when men were men

From the online bicycle culture magazine, Tubulocity, comes this story of a man who in 1900 rode his bicycle 1,200 miles in 10 weeks through the Klondike!

Amazing!

deep freeze

(Not my bike - we don't have snow... yet!)

The Seattle area has had quite a bit of cold weather lately, cold air that has drifted its way down from British Columbia and the Yukon.

With overnight temps in the teens, something we don't get around here much in the 30+ years I've lived in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, I have chickened out of the bike commuting this week, mainly due to concerns about black ice. My commute has me riding through a construction area which often has water running across the shoulder or the street - this condition has existed prior to the construction - and I'm concerned hitting this area could lead to a broken collar bone, wrist, arms, rib, or worse. (I'd read stories online of other bike commuters doing these things while crossing icy bridges or overpasses).

So, yeah, I'm a chicken this week, but at least I won't be on crutches for Christmas. I intend to drag out the trainer this weekend so I can still get some "miles" in and in the meanwhile, I'm hoping for rainy weather in the 40s returns soon... that's pretty twisted and sick, huh?

Note: I'd love to test ride a set of Schwalbe Marathon Winter HS396 studded bicycle tires and write a review if anyone has some to loan me :) One of our LBS here in Renton, GHY Bikes, has them in-stock and they're around $80 each if I remember correctly.

Safe Routes to School

Today I attended a workshop put on by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Program, taught by staff from the national (USDOT-funded) SRTS program.

The emphasis of the SRTS program is on improving physical barriers to having kids walk or bicycle to school and enhancing safety through education. The reasons for the program (i.e. why it is good for kids to walk or bicycle to school) are many: reduce traffic congestion, improve physical health of kids (combats childhood obesity), improves the environment (improved air quality), and more.

I'll have more to post on this, but it was nice to see a lot of staff from various Washington school districts, King County DOT, Seattle DOT, WSDOT, and advocacy organizations like Feet First and Bicycle Alliance of Washington.

500+ commute miles

I almost forgot to mention, according to my Sigma brand odometer, I passed the 500 bike commute miles mark this past week*.

It seemed like it took forever to get there but on the actual day it happened I was clueless. The following day I happened to look at total miles and see it was 504.

I accomplished this in about 15 months since starting to actively bicycle commute 2-3 times a week throughout the year and my commute is around 2.2 miles one-way. So that's roughly 113 bicycle commute days if I did my math correctly.

* Note: I've actually put more miles in that are not counted, as I biked for about a month before getting the Sigma, also, I have used other bicycles to commute but not too often. Also, this does not account for any recreational cycling I've done on other bicycles while on weekend rides with the kids or camping.

Bikes near the Pike

Last weekend, the four of us headed down to the Pike Place Market in Downtown Seattle. My wife wanted to pick up some Market Spice Tea. Despite my urging we travel via bus or light rail into Downtown Seattle, we ended up taking the family truckster (our 2003 Dodge minivan). Predictably, traffic around the Pike Place Market (vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians) was heavy and parking, when we found it, was expensive ($17 for about a two-hour stay).

I snapped lots and lots of photos, but below are ones that have some bike-related content. Most are not in the Pike Place Market proper, but on the next street or block over in one direction or the other.

I snapped this one of my daughter Lauren posed near a Walmart type of MT bike. It was locked up.


A Schwinn road bike set up for commuting perhaps. Locked up on First Avenue. The owner must be close by, since it looks like the front wheel is left unlocked.


Isn't the whole point of a folding bike that you tote it with you? Maybe they don't let bikes into the strip club across the street. It was nice of the owner to fold it up before locking though, less for the pedestrians to step around.


The guy riding down Post Alley just prior to me snapping this photo nailed the girl in jeans on the right hand side of the photo and kept on riding, not even pausing to see if she's OK. This is not far from where this bike-ped collision happened recently.


In the far left of the photo above, you'll see the world-famous "Gum Wall". A gross tourist thing to be sure... one that most locals don't even know about. Here's a detailed view...


My daughter was less thrilled to be in photos as the afternoon wore on. Here she's posed next to a cluster of bike racks near the Pike Place Market. I was wondering why so few were being used and/or how they determined how many to install in that area.

"It keeps me alive"

This morning, the temperature may have dipped into the upper 20s or lower 30s. I was pretty well covered in a basic commuter jacket, wintery (but still too thin for very cold weather) neoprene-like full-finger gloves, a full face (bank robber style) acrylic stocking cap, a Polartec acrylic fleece jersey, and wool (German Army surplus) knickers over Hincappie bib shorts. Note: I didn't wear (or even own?) a tall wool or wool blend sock, so about 6 inches of my lower legs were chilly...

While checking my bike in the midday today (I thought maybe I left my auxilary headlight turned on) a non-cycling coworker saw me and said something like "it's too cold to ride that today!"

My quick (but not necessarily well-thought-out) response: "It keeps me alive!"

I was expecting a reply back from her challenging or questioning how the bicycle keeps me alive, but there was none. It was an interesting but silent elevator ride back up to my floor. The whole time, of course, in my head, I'm trying to come up with a list of how bicycling keeps me alive.

craigslist (or other bulletin board) ads for bicycles

I have advice for sellers of bicycles who post on craigslist or similar websites, including bicycle club message boards or elsewhere. This is advice that will help you attract buyers and also keep buyers from wasting your time. This is only a sampling of consistent issues I see in ads posted on craigslists, for all sorts of items, especially bicycles.

1) Write a title that is descriptive.
"bicycle - $20" is not effective.
"1990s Trek road bike" is a little better.
"1992 mens' Trek road bicycle 56cm, like new" is even better still.

2) Include a photo... a good photo!
Avoid using clip art. We don't know if you are too lazy to take a pic or if you just plan on mugging us when we arrive with cash to buy your $2000 Prince or Cervelo. And please, try to avoid blurry and dark obscure shots of your bicycle taken with your cell phone!

3) Include a SIZE in the description... and a description of the size and components is very welcomed!
Eliminate the waste of time created by potential buyers contacting you to get the size of your bike for sale - do both of you a favor and list the size. Measured from crank to the top of the seat post or whatever. Even a ballpark estimate is better than none.

Secondly, please describe how your bicycle is equipped. Is it all stock from the factory or did you upgrade and/or repair or replace parts during the time you've owned it? This might be proof enough to justify why you might be asking $200 more than what might sound reasonable for a bicycle of this model or age, for example. If you just list the make and model and year of the bicycle, the potential buyer won't know you spent $600 upgrading the wheels and drivetrain. I'm just sayin'...

4) No one wants your story... this isn't Oprah.
OK. We understand. Sh*t happens. You need to sell this bike for a reason. Maybe you bought it with an ex and she dumped you for a X-games star or her yoga instructor... we don't really care. What we do care about are the items listed above and if you have receipts for any work on the bike, including the receipt for where and when you bought the bike, if available.

5) Provide contact info and the times to call or when you're available to show the bicycle to buyers.
Assume someone might e-mail you 5 minutes after you post the ad. How will they contact you? If you put e-mail contact only in the ad, how often do you check it? If you put a phone number, is that cell or home or work? What hours do you answer? Do you accept text messages?

Related to this is your location. Please specify where you are able to and willing to meet-up. If you put "south end" that's pretty vague. South end of what?

Anyone else have suggestions to sellers? I may add more as time goes on.