Take The Lane

Cycling infrastructure vs. riding on roads

It's not often that The Waterloo Region Record devotes this much space to cycling.

In Saturday's paper and on the website are a front page photo and story opening, turning inside to almost three full pages of main story, photos, sidebar articles and graphics about our network of bicycle infrastructure, that, according to Record reporter Catherine Thompson, "looks more like a spilled bowl of noodles than a comprehensive transportation system."

The thrust of the piece was that people will ride their bicycles if they are not afraid of becoming a roadway casualty, and that the way to prevent roadway injury is to improve the bicycle infrastructure.

A missed opportunity in the package was the option offered by CAN-BIKE: that hesitant riders can become competent and confident riders through bicycle training (Full disclosure: I am a CAN-BIKE instructor).

CAN-BIKE is the recreational cycling training program offered through Cycling Canada.

Trainers like me help non-riders learn to ride, and help hesitant riders learn to ride in traffic. Why spend millions on bicycle lanes when you can spend thousands training people to use the roadway infrastructure that now exists?

And as Thompson noted in her article, every bike lane ends somewhere. A cyclist must use a roadway, likely more than one, to complete a journey. Best to learn now how to use those roadways effectively.

Watch the City of Waterloo website for details on the next CAN-BIKE courses, or contact me.

The World is coming to Milton and hardly anyone knows

Here's a secret known largely only to people in competitive cycling: world-class athletes and Olympic medal holders will be in competition this weekend in Milton.

The Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup will be held Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Dec. 1-3) at the Mattamy National Cycling Centre (aka, the Milton Velodrome).

I am totally pumped to have my parking pass for the Friday events, where I will be joining members of Cycling Canada to promote Canada's national cycling education program, CAN-BIKE. Cycling Canada is expecting to spread the good news about cycling to the 1,400 Grade 6 and 7 students from southern Ontario who will be visiting the facility during the events Friday.

This Milton event is the third round of the five-round event. The world's best track cyclists — from Canada, Great Britain, U.S.A., Australia, France, Italy, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Spain, Greece, Ukraine and China, among others — started this process in Pruszkow, Poland, then went on to Manchester, England, are bringing this event to Milton this weekend (for the first time that Canada has had the opportunity to host the Track Cycling World Cup), and continue on to Santiago, Chile, in the new year, and then the final round in Minsk, Belarus.

The Friday events include qualifying rounds, heats and finals for the men's and women's points race, and qualifying rounds for the team pursuit.

If you have never experienced the excitement of watching highly toned athletes translate their raw power into speed on a banked tank, you should come. The tickets are shockingly affordable: as little as $6 for seniors for a morning session.

You were wondering what to do Saturday or Sunday. Get a ticket.

 

Time was up for Bicycle Times

I was wondering why I was getting notices from Dirt Rag Mountain Bike Magazine, advising me that my sub was almost up and it was time to renew.

I never was a Dirt Rag subscriber, so I thought it was just a marketing ploy.

I was a subscriber to Bicycle Times, which was the recreational cycling spinoff in the Dirt Rag universe. Bicycle Times announced in March of this year that it was ceasing its print publication and continuing as a website and "brand". (How does one continue as a "brand"? If no one was buying Coke, would Coke just keep the name alive and you'd drink "Coke" online?)

Anyway, I apparently missed the notice that my Bicycle Times sub would continue with Dirt Rag. I was never much into Dirt Rag -- too much about racing and mountains. 

The current issue (and my last unless I renew, according to the emails I'm getting) has some pretty good reads, including Joe Parkin's guest editor space, Damon Roberson's piece on "chocolate foot", Steve Kinevil's piece on his fave bike, and a selection of bicycling tales in the feature, Let Me Tell You A Story. It is 80 pages of material that reminds me of Bicycling Magazine back in its golden period. (Maybe the influence of Dirt Rag's editor-in-chief Mike Cushionbury, who was on Bicycling's staff back in the early 2000s.)

Am I going to renew? It's $30 USD for a year. It's only $20 USD for a year if you live in the U.S., which totally sucks since someone in Alaska gets a mag shipped from Pittsburgh for less than someone in southern Ontario gets it. Odds are good that the answer will be "no", but I'm still thinking about it.

Left-handed bicycle bells? Yes!

In case you ever need to know, Canadian Tire stocks left-hand bicycle bells.

They aren't pretty, but they make a pretty sound.

Jocelyn Lovell was a person with passion for life

So sad to hear of the passing of Canadian cycling great Jocelyn Lovell. 

I watched him race at the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton in 1978, and I interviewed him for Take The Lane in 2009. 

He was a person filled with passion, for whatever he did. It's a loss for his community, and the country.

Mobile bicycle repair comes to Waterloo Region and Guelph

Next week, Velofix comes to Waterloo Region and Guelph.

Velofix is a mobile bicycle repair franchise that was launched in Vancouver, attracting some Dragons' Den investment, with franchise owners in Canada and the United States.

Velofix KW-Cambridge, Guelph has a website here, but there's not much on the site right now. That could be because the operation is not open until next week. Opening the local franchise will bring to eight the number of Velofix franchises in Ontario, and to 16 the number in Canada. You can read more about Velofix on the main Velofix website and in this news release from last year.

Mobile is just what it says: no bricks-and-mortar store. All the gear needed to do on-the-scene bicycle repair is in the gaudily painted Velofix vehicle which you may see from time to time in the area.

With the creation of two new bicycle nodes in the area — Black Arrow Cycles and the Berlin Bicycle Cafe — Velofix is another indicator of a healthy cycling environment in Waterloo Region.

Why not a smart bike?

Do a mashup of a GPS, Pebble watch, Fitbit, bike light and car alarm, and you've got some pretty smart and chic tech for your urban ride.

The Montreal-based CycleLabs has crowdfunded the Smarthalo, a handlebar-mounted device that pairs with your iPhone or Android to make your bike a little smarter.

Plug in your destination on your smartphone app, and Smarthalo uses its coloured lights to show you where to make the next turn (or turn around if you missed it). It tracks your usual bike motion metrics (time, speed, distance, and tosses in elevation), and reports the calories burned on the ride. It also alerts you to incoming messages on your smartphone, has a built-in 200-lumen headlight that powers up when you're riding in darkness and powers down when you stop riding (or when it's light, for you night riders), and a bike alarm that emits a noxious howl to unnerve potential thieves.

Battery life is estimated at three weeks, and it's rechargeable by USB. Because it's paired with your smartphone, it only activates when your smartphone approaches (so don't lose the phone!).

There's a very convincing video on the Smarthalo website. The $150 USD for a Smarthalo might deter some, but this isn't a lot more than a decent bicycle computer and headlight combined, if you're planning on a new bike or (like me) have to replace both after they got knocked around over the winter while in storage (grumble, grumble).

 

Smarthalo is planning to ship in June, although the Kickstarter backers will be getting theirs sooner.

Yeah, I want one of these

Practically every time I look at an Xtracycle, I think: "What a great bicycle. How would I store it?"

So the U.S. veteran of cargo bicycles Xtracycle and the Taiwan-based bicycle maker Tern have paired up with a Kickstarter campaign to make a folding Tern/Xtracycle.

The video on the Kickstarter page is very appealing. And it appears that the campaign has exceeded its goal, although of course, the two companies would be happy to have more backers pile on. 

Want to lose your bike? Here's how

A repeat-worthy item from the website v[]cativ: Tips from a Bike Thief.

You've heard them all before (well maybe not the bit about not locking your bike at the end of the bike rack) but they are worth repeating, especially in Bike Month.

 

Toronto getting its own cargo bike?

I know my Toronto-ist daughter will be interested in this: a Toronto-branded long-john cargo bike being marketed there.

There was a post in Biking Toronto about HaulBike, which will be offering a one-seater or two-seater long-john bike this summer. Preorders due by end of March. Here's a link.

Tne only caveat I have in all this is that I can't find diddly-squat about HaulBike. The HaulBike site is spare, limited to not much more than I've written here, and the prices ($1099 for the single seater; add $400 for the two-seater and $700 for electric assist).

I'd like to know that if I'm committing to purchase something, that there will be something to purchase! Still, it can't hurt to send an email and say that you are interested. Expect to see more cargo bikes in your bike-friendly cities. They are simply too smart an idea.

 

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