Month: June 2009

Water bicycle

Chinese amphibious water bike.

amphibious bicycle floating on water

Chinese inventor Li Weiguo apparently took the Treehugger article on women and bikes to heart by asking his daughter to demonstrate his amphibious bicycle that can be used on land or water. Li used empty water bottles (the large 8 gallon size used in office water coolers) as flotation for this bike, with paddles in the rear spokes providing propulsion. The bottles are removed for use on land.

More cool photos at Inhabitat and China.org.cn. Props to WIRED Gadget Blog.

MUPs in the News

MUP: Multi Use Path.

Chicagoist on sharing the road and sharing the trails:

Riding to work Wednesday morning this Chicagoist staffer and avid cyclist was doored ever-so-slightly by a trucker. While tending to the minor scrapes incurred from the sudden braking and subsequent tumble, the trucker proceeded to yell at us about how we shouldn’t be on the street. Until we grabbed the bike lock and took a couple of swings at him.

More bike path safety problems caused by all of those people driving to a newly completed path.

Here’s a pretty cool story: Charles Semprebon of Vermont was touring on bike from Los Angeles to Boston when he passed away in New Mexico. Okay, that part isn’t so cool, but in his will, he gave $1 million to the town of Barre, VT to build a bike path around the community. More here and here.

Jason Bourne rides a bicycle

My morning commute reading this week is The Bourne Sanction by Eric van Lustbader.

Guilty pleasure

I was kind of a fan of Robert Ludlum and the first couple of Jason Bourne books. Sanction is kind of meh — there’s a power struggle between the U.S. military and the CIA that only Bourne can defuse and an Islamo-Nazi (!) terrorist scheme that only Bourne can stop. Bourne can turn any object into a weapon, leap tall buildings, dodge speeding bullets and even ward off the effects of tranquilizing darts with chocolate bars, but he’s unable to ride a bicycle through DC city traffic.

Jason Bourne is chasing The Bad Guys when he takes a bike from a gutter bunny and runs red lights to catch up to his quarry.

Bourne was able to make good headway, as the GMC had been slowed by the sludgy traffic. Just as he neared the light he saw the GMC take off and knew he had been spotted. The problem with a bicycle, especially one that had caused a minor uproar lunging through a red light, was that the cyclist became conspicuous.

Bourne threw caution to the wind, following the accelerating GMC into the fork as it took Pennsylvania Avenue. Swerving in and out between vehicles, he put on another burst of speed. Just as he was coming abreast of the far crosswalk, a gaggle of drunk teenagers tumbled off the curb on their way across the avenue. They closed off the lane behind the GMC.

Bourne swerves to avoid the teenagers, hits the curb and endos into a crowd on the sidewalk.

Bourne’s mistake: He aimed for the sidewalk. He clearly should have taken the lane directly behind the GMC.

Van Lustbader’s storytelling, dialog and plot are all pretty weak, but his word pictures are superb, engaging all of my senses through his prose.

Amazon: Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Sanction

Women, schlepping and transportational cycling

April in Sweden posted on Six reasons the world needs more women on bikes, mentioning some of the reasons women don’t bike to work as much as men. April mentions that only about 30% of bike commuters in Portland (Oregon, presumably) are female; in San Francisco, it’s currently about 27%.

Why the gender split?

Natalie Ramsland of Sweetpea Bicycles told me last year that she thinks “the broader scope of women’s responsibilities (work, caregiving, schleppin’) plays some role in female ridership. It’s easier to be the heroic bike commuter if you’ve got somebody else picking up the dry cleaning and shuttling Johnny off to soccer practice. It seems that too often that somebody is female.”

In out society, there are also greater expectations placed on women’s appearance in the workplace. Men can more easily get away with sloppy clothing and hair. Blogs like Velocouture, Copenhagen Cycle Chic (which turned two years old today!), Velo Vogue, Chic Cyclist, Riding Pretty, and many others work to illustrate that’s possible for men and women to look good on and off the bike.

H/T Eco Velo. Photo by Chad Rogers in Orlando, Florida.

Last night

I watched the cool cats waiting around in San Jose last night for the Tuesday night SJFixed ride to start. Their trackstands, backwards riding and bar spins reminded me of this old film of bike tricks shot by Thomas Edison back in 1899. They’ve got the whole repertoire of modern bike ballet over 100 years ago. There’s even a guy doing bunny hops with a jump rope.

As I boarded the southbound train in Menlo Park last night a guy on a bike asked me if this train goes to Palo Alto. “Next train,” I quickly told him, “in about 10 minutes.” Then I looked at him strangely, pointed at his bike and said, “It’s only a mile to Palo Alto. Ride your bike.”

For some reason, views of this photo I took on Caltrain spiked last night. I don’t know why; I don’t really think it’s that good.

Empty Caltrain bike car

Sierra Club book: Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents. Botanist Jim Malusa bicycled alone to the lowest point on each of six continents, a six-year series of ‘anti-expeditions’ to the ‘anti-summits.’ With a scientist’s eye, he vividly observes local landscapes and creatures. As a lone man, he is overfed by grandmothers, courted by ladies of the night in Volgograd, invited into a mosque by Africa’s most feared tribe, chased by sandstorms and hurricanes ‘ yet Malusa keeps riding.

Absolutely crazy cool work zone safety engineering.