly structured format for each page also means that there can't be much detail written about any particular subject - for the most part each subject is dealt with in two facing pages.

* Despite being an introduction to the subject, it often reads as though you already know something about the subject - in the summary of what makes a road bike a road bike, it says "uses 700c wheels, caliper brakes, and skinny smooth tires" - skinny smooth tires is clear, anyway.

* Doesn't answer many "why" questions. Again, due to the limited space for text, much of what is provided are descriptions without explanation.

* The glossary is too short and misses many terms used in the text without explanation, and is the one part of the book with no images. In the text one is told to avoid potholes to avoid getting "pinchflats" which are just one item not in the glossary (or the index, for that matter).

I concluded that there is far more to cycling than I had realized since it doesn't turn out to be possible to provide anything like a comprehensive introductory guide to the different types of cycling (mountain, road, commuting) in a single book.

I was somewhat amused by the subjects where the authors chose to provide additional information - since they live in Colorado, they are quite a bit more into mountain biking than commuting by bike so unlike most subjects that must be dealt with in two pages, you get "terrain tips - part 1" and "terrain tips - part 2" (or four pages!) on handling rough riding on a mountain bike. (The coverage of bike commuting in this book is weak, when you get down to it.)

And they are pretty much satisfied with the modern buy-lots-of-crap-and-keep-corporations-afloat approach to cycling - this is most noticable in their discussion of winter clothing, where wool sweaters you might already own are not mentioned - the models are attired in hundreds of dollars of special cycling clothing. (Don't get me wrong, I happen to take that approach too, but I'm pretty sure it isn't the most cost effective and I sure didn't start that way.) I think this reflects a lack of enthusiasm for true beginning bike commuters - mountain biking is more fun.

Summary - it's a pretty book to look at, and has it's tidbits of useful info here and there. It isn't a particularly useful comprehensive introduction.

1899 "Book on Wheeling" & Tandem Photographs

Title page of Dr. Neesen's Book on Wheeling

Dr. Neesen's Book on Wheeling is a rather extreme (and late, since the cycling craze was ending by this time) example of the "physician as guide to all-things-cycling" approach to cycling advice. Note his particular qualifications as a specialist in women's medicine:

Assistant to the Chair of Gynecology, Long Island College
Hospital ; Member Women's Hospital Society ; Kings Co. Medical Society, Long Island Medical Society, Kings Co. Medical Association ; Lately House Surgeon at the Woman's Hospital in the State of New York ; Recently House Surgeon at Prof. Martin's Privat-Anstalt in Berlin ; Member Physical Education Society of New York.

He includes some interesting photographs of men and women cyclists in his book - here are those of tandems and riders. I have included the original captions, which in keeping with his rather directive sort of advice, usually find some fault with the models' posture.



Above is the only photograph in the book of this particular tandem - although the front rider is a woman, the frame has a continuous top tube rather than a step-through portion for the woman rider, which could be either the front section or the rear. (This author takes the slightly radical position that women, properly attired, should be fine riding a "diamond frame wheel.")



Above is the first of two photos of this tandem that has a step-through frame section in front. Note that this tandem (and the preceding) have the ability for the back cyclist to steer also - how this worked in practice, one can only wonder. It certainly negated some of the advantage in the normal tandem arrangement, where the "stoker" in the rear can focus all if his (or her) energy on pedaling. Presumably the assumption was that the man could easily see over the woman in front, but it doesn't look that way here. Many tandems at the time had the step-through portion in the rear, in which case the rear rider could not steer (at least not in examples I've seen). There was an apparent tension between the version that was more socially acceptable (woman in front) versus what was easier to engineer (man in front).



To ride a "diamond frame wheel" Dr. Neesen advises wearing a short divided skirt, but apparently this is too short.

Bob Roll's "Two" Books

Bob Roll in his days with the 7-Eleven team

Lately I have given up Swedish detective novels (of which there seems to be a never-ending supply) in favor of cycling books of various sorts, from "policy tomes" (think Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities) to cycling travel narratives (now I'm reading Take a Seat: One Man, One Tandem and Twenty Thousand Miles of Possibilities and also the occasional book about professional cycle racing.

Which brings me to Bob Roll, and his "two" books. Bob Roll has been a cycle racing commentator for OLN and more recently Versus for the Tour de France following his racing career, but his first sports journalism efforts were writing for Velonews.

I work in a very large library in Washington DC. We don't have everything, but we have quite a lot (of books, anyway). Given Roll's performances for "Road-ID" ads (you can watch the regular ads on the Road-ID channel on YouTube, although you get the best sense of Bob during the first third of this "outtakes" collection video. He even talks about his books, saying, "I am an author - although the books aren't that good." He was joking.

So it seems plausible that a book by Bob Roll could be pretty funny. And, according to the very large database at the library where I work, Bob has written two "memoir" type books of his racing career! (Leaving aside two books he has co-written that are "how to understand the Tour de France" guides.) Fantastic!


The "bibliographic record" that describes Bob Roll's first book, from the very large database of such things

So, above is the description of Bob's first book, published in 1995 - 124 pages of Bob. It's a fun book, in a large paperback format with quite a few photos of Bob being amusing, or sometimes just racing his bike (without being amusing). Most of the text is taken from stuff he wrote for Velonews and is in the form of cycling race diary entries (he was writing while still racing at that point). It's a little random in spots.

Lourdes is a bizarre place. It's a sort of Kmart for Catholics, and provided a weird takeoff point for this final mountain stage.

And like that. So a little random.

Nevertheless, if in the right frame of mind, Bobke I (as I think of it) is a good (and quick) read.


The "bibliographic record" that describes Bob Roll's "second" book, from the very large database

Why do I put "second" in quotes?? Because once I got my hands on the "second" book and started reading, I thought, "wait a second, I read this book already!" And I had, mostly. The first two thirds of Bobke II is the same as Bobke I, except that it is now in a smaller paperback format (with more pages, yeah) and no photographs (boo! on taking out the photographs). And in fact, on the verso (that's "back side" for non-librarians) of the title page it says, "Part I [of Bobke II] was previously published as Bobke (VeloPress, 1995)." So, what one gets that is new in Bobke II is "Part II (of Bobke II)" and that amounts to about 65 pages. To paraphrase Bob, "ouch!"

Still, there is some good stuff in those 65 pages. There is a description of Bob's training rides in North Carolina with Lance Armstrong and there is probably the most amusing article-length first person description of a professional road race that I have ever read anywhere, although I may be heavily influenced by the central role of the Russian "Team Lada" cycle team in it. (I have some college degrees in Russian studies. Oh - and somewhat oddly, the full text of this story is online.)

I assume the reason that the publisher decided they could get away with this is that the number of copies of Bobke I printed and sold was tiny - at that time, the only reason anyone would know who Bob Roll was would be from being a bike racing nut (remember, 1995 was before Lance Armstrong won any Tours) and (or maybe or) reading Velonews. This isn't a huge market. By the time of Bobke II, in 2003, Bob had already put in several years as a TV commentator and although the audience was still skewed to people who were interested in cycling, thanks to Lance this was much larger market - so for the three people who accidentally bought Bobke II who already had Bobke I; well, they should be more careful.

I feel some affinity for Bob Roll, although for no good reason I suppose. Bob has a gap-toothed smile and I have a gap-toothed smile. Parked in that gap-toothed smile Bob has a tooth that (from the color) I would guess has a dead nerve and guess what, so do I. Bob thinks he's pretty funny and I would like to think I'm funny (but I concede wacky crazy funny to Bob). And Bob is a former professional bicycle racer and I like to sit on a bicycle from time to time and pedal to and from work.

At any rate, I hope I have cleared up the "two Bob Roll memoirs" situation sufficiently.

If after all this, you are still interested in some further amusement, I offer a link to a 1987 video from the 7 Eleven Cycling Team that I came upon while doing "research" for this blog post.


At 2:18 during this very dated video there are a couple of seconds of this Springer, attentively watching the bicycle race. This would be Springer with different interests than the one in our house.

Annual Dillons Bus Photo Op

Dillons bus driver demonstrating his "split the lane" right turn technique

This is just lazy driving, in my view. But I only drove a city bus for 12 years so what do I know.

Anyway, as with a year ago when I saw some less than excellent driving from these people, I took a photo and then I wrote an email:

This was taken with a cell phone camera, so the quality is not terribly good. This is proceeding west in Independence Ave SW, just approaching the intersection at 7th SW. This would have been around 4:30-4:40? Today. I don't wear a watch.

This is a common practice with Dillons buses making this turn - splitting the two right lanes. Here you have a photograph illustrating what I see often enough. It's just sloppy and dangerous - and completely unnecessary! This bus is turning into three lanes, so if the bus was entirely in the right lane on Independence it would be no problem to swing around the corner even if the nearest southbound lane has a vehicle in it. The bus ain't that long.

The only reason for this approach is to make it simpler to intimidate pedestrians by having four-five feet to turn in the direction of the crosswalk to the right without actually going into the crosswalk. I grant you, waiting until the crosswalk clears if the bus stays patiently in the right lane, where it belongs, isn't much fun - but what this driver is doing is putting the problem in the lap of everyone in two lanes behind the bus. Do you want your buses sideswiped? This is asking for it.

I was on a bicycle, by the way, and had plenty of room to ride right by (on the left) and from my personal perspective this is great since he blocked traffic and I got on down the road. But otherwise it's awful.

The last time I took a picture of a Dillons bus - the "open the door with a full lane open to the right so the passengers can get run over" technique

Little Lost CaBi Bike

Unlocked, in front of the U.S. Botanic Garden, middle of the day

I went for a mid-day run and below the Capitol (in Washington DC) this CaBi bikeshare bike was sitting like this, unlocked, in front of the U.S. Botanic Garden. No one around seemed connected with it. CaBi bikes don't come with locks - the idea is you ride from one docking station to another, so why do you need a lock? On the other hand, if someone makes off with one charged to a particular account, there is a 1,000 dollar charge.



Still here twenty minutes or so later, but someone stood it up anyway

When I was heading back, it was still here. That someone had stood the thing up led me to think it really was here unattended. It now had some tourist brochures shoved in behind the seatpost. My guess would be that someone found it improperly docked (not locked in) and took it for a little joy ride. I called CaBi (their number is on the bike) and they were going to send someone to investigate - nobody around paid the slightest attention to my interest in this bike - if someone had really left it like this, out of their sight, the person was being a bit lax.

A problem for CaBi would be that this area is restricted for delivery sorts of trucks, like the one CaBi uses to ferry bikes around. Someone would have to walk a few blocks.

Later in the day when I went home it was gone.

Springs, Not Air, for Bike Tires (1896 Patents)

For whatever reason, in December of 1896, more than one clever (or not so clever) inventor decided that they could make their fortune with a tire that required no air (or at least was only optionally inflatable). All three of the patent applications below were made with one month ~


Patent number 573,907

The patent above is straightforward in intent:

This invention relates to tires, being especially designed for use upon bicycles and other vehicles, and the object in view is to provide a mechanical tire resembling in action a cushion or pneumatic tire, the elasticity being obtained through the medium of a series of springs disposed around the wheel-rim and incased within a suitable sheath or cover, thus dispensing with the necessity for a pneumatic tire and avoiding the disadvantages of frequent puncturing and repair incident to the use of pneumatic tires.

The design is simple enough - one wonders if the inventor built a prototype that worked. Why are we still riding around on tires filled with troublesome air?



Patent number 573,920, part a

The next submission to the Patent Office seems to have decided a more complex approach was called for - in fact, he patented two separate spring systems as possible ways to solve the problem. (See above, and below.)



Patent number 573,920, part b

Just before 1896 ended, we have the submission below - the simplest approach yet. The inventor takes a more middle of the road approach - air is optional, not required:

If preferred, my improved tire may be used without being inflated, the spring D serving to maintain the tire in its proper position and to give elasticity thereto; but said tire may also be inflated with air in the usual manner, if desired, and by the usual means, and in this event both the air and the spring serves to give elasticity to the tire and to maintain it in the proper form.

Patent number 574,015

Alas, 115 years on, we are still riding around on tires that get punctures.

Is Cycling Safe? The Product Development View

Since I ride a bike more than a 100 miles a week on average, I think about bike safety a bit. Mostly I ride on bike paths or bike trails (or whatever they are properly called) although of course they are used by pedestrians, runners, etc - but not motor vehicles! And it is the motor vehicles that represent the significant safety problem for cyclists.

In the Seattle area, supposedly a very bike friendly region, two middle-aged cyclists were recently killed within a period of less than two weeks, one by a truck that went onto the shoulder where the cyclist was riding and another when an SUV made a left turn once oncoming car traffic had cleared, but not the oncoming cyclist. (In the second case, the driver got out, ascertained there was an accident, then drove away - hit and run.) Even though I read about cyclists getting killed all the time, for some reason these two events bother me.

At a conference recently (that had nothing to do with cycling) I heard a presentation by someone from Kickstarter, an organization (well, it's a commmercial company, actually) that provides a vehicle for getting start-up funding for various kinds of endeavors through their web site. Many are small cultural projects but others are efforts to start sales of products of one sort or another.

As it happens, Mr. Bikesnob NYC had a recent blog entry about a Kickstarter project for a bike turn signal system that is built into a left cycling glove. Kickstarter seeks solicitation primarily through videos; the "you turn" fundraiser video is below.



Mr. Bikesnob has lots of fun spoofing this Kickstarter video in various ways, although he leaves aside the main question I had (at first) which is whether the fellow is serious - the circuitry in the glove detects whether the cyclist points his hand up (for a right turn) or out to the left (for a left turn) and activates one of two LED arrows built into the glove. Yes, but . . . we inherited the "left hand straight up = right turn" thing from people driving cars (from when turn signals for cars were not always present!) and most cyclists now use their right arms to signal right turns. Since the left brake lever is for the front brake (also known as the brake that works best) I never signal right turns with my left hand - common sense dictates using my right hand to signal, stuck out to the right, and keeping my left hand on that brake lever. So if you wanted LED turn signals combined with gloves, it would be simplest to put a single arrow on each glove - assuming you think it makes sense to have such digital signals at all.

But I digress.

The real question I have is whether attempts to buttress cyclists' safety through developing new products to buy and use is a good approach. That it is an American approach, that much is obvious, but is it going to make it safer for cyclists?

Frankly I'm doubtful. The two things I believe that are needed to improve the safety of people on bicycles (vis a vis cars, trucks, etc.) is more people on bicycles, which inevitably leads to a lower accident rate for the cyclists; and, in tandem with that, a change in our transportation culture such that the "complete streets" concept makes sense to more and more people.

Of course, common sense says that cyclists are safer when they are visible to motorists if they use roads. (And of course there are laws requiring reflectors, lights, etc. for certain conditions.) This product, however, seems to contribute more to making cyclists more car-like, which doesn't seem particularly helpful. An LED turn signal system for bicycles contributes mostly to making cycling seem more dangerous and more complicated than it should be. The more safety equipment we pile onto cyclists, the less appealing it becomes, thus defeating the "more cyclists = fewer accidents" strategy.

Kickstarter has another cycling funding project - a bicycle brake light system.



It is suggested that having a brake light like a car's (that comes on when the brakes are applied) "has the potential to save many lives." As with the glove-signal system, it seems more to add to the complexity of cycling and to the impression that it is dangerous. Having a light or lights and a reflector to make a cyclist visible when it is dark and to take other measures to increase one's visibility to motorists makes good common sense but "I failed to realize the bicycle was stopping and therefore ran into it" isn't the problem I read about with cyclists hit by cars from the rear, it's the "I wasn't expecting a cyclist at that location, I didn't see him/her, and . . . " situations that are the problem. As the number of cyclists increases, the motorists get used to them, and expect to interact with them in their daily drives (and stop running into them so much). Also, eventually (a la Amsterdam) more and more drivers will be sometimes-cyclists, which can only help.

Now I'll get off my soapbox, such as it is. I'll put forth my thinking on bicycle helmets another time . . .

PS I asked a fellow from the Netherlands recently if he commuted by bike to work on Capitol Hill - his answer? "No, so many here talk about friends they know who got killed riding their bikes. No one in the Netherlands is ever killed riding their bike! It seems too dangerous."

Ideas for Bicycle Saddles (1896)

Google presents zillions of digitized patent applications - in the 1890s there were so many patent applications related to cycling that there was magazine, Cycling Monthly, that was nothing but patent and trademark applications related to bicycles. Not surprisingly it is more entertaining to page through that (if one works in a large library where there are some issues) and then bring up the Google versions rather than try to find 1890s patent applications for bicycle stuff directly in Google.

One quickly realizes that then as now, there is a sense that there must be a better bicycle saddle. The following examples are all from 1896 ~


Patent number 554,337

The notion in the above "invention" is that really you just want to sit on a couple of springs.



Patent number 556,250

Above is something like the opposite view to the previous patent - no, what you really want to do is sit on a shaped piece of wood! Oh, with a slit in the middle.



Patent number 557,238

Above, the well-known view even today (perhaps even more so today) that a wider base of support is key.


Patent number 558,917

A rather complex contoured approach . . .



Patent number 562,919

The last example here (but hardly the last patent application for bicycle saddles from 1896) is an "add on" to an existing saddle the would provide inflatable cushions held in place by their invention.

Bicycle "Body Shield" (Patent, 1896)

Patent from Google that demonstrates that while the basic bicycle design hasn't changed much, ideas for how to improve cycling have had their ups and downs.


Has every crazy idea been patented?

The object of the invention is to provide a new and improved body-shield more especially designed for use by bicyclists,boatmen, or other persons exposed to the force of the wind, the shield being arranged to not only break the force of the wind against the body of a bicycle-rider, but also to protect the throat, breast, face, and ears of the rider and at the same time permit the rider to easily get on or off the bicycle.