In June, cycling advocates from all over the world descended on Copenhagen for the Velo-City Global 2010 Conference. This offered a chance for folks to share what they’ve been doing to make transportation cycling safer and more accessible. It also provided Copenhagen as a venue for what can be done and how far a city can come to get majority population adoption of the bicycle as a valid form of transportation as you can see in this StreetFilms documentary on the conference.

Tom Wald, the Executive Director of Austin’s League of Bicycling Voters, attended the conference and filed this report for us. Tom will also be doing a presentation on his trip at Mellow Johnny’s Bike shop on Saturday, August 7 as part of The Hottest Day of The Year Ride: A Benefit for The League of Bicycling Voters.

My Trip to Copenhagen and Velo-City Global 2010

The participants at Velo-City Global 2010, the first world bike conference, included participants from about half of the world’s countries — Spain, Mongolia, USA, Uruguay, China, Netherlands, Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Mexico, Denmark, to name a few.  Each part of the world has its own challenges and successes.  This conference and the experience of being in Copenhagen was there to spread the knowledge and inspiration to cities across the globe.

The major value of my professional experience in Copenhagen came in three ways:
* via the content of the conference itself,
* through conversation with colleagues in USA, Canada, and elsewhere, and
* by experiencing a world-class bicycling city for myself.

The valuable plenary presentations were too numerous to describe them all here.  The architect Jan Gehl, highlighted five things that cities want that the bicycle can provide: a lively city, an attractive city, a safe city, a sustainable city, a healthy city.  Indeed bicycling and walking serve transportation functions, but they must be seen as tools to improve quality of life as well.  Mikael Colville-Andersen of Copenhagenize.com emphasized positive promotion of the bicycle as the key to increasing bicycle use. Continue reading →

Here’s a quick run down of recommended events for the coming week from our comprehensive calendar of all cycling events. Thanks to Jason at ATXBS for letting us know about some events we couldn’t find elsewhere. As always, if there is an event you know about that’s not on our calendar contact us, and we’ll add your event on and possibly add it to the weekly round up.

Thursday, July 29
Thursday Ride & Swim by Social Cycling on the Dirt
Meet at 9:30 AM, Leave at 10 AM, Zilker Trail Entrance (North West side of Barton Springs)

A new off road ride from Social Cycling Austin’s spin off Social Cycling on the Dirt. “The ride will be best suited for non beginners or at least non whiners. I don’t mean to be rash but these trials can be unforgiving if you don’t know… what to expect. We will ride for an hour or two and then swim at Barton Springs. If it is wet we stay off the trails and ride either Lady Bird Lake Hike & Bike or Shoal Creek.”

Thursday Night Bike Polo
5:30 PM, Eastwoods Park, 3001 Harris Park Ave
The Austin Bike Polo Club’s weekday match. All bikes and skill levels are welcome and spare mallets and balls are available if you don’t have any. Check out our recent article on bike polo for more info.

PURE Austin Fitness Driveway Crit Series
5 PM, The Driveway, 8400 Delwau Lane
Weekly Thursday night road racing through October that takes place on the closed car-free driving course at the Driveway. Races include Cat 3/4 women’s and juniors race at 5:00, Cat 4/5 at 6:10, Cat 3/4 at 5:30, Pro/Cat 1/2/3 at 6:45 to choose from  Races registration $20. Full and 1/2 season passes available. USA Cycling annual or one day license required. One days for sale at race.

Thursday Night Social Ride
7:30 PM, Fiesta Gardens
A ride from the Facebook group Social Cycling ATX. Meet up at 7:30, ride at 8:00. “Hey Everybody! It’s pretty damn hot outside, but don’t let that keep you inside, being lame and watching TV. Join us this week on the Thursday Night Social Ride instead. We’ll be riding bikes, hanging out at parks and this week we are going to stay cool with a MASSIVE water balloon fight along the way. Keep on reading for the details.” Read our article on the popular weekly ride.

Friday, July 30

July Critical Mass Ride
5 PM, West Mall UT Campus
This bike jamming ride is designed to shout to the world that bikes belongs and occurs on the last Friday of the month. You never know what will happen, but don’t miss this foundation of the Austin bike culture we know today.

Saturday, July 31

Mr. Fancy Chef’s Farm Ride
8:30 AM, The Peddler, 5015 Duval St
Join ACA Ride Director and super fancy chef Greg Ritter for a ride to two of Austin’s best farm offerings.  Greg got his Mr. Fancy Chef credentials while cooking at Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio in San Francisco and has cemented his position as food nerd by teaching at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, Austin for the past 8 years. “We’ll start at the Peddler and then toddle over to Boggy Creek farm stand first. After we’ve gotten what we’d like there, we’ll head down to the SFC’s Downtown Farmers’ Market. Feel free to ask me about ingredients and how to prepare them or just shoot the poop about food in general. After the Downtown market, we’ll go to Juan Pelota’s and enjoy fellowship with Eileen and Stephanie’s MJ ride. The hosted part of the ride will officially end at the coffee shop as I like to chat for a while, but maps will be offered to anyone who wishes to head back to the Peddler before I’m done babbling. I usually head back toward the Peddler by noon.”

Mellow Johnny’s Scout-A-Ride: Another Pleasant Valley Bike Ride
8:30 AM, Mellow Johnny’s, 400 Nueces St
Saturday mornings spent exploring City of Austin bike routes finding new neighborhoods and ways to get around on your bike.  This is week’s theme is Another Pleasant Valley Bike Ride. A new east route with a foray over the river via Pleasant Valley Rd and rolling back through Travis Heights. It’s a mix of flat, hills, urban and creekside all within minutes of downtown. Come by at 8:00 for coffee. Helmets required. Ride organizer: Eileen Schaubert at eileen@mellowjohnnys.com or 512-426-4851.

Frankenbike #60: 2 Days of FrankenBike!
10 AM- 10 PM, Ozone Bike Department, 3202 Guadalupe
Austin’s monthly bike swap is back but this time for 2 days and with music & beer. Bands on SATURDAY @ 6pm. Bastards of 76, Creeperweed, the Stuffies then Woodgrain. Continue reading →

I discovered this great short video of a bike bus project in Vienna, VA. If you are not familiar with the concept, a bike bus works like a real bus with “stops” along the way to pick up riders. Essentially, a leader starts the ride and brings riders into the group at predetermined times and locations. It offers a safe group for those nervous about biking on the roads with experienced transportation cyclists answering questions and providing support. It has been used in other communities to not only help children but also adults new to bike commuting. I thought about doing this for my child’s school last year for Walk to School Day, but ran out of time to pull it together. Now I’m inspired to try again.

Summary: BikeSnobNYC’s first jump from new media to old falls flat in an attempt to create an intro to cycling book with an edge.

Rating: 2/5

Price: $16.95

In the world of bike bloggers, there are the earnest and the snarky. Usually the twain never meet, but BikeSnobNYC has become one of the rock stars of cycling new media with a lot of the latter sprinkled with some of the former. The once anonymous writer built an impressive, widely read site with extremely funny, sharp pieces poking fun at all of cycling’s various archetypes with fixie urban hipsters getting a good dose on a regular basis. Logic would say you take this great writing and put it to paper, and you’ll have something great. Unfortunately, taking the magic of one format and medium to another isn’t so simple as we’ve recently seen.

The strength of the BikeSnobNYC’s online work has been responding to the latest ludicrous happenings in bike sport, advocacy, and industry and his observations of cycling on the streets of New York. If one post falls a little flat, no biggie. Just wait until tomorrow’s post. This freshness and timeliness is difficult to covert to a medium that must stand by itself in a book store with no links to background stories, funny pictures, or previous related posts. Instead, BikeSnobNYC is shoehorned into what can only be described as an introduction to bicycling book. There are chapters on what to wear, how to do basic repair and maintenance, and bike safety. Bizarrely, the book begins with a pretty straight history of the bicycle. Interesting, but not exactly BikeSnobNYC territory. Throughout the book, the austor attempts to convince the reader how great cycling is and why you should take up the activity. This bee line shift from snarky to earnest is a little off putting regular readers of the ‘Snob.

It’s not all straight forward bike advocacy and education. The chapter Velo-Taxonomy attempts to define the tribal splits within cycling brings BikeSnobNYC back to his more familiar territory of satire with pseudo-encyclopedia entries on the Roadie, the Righteous Cyclist, the Contraption Captain, and the Beautiful Godzilla. This was probably the funniest chapter and the one regular readers will enjoy most.

There are also some real moments of clarity in describing our car addicted culture and the aggression motorists often take out on cyclists. Take this gem:

The fact is that a motor vehicle is a “major purchase,” and major purchases are how people express their self-importance and project it to the rest of the world. But they’re not important; they’re merely self-important. And that’s the real reason everybody is trying to kill you. . . when you do something as audacious as question someone’s importance by obstructing the physical manifestation of that importance with your bicycle, you are an affront to their very existence.

Unfortunately, these insights and the old sharp tongue of BikeSnobNYC are few and far between. Whether the print medium required this mediocre moderation for mass market appeal or the ‘Snob is trying to pay karmic amends for past systematic and merciless satire is uncertain. It is probably the former as BikeSnobNYC is now also featured with a seriously toned down column in Bicycling, no doubt to provide some edge to the flaccid publication. What we are left with is a book that will go over the head of a newbie not steeped in bike culture and fall flat on the fan of BikeSnobNYC. The good news is that while this book is not worth picking up unless its on discount, his blog is still going strong with great, funny posts on a daily basis. I recommend you bypass the watered down Bike Snob book like a Walmart Huffy and head straight over to his blog for unfiltered truth.

Editor’s Note: This is a second in an ongoing series of guest posts from Sally Miculek. an Austin mom who’s trying to ride her bike more places and leave the car in the driveway.

So, when you read about bicycling for transportation, you read a bit about planning ahead.  Planning for how long routes take (cause the bicycling takes a little longer than the car), planning for what you’ll need along the way (water, grocery bags, laundry to drop off at the cleaners…), planning what you’ll need when you reach your destination (especially if that destination is an office and you’re bicycling in Austin in July!)  Also, packing is a bit of a thing to consider when one is bicycling for transportation.  For me, riding my bicycle wherever I need to go isn’t a problem.  Planning and packing, though?  Those are definitely difficult.

This week I’ve planned three bicycling days.  The first was Tuesday.  That meant that on Monday evening I needed to get my things packed and ready to go, as I wasn’t going to want to get up any earlier than I had to on Tuesday morning.  I didn’t really feel up to packing on Monday, though, so I did a half-hearted job.  When I went to put everything in my panniers on Tuesday morning, it didn’t quite all fit.  So I had to move some stuff around and my purse got squashed, but it survived.  I also didn’t wake up quite as early as I needed to on Tuesday morning, so was in a rush to get out, and managed to leave the security card that allows me to get in to the Library before it opens to the public in the car.  I still managed to ride to work on Tuesday morning, though, and dropped off a bunch of work clothes for my husband at the cleaners on the way.

Tuesday evening’s ride home was considerably more relaxed, as I just strolled out of the Library and hopped on my bike, then took a leisurely ride home.

Tomorrow, Thursday, is likely to be another hectic morning getting to work.  I’ve done a better job packing my work clothes (I don’t like to wear slacks on the bicycle in the summer) and the hair dryer (I attempt to make my hair a bit tidier when I get there, and the hair dryer is a necessary part of the process) for the trip.  And I’m not taking a pile of clothes for the cleaners in the morning, so I’ve got more pannier space to work with in general.  BUT, I have to drop off the trailer at Iris’ school on my way.  My husband takes the girls in the morning, but I do pick-ups on non-Tuesdays, and so I’ve gotta get the trailer to Iris’ school in order to get her home in the afternoon.  Pulling the trailer always slows things down a bit, whether the girls are in it or no, and then there’s the couple of minutes it’ll take to get it unhitched and put in the trailer parking area at the preschool.  So I have to make sure I get out of bed in time to get shower, breakfast, and final packing completed with enough time to then make the pedaled journey down to the Library!

Friday will be a leisurely biking day, but will include the challenge of pedals and pedicures.  It’s time to get the toesies done, and since my off Fridays are also bicycle-only days, I’ll need to do some riding with fresh nailpolish.  Can I avoid chipping?  Only time will tell!

Image Courtesy of Bike Portland.

Rob from the Austin Texas Bike Polo Social Club announced earlier today that the club is putting together their biggest tournament to date the weekend of Halloween. Bike polo enthusiasts mark your calendar and look for more news soon. If you are unfamiliar with bike polo and intrigued, check out our article on bike polo or better yet head out to ATXPSC’s Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday matches.

So as you all have heard by now, we will be hosting a tournament on Halloween, Oct. 30-31, and there has already been considerable interest from other teams from across the country!  We have a location, but the details are still being worked out, and we have a theme!  What we need now is help from our Club!  Several of us will sit down and iron out the plan, which will then get relayed to the rest of the club, and we’d like to have you all give us your feedback, ideas, and support!  This is going to be the biggest thing we’ve done as a club, much bigger and much better than last years BFF tourney!  So with all that said, keep your eyes and ears peeled for more info, and keep checking back here or bugging me at polo if you’re interested in helping!  Also, start getting your teams together!

Peace, love and polo!

Rob

Here’s a quick run down of recommended events for the coming week from our comprehensive calendar of all cycling events. Thanks to Jason at ATXBS for letting us know about some events we couldn’t find elsewhere. As always, if there is an event you know about that’s not on our calendar contact us, and we’ll add your event on and possibly add it to the weekly round up.

Thursday, July 22

Thursday Night Bike Polo
5:30 PM, Eastwoods Park, 3001 Harris Park Ave
The Austin Bike Polo Club’s weekday match. All bikes and skill levels are welcome and spare mallets and balls are available if you don’t have any. Check out our recent article on bike polo for more info.

PURE Austin Fitness Driveway Crit Series
5 PM, The Driveway, 8400 Delwau Lane
Weekly Thursday night road racing through October that takes place on the closed car-free driving course at the Driveway. Races include Cat 3/4 women’s and juniors race at 5:00, Cat 4/5 at 6:10, Cat 3/4 at 5:30, Pro/Cat 1/2/3 at 6:45 to choose from  Races registration $20. Full and 1/2 season passes available. USA Cycling annual or one day license required. One days for sale at race.

Tour de France Stage 17 Watch Party
7 PM, Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop, 400 Nueces St
Every Tour has a “Queen” stage, where the final selection is set in stone, separating the contenders from the pretenders. And it’s usually on a mountaintop.  This year, it’s at the top of the legendary Col du Tourmalet. It’s the highest peak of the 2010 Tour, and it could very well decide who is on the podium in Paris. Join in to see the action on the big screen with French wine and hors d’oeuvres. Leave your costumes and cowbells at home for this one, Tourmalet will provide all the action we can handle for the evening! RSVP here.

Thursday Night Social Ride
7:30 PM, Fiesta Gardens
A ride from the Facebook group Social Cycling ATX. Meet up at 7:30, ride at 8:00. “we will ride, then we will rest, then we will ride some more, and then we will get beer.” Read our article on the popular weekly ride.

Saturday, July 24

Triathlon Ride & Clinic
8 AM, Bicycle Sport Shop Parmer, 9900 W. Parmer Lane
Join Austin T3 – Team Triathlon Training for a ride of up to 50 miles and featuring plenty of turn around points for those looking for a shorter ride option. Post-ride Texas Orthopedics will provide a BBQ lunch, beer and non-alcoholic beverages while participants receive tips and advice from T3 coaches on all things triathlon.

Mellow Johnny’s Scout-A-Ride: Rollingwood And Vine
8:30 AM, Mellow Johnny’s, 400 Nueces St
Saturday mornings spent exploring City of Austin bike routes finding new neighborhoods and ways to get around on your bike.  This is week’s theme is Rollingwood And Vine. Today’s ride is a more challenging route than usual with the hills of Rollingwood and an option to ride a short section of Loop 360 with it’s wide shoulders but faster traffic. The mileage is low at 14 miles but requires some experience. Come by at 8:00 for coffee. Helmets required. Ride organizer: Eileen Schaubert at eileen@mellowjohnnys.com or 512-426-4851.

Sunday, July 25

Sunday Morning Fixie Ride
8:20 AM, Posse East, 2900 Duval St
The ride is focused on fixed-gear bikes, but everyone is welcome. The ride will proceed at a social pace from the UT campus on various routes of 25-35 miles.

Mountain Bike Skills Clinic
9 AM, Bicycle Sport Shop Parmer, 9900 W. Parmer Lane
Members of Bicycle Sport Shop’s Mountain Bike Team will host a skills clinic and ride technique discussion.  Additionally, Bicycle Sport Shop will be donating a portion of their sales from this day to the Williamson County Parks and Recreation Department for development and maintenance of the Brushy Creek Trail. Continue reading →

This just in via Keith Byrd and ATXBS.

STOLEN BIKE ALERT!!!: quincy johnson just called me to report his bike was just stolen. it’s a blue redline single speed with disc brakes, 29″ tires with mountain bike handlebars and is covered with bike stickers including “support your local bike shop” on the stem and “i brake because i love beavers” on the front fork breakfast burrito sticker on the right side of the frame. there are also two bottle cages on the frame. it was stolen from a backyard at 12th st. and springdale around 7pm, monday, july 19th. if you see it call quincy at 512 552 9485 or email him at qjohnson@mail.com. thanks for the eyes on the street y’all!

Editor’s Note: Austin on Two Wheels would like to welcome our latest guest writer, Sally Miculek. Sally is a friend and mother of two young children who is attempting to drive less and ride more to get around Austin. She has a nice introduction here but if you liked my wife Amy’s articles about her commitment to ride 30 days in a row, you’ll really love Sally’s articles. I’d also like to apologize that this first article is about 2 weeks old (but still great!) I was on vacation when it came in had it took me quite a while to catch up last week on my return. We’ll have a second post from Sally later this week which will get us up to the present. Enjoy!

Intro Post:
Who I am: Sally Miculek, Children’s Librarian, wife and mother with some serious Bo-Bo tendencies.
As a mother of two young children and a full-time librarian at Austin Public Library, I have trouble finding enough time to get exercise.  My daughters love travelling in their bicycle trailer, though, I find that bicycle travel makes it easy to squeeze in little extra workouts while having fun with my family and even getting errands taken care of!  I currently commute by bicycle one day each week, and try to use my bicycle as much as possible in evenings or on weekends.  My husband is doing the same, and we’re enjoying the benefits of combined family time, workout time, and time out-of-doors!

What I ride:

I ride a cheap bike.  Inexpensive is one of its nicest qualities—in 2007 I bought a 2006 Fuji Monterey 2.0 for $250.  Shortly thereafter I added a rack and a couple folding panniers as well as cheap-a** battery-powered head- and taillights.  I should qualify that.  *I* didn’t add those things to my bicycle.  I got the nice fellows at the bike shop where the Fuji was purchased to put the rack on for me, and my husband was put in charge of lighting.  The panniers were affixed with zip ties, and I found I could manage that much.

In the parlance of children’s clothing, one might say that the Monterey is a “husky” bicycle.  It weighs something on the order of 5,000 lbs, and it’s got front fork suspension that can’t really be locked, so it’s all mushy and soft.  The wheels are of impressive diameter, and the tires are thicker than my wrists.  In short, this bicycle is not built for speed, and it’s certainly not built to catch the eye.  It’s pretty comfy, though, even though I don’t sit totally upright, cruiser-style, when I ride it.  That mushy front fork and the gigantic tires?  Nothing but smooth on Austin’s many bumpy streets.  Its extreme huskiness and overall lack of style?  Any thief that’s deciding whether to cut my cable of that of the swanky cruiser that’s likely to be parked next to mine is totally going to go with the cruiser every time.

The fanciest accessory on my bicycle is the lovely blue and yellow Burley D’Lite trailer that I use to tote my daughters, Iris (4) and Camilla (1), as well as sundry child-related accessories and whatever else fits back there.  My husband and I take turns pulling the Burley, having acquired a second hitch that allows us to trade off whose bike it’s behind.  We chose this trailer due to its capacious cargo space:  ample room for Camilla’s pool float and a host of noodles when we go for a swim or three bags of groceries plus the diaper bag when we do our weekly shopping.  It has many flaws of design, but no more than the other trailers we researched, and this one had a few features and a price point that beat out the Chariot, which was our other top contender.

I am definitely not a person who wants to tinker with her bicycle.  As far as I can tell, there are people in the world who spend a fair amount of time learning how to keep a bike running smoothly, and I’m content to pay them a fair price for their time in repairing mine when something’s gone wrong.  I do know how to change a tire, but when it comes down to it, I find that it takes far less time and a great deal less frustration for me to take a tire to a shop and wait ten minutes for the shopkeepers to replace the tube than it does for me to go through the misery of changing the tube myself.  I can’t even imagine taking on more substantial repairs on my own.  My husband has a degree in mechanical engineering, and has plenty of capacity to take care of a bicycle, but, as seems to be the case with many engineers, he enjoys the process so much and wants to spend so much time geeking out over machinery that I really don’t have the patience to pass bicycle repair projects on to him.  So I’m a shop-goer, and proud of it!

That’s my introduction.  I’m going to try to write a few posts for Austin on Two Wheels to discuss the ups and downs of learning to ride in Austin’s traffic with and without my daughters, as well as my efforts to master the art of making an 8-mile trip immediately after getting a pedicure without chipping my nail polish.

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Post-Post

Today is an off-Friday for me, which means that I’m not at work!  My daughters are at their respective daycare facilities, however, as I use my off-Fridays to get stuff done.  These are the days I catch up on laundry, run some of my errands, and clean house.  Lately I’ve been travelling by bicycle on off-Fridays: it’s a good way to get in some extra exercise, and it’s more fun than schlepping around in the car.  Plus, Iris and Camilla are fans of bicycle travel.   Continue reading →

Dah Tour is in full force with more broken bones in the peloton than a gambler after a bad day at the races. This year there are 4 American teams competing, but it’s easy to forget how recent the American presence is on the history of the sport. Well, get out your Ray Bans and leg warmers and prepare to rock the mullet ’cause today’s film takes us way back to this 1987 promotional film for Team 7 Eleven, the first American team to compete at the Tour de France, along with an equally inspiring 80s synth rock ballet.