Flat Tire Blues?

Really, though, it wasn't so bad . . . or anyway it could have been worse.

Lately I have been commuting every day on my 30 year old Bridgestone. Two weeks ago, I got ready to go and when I put air in the rear tire, it started coming out faster than I could put it in! The edge of the hole in the wheel that the stem passes through had a rough edge that had made a hole in the rubber of the tire that extends a small way up the stem creating a leak. This was not a "puncture" flat of the usual sort but still, flat tires tend to come in "threes" so I guess I wasn't surprised when yesterday I had a flat tire on the way to work.


My nice 1982 Bridgestone Sirius, with air in the tires

Before 7 am these days, it is dark out. Plus the weather yesterday was strange - the temperature this early was close to 60 degrees - but rain was threatening so I was pretty sure that stopping to fix a tire was going to increase my chances of getting wet. As it turned out, I was just at where the Four Mile Run trail passes under Route 1 and the GW Parkway near the south end of the airport, so I pulled over between two lights and at least could see what I was doing.

I like to imagine I can fix a flat in ten minutes or less, but it is always more like 15. Off comes the tire and I pull out the tube and mark the tube with my Sharpie as to which side of the tube was which - if I don't do that, then when I find out where the hole is it is just that much more work figuring out if the sharp thing that came through the tire is still there or not. (I never like putting in a fresh tube not knowing what caused a whole in the previous one.) I put some air in the tube and easily found the hole, marked it, then matched it up with the tire and quickly found a very stiff bit of fine wire, say 3/8 inch long, going right through the tire that had punctured the tube. It was nice that there was no damage to the tire at least. Even with Kevlar belts this kind of thing is going to happen, although how this wire had been sitting there on the trail, standing on end waiting for a bike tire to poke into, is hard to imagine. Out comes the wire from the tire, take new tube from tool bag, put wheel back together, fill with air and off I go.


I guess I should have put on some rubber gloves

Nine riders went by while I worked on my tire - none of the fair weather bike commuters out on a day like this! I was a little disappointed that of the nine, five rode by in silence (like I wasn't there) and only four offered to help with the usual "got what you need?" or similar. Of course, to stop on a day like this would be to increase the chances of getting caught in the rain. Not that we are going to melt . . .

Having fixed my flat about three miles into my ten mile ride, I then took off - I found that the wind was from the south (which is unusual at this time of day) and I made good time, although I didn't make up for the 15 minute "break" in my ride! Still, it was exhilarating. As I crossed the 14th St Bridge, I could see rain off to the north, but I got to work without getting caught in the rain. On the way to my office, after parking my bike in the garage, I looked out a window and was surprised to see water sluicing down the windows from a downpour. I don't mind riding in the rain, but not so much downpours, so even with my stop I managed to avoid that. Good!

Almost immediately after broad adoption of pneumatic tires for bicycles in the late 1880s, people began trying to figure out a way to avoid flat tires and yet have the obvious benefits of that kind of tire (as compared to solid rubber or other sold tires).


An example of an 1896 proposed alternative to the pneumatic tire

So far, however, nothing like to replace the pneumatic tire (and inevitable flat tires) has been developed that is widely used.

Bicycling Magazine's Confused View of the 1890s

A recent blog post, titled "19th Century Ride Etiquette for Women" on the Bicycling Magazine site looks at a list of Don'ts for Women Riders published in a Newark newspaper in 1895. Most peculiarly, the blog post leads with a photo of a group of young men with "ordinary" bicycles, otherwise known as "penny farthings". The photo is captioned in this way - "Were the early years of organized cycling a boys club?" (No credit is given for where the photo was found, which is kind of rude but oh well.)


Eight young men with Penny-Farthing bicycles, from the State Library and Archives of Florida

As a number of the comments with the blog post note, these sorts of bicycles weren't much in use by the time of the 1895 article that is the subject of the blog post - the "safety" or "diamond" [frame] bicycle had displaced it completely in sales and almost completely in use. Certainly women did not start cycling in any significant numbers until the safety became popular. So apparently the Bicycling blogger searched Google images for "penny farthing" as a way to find a suitable "old" image, because a search on "group bicycles penny farthing" will include this image in the first page of hits. Now, it may have been confusing that the Florida librarian who cataloged this indicated, "Photographed in Tallahassee, Florida between 1885 and 1910" but the cataloger wasn't a specialist in bicycle history and presumably based that date range on the known period of time when the particular photographer was active - without better information than that, there isn't much choice. One would think, however, that someone working for Bicycling magazine might know (or be able to find out) what bicycles were common in 1895 and find a corresponding image.

To me even worse than using an image of the wrong sort of bikes is that it would have been easy enough to find an image of women with bikes from the 1890s - a Google image search on women bicycles 1890s brings up images of groups of just women and groups of men and women (and with the right sort of bikes).


This is an image (although not a photograph) found by searching Google - women and bicycles in 1895

I also think that casting the newspaper article as "etiquette" isn't particularly accurate - it is far more all encompassing than that, covering virtually every aspect of cycling. One comment suggests that this over-the-top approach surely must have been intended as a joke, but there were plenty of similarly detailed instructional articles and even books written for cyclists in those days. Based on what I have seen, it wasn't even odd to cast an entire body of advice as "don'ts."

The list is pretty long, and for today's reader, many are amusing:

DON'TS FOR WOMEN RIDERS

Don't be a fright.
Don't faint on the road.
Don't wear a man's cap.
Don't wear tight garters.
Don't forget your toolbag
Don't attempt a "century."
Don't coast. It is dangerous.
Don't boast of your long rides.
Don't criticize people's "legs."
Don't wear loud hued leggings.
Don't cultivate a "bicycle face."
Don't refuse assistance up a hill.
Don't wear clothes that don't fit.
Don't neglect a "light's out" cry.
Don't wear jewelry while on a tour.
Don't race. Leave that to the scorchers.
Don't wear laced boots. They are tiresome.
Don't imagine everybody is looking at you.
Don't go to church in your bicycle costume.
Don't wear a garden party hat with bloomers.
Don't contest the right of way with cable cars.
Don't chew gum. Exercise your jaws in private.
Don't wear white kid gloves. Silk is the thing.
Don't ask, "What do you think of my bloomers?"
Don't use bicycle slang. Leave that to the boys.
Don't go out after dark without a male escort.
Don't without a needle, thread and thimble.
Don't try to have every article of your attire "match."
Don't let your golden hair be hanging down your back.
Don't allow dear little Fido to accompany you
Don't scratch a match on the seat of your bloomers.
Don't discuss bloomers with every man you know.
Don't appear in public until you have learned to ride well.
Don't overdo things. Let cycling be a recreation, not a labor.
Don't ignore the laws of the road because you are a woman.
Don't try to ride in your brother's clothes "to see how it feels."
Don't scream if you meet a cow. If she sees you first, she will run.
Don't cultivate everything that is up to date because you ride a wheel.
Don't emulate your brother's attitude if he rides parallel with the ground.
Don't undertake a long ride if you are not confident of performing it easily.
Don't appear to be up on "records" and "record smashing." That is sporty.

Of course this was doubtlessly a list prepared by some man, who was obviously far more concerned with what a woman should not do (in his view) than what a woman should do. Bicycling for Ladies, written by Maria Ward and published in 1896, has a much more positive tone.


She is probably breaking at least ten "don'ts"

Winter Cycling 2012 - Moscow & Seattle

A fellow living on Phinney Ridge in Seattle has posted the video above showing a ride in their recent heavy snow. It is in real time and his camera is bolted to his handlebars; the video is pretty bumpy. It demonstrates that as long as you don't have ice but just slush or snow that isn't too deep, a person can get around by bike. However I know from experience it's pretty tiring and ideally you maintain some speed/momentum in order to push through the stuff.

I used to live in this part of Seattle - at about 1 minute 20 seconds an apartment building appears on the right that we lived in. Beyond the stop light that can be seen at that point is the Woodlawn Park Zoo.



This video is more fun to watch than the Seattle snow video - it is not in real time but sped up four times, also he says he used some feature of YouTube to "stabilize" the images (so not so bumpy). He rides from Krasnye Vorota, somewhat northeast of the Kremlin, to Novokuznetskaia, which looks to be somewhere between four and five kilometers. Unlike Seattle, there are plenty of cars and pedestrians that he shares the road (and the sidewalks) with. Of course part of it is that it is not in real time, but he's got more courage than I have. At about 2 minutes 30 seconds he crosses a bridge over the Moscow river - he rides (as he does most, but not all the time) in road and not on the bridge pedestrian area, which seems pretty risky.

Even with fenders (and the bike isn't shown, so who knows) you would get filthy riding in these conditions - Moscow is famous for the chemical mix used on the streets in winter which contributes a dirty brown "oatmeal" consistency slush. People must be astonished to see someone riding in Moscow in winter.

Kickstarter Bicycle Trailer Example

I have to wonder who decides and on what basis to accept the Kickstarter projects that are trying to get some bicycle-related product "kickstarted." Because a lot of them don't seem to be very compelling . . .



The BOB trailer hitch used for this project is part of a bike trailer product line - I assume that our Kickstarter proposal submitter is getting that part of his product from the BOB people and didn't just borrow the design.


A real BOB trailer, waiting patiently to be needed

The innovative aspect of this Kickstarter proposal is that the cargo area for this particular trailer is in a lockable aluminum box that fits onto the trailer frame. The box can be removed from the frame and the frame can be disassembled and the pieces can travel in the box, which is clever. In Seattle and such places a nice sealed box would be good to protect whatever you want to carry from the weather, but of course one could easily attach a box like this to a standard BOB trailer if one wants.

The proposal is a little disingenuous - you can get a basic BOB trailer for $300 (not the 380 he compares it to), or half the cost of this trailer. So he wants an additional $300 for the box, more or less. It's a nicely made German box, but $300 is kind of steep for what is, after all, an aluminum box.

However the pricing of his product isn't as much of an issue for me as the typical "I need $x,xxx to make this a reality" line with no further explanation of what the funds are needed for. The absurd Bicycle Contrail project proposal that I looked at least had a sorta budget:

Here's where the money will go:
$5,700 A down payment on the tooling to make the housing and the gears.
$2,800 To pay for the first 2000 pieces, half of which will be donated to non-profits.
$1,000 To visit the factory in order to ensure that everything is built to our standards.
$1,500 To help coordinate and promote our first non-profit partnership event.

Here though the statement that $9,000 is needed to built his first 15 copies and get the business started is to be taken as sufficient. (Yeah, I get that $9,000 divided by 15 units is the $600 he quotes for each unit, but for one thing, he doesn't get the entire $9,000 raised.)

I guess I'm being too picky, but I don't see how building 15 of these gets him any further down the road than having built the one prototype as far as having a sustainable manufacturing system on the one hand and someone to sell them for him or a way for him to sell them himself on the other.

The video is curious - it is over nine minutes long, which is pretty long for such a simple product. Turns out to be one-third product explanation and then six minutes of ground-level footage of the trailer bouncing around Seattle streets.

There is also a peculiar factual error in one statement - he says the trailer tracks directly behind the bike. Of course I may not correctly understand what he meant by that, but I take that statement to mean that the trailer tire would be on the same track as the rear tire of the bike, and that isn't possible - if you make a turn, the trailer wheel will track somewhat inside the line followed by the rear bicycle tire. Because the distance between the two wheels is slight, the amount we are talking about here is pretty small, but still, why say that when it isn't correct?

We'll see if he gets funding - the most similar previous Kickstarter project was looking for $35,000 for what was a rather larger scale bike trailer and did get commitments for more than $5,000 but fell quite short of its target.


As compelling as a heavy-lift bike trailer might be, it wasn't funded


Bicycle trailers are hardly a new idea, with or without a German box

Peddling Bicycles to America - Book Review

Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry by Bruce D. Epperson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This seems to be one of those rare cases where the author's eagerness to include much of what he learned in his book diminishes the result. The author obviously knows an incredible amount about the subject - he documents this both in the preface and in the notes and bibliography, but what story is he trying to tell? Based on very last sentence, apparently his main point was to fit bicycle manufacturing history into its proper place between arms manufacturing and automobile mass production. If that's the case, then why did we need so many details about all the members of Albert Pope's extended family?

My review is just as bad as the book in this regard - it assumes you know who Albert Pope is. This in fact is probably the greatest weakness of this book, which is that it is really intended for a specialist audience which seems too bad, since there is so little written on this topic for a more general audience. I think it would have been possible to have the book serve both audiences reasonably well, but that isn't this book.

Epperson debunks various commonly held (in small circles) assumptions or understandings about bicycle production from the 1890s, such as the number of bicycles built and sold by the big companies - it wasn't so many, basically. This seems to be one of his big goals, to correct the record. The book is put forth as a technical and economic history, but I don't quite see how an economic history can spend so little time describing the customers' interests and the market for bicycles generally during this period. Again, it is the "book for specialists" problem. (If this is a problem.)

This is a very interesting book for someone who has already read about this period and knows some of the history but it isn't a very good book for anyone else. Alas.

View my GoodReads list of cycling books and review.

Unprecedented Kickstarter Bicycle Project?

Yeah, this isn't a current Kickstarter proposal but something from a bit over a year ago - but for some reason, I am only noticing it in my search results now. I love perusing Kickstarter projects involving bikes and trying to figure if or why they will or did get funded.



Here's what the project is about ~

We want to encourage people to ride bicycles in their everyday lives, so we invented Contrail.

Contrail turns your bicycle into a paintbrush leaving a temporary mark of your bicycle's path.

You attach it to your bike and as you ride, it leaves a colorful line behind you. When many people ride with Contrail, the result is a colorful path which illustrates where bicycles are riding. We envision artists, non-profits and community organizations using our product to create art, promote their events and celebrate shared spaces.

Contrail uses washable, non-toxic chalking fluid made from eco-friendly pigments. Like a jet's contrail, the lines on the road will fade with time and rain.

So, what they meant wasn't really "community tool" but rather a "community building tool" - by seeing that other bicycles have been out there with their contrails, we would feel community. The benefits are listed (in order or priority, presumably) as "create public art; make biking safer; and, encourage more bicyclists." I don't see how it does anything about the second one and as to the third, it seems more like it encourages existing cyclists, not new ones.

My impression from looking at Kickstarter proposals for bike-related projects is that the video has to make a compelling case and usually "fun" bike projects do better than ones heavily focused on safety. This is certainly a fun project but I am surprised that as many people found the video persuasive - the little chalk lines are hardly noticeable unless you have had 20+ bikes ride by with these units, and is that really going to happen? But the young presenters seem very likable and earnest.

Anyway, how did this work out once they got their money? Apparently it didn't. With Kickstarter, if your proposal is funded, Kickstarter gets the money from the supporters and then takes their cut and the proposal originators get the rest (something over 90 percent). The accountability to do whatever they proposed is apparently pretty minimal. In the comments a year after the funding was achieved, several people write wondering what ever happened, as one put it, "Wow no updates since November 2010?!!!! Did you enjoy the holiday we funded or what?"

They have their own separate web site that does not appear to have been touched since October 2010 when they got their funding.

At any rate, what I meant by "unprecedented" is that there aren't very many truly new ideas related to cycling - one can often find patent applications from over 100 years ago similar to what is supposed to be a new idea today. This does seem to have that going for it - it is a novel idea. Didn't seem to get done, however.

If You Ride the Wheel, You Have to Fix the Wheel

Title (apparently given to its by photographer) is "Paying for his fun"

Another photo (that seems to be the only other one digitized) by the mysterious 1890s photographer, F.T. Harmon, who took the two in yesterday's blog entry. I like his sleeve protectors keeping his shirt clean as he polishes up his spokes.

You can see the rear cog in on the wheel - chains were different at this time and there were only half as many teeth on a cog because the chain had a space for a tooth only between every other link.

From the Library of Congress.

1897 Photos Tell a Story

Something about these photos looks staged to me. Pretty surprising to have a fork stem break. Anyway, although probably posed, there he is with his broken bike.


From the Library of Congress

Now comes along this other fellow, but how he is supposed to help repair a problem like this is difficult to say.


From the Library of Congress

Taken by one F.T. Harmon in 1897.

Bicycle Parts Named, 1898 Version

Taken from The Modern Bicycle and its Accessories: A Complete Reference Book for Rider, Dealer and Maker. New York: Commercial Advertiser Association, 1898. Digitized version from Google, a rare example of a book digitized by Google from the Library of Congress General Collections.


Above, the title page

Note that Google only got the first part of the title correct ("The Modern Bicycle") and made part of the title into the author - "By Rider Dealer and Makerr". Oops.




A detailed listing of all the parts of the bike

If you click on the image you can get to a better version on Flickr. It is probably an artifact of Google's efforts that the text is straight but the image of the bicycle is not. Also, the poor image quality is another sign of Google digitization. I think this would have been done very early in their digitization efforts.



An amusing example of the most "up to date" model - a racing bike, presumably

Note the rather large front ring. This almost looks like a bike used with a lead bicycle (with three or four riders) that the rider of this bike would draft behind.

Arlington (VA) Survey of Area Cyclists

This short article summarizes a study of Arlington cyclists.

Here are the survey results. The survey results include information gathered in 2009 and 2011. Apparently they stopped riders on the trail to administer the survey.

The point of the survey, besides understanding who bikes in Arlington and why, was to assess the BikeArlington program.

BikeArlington scored high satisfaction ratings in the survey. 79% of respondents reporting they were satisfied with the service, and more than half (54%) of BikeArlington users have already recommended the program to someone else. Most importantly, almost half of those who used BikeArlington services reported making a change in their biking behavior!!

I confess I don't think of BikeArlington as a service and other than providing rider instruction and managing the bike trail system and bike lanes, I don't know what they do, in the sense of being able to "recommend the program to someone else." And making a "change in their biking behavior. . . ?" Hm.

Good List of New Cycling Books ~

Podium Cafe has a nice list of new books about different aspects of cycling. Something fun to peruse!

It mentions that there will be a fourth edition of The Dancing Chain! Who would have guessed there was so much about bicycle chains (well, and the rest of the drive train too) to update!

Contrasts in Rider Attire - Women Century Riders 1897

The photos below are taken from the C.R.C. Manual compiled by Will L. Krietenstein for the Century Road Club of America in 1898. In the middle are a number of posed photos of century ride champions, including two women.


More manly attire, as shown on this page


More traditional attire, as shown on this page

Since the photos were posed in two different photographers' studios, one wonders if the second rider actually rode with such a long coat and that particular sort of wind-catching hat; still, one sees other photos of women on bikes in similar attire at that time (but not, presumably, riding 100 mile intervals). The first rider's attire is noteworthy for its practicality. One senses that this may even be her own bike that she has brought to the photography session, with its tool bag attached under the top tube. (I assume that in the first one the bike is a photographer's prop and not her own since it was taken in St. Louis and she was the champion of Minnesota.)

Given that these images are captured from Google book scans rendered in poor grayscale, they are not too bad, I think.

New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest with Bikes

The New Yorker has a cartoon each week that users can captions for - this week's shows two angels (with haloes), both holding bikes at their sides. One is talking to the other. They are standing in the clouds and in the background another angel can be seen riding on a cloud on his bicycle. These three angels are the only ones visible, so apparently in this heaven one has a bike.

Here's the link although next week it will change.

One has to suggest a caption by January 1 to compete. It seems like I should have some sort of idea, but nothing is coming to me.

Cartoon brawing by Mick Stevens - Contest #316, January 2, 2012.

Kickstarter Funded Bike Travel

Reading Kickstarter proposals and seeing what success they have is an interesting way of learning something about human nature. There aren't that many connected with cycling but the few I see are interesting. Most are seeking funding for products related to bicycles for which they believe there is a market; some are for projects that are for projects that use bicycles as the delivery system - vegan baked goods provided on a bicycle sales cart, for example. A few are proposals to fund bicycle travel of one sort or another.

I am puzzled why this fellow's proposal was approved by the Kickstarter folks - it doesn't seem a likely candidate. Kickstarter is mostly, in my observation, about fun and then secondarily some "feel good, do good-ism" but in more high level ways (like funding portaits of South Africans and their bicycles.

A mystery is how this fellow can have 245 Facebook friends and only raise a total of five (5!) dollars (from five people).

There is a long history of riding long trips around the United States or even around the world that started with the "ordinary" bicycles of the 1860s but grew with the development of the more modern "safety" bicycle that is much like today's bikes, funding the travel with ad hoc fundraising along the way. In the 1890s Annie Londonderry funded her travel around the world by raising the money as she went along, primarily by giving talks (for which she was paid) and selling various momentoes. At the end she supposedly received $10,000 from a wager that she couldn't complete the trip.


In 1904 two men used this route to win a $5,000 wager by visiting all 48 states in 18 months

Merry Christmas 2011

Columbia Bicycle Co. History

I have been reading Bruce Epperson's Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry - it is very good and I will write more about that later (as a book review).

Meanwhile, I found this article online about Colonel Albert Pope that provides a nice brief history of his life and Columbia Bicycles (although not so much about the bicycles . . . )

Pope was influential in the "good roads" movement that sought to improve the conditions for cycling (and thus the sales of bicycles, particularly Columbia bicycles) - this photo (from 1937) shows the one million signatures gathered in 1892 to support federal assistance for construction of better roads. (They apparently couldn't throw the thing away so were at a loss, it seems, to know what to do with it.)

National Archives to get 1892 petition for building of better roads. Washington, D.C., April 30. A petition containing over one million names submitted to the United States Senate in 1892 requesting legislation, "for the purpose of promoting knowledge in the art and construction and maintenance of roads" is to be removed from the Capitol and deposited in the National Archives building.

Pope started out by pricing his bikes under the competition, but by 1897 he was attempting to appeal to those who might understand that low price wasn't everything ~


An appeal to reason by Columbia

This ad, and the text below, both came from an 1897 issue of "Cycling Life".

On the same page as the Columbia ad is this "article" that one assumes was supplied by Columbia itself - this sort of thing seems fairly common in this publication, which was produced for bicycle resellers ("the trade") and not for consumers. The line between advertisements and journalism was blurred, to say the least.

Columbia Excel.

A comparison between the smooth running features of Columbia bicycles and those of other makes, reveals at once the superiority of the former. The entire concentrated energy of the army of mechanical experts at the great Hartford factories has been directed during the past year to the perfection of these qualities, and nothing has been omitted that could aid in keeping Columbia s in their universallv recognized position — the standard of the world. The famous crank shaft mechansm, which was the wonder of last year's running gear inventions, has been retained in its original form, having proved a triumph in the art of cycle building. The Columbia bearings are unequalled, and run with a smoothness hitherto unknown. The light, correctly shaped saddles will carry Columbia riders further with less fatigue than any others, and their perfect fitting qualities enable the rider to retain a firm seat and control of the wheel, giving the grace of personal carriage which distinguishes the Columbia rider above all others. Considered from an artistic, mechanical,useful, or any other standpoint, there is but one best bicycle—the Columbia.

The brief "news item" about how good Columbia bicycles remain in 1897

Young Bicycle Messengers From ~100 Years Ago

Lewis Hine took thousands of photographs that make up the National Child Labor Committee Collection that was used to document terrible conditions for working children - the photographs were used to support arguing that laws should protect children.

The photos below are from the Library of Congress collection and are just a few of 159 at the Library of Congress (although not all show bicycles . . . ) - they are quite amazing.


Group of Western Union Messengers in Norfolk, Va. 1911


Leo Day, Postal Telegraph Messenger, 12 years old, and a very knowing lad. Tampa, Florida. 1911


Isaac Boyett, "I'm de whole show." Waco, Texas. 1913

The caption continues: The twelve year old proprietor, manager and messenger of the Club Messenger Service, 402 Austin Street, Waco. The photo shows him in the heart of the Red Light district where he was delivering messages as he does several times a day. Said he knows the houses and some of the inmates. Has been doing this for one year, working until 9:30 P.M. Saturdays. Not so late on other nights. Makes from six to ten dollars a week.

Déesse 16, rue Halévy, Paris - Lovely Poster

Déesse 16, rue Halévy, Paris, Jean de Paleologue, born 1855, artist

One print (poster), lithograph, color ; 149.9 x 110.5 cm. (That is, about 60 inches on the long dimension.) From about 1898.

Permanent Link is http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011661494/.

As of December 22, 2011, not yet online but will be soon. I got an advance copy . . .

Bicycle Crime in Ukraine

I found this news item online, in Russian, about a bicycle theft in Ukraine. The following is my edited translation. (I started with the Google version . . . )

In Kharkiv two drunken women robbed a pensioner

December 16, 2011

According to the correspondent of the Kharkiv Press Service of the Main Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (that is, the police) in the Kharkiv region, the incident happened in the village Kochetovka Zachepilovskii area.

That evening the two women were at a party. They eventually tried to go home when the buses were no longer running. They did not have money for a taxi. They decided to "borrow" the money or any transportation from a 72-year-old local resident.

Knowing that the pensioner lived alone, the women boldly opened the gate to his yard and began banging on the windows of the house. They called the man into the yard and asked him to give them money or a bike to ride home. The surprised man opened the gate and tried to drive the drunk women out of the yard, explaining that he did not know them and did not plan to give them anything. Then they pushed the owner, went into the hallway and found the keys to the shed where there was a bicycle, and left. The man called the police - the suspects were arrested for the the crime and spent a few days in jail. The women again came to the pensioner's home and they took metal materials from his yard in order to sell them for scrap. "They have been detained [again] as criminals," - the press service says.

This is now a criminal case under Article 186 (robbery) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

A bicycle in this part of the world

Incidentally, the main factory for sports bicycles in the former Soviet Union was not far away, the Khar'kov Bicycle Factory - here is one of their catalogs.

Why Cyclists May Avoid "Their" Bike Lanes

My dog isn't too interested, but the dedicated bike lane has some issues

A classic example of how the bike lane, created with much (ok, not much) fanfare when this bridge was resurfaced a few years ago, has become the place for little trashy crap kicked up by the passing cars - just the sort of thing to flat a bike tire. Mighty convenient for all of it to be stored right there in a special lane just for the bikes (and their tires)!


Close-up shows how much crap is in the bike lane