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I Bike: Tom Radley

By Louise McGrody | Published June 16, 2010

I met Tom Radley of Redmond in the mid 1990s when he stepped forward as an early supporter of the East Lake Sammamish Trail. He lived on the lake at that time and, according to Tom, he dearly wanted to see the trail built. Today, Tom is retired and rides this gem of a trail often.

Tom has enjoyed bicycling since childhood and fondly recalls earning the Cycling Merit Badge as a Boy Scout. He rode his first STP in 1980 and became hooked on long distance riding and touring. Although retired from full time work, Tom leads rides for Adventure Cycling Association. He gets “tremendous satisfaction from helping others enjoy and be motivated to do human powered travel.”

Tom bikes for many reasons–health, recreation, exercise and transportation. Most of his vacations the past 30 years have been by bicycle.

“You see much more on a bike and the experience is so much richer. You use all your senses at once to fully soak in the environment,” said Tom. “And when you see other cyclists on the road, they are always smiling!” he added.

Tell us your story! I Bike is a project of Washington Bikes to put a personal face on bicycling when we talk to elected officials and the public. Contact Louise McGrody if you’d like to share your I Bike story.

Posted in I Bike, People | Comments Off

What Are Volunteers For?

By baw_admin | Published June 15, 2010

Disclaimer: This article is solely the opinion of the author and does not reflect the opinion of Washington Bikes, its volunteers, its board, or its employees.

So far this blog has focused on bicycling-related topics, which makes good sense, what with the Bicycle Alliance’s interest in bikes and all. Nary a word has been written, though, about the Bicycle Alliance as a nonprofit. Nonprofits exist in an interesting world of grants, donations, and in-kind help.

Nearly all nonprofit organizations rely on volunteers (pictured: Volunteer Ted Inkley working at the Bicycle Alliance’s Bike Expo booth) to achieve their missions. How, though, should an organization like the Bicycle Alliance use volunteer labor? Pablo Eisenberg sums up one common view of volunteer labor succinctly: “Although volunteers can certainly provide useful ancillary services, they cannot solve deeply rooted problems.” On the other end of the spectrum, Richard Lynch argues that volunteers are as reliable or unreliable as paid staff, and that a good volunteer program enables an organization to:

Engage the community as a partner in accomplishing its mission.
Access to all the skills available in the community.
Accomplish its mission more easily.
Escape its financial constraints.

Other benefits of a program that uses volunteers at all levels include, but are not limited to:

Expanding the organization’s influence.
Increasing community representation within the organization.
Increasing donations, since volunteers are often also long-term donors.
More depth and focus on one project than a staff person, drawn in a variety of directions, could normally provide.

In short, volunteers can enable an organization to meet all its goals and frees the organization from its constraints.

Sounds pretty ideal, doesn’t it? Yet most organizations limit their volunteers’ effectiveness for lack of imagination about what volunteers can do for them. I hope, during the remainder of my tenure as an AmeriCorps intern, to begin expanding the Bicycle Alliance’s volunteer program. Some day we will offer the kind of vibrant, exciting volunteering activities that attract bicyclists of all stripes. Will you join us in making this vision a reality?

We can only accomplish what we believe we can accomplish. I believe we can do this. If you’re interested in helping me to revolutionize the Bicycle Alliance’s impact with a strong, exciting, effective volunteer program, contact me at katief (at) wabikes.org.

Posted in Volunteer | Comments Off

Weather Radar

By baw_admin | Published June 14, 2010

May has been wetter and colder than normal, which makes me think about riding in the rain. I’m willing and usually prepared to ride in the rain, but I don’t like to get wet. I dodge the rain whenever I can. I have a very flexible work schedule so I often avoid a wet trip to the office by waiting a few minutes.

In the middle of Bike To Work Month meteorologist Cliff Mass posted at his blog about using weather radar to sneak in a bike ride to work between the raindrops.

An interesting and critical fact about rain is that it is rarely uniform. There are heavy areas and light areas and breaks. By viewing radar animations you can spot the light areas, or make a good estimate when one will be at your location. So if you have some flexibility of when you bike, delaying or advancing your trip by a 10-15 minutes, you can nearly always avoid the real heavy stuff or secure a dry ride even on a supposedly rainy day. The more flexibility you have the better your chance of staying dry.

You can find radar coverage on the web at:

National Weather Service

Weather Underground

AccuWeather

(These links are for Seattle, where I live. Each of the top pages has a search box where you can point the forecast site to your location.)

Smartphone apps can deliver weather forecasts and radar views when you are away from your keyboard. The Weather app delivered with the iPhone shows only a very brief summary forecast and no radar. Two better apps for the iPhone are:

AccuWeather

WeatherBug

WeatherBug is my current favorite. There’s a free, ad-supported version so you can try it out. The paid version removes the advertisements and the animated radar view shows how fast that squall is coming.

Anyone else have a favorite weather resource?

(If you are seeing this in Facebook, please return to the Bicycle Alliance blog to post comments.)

Posted in Bike to Work, Commuting | Comments Off

Cyber Cynic

By baw_admin | Published June 11, 2010

What is that sucking sound?

I am new to blogs and blogging, with less than a month of online posts under my belt. I receive at least two emails a day at work that link me to seemingly unending information and opinions about all things bicycle, and the number is rising. The only reason these emails get past the spam filter is that the folks sending them are on my contacts list.

Reading these blogs about bicycling was for me like going to sea for the first time: I can tell it will take awhile to keep from getting dizzy from the constant back and forth, up and down, and the feeling of being trapped. I love getting on the boat that is the article on the other end of the link, but then we leave the dock. An instant rough sea waits at the end of the blog post, with all of the comments, and comments on comments, replies to replies, and often a chance to jump overboard with MORE LINKS.

Reading blog commentary, I am sucked into the brains of other people, and I reflexively try to follow the reasoning (and even the unreasonable). It seems that the internet’ ability to allow instant letters to the editor (sans the editing), attracts extremes of point of view and experience. Bicycling blog commentary seem to follow a pattern:

first comment–usually thumbs up, with a shout out to the credibility of the commenter’s reply.
Reply to first comment–you are nuts!, and here is why………..
Reply to first reply’s reply–come on now, why can’t we get along…..

second comment–usually thumbs down, with a discrediting reference to data that is may or may not be backed up by a LINK to a study disputing some content of the article, plus maybe a little snipe at first commenter
Reply to second comment— a LINK to a study disputing the above non supported data and a LINK to data that supports the writer’s right to dispute to second commentator’s comment
Reply to second reply’s reply–come on now, why can’t we get along…..

third comment—cynicism or lame attempt at using a previous posting as the butt of a joke.

I just finished Josh Cohen’s PubliCola post about putting in a Cycle Track on Dexter. Josh’s blog was simple, factual and educational, and something about bicycle infrastructure that I have not seen in the Seattle Times, yet. OK, so no links to follow in the comments section, but 62 postings all culminating in what? Did anyone commenting change their opinion, or was it just a morning fix of agitation (political caffeine)?

Please believe me when I say that I am not one of those “let’s all get along” idealists. But I would hate to become so cynical and isolated that all I did anymore was fire off one-liners in cyberspace, entirely intent on polishing my cynicism. I happen to like observing human behavior. My Mom was a great people watcher and could make up a life story for anybody, usually focusing on the good in a person without judging the book by its cover. I also know that she drew on her infamous photographic memory—recalling relevant information that came from one of the three daily newspapers she took—and she enjoyed pointing out an Op Ed writer’s misstatements, or a politician’s rhetoric.

I try to imagine what she would have had to say about a bike blog’s detractors and champions. I truly appreciated her prowess at critical thinking and fact based schooling of loud mouths, and I feel her distaste for the blood sport of attacks on life choices, or mean spirited aspersions on anyone’s desire to influence change for the common good.

Posted in Bike Blogs | Comments Off

Wagner’s music, skydiving, and getting Americans to ride their bikes

By baw_admin | Published June 10, 2010

“Wagner’s music,” Mark Twain once observed, “is actually much better than it sounds.”

Which reminds me of trying to convince my non-bicycling friends that riding a bike is actually much safer than it seems.

“I would never ride a bike in Seattle,” they declare. “All those cars. It’s just too risky.” And I’ll respond: “I know it might feel dangerous, but it’s really not. Statistically, only 5.8 cyclists die for every 100 million kilometers cycled in the United States.” And they’ll say: “Statistics be damned. Bicycling on the street makes me feel like I’m roller-skating in a buffalo stampede. I’ll keep jogging, thank you.”

If perceived danger keeps Americans off their bikes in droves, then how can you convince them that they’re wrong? I think the answer is: You can’t. People’s first-hand impressions will trump cold statistics every time. Only when bicycling feels safe will more people will do it.

European bike blogger David Hembrow likens it to skydiving. Statistics show that there’s only one death for every 122,000 jumps. That means that you could skydive once a day for 334 years before you were killed. Great–but it doesn’t convince most people to jump out of airplanes, because it still doesn’t feel like a safe thing to do.

It’s the same thing with bicycles. Hembrow believes that the only way to increase cycling rates is to increase riders’ sense of “subjective safety.”

How do you do that? Hembrow argues that the key is good infrastructure that separates cyclists from cars, and the statistics support him.

The highest cycling rates in the first world are in countries where the infrastructure is best. Both the Netherlands and Denmark have emphasized construction of first-rate separated bike facilities. The result? In the Netherlands, 27 percent of all trips are made by bicycle. Compare this to the United States, where the bicycle’s share stands at a miserable one percent. In Copenhagen, which has 350 kilometers of physically-separated bicycle “tracks” along its arterial streets, 55 percent of all residents get to school or work by bicycle. In “bike-friendly” Seattle, it’s three percent.

You can see how separated infrastructure increases “subjective safety” by taking a ride on a local bike trail. I was on Seattle’s Burke-Gilman Trail last Saturday morning. It was sunny, and the trail was clogged with cyclists of all descriptions. Not just road warriors, either. There were kids in bike trailers, kids on the bike behind mom or dad, and kids on their own bikes with training wheels. If parents are willing to let their children ride somewhere, then you know they believe it’s safe.

Yes, building good bike infrastructure costs money. But it’s sure cheap compared to building new highways and parking garages. And it’s the only way we can bring bicycling out of the realm of fringe activities and into the mainstream.

Posted in Commuting, Infrastructure, Kids, Safety, Transportation | 1 Comment

Rhapsodizing on RAPSody Bike Ride

By baw_admin | Published June 9, 2010

We Northwesterners live in a beautiful place. I am reminded of that each time I get to enjoy views of the Puget Sound, of the Cascades and of the Olympic Mountains from the seat of a bicycle. Of course, you can see the scenery from a car, too, but on a bike you can smell the salt and the trees, live the shape of the landscape in its hills and see at a pace that lets you notice the smaller things as well as the big – the herons, the slack of the tide on the shore, the ripened blackberries within arms reach.

Enjoying the Puget Sound by bicycle is what RAPSody is all about. For seven years five bicycle clubs have organized the Ride Around Puget Sound with 100% of proceeds going to Washington Bikes. RAPSody is Aug. 28-29 this year. We call it a ride “by cyclists, for cyclists.” Our priorities have always been a great route supported by great food stops. With 170 miles of rolling hills, RAPSody is not easy, but it is relaxed and friendly enough for most anyone to complete with a smile on their face. .

To fuel your ride, you get homemade cookies (thanks to West Sound Cycling Club), hot calzones (served by BIKES Club of Snohomish County ), yogurt and granola parfaits (Capital Bicycling Club ), sandwich wraps in the shade of an old McDonalds’ playground character (Cyclists of Greater Seattle) and ice cream and cow bells for your finish (Tacoma Wheelmen Bicycle Club).

A couple timely notes. First, the deadline to order a RAPSody jersey designed by Tacoma Wheelmen artist Steve Lay is June 30. Take a look at this year’s heron theme and you’ll see why his jerseys always sell out.

The early registration deadline for RAPSody is July 27. You’ll save $15 and help the organizers plan. This is the kind of event you CANNOT register for on the day of the ride, so do commit by Aug. 13. You also save $10 if you are a member of or join the Bicycle Alliance.

Finally, a request for help: We are looking for a fun, oldies rock band to play at Shelton High School during dinner Saturday night. We do have a budget to pay a stipend – and the rewards of getting tired cyclists to get up and dance are priceless. If you know of a local band that might be interested, please email info@rapsodybikeride.com.

Posted in Events, Go By Bike, Olympia, Olympic Peninsula, RAPSody, Tacoma, Volunteer | Comments Off

Report Street Hazards – Persistence Can Pay Off

By Louise McGrody | Published June 8, 2010

Potholes, cracked pavement, and drain grates–oh my! Not only are these street conditions annoying, they can be hazardous to your cycling health. So what’s a bicyclist to do about these street hazards? Report them!

I know of two websites that are designed to report street hazards: Bicycle Watchdog and Bikewise. The first site limits its services to Washington State, the second claims to serve the world. Both sites require you to create an account in order to submit a report and both promise to forward your report to the responsible jurisdiction. It’s difficult to tell how successful either of these reporting sites are, but it’s always worth submitting a report as both of these sites serve as hazard databases.

The surest way to eliminate a known street hazard is to report it to the jurisdiction yourself. Where to start? You need to find the department that handles street maintenance–usually called Public Works, Roads or Transportation. Bicycle Watchdog has a list of jurisdiction contacts so this might make a good starting point.

Some communities make it easy to report quick-fix hazards like cracks and potholes. Spokane has a Pothole Hotline, 509.625.7733. In Yakima you can report a pothole by calling 509.575.6005. You can report street hazards in Seattle, Vancouver and Everett by using an online submission form.

I live in Seattle and, in the past 5 years, I have reported several street problems along my commute–a linear pavement crack, a pothole, and a traffic signal that didn’t detect my bike. The pothole was filled in a few days; the other two problems required additional follow up on my part before getting fixed. But they did get fixed within 4-6 weeks.

Have you reported a street hazard in your community? Tell us your story.

Posted in Infrastructure, Safety | Comments Off

Give me money

By baw_admin | Published June 7, 2010

“Your bike plan gives me such a thrill,

But we can’t build it if you don’t pay the bills.

Give me money, that’s what I want…”

(With apologies to the Beatles)

Aspirational goals are great. Plans are even better. But best of all is actually accomplishing what you set out to do.

Which brings us to the Seattle Bicycle Master Plan.

The plan, unveiled to much fanfare in 2007, had lofty goals: triple the amount of bicycling in Seattle within ten years, reduce bike crashes by one-third during the same period, and “make Seattle the best community for bicycling in the United States.”

Problem is, the plan is woefully underfunded. According to a February story in Seattle’s Publicola news blog, funding was projected to fall about $165 million short of the $240 million required—a shortfall of nearly 70 percent. The City’s Pedestrian Master Plan is similarly short of money.

In response, a coalition of citizens’ groups has formed under the banner of “Streets for All Seattle.” Their aim: Work with City officials to find $30 million in annual revenue to make the bicycle and pedestrian plans a reality, and to fund Metro transit service.

Specific sources for the money have been discussed but final decisions haven’t been made. Instead, a Streets for All spokesperson said, “We want to have a conversation with the council, the mayor, with all of our partners to see what really works [for stable funding].” Possibilities include things such as a motor-vehicle licensing fee or an increased commercial parking tax.

The Bicycle Alliance has endorsed Streets for All’s efforts, and we’ll keep you posted as the campaign unfolds. Meanwhile, you can find out more about the coalition at http://www.streetsforallseattle.org/.

Posted in Advocacy, Funding/Policy, Seattle | Comments Off

Rules of Thumb

By baw_admin | Published June 4, 2010

I’m a new contributor to the Bicycle Alliance blog, so I should probably introduce myself. The basic facts:

Name: Dave Shaw

Residence: Capitol Hill, Seattle

Age: 64

Cycling since: 1973

Number of bikes: 2

Number of cars: 0

I was involved in the formation of the Northwest Bicycle Federation (NOWBike) the predecessor of Washington Bikes. I attended the first BAW auction, and I still own a NOWBike T-shirt. Currently I volunteer, mostly as the resident geek. I have participated in most of the varieties of cycling – recreational, racing, long distance touring, utility – and have worked in the sport as a race and event promoter, and publisher of The Bicycle Paper. Many years, many miles.

Out of all those miles some rules of thumb have emerged:

• A split second is the time between when you unclip your foot from the pedal and when the light changes.

• If you ride south in the morning, the wind will blow from the north in the afternoon.

• Twelve miles an hour is about the best speed you can make through city traffic however fast you sprint between traffic lights.

• The optimal seat tube length for your road bike is equal to the circumference of your head less 2 cm. (Credited to Bill Ferrell, developer of the Fit Kit, in the catalog of The Third Hand of Ashland, Oregon.)

• The sum of the weight of your bike and the lock you would use to secure it on a college campus is a constant.

• When you take a long trip, plan only half of it and leave the other half open for enjoying surprises.

• Pace lines are fastest with 4 to 6 bikes. Fewer is not enough horsepower, more riders increases the chance of a pace-breaking disruption.

• The batteries in your lights never go flat when the bike is at home.

• Add an hour to your usual check-in time at the airport if you are bringing a bike.

• A bike shop will take twice as long to true your wheel if you have worked on it first.

• If there are n types of tires in your group, there will be n-1 types of spares. The nth person will get a flat.

• For in-town trips less than about 3 miles, a bike will be faster than either a car or the bus door-to-door.

• Soon after you first adopt cleated shoes, you will have a “falling down story.” It happened to all of us.

• Saddles don’t “break in,” butts do. If your saddle hurts after 20 or 30 miles, get one that fits you. You’ll know it’s right if it doesn’t hurt.

• When a local person gives you directions like “Just down the road a mile,” it won’t be either down or a mile.

• Maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. Optimal training rate is 80% of that. It will hurt to go that fast.

• A “quick stop” on a group ride is 5 minutes times the number of people. Double that if it’s raining.

• Often is better than long. Five 10-mile rides each week will do your training more good than a half-century every Saturday.

• No matter how many bikes you have in your basement, at least once a year they will all have a flat tire simultaneously.

• Bikes go faster when they are clean. (That’s my excuse for going slow.)

• No matter how many times you check the list, you will forget something. The best you can hope for is that it will be something you can replace at your destination.

• Starting about March, all the hills in the world flatten out slowly. Somewhere around November they start getting higher and steeper again, reaching a peak just before your first ride of the season. This is a known physical fact.

Who else has a favorite rule of thumb?

(If you are seeing this in Facebook, please return to the Bicycle Alliance blog to post comments.)

Posted in Bike Culture, Go By Bike | 1 Comment

Ding-a-Ling, a Heavenly Sound

By baw_admin | Published June 3, 2010

As cyclists, we hear plenty about motorist-bicyclist friction, possibly because one-ton hunks of metal hurtling around us seem like the greatest threat to our safety. In reality, bicyclist-motorist collisions comprise a mere 17% of all bicycle crashes. The largest cause, according to the League of American Bicyclists, chalk 50% of all crashes up to operator error. We are perfectly capable of bringing ourselves to the ground all on our lonesome. The final 33% of crashes cover everything else: Bicyclists hitting (or being hit by) animals, other bicyclists, or something other than a car.

It’s this last category that interests me, since during Bike to Work Month, the number of bicyclists on the road — and thus the likelihood of colliding with another bicyclist — increased dramatically. This means that lots of people who normally only ride on weekends hop in the saddle during normal commuting hours and start working on logging those miles.

What did this wonderful increase in cycling mean for me personally? More than anything else, I experienced a dramatic increase in stealth passing, usually by bike path racers. Innumerable times on my commute, I would be blithely pedaling along and suddenly find another cyclist next to me, often much closer than was safe, ghosting by with nary a word or ding-a-ling. Not only did this discourtesy irritate me, it endangered me unnecessarily.

I love to see more people bicycling, and I dream one day of living in a society where nobody bats an eye at biking for transportation because it’s as normal as driving is right now. But I hope that when that day comes — and you can be sure it will come — it comes with a good dollop of on-bike courtesy, too. Let’s start making that dream a reality: take a moment to politely call “On your left” or ding a bell next time you pass somebody.

Posted in Bike Culture, Commuting, Gear/Maintenance | 2 Comments