Just in case my dedication to the bikey lifestyle was in doubt...

New ink, as of two Fridays ago:

If I had put bacon in there, it would have all three of my most favorite things in the world.

So what's up in The Greatest City in America, you ask? Well, it's been hot. So hot that I almost considered giving up the bike for a week or so but... no, couldn't do it. Just the thought of having to leave the house a whole ten minutes early, then being interrupted in my reading by the light rail bull every five minutes to make sure I've bought a ticket (and seriously, Baltimore, come up with a better system already. In Pittsburgh you had to buy your ticket on the train and honestly that makes a lot more sense to me), and THEN having to wait for ANOTHER train on the way home. Point is, I think I made the right call. Although I did make the sacrifice of putting a bottle cage on my hybrid. I hate the way they look, but when the temperature's cracking a century, looks ain't worth a hill of beans.

I recently discovered a little tip that makes riding in 90+ temperatures slightly more bearable and even though I didn't know about it when it was really bad, at least I'm discovering it now. Cycle chic fans will hate me for this, but the secret is: men's boxer briefs. (Under your dresses or skirts.) Originally I was wearing nothing, but wound up getting terrible saddle sores and had the saddle pressing on me in all the wrong places. Then I graduated to wearing women's athletic shorts under my skirts*, but they were much too hot. I pinged to using boxers when putting away my husband's drawers and damn, do these things ever work! No saddle sores, no inadvertent flashing (not that I really care about that), and the cotton breathes like the poly blend athletic shorts never could. Yeah, it looks super dumb when you're off the bike, but again, hot weather + ease of use = don't give a crap. I'm using the Hanes brand. Maybe they make a "women's" version of boxer briefs but if they do it probably comes at half the durability and twice the cost. So dude panties it is!


*Taking off the skirt never occurred to me; I hate dressing multiple times throughout the day. If I lived in the desert or Florida or something, maybe I'd feel differently. But in Maryland? And with a half-hour commute? Just make clever use of layers, put on some deodorant, and deal with it.

Expressway for Bikes

In the past couple of weeks, I've made drastic changes to both my morning and evening routes into work, coming up with what I think is both the shortest and the least trafficky way from Hampden to the Inner Harbor and back. I've completed them both in slightly less than a half hour, although that's only if all the traffic lights are working with me. I'm especially pleased with my evening commute, enough so to take a break from not posting on my blog and talk about it for a few hundred words.

View from the end of the lane, I love the color of that bridge.

Before, I was dodging evening traffic on Calvert, which I took mostly because it's either Calvert or Charles and there's slightly fewer cars on the former. Very slightly. Not a day went by where I wasn't yelled at or buzzed at least once, but that's what you should expect when you live in a city that didn't even make the top fifty American biking cities. (Okay, I know that these rankings are just a popularity contest and don't mean anything, but friggin' Orlando is on this list. Baltimore ain't Portland but there's nowhere in goddamn Florida that deserves to be on ANY "best biking cities" list.)


I've known for months that the Fallsway cycletrack was in progress, or had just finished progressing, or had yet to be completed... I'm not really as up on these things as I should be. I assumed that construction was still ongoing so instead of worrying about how I was going to deal with an unfinished road, I stuck with the devil I know. Then one afternoon I just said "screw it, let's try this out." It couldn't be any worse than dealing with northbound suburbanites who are already all pissed off about the JFX lane closure.

View of pedestrian path, bollards... and pothole.

The route isn't pleasant and picturesque in the normal sense of the word. You're sandwiched between the JFX and a succession of industrial buildings (and a jail). But who really cares? For a little over one glorious mile I'm completely separated from cars and that is the MOST pleasant thing I can think of. The road spits you out on Guilford Avenue, the first bicycle boulevard on the East Coast (but it's nothing compared to what Orlando's got). I've been taking Guilford into downtown every morning and I can say with confidence that it's at least ten billion times better than Cathedral. They're similar streets (one-way, multi-lane, 25 mph that really means 35), but the fact that Guilford is marked as a "bike boulevard" makes all the difference. So basically, suck on that, anti-infrastructure types.

It's not done, as the huge, evenly-spaced ditches can attest (it's just not a Baltimore road if there isn't at least one pothole every half-mile). I'm also still a little edgy about taking it in the wintertime but I'll cross that overpass when I get to it. For now, this is the fastest, safest way to get out of downtown on a bike. I'm sure glad I decided to try it.

How's Your Bike Week?

As the many cycling blogs I follow have mentioned once or twice, this week is Bike Week in the USA, a time when we collectively think about how different and better our lives could be if we accepted cycling as a viable form of intra-city transportation... before jumping in our minivans to drive half a mile down the street. As this is my first Bike Week as a transportation cyclist in a city with a large enough cycling population to support Bike Week activities, I wanted to partake in a few of the events, even though I'm not really a very social person by nature or in practice. "Unfortunately," I've also been busy with writing stuff: I've really felt a lot of drive to work on my short stories lately, and haven't done any cycling outside of the minimum amount of nine miles per day. That's more than 99% of Americans, but less than 85% of bike bloggers. Mea culpa, except not really, because my short stories are very important to me.

My bike, after riding to work in the rain. Note the frame sticker.

My "festivities" this week have been pretty much confined to riding my bike like always, although I must admit knowing that there were going to be bike counts this week (and that I pass two of the checkpoints on my daily commute each way... four "counts" in all!) influenced my decision to ride to work Tuesday in a fairly heavy rain, although I've found that even when it's raining, I never really regret riding to work. I think I've maybe missed two commutes because of weather in the six months-plus I've been doing this, and both times I spent a good portion of the morning thinking "man, I really wish I would have rode in, I'm such a chumpette." And anyway, the rain was over by the time I got to work, as happens more often than not when I set out (the other possibility, of course, is that it gets way worse and I have to wring out my pants/skirt in the bathroom, which is annoying but still probably better than taking the train). I thought about going to the Ride of Silence but I didn't know about it until the last minute, and I had a writing group meeting. It's something I think is really important, though, and I'll definitely be doing it next year as it is apparently a yearly, nationwide event.

Tomorrow I attend my first Bike to Work Day, which I assume will be just like a normal non-capitalized bike to work day, except that I'll get free stuff. I'm hopeful that there will be a lot more riders on the road... but it will also make me sad, because I know that for many people, this is only a once-a-year thing. Then a week later is Baltimore's first Tweed Ride. Being a committed citizen of the 21st century, I don't have anything to wear for it, and I'm debating showing up in rags with dirt smeared on my face, as this was the style at the time among my coal-mining ancestors. (Who probably didn't even own bikes, and just walked everywhere until their feet fell off and then couldn't afford to buy new ones, which was also the style at the time.) But I could also just get a nice hat at one of the four thousand resale shops along the Avenue and duct tape it to my head. At least my bike is vintage!

Back in Action

Sorry once again for the lack of updates, my three or four regular readers. I'm still riding to work every single day, and still riding most other places too. Still as committed as ever. Just... not talking about it. I think that maybe it's because cycling has moved to being such a normal, everyday part of my life that I don't talk about it, any more than, say, a blog on eating food. Although, wait, those do exist. Damn hipsters.

BUT ANYWAY, I am pleased to report that my vintage Raleigh Sports is back in service! A few months ago, I came out of my last day of work at my former job to find that my rear wheel was flat. This is the wheel that is really hard to remove due to the internal hub, and I had a new job to get to, and the hybrid was sitting right there, looking pretty unsexy but oh-so-practical. And then even once I changed the tube, I couldn't get the rear wheel back on correctly. The Sports isn't practical for winter anyway, because it doesn't yet have lights (though I hope it will soon... hint, hint).

But now that it's light for my entire commute home, I knew I'd want to ride it every damn day. So I took it down to Baltimore Bicycle Works and gave it a full treatment: tune-up, cog change so it's easier to climb hills (was 17 teeth, now 20), and new brakes. Before, I had to partially use my feet to skid to a stop, like a fixie rider. Although it was even dumber because this bike weighs like 35 pounds and was hard to stop. It's working probably as well as it did when it first rolled off an English assembly line in 1973, and I actually think it's a better hill-climber than my hybrid now. The steel frame definitely makes it a smoother ride on Baltimore's interestingly-textured streets. Still not sure if I'm going to put a rack on it, since I have the hybrid for my epic weekly 50-pound grocery hauls. But it will be my daily commuter until it gets dark out again at least.

Here's the Sports at one of the stops on last Friday's Baltimore Bike Party (formerly Critical Mass) ride:

Holy crap, that's blue.

That's Northern Parkway in the background, and I feel I should report that I rode on it for a whole minute almost, and it was kind of a surreal experience. Certainly not anything I'd do without fifty other cyclists around me, but if they're there, then it can be fun, and a good preview of the kind of riding we'll all be doing post-peak oil. I've done four group rides now, and each time I come away feeling so much positive energy (to sound like a damn hippie) and hope for the future of transportation cycling. Although, the fact that our ride also has sweet tunes is all for the better:

In the dark he put on lights that made it look like a disco ball, and as a side benefit, made it easier to find the group if you fell behind. Which I did a lot, because I'm not used to cycling fifteen miles at a stretch. One thing that I love about the group rides I've done is that they're incredibly low-pressure. You don't need to be a racer to join and sometimes even I was able to get closer to the front. I do wish the Baltimore rides had more diversity (both age-wise and race-wise), but there were a lot of other lady riders. I'd guess maybe a third of the riders this time were women, and while I don't know how that compares to other group rides in other cities, nationwide the gender split for transportation cycling is like 80%/20% men/women. I feel like I've seen a higher percentage of women cyclists in Baltimore, although it could just be that I notice them more.

So to get back to the main point of this post, my vintage bike is working again, and I'm pretty excited about that. Now, off to ride!

Taking Me Home

A discovery: my evening commute is exactly as long as one of the soundtracks to my late adolescence, Sleater-Kinney's Call the Doctor.

It's a great album to ride to!

Submission Call for Short Bikey Fiction

As some of you know, I write me some fiction, and today I stumbled upon a submission call right up my alley! Maybe it's something you're interested in, too? Ride 2, a collection of short stories in which "a bicycle (or bicycle subculture) must feature prominently in the story." Up to 12,000 words. Of course, I'll be writing some kind of SFnal crapsack world post-peak oil story, because that's the only type of fiction I am capable of writing. And if you want, you can check out Ride 1. I just might.

Reading that submission call made me think about the other stories I've written, and how even without trying to set forth any sort of "message" or even intending it to be that way, my stories are largely car-free. This could be because my writing is pretty much autobiography. (Autobiography that's usually set in the future. With aliens. Or global pandemics. But it's still autobiography.) I've never known what it's like to own a car, so consequently, I don't think of including cars in my fiction. If something's not a major part of your life, it's easy to see how it can slip through the cracks when you're writing a story. If I wrote "straight" fiction, the transportation mode might be notable, but I think to some extent it's hidden in genre work. Or at least, I've never had anyone ask "hey, why don't any of your characters drive?" and I didn't even notice it myself until earlier today. Then again, most of my fiction is set in cities, where "alternative" transport isn't such an unusual thing.

Despite my relatively car-less fictional world, I've never written a story in which bikes play a major or even minor role. So I'm excited about writing a story involving bikes. Maybe that story will be a little less crapsack than most of my others! (But it will still be pretty crappy because that's the way I roll, man.)

Getting My Advocacy On

On Saturday I attended the launching of BikeMore, a new bicycle advocacy group just starting up in Baltimore. (Note: group does not yet have a website, so that link goes to Twitter.) Some random thoughts:

• It makes me ridiculously happy to pull onto a sidewalk and see three dozen bikes parked there, and know that almost everyone at the meeting got there on a bike. I didn't snap a picture because I'm not yet at the stage of my blogging career where photography is second nature, but rest assured, there were plenty of bikes, and I hope to get to the point where it's common to walk down a street in Baltimore and see three dozen bikes (although hopefully with better parking).
• I was quite happy to see a diversity of ages and genders represented... okay yeah it was still largely white males in the 30-50 range but maybe a fifth of the attendees were chicks? Not so much racial diversity but hey, gotta start somewhere. And a focus on diversity (both of the members of the group and of the eventual board of directors) was one of the main things talked about so I am pretty confident that this isn't just going to become a conglomeration of vehicular cycling advocates with their insane hatred of bike lanes.
• Still a little confused about how advocacy at this level actually WORKS. Like, say you have an awesome idea, like taking out all the on-street parking on Calvert Street and putting up a sweet two-way bike lane with a barrier. (Note to politicians: steal my idea!) If you're like me and have no political connections or desire to BE a politician, what then? But I guess this is stuff I'll learn as I get more involved!
• The most contentious debate seemed to be about the name of the group, and at some points nobody really had anything to say and I wondered if the facilitator was getting peeved. I don't know if that means we're all on the same page or if everyone was just really shy.

So anyway, it was a fun experience even if I got a little stir-crazy by the end. (Eight hours in a room with no windows, oh my!) I am looking forward to being a part of this group even if I'm still a little new to the idea of organized advocacy in general. Once again, BikeMore's the name, and I'm sure I'll be posting lots more about it!

Random Thoughts from an Increasingly Infrequent Blogger

1. I listen to music while riding now. Yeah, I know, it's dangerous. Still not as dangerous as driving, of course! My new commute is around forty minutes each way, and truth is, I was getting a little bored, and also very, very tired of listening to nothing but wind and cacophonous engine noises. Right ear only, of course, and not ALL the time, although most of the time. I find my music choices on the bike are slightly different from my music choices at home: more dancey, electronic-y type stuff, no folk rock by bearded hipster dudes. Some current faves: Cut Copy, The Go! Team, Tune-Yards, Aesop Rock, Los Campesinos! (Looking at that list, the unifying factor seems to be "bands with exclamation points in their names." If only I liked !!! more.)

2. It's sorta funny to me that as much of a transportation snob as I am, and how much I truly believe in sustainability and urban living and whatnot... in some ways I will always be a suburbanite. Take my food choices, which would probably horrify most bike bloggers. My diet is that of the typical five year old without parental supervision: we're talking corn dogs, Mountain Dew, giant blocks of processed cheese, and candy. Oh, so much candy. And even though I know this stuff is bad for me (and the planet), it's easy to believe it's not, because I'm at a weight I'm happy with and I don't feel any better when I don't eat crappy. In fact, I feel worse, because I'm denying myself my favorite foods! So at least for now, I'm going to continue eating dirty and traveling clean, the exact opposite of most "health nuts" I know.

There's also the fact that I sort of love big box stores, at least in concept. I like doing all my shopping in one place, especially since I don't have a secure trunk to put my purchases in. Anything I buy has to come with me to the next store, so yeah, cutting down on trips is definitely something I look for when I'm planning any consumerist activities. Of course, in my fantasy world, big box stores would pay a living wage and not be surrounded by miles of shitty parking lot and would sell only fair trade or locally sourced goods. It's more about convenience than price, for me. (And hey, it's not like I could find locally sourced versions of most of the stuff I buy at Target anyway, no matter how much I'd be willing to spend.)

3. Drop bars: what's the deal with them? I'm starting to think my next bike is going to have drop bars. I have no interest in racing, but I DO have interest in doing recreational rides like Tour Dem Parks and although it's certainly possible to do a 30+ mile ride on a comfort hybrid with BMX handlebars, it seems like it might be easier on a more aerodynamic bike. Like, I even found myself struggling to keep up with Critical Mass and I don't know how much of that is because I'm just slow, and how much is the bike's set-up. A little of one, a little of the other, I'd reckon. But then, drop bar bikes look more difficult to ride and someone might mistake me for an athlete, which would be the worst thing ever, am I right? So, mental note: if I get a bike with drop bars, I have to be sure to always wear an evening gown and/or clown costume when I'm riding it.

4. I know it's old, but this Portlandia clip still cracks my shit up:

Cars, man, WHY???

Last Week I...

1. Went to a Bike Maryland meeting. My review is mixed, although I now have had the (dis)pleasure of actually encountering one of the vehicular cycling spawn of Satan advocates in the wild and I'm cautious about doing any more advocacy work with this organization until I am convinced they are advocates for separated infrastructure, or at least, not advocates against it.

2. Rode in my first Critical Mass! It won't be my last.

...but I don't really feel like talking about those things right now. Instead, let's talk about pedestrians, in particular Baltimore pedestrians. What the hell, Baltimore pedestrians? I recognize that pedestrians are our most vulnerable road users and should be protected at all costs and any car (or bike) that hits them is the one who's at fault, not the pedestrian. Whenever I am off my bike, I am a pedestrian, and I would like other road users to look alive and be aware of the very-slow-moving humans among them. Yes, this includes bikes.

But, man, sometimes it's hard to care about pedestrians! Last week I witnessed a man in a motorized wheelchair crossing against the light. In front of a bus. At. Night. Luckily, the bus ground to a halt. That's the worst single example of Baltimore jaywalking I've seen, but on every commute, I have pedestrians literally throwing themselves at me. It's not really better if you're in a car, according to my husband, so it's not a case of pedestrians not understanding that a bike in motion can hurt them.

There's a certain attitude inherent in Baltimore jaywalkers that is different from, say, Pittsburgh jaywalkers. If you are jaywalking in Pittsburgh you do it fast and make sure to look apologetic while you're doing it. Baltimore jaywalkers, though, take their sweet time. They give you an expression that seems to say "yeah, I see you, what are you going to do about it?" as they saunter across the road, only five feet away from the nearest crosswalk. They are a very diverse group in sex, race, and most visibly, age. You'd think an eighty-year-old woman with a cane wouldn't want to take the chance of walking against the light on a moderately-trafficked road during rush hour, but hey, she's managed to live this long and I haven't, so maybe there's things she knows that I don't. Baltimore jaywalkers are the true kings of the road.

The Week of Fail

Hola, amigos. I know it's been a long time since I last rapped at ya, but I've been living it up, enjoying my great new job (and, relevant to this blog, the most perfect 4.5-mile commute), and attempting to work on my "real" writing. After taking care of the house and the cats, there isn't much energy left for blogging

This has been... not so great a week for cycling. My troubles started on Wednesday morning, when I decided to bike to work despite it being a cool thirteen degrees out. Cold weather doesn't bother me any when I'm on the bike because I heat up like a motor (this is probably also the case for you), but it sure did bother my bike! The back wheel froze up causing me to skid. I tried everything to unfreeze it, including loosening the brake pads and attempting to unlock the quick-release back wheel, but it remained frozen until I reluctantly dragged it onto the train, at which point it heated up enough to spin. I resolved not to ride anymore if it's under twenty degrees.

On Thursday, though, it was a bike-approved thirty-five degrees when I set out, so no problems, right? WRONG! I normally take the Fallsway to work, a gently down-sloping back road with almost no traffic and no stoplights, which runs alongside the Jones Falls. Scenery-wise, it is very pretty and a great way to spend half my commute. The Fallsway's upsides are also its downsides, though, since there was a thin sheen of ice on it that hadn't been melted away from the crush and heat of cars. And when I swerved to avoid that ice, there was an invisible layer of ice just to its left.

So, I fell off my bike, for the first time since I was a kid probably. I ruined my pants, removed the top layer of my knee, and was late to work again. I had no idea what was going on for like two minutes, at which point I figured, oh crap, better get the bike out of the road before someone hits it (hey, I told you that road never gets traffic). At that point a friendly motorist asked if I needed any help, but I didn't want to take a ride from a dude and I was only three minutes from my house, so I painfully pedaled back and took the train to work. Hello again, MTA! Really really wasn't expecting to see you again so soon.

Not that epic.

I wasn't going to bike to work yesterday and actually considered calling off the rest of winter, but it was Rob the non-cycling bikes-are-dumb-and-I-hate-them husband who convinced me to ride, because he knows that I'm miserable without my daily dose of exercise. Just avoid the Fallsway and leave extra early, he said. So I did, and I was completely fine. Bypassing the Fallsway adds an extra ten minutes to my commute, but hey it's not like I don't enjoy riding, right? And I'm sure I'll find ways to shorten that commute once I ride it for a week or so.

So basically, the moral is, if life kicks you once, get back up and do what you want to do. If life kicks you twice in two days, well... still do that. Or maybe the moral is that my impatience will someday be the death of me!


(P.S. The fact that the Fallsway is in such bad condition now makes me a tad leery about the in-progress Jones Falls Bikeway, which I previously wholeheartedly supported. I think I'm going to have to get some reassurance that the lane will be cleaned on a regular basis, or else I'm going to have to ride through the city, traffic or not, at least for the four months out of the year when ice/slush is a possibility.)

Unacceptable Absence

What the hell, I just started this blog and already I abandon it? Well, I have a good reason...

Even "in this economy" I managed to find a new job, which I will not talk about for important life/work separation reasons (yeah, having a bike blog isn't exactly like putting drunk pics on Facebook, but close enough), but suffice to say that employment-wise I'm as happy as I've been since 2007. After such a long time being unemployed, and then experiencing my second worst job of all time, I can scarcely believe my luck in the employment arena.

In bike-commuting terms, this means that my commute is over twice as long as it used to be, and I couldn't be happier about that. Every day I get to see a nice little slice of Baltimore, from where my commute starts out riding the scenic, almost car-free Fallsway right next to the Jones Falls Trail, then onto city streets, which are (for now) completely un-laned but also relatively calm at 8:30 when I hit them. I need to take some pictures, once I get a digital camera that can fit in my pocket and doesn't take forever to warm up. I don't know that my commute is the "best part of my day" because honestly my job is pretty killer but it's a really great excuse for getting in an hour of exercise every day. (And as a bonus, light rail is very convenient to both my job and my home, for when it snows or rains... which hasn't happened yet!)

The downside to my new commute is that the return trip is entirely dark for now, and I have to ride with traffic for most of it (at least for another year until the Jones Falls Bikeway is complete... and check out that link if you want to watch someone who obviously doesn't ride try to talk about bike infrastructure*). In order to not die, I picked up a Nite Rider MiNewt 350 headlight at my local bike store (Twenty20 Cycling in Hampden), and while it worked fine for the first two weeks, three days ago it just didn't come on after work. Apparently, I'm the first person ever to have a problem with this light, and it's currently being repaired and/or exchanged, so I will in fact be able to post a glowing review of it later. While at the LBS, I also purchased a pannier, as my quick-release Wald basket no longer fits on my hybrid due to the headlight. No review needed, as it's just a basic pannier, but I will say that I now find panniers to be a much better stuff-carrying system than front baskets. I still worry that it's going to hit against a car or fall off for no reason, but I can get way more groceries and things in there than I ever could in my basket, and even with twenty pounds of stuff, there's no noticeable fishtailing.

So, yeah, right now life is pretty awesome, despite being winter and the holidays, i.e. my usual least favorite part of the entire year. I have every hope that 2012 will continue to be as awesome. And that I will remember to post to this blog more often.

In closing, my current favorite bike-related Youtube clip:

*Okay, so I have more to say about that post but I don't want to start another post about it so let me just say that it's really sort of insulting to see someone who's willing to throw cyclists under the bus (literally!) because we're "good for the community," in other words scenery. I pass through Mount Vernon twice a day, and look forward to not having to ever pass through it again once the bikeway is complete, because the drivers are insane, and the streets are way too narrow to accommodate a double line of parked cars, plus cars in motion, plus bikes. Yes, people also park on the street in Hampden and the rest of North Baltimore, but we're nowhere near downtown. Also, pretty sure the streets are wider here, because we used to have electric streetcars. Mount Vernon could be a decent neighborhood for bikes if  they got rid of the on-street parking (why people are allowed to park on the street so close to downtown flummoxes me) and put in lanes instead but that will never ever happen ever. So fuck yeah, I want to ride next to a prison if that's the only way I can be almost completely separated from deathmobiles. Man, I just should have made a new post about this.

My First Group Ride

Yesterday night I participated in my first ever group bike ride, the yearly Holiday Lights Ride in Baltimore City. I've been wanting to participate in group rides ever since starting to ride a bike again a year ago, but getting from Towson to the city is already a mighty journey by itself. And once I moved to the city, I kept finding excuses: my brakes were shot (although they are fixed now, yay!), I probably couldn't keep up, and especially, "I'm not cool/not political enough for this." (That last reason is why I have yet to ride in a Critical Mass.) But eventually, I had to just psych myself up for it, and what with this ride starting less than a mile from my new-as-of-two-days-ago workplace, I had no excuse for not doing it. I'm so glad I did.

Gearing up for the ride. Not intended to be a pun. Also, my camera phone sucks, sorry about that.

I had no problems keeping up. In fact, I was near to the front several times, and often found myself deliberately slowing down. I rode the hybrid, due to the fact that the 3-speed is pretty terrible at climbing hills, plus I had to change a flat on it a few days ago and want to do some neighborhood riding with it first before using it to commute. The route was fairly similar to my route home from the Inner Harbor, except that it detoured from Charles to Howard (I think? Hard to tell where I was sometimes because it was dark and I was focused on staying with the group). After hitting the Miracle on 34th Street, the group went back downtown to a bar somewhere, but I decided to go back home instead. I would estimate around 30 people were there, pretty good for a fairly cold evening in December.

We ran a lot of red lights and there was a fair amount of corking going on, which sort of makes me nervous. I am definitely in the "cyclists should obey all traffic laws at all times" camp and when I'm riding alone, I stop for all lights and generally try to act like a little car. I do this not necessarily because it's the "right thing to do" or "the law" but because if there is an incident or an accident I want to be damn sure I'm in the right of things. (Also, it freaks drivers out when you obey the law, and pisses them off too! It's so much fun to stop at a late-stage yellow and hear a car squealing behind you, the driver cussing you out because they just naturally assumed that a cyclist would run that yellow. My non-cyclist husband gets flummoxed when he sees law-abiding cyclists.) But there were no honked horns or revved motors in our direction that I could tell, so I think drivers were tolerant of the group. The fact that many of us wore lights and the leader dressed like Santa Claus probably helped with the goodwill.

Yeah, this picture came out a little better but still pretty much sucks. But look at all the cyclists!

The best thing about riding in a group is how safe it felt. We took up an entire lane of traffic, and even when I was on the outside of the pack, I felt completely protected. It wasn't a physical protection, but more of a psychological one, the feeling that for the first time in my cycling life, I was part of the transportation majority. (There was very little traffic on the road at 7-8 pm that day.) And it struck me that if people wanted it to, every day could feel like this. Every day could end with a healthy dose of physical activity, pleasant conversation among strangers, really seeing the city you live in. When I take public transportation, I'm never aware of my surroundings, I always have my head in a book or my phone. I honestly don't know why anyone who can physically ride a bike and lives within a bikeable distance of their workplace would not ride to work at least some of the time. But that is smugness for another day!

34th Street light show! Pretty, but I don't envy their electric bills.

Now that I've done one group ride, I want more, more, more! My cycling has fallen into a bit of a rut, as commuting tends to do, and I rarely go out just to explore anymore. I think participating in more group rides would make cycling more of an adventure again, as well as help me meet more people who share my interest. I can't do the next Critical Mass (I'll be in Pittsburgh for the New Year's Weekend Gift-O-Rama), but the one after that I'll definitely do, plus any other rides I might hear about.

We Are Now Experiencing Technical Difficulties....

First of all, in non-bicycle-related news, I have a new short story in this season's issue of Ideomancer. Do you like depression? Then you'll love this story, people, even if there's no mention of bikes and I don't know why I'm even posting it on my bike blog except I'm so excited.

In bicycle commuting related news, I've hit a snag. Not a snag that would cause me to stop riding (that will not and cannot happen... I have a job now and I don't have another form of transportation!), but something that makes getting around by bike a little less convenient. Both of my bikes have "technical issues." The three-speed sort of sucks on hills, and while that's not a problem usually, I live at the bottom of a pretty steep (for Baltimore) slope, so I'm finding that I have to walk it up the worst part of the hill, until I get to a part where I can easily start it from a stopped position. This adds an extra two or three minutes to my commute, and sometimes, I don't have the time. Not to mention, I really hate walking my bike.

What's the fix? Seems like it might be to lower the gearing, which I'll have to go to a bicycle shop for. Since I was already going to go to one for help with installing my new dynamo, I can just ask about this while I'm there, too. Another fix is to just get stronger leg muscles, but man, who has time for that? I ride my bike almost every day for at least forty minutes, these legs are as tough as they're going to get.

The hybrid, which has a derailleur, can climb hills like a mountain goat (and not the kind that writes awesome songs and has the best Twitter feed ever), but it has no brakes. Well, it does have brakes, but they seem to fail whenever the bike is left out in the rain, which unfortunately I have to do because job + no indoor parking + no other form of transportation. And even after they dry, they don't work well. Actually, they haven't worked well at all for a few months, but it's just now getting to the point where I feel very unsafe riding the hybrid. By which I mean, I almost got hit by a truck, and probably made at least a dozen people hate cyclists in a two-minute span. (Great job, me!)

I did some digging into bicycle brakes, and discovered that the brakes on my hybrid are what are called "V-brakes," which I believe is short for "very poorly designed brakes." The brakes are operated by pulling a "noodle" through a small hole, and they worked just fine when I first got the bike*. However, with heavy use (and I have probably put enough miles on the hybrid to go halfway across the country by now), the hole that the noodle goes through can get bigger, leading to epic fail.

The answer, once again, is to find a good LBS and ask them about new brake pads or even an entirely new braking system. Even though the Raleigh Sports is now my daily commuter, I still need the hybrid for recreational riding and big grocery runs, and if there's one thing worse than being almost hit by a truck, it's almost being hit by a truck while carrying twenty pounds of kitty litter.


*And this is where I start to wonder if the hybrid isn't a lemon. When I went back to the (sporting goods) store I bought it from for a tune-up, they were shocked at how much I rode it. Were they impressed at my stamina... or surprised that someone who bought an entry-level hybrid uses it for more than a few hours a month, that they would ride in all conditions, that they would use it as a primary vehicle? I don't think they intended any of their bikes to be used as vehicles! From here on out, it's dedicated bicycle shops or Craigslist all the way. My bike is not a "sporting good."

Dynamic Dynamo

I will keep to a regular posting schedule on this blog that nobody reads if it kills me!

Aside from my commute, I haven't really been riding much lately. Most of that is due to overwork; when I get home, the last thing I want to do is go for a long bike ride for fun. Or, rather, that's one of the first things I want to do, but I also have to do dishes and wash clothes and all that boring adult stuff. So the riding falls by the wayside, a lot of the time. But I have reason to believe things might improve in January, so yay? Even though I don't think I'll be doing much recreational riding in January anyway, because snow (boo!).

But! I have a new bike toy, and while I can't play with it yet, I am super excited about it. It's a bottle dynamo for a human-powered thievery-averse lighting system.

It looks like a tiny gun. Or maybe a hair dryer.

I now need to get a headlight and taillight, and oh yeah, figure out how to hook up the whole thing. It would probably be better to go to a bike shop to get this done, but I enjoy tinkering, and it doesn't look too too hard, at least once I get the voltages right. The dynamo is used and vintage because it was way cheaper than a new one, but I think I'll stick with modern lights. These would be for the vintage Raleigh as the newer hybrid already has battery lights, and while the battery lights are detachable they don't fit on the Sports very well. I'm also constantly leaving them on the hybrid or on the kitchen table instead of taking them with me, which does nothing for my nighttime safety. So I think I'll be much better off with a system I can't possibly leave at home.

It's All in the Commute?

So, as I alluded to in my last post, I have a new day job. Without going too far into details, it isn't the greatest job in the world. To go slightly more into details, it isn't the job I applied for and I'm a little irked at the bait and switch. But enough with the details!

I've noticed that, as non-ideal as my job is, I am a lot less cranky than I feel like I "should" be when I get home. Part of that is that I'm (by choice) not working full-time. But I think that, weird as it sounds, a very big part of the reason why I don't come home cranky and miserable is -- you guessed it -- because I ride my bike to work.

See, for around a year when I lived in Pittsburgh, I used to have a walking commute. It was approximately the same amount of time as my current bike commute (20 minutes each way). And I didn't come home cranky then, either. I really liked that job, which could be part of it... but when I moved and had to start taking the bus to work every day, I started getting cranky. And pretty much didn't stop being cranky about my job for the next few years.

I can't really get much thinking done on a bus. Oh, sure, I got a lot of reading done. But deep thinking, the kind I need to cleanse my introvert brain after a long day of working in an extravert's world... no. Not with all the stop calls, the babble of voices, people pushing and bumping into me, and oh god, the motion sickness. I don't get carsick as easily on a bus as I do in a car, but it's still present. (Well, someone's a delicate butterfly.) And I think all these various bus annoyances had a lot to do with why my attitude went downhill all those years.

Maybe there's no correlation. Or only a very weak correlation. I'm not a scientist.

I kind of wish my commute was longer, although I'm sure I won't feel that way after the first snow.

It's New! It's Old! It's Vintage!

Apologies for the delay in posting for the maybe five people who read this. As it turns out, starting a blog at the exact same time you start a new job (after almost two years unemployed!) isn't such a great idea. Really going to have to get on a regular posting schedule soon!

But anyway, big news: I got a new bike! I shouldn't have really been trawling Craigslist's bike section, but I did and came upon a vintage three-speed Raleigh Sports at a price I could afford. After hemming and hawing for a few days, I finally realized that I couldn't not at least look into it, and shot the owner an email.

Parks and Recreation: lessons for life.

The bike lived in my old stomping ground of Towson, at one of the soulless apartment complexes that are so numerous in suburban Maryland. I was late to my appointment, because the road I had to take didn't have sidewalks and drivers in MD speed like hell so I was a nervous wreck. (In fact, the lack of sidewalks in a lot of places there is one of the reasons I decided to start cycling!) But once I got on the bike -- well, after me and the bike's owner went to a gas station to fill the tires -- everything felt a lot better.

I'd been wary of the steel-is-king mantra, believing it just to be a scam to sell expensive steel-frame bikes to suckers. But wow, it's true: steel is better on potholes, cracks, grates, and all the other road inconsistencies that you get in an average city. During the test ride, I deliberately rode it over some extremely shitty potholes, and ones that normally would have put my heart in my mouth were little more than gentle waves. On an aluminum frame, you feel everything, and while I don't dislike aluminum as much as other bike enthusiasts (sometimes you want to feel the road!), I can't deny that steel is in many ways superior for a city environment.

Ta-dah!

The internal hub feels far different from a derailleur. The "junk in the trunk" effect took a few minutes to get used to, but it makes the bike feel a lot more stable. It's much harder to climb hills on this bike, but that was only an issue for two hills I encountered on the way back from Towson, and will not be an issue with any hills in the city. (I also imagine my riding style and my legs will learn to compensate for the extra rear weight.) I do notice it has a tendency to drop out of gear randomly, usually when I'm trying to shift while pedaling (the opposite of a derailleur, which can only change gears while you are pedaling). But these are just minor inconveniences. On the plus side, my chain hasn't fallen off once; it falls off at least every tenth ride on my hybrid, leading to hands that are stained black for at least the rest of the following day. But then, I tend to give the gears on my hybrid a workout, using all seven on the same two-mile ride.

The bike is in seriously beautiful condition for its age. The blue paint isn't faded or patchy at all, looks like it just came out of a showroom. The only rust I see is a slight bit around the back fender which considering the bike is from 1973 is a goddamn miracle. I wonder if this thing was even ridden at all! The Brooks saddle isn't a "real" Brooks, i.e. leather, but it is super comfy and I don't plan on changing it. And while I'm not usually a person who notices or cares about little details on bikes, I admit to loving the lugged frame and little chromey details on the fenders. And that reflector on the back fender! Everything on this bike is adorable.

So cute I could explode!

Things to add: lights! Right now I put my little clippy lights on at dusk, but I'm probably going to spring for some kind of generator system (at least in the front) as the bike is set up for it with a headlight bracket. I may also get a rack, but not unless I can find one that doesn't look out of place on a vintage bike. This may just become my city commuter, with the hybrid as a grocery bike plus a bike to ride on rails to trails and other recreational rides where I have to drive the bike to the ride spot. (The Sports doesn't have quick release wheels, so no car rides for this baby.)

So, yeah, buying this bike was pretty gratuitous but we all need to do something gratuitous for ourselves every so often. I smile every time I look at it, even when I'm not riding it. And I've already gotten a few compliments, which is something I care about even though it's sorta shallow. Basically, if you have a few Jacksons to spare, treat yourself to a vintage bike. It's still cheaper than a month of gas.

A good view of the front. Hello there!

Daylight Saving Time: A Cyclist's Perspective

If you're reading this American blog written in English, chances are probably pretty good that you've just participated in the twice-yearly changing of the clocks. Amid the jokes about time travel and the elation at getting an "extra hour," there is the harsh reality that we're going to be faced with an ever-decreasing amount of daylight, which moving the clocks back will only hasten. The day we switch to Standard Time is one of my least favorite days of the year, which is why I've spent all day lounging around in my adult onesie and listening to the Smiths.

The view from my window, approximately 5:52 pm.

I am a fan of DST. I like coming out of work and having a good three hours, or even one measly hour, of glorious natural sunlight. Daylight saving time has many non-transportation-related benefits for me and for others: lessened seasonal depression (those sun lamps don't work, that is not the sun), lower energy costs (although those are doubtful), and less time watching TV or playing on the Internet because hey, what else are you going to do? But as this is a bicycle blog, let's just talk about the transportation effects, because those alone are enough to convince anyone that a move to permanent DST is an excellent idea that should be carried out immediately. According to some British news site:

• Car accident rates in November go up 17% as drivers adjust to darker conditions. This wouldn't happen if the change to darkness was more gradual, and if there was less darkness in the evening overall.
• Motorcycle accidents go up 41.8% during standard time. Our two-wheeled brothers and sisters bear the brunt of the decrease in driver attentiveness.
• 80 lives per year in the UK would be saved if permanent DST were the norm. Extrapolate this to the US, where  more people are driving longer distances, and that's a huge amount of people.

Although bike commuters aren't mentioned specifically on that article, it's pretty easy to see that permanent DST would have enormous benefit for us, the main benefit being more people would bike commute. I mean, I'm going to commute by bike all winter long anyway: I don't have a choice. But for people who do have a choice, it's awfully hard to convince them that it's safe and healthy to ride their bike home from work when it's pitch black outside. Most people who work standard shifts, and most students, stop working/going to school around five at the latest, which in standard time is just when it turns from dusk to evening. But with an extra hour? It would still be pretty light, and that extra 20-40 minutes of fading daylight might be enough to assure greener cyclists that the roads are still safe for them. And more riders equals more safety! (But still turn on those lights, kids.)

But also, more daylight means more protection from drivers. Cyclists are just as susceptible to driver inattention and poor night vision (hey, I have both!) as people on motorcycles, and just like them we're much less likely to survive an accident. Lights are an essential tool for cyclists, but no light can match the sun, the ultimate bottle dynamo.

Of course, a trade-off of longer daylight hours is that it will still be dark when many of us leave for the day, but personally I don't mind riding at dawn nearly as much as I mind riding at dusk. Okay, I do hardly any dawn riding because I am lazy and don't like leaving the house before mid-morning if I can help it. But the little I've done, I haven't minded. I'd guess that it's safer than dusk riding, because after all the light is increasing, so every minute that passes gets safer and safer.

I can't think of any good reason why we shouldn't have year-round DST. What do you think?

First post!

Well, hello there! I previously "blogged" (seriously, I hate that word) about my bicycling adventures on Breakfast at Twilight, but my interest in cycling has grown to the point at which I felt it warranted its own site.

Anyway, here's the story, for those too lazy to read the "about me" link: my name is Erica, I live in Baltimore, and I don't drive. Sometimes this hasn't affected my life in the slightest, and other times, it's been a major barrier to my employment, socialization, entertainment, and independence. I also have a lot of political beliefs shaped by my non-driving status. Up until 2010, I lived in a city (Pittsburgh, PA) with a fairly extensive public transportation system, which is currently in the process of being dismantled. In 2010, I moved to a satellite city of Baltimore where public transportation was severely lacking, so I decided to start bicycling. And I fell in love!

One of the many pieces of Hampden public art.

Cycling has improved my life in so many ways. Although public transportation is a wonderful thing, there is really something to be said for getting where you need to go under your own power. The feeling of being on your own timetable, without the delays common with buses and trains, is liberating. Bicycles really are freedom machines, at least for those of us fortunate enough to live in places where cycling is possible. (I grew up in a place where it wasn't possible, and I'm sure my suburbia hate will come out here sooner or later.) At the same time, cycling in a major American city that isn't Portland is quite often a daunting experience... it's always better than driving (for me), but there's still an ever-present danger which doesn't have to be there.

With this blog, I hope to give a little bit of insight into cycling in Baltimore, as well as talk about what it's like to be a non-driver kinda-but-not-really-but-YES-REALLY by choice (my driving history, it's complicated), public perceptions of cyclists/non-drivers, and how to commute and run errands easily on a bike (protip: it's really, really easy). I'll also probably post more pictures here than at the other blog, although I'm really not much of a photographer.

Happy reading, and happy riding!