Bike carry

From today's BBC, another great bike carry:

Great bike carries

I'm always been impressed by what bikes can carry. Someone just sent me these pictures.

Yucatan taxis

I was down in the Yucatan, Mexico, and discovered that tricycles were the most common form of taxi and transport in villiages and small towns. The sad part is they'll probably eventually all get replaced with loud motorized vehicles as they get more money.

There was even the occasional bike path next to some major roads out of town.

Bikes in Europe

The French have great city bikes. Not too many of them here. And I’ve read they use lot’s of uniquely sized parts and are therefore hard to work on in the US. A shame. Here’s a typical beautiful mixte.


I’ve never seen a three speed with a derailleur. It’s great, because three speeds is really all you need.


Lyon has a great system of free bikes. You need a credit card to put a 150 euro deposit on. Then it’s free for the first 30 minutes and then something like 50 cents for each half hour after that. Stands are everywhere. And amazingly, I’d say about half the bikes on the road are these bike. So I guess the system works. Alas, we couldn’t use them, to our great disappointment, because the system won’t accept American credit cards.


The bikes are well designed for “free” use. It’s uses a nexus hub for gearing, breaks, and dynamo (the lights are always on). There are no cables to be easily vandalized. And the seat can’t be removed, but can be easily raised and lowered.


The hub.


The directions.


Bike fixer.


Here’s an old exercise bike at our hotel. Amazingly, despite the fact it was there just for decore and not maintained, it worked really well.


The tension adjuster.


Here’s the free wheel that gives resistance and a smooth cycling motion. This bike gave a much more realistic feeling of peddling than any other exercise bike I've been on.


The seat.


A nifty handlebar raiser in Amsterdam.

Moped Bike

Wooooh!

Check out the fork on this bike! The drop-outs were welded on. We found this on a block of Astoria we've never walked before.



A day later I saw a guy riding it.

Transit Strike 2005

Last day of the transit strike. It doesn’t really affect me too much, since I bike everywhere. But it’s kind of a pain when, say, you have to get your wife to the hospital. There wasn’t really any problem in Manhattan. There were plenty of cabs. But getting to and from the City was close to impossible, at least during the day, except by foot and bike.

There’s a kind of street-festival atmosphere crossing the bridges. I got to ride on the other (South) side of the Queensboro Bridge. A nice new view and there’s no ugly fence there (and they’ve just put up a nasty chain-link fence on the bike-path side for no good reason other than to ruin the view). It’s just annoying that pedestrians have no respect at all for the bike lane.


Bikes need so little space. And since we will get by, it would be better for everyone involved if people could say, just stay off two feet of the bike path.

Disaster relief.



Giving out hot chocolate.



It was nice of them to cone-off a bike lane coming off the Queensboro Bridge. This is one of the annoying parts of my normal bike ride home, because you’re forced to go against traffic for a short block. Even though the street is lightly traveled and there is plenty of room to say, cone-off a lane for bike.






Even more annoying there is a permanently closed lane they could use as a bike lane. Instead they block it off with Jersey Barriers (on the other side), keeping bikes out of a never-used lane and into oncoming traffic.



And then, quicker than I can say “Union” and you can say “Power,” they removed the cones so that the lane could revert to it’s normal function: space for illegally parked cars.



There are so many things the city could do to making biking better. Things that would cost nothing and have no downside. But they don’t. It’s very frustrating. The entrances around bridges are key, because every biker from an outer-borough has to use them.

The basic problem is the crappy Department of Transportation has the wrong prime directive: maximize number of cars on the road. Rather than say, trying to reduce the number of cars on the road. The fact that they still allow cars on the roads in the major parks, and it took them over a year to remove dangerous bumps on the Williamsburg Bridge bike path, doesn’t give me much hope or enthusiasm to fight City Hall.

It also doesn’t help that the good people at Transportation Alternatives are much more focused on Brooklyn to Manhattan access (I suppose because a lot of them live there). Don’t get me wrong, most things are getting better for bikes in New York City. It’s just a glacier’s pace. And there’s so much that could be done so easily.

But I took the South side, because it’s normally a (crazy) traffic lane. A new view.



South side path.



Sun over UN.



Roosevelt Island and Queens.



They also opened 5th Ave. to traffic today. Yesterday bikes and pedestrians had the whole street to ourselves. It was great. The right lane was for emergency vehicles.


Some cops shooed you off to battle with cars. Other didn’t care. There were no emergency vehicles. And if there were, I would have gotten out of the way. Bikes, unlike cars, can pull over and out of the way. It is not, or should not be: “same road, same rules.” Different vehicles, different rules. Rules that make sense for large and deadly multi-ton motorized vehicles, really don’t always make sense and shouldn’t be applied to bikes and pedestrians.

There was a long line for the just starting Q60 bus. A very long block-and-a-half line that went around the corner.






Some may wonder why Queens buses end at 2nd Avenue—where there are no transportation connection—when 3rd Avenue is so close, and there is a Lexington Avenue subway entrance there. Well, gentle reader, 50 years ago the Steinway Street Car ended here, at the 2nd Avenue Elevated. Never mind that neither exists anymore. The bus the replaced the streetcar still dumps people off where there used to be a El Train. And in 50 years, nobody has thought to reroute the bus to somewhere logical and convenient. It amazing how many buses still follow the routes of long-dead streetcars. Even when it no longer makes any sense. But you can’t fight City Hall.

Burning man bikes

We're going to pick up these bikes for Burning Man!

A good carry

I've always wanted to make a coffee table book about great bike carries (mostly things carried on bikes, but bikes being carried would be good as well). I figure most of the shots would come from the 3rd world, China, and Amsterdam. It's amazing what you can get on two wheels. Here are some great pictures than were sent to me. If you have any other great pictures, please leave a comment and e-mail them to me!

From the Dominican Republic


bike on bike

driftwood recumbent

couch bike!

check out the peddle system! It works like a stairmaster.

A ride in the park.

Most of these pictures (and comments) are Jim's.

Peter on the celeste Bianchi.


Despite taking pictures while riding, I didn't bust my ass all day.


It was perfect biking weather, low 70s and breezy.


This was horrific. The guy on the ground has a bee in his ear. He was in agony. About 8 different people called 911...


Underneath Riverside Drive at 125th Street.





Old fashioned *but* good?


The Servants of God, Seafood Division.


The Swift folder got a flat and we had to do some creative "sweethearting" (two on one bike) and "ghosting" (one with two bikes) to get us all home.








Damn this sign was big!

Facing My Demons on the Triborough Bridge

On September 20th, 2004, I was biking back from a Yankee game and wiped out on the Triborough Bridge I was pretty messed up.

I haven’t been over the bridge since then. It’s not that I was avoiding it. I just don’t often need to go to Harlem or the South Bronx from Queens.

Last year, coming back to Astoria, I was on the Triborough Bridge and didn’t see a bump. It was dark, my front light was flopping around, and the headlights from oncoming cars were in my eyes. The bump is probably a half-foot high and is poorly asphalted over. Hitting it is basically like hitting a small curb. It’s also on a downhill. So I was going about 22 miles-per-hour. I hit the bump and went flying. It happened very fast, as they say. I bruised various points on the right side of my body, from my hip to my eye.

You can see some of my injuries in these pictures from last year taken a few days after the fall.



These are old pictures. Please don’t think I fell off my bike again. What the pictures don’t show was the fractured rib. Damn that hurt. Luckily, I didn’t hurt anything that didn’t heal. Amazingly, my bike wasn't damaged at all, except for a lost rear reflector. In fact, I was able to bike home (damn, that hurt, too).

Yesterday I went to see my Chicago Cubs lose yet again at Yankee Stadium. I was able to revisit the disaster scene.

This is the bump that did me in:




I went over it very slowly.

I imagine that after my fall I looked something like this. But bloodier.



The Triborough Bridge is by far the seediest of the city’s bridge crossings. There are three separate bridges. About a 2-mile stretch links Queens and Randalls and Wards Islands (they’ve long since become one land mass). Then you have a choice to go to either the Bronx or to 125th St. in Harlem. Each of these stretches is another mile. In general, the path is long, littered, and frequented by the occasional out-patient from the mental hospitals on Wards Island.

The Triborough is an expensive $4 toll for cars. It brings in a lot of cash for the State (in typical political hypocrisy, New York State won’t let New York City charge any tolls for the city’s bridges). So it’s a real shame that the Bridge Authority can’t sweep the path every now and then of trash and sand and broken glass.


All that said, and if you don’t mind the three flights of stairs, it’s incredibly beautiful. And for the main span over the East River, you’re above the traffic level, which is a peaceful treat.

The views are spectacular. To the North is the Hell Gate Bridge. This underappreciated bridge was the largest span bridge in the world when it opened in 1916. It allowed trains to go from New England through New York to New Jersey and all points West. Previously, trains had to dead end into Grand Central Terminal. .



To the South you see Manhattan and the Empire State Building. The little red bridge links Queens and Roosevelt Island. Behind that is the Queensboro Bridge.



The path continues to the West before turning North.



Between Randalls Island and the Bronx is a little creek connecting the Harlem and East Rivers. This is all the keeps the “Island” in Randalls Island. That’s the mainland on the other side.



The rest of the day can be seen on my other blog.

Off into the sunset...

The Bluebird and I had a bittersweet farewell as Zora rode her off towards the wilds of Northern Astoria. I wish them godspeed and hope to see them again some day...