Mission: Beat That Bus!

Maymester at CU has been a true eye-opener for me. Normally I would say that being forced to get to school without the luxury of the bus system is just a huge pain. But I have to say, there are some MAJOR perks to having your own private mode of transportation that allows you to skip traffic lights and cut right through campus.

I never realized the true advantage of having a bike until I actually BEAT the Buff Bus to my destination by a good 5 minutes.

A few weeks back, I was still trying and failing miserably to find the fastest and most direct path to school from my apartment. I was almost late to three classes and nearly killed myself when I had to stop short at a ditch that followed a very shallow turn on the path near Kittredge. Now after all my wanderings I’ve finally found my route.

Well, technically it’s TWO separate routes; one for the ride to school, and one for the ride home. The route I take to school is a bit longer, but the hill climb is not very steep at all and takes me along Baseline then Broadway. It’s perfect for a groggy morning after an all-night study session.

This is the route I took that left the bus in the dust.

If you get enough speed at the start of Baseline, you can FLY up those hills, not to mention the fact that you don’t have to wait for those traffic lights!

The route home is a LOT more simple and is almost ALL downhill (WEEEE!!!). I just cut straight through Kittredge and catch the tunnel under 36 that leads to the bike path.

I can’t wait until the regular school year again so I can try and beat my previous record! ^_^

Let the Path Take You

Greetings fellow Boulder cyclists! Summer has finally started to fight its way through the crisp spring. The spokes are beginning to turn with the seasons. The glorious days of sunshine are upon us!

It has been a long frigid winter. I can't even remember the last time I slipped on a pair of flip-flops. A sense of accomplishment and freedom lingers in the air with students finishing up another semester and a lucky few graduating. What better way to celebrate the start of summer than to cruise on through one of Boulder's many biking trails? Just the other day I was riding along the creek, and an uplifting feeling of joy put a nice bounce in my pedaling. The birds were chirping, the trees and flowers were blooming, and even the homeless seemed chipper. I decided to explore.

I've never gone out for a ride without an intended destination. The warm air and sunshine just inspired me to lose myself on the path. I found completely different parts of boulder. Secret niches and interesting geography littered the entire adventure. After wandering various paths for several hours I began to realize that I needed to eventually get home. Heading back the way I came seemed impossible because of my spontaneous route. Uneasiness began to takeover as darkness set in. I hadn't planned ahead for a night ride, so I started to worry about being seen by traffic. My eyes were peeled for anything that might be recognizable. I was about to give up hope and call a ride, until I saw the creek.

A rush of relief gave me an adrenaline boost that got me home just before dark. My seemingly unending adventure was finally over! Exploring uncharted territory was a lot of fun, but next time I think I'll use a map.

The long summer ahead will bring plenty of opportunities for more path charting. I encourage everyone to take advantage of the beautiful weather to come.

Until next time, keep those wheel's turning!
Nick Wachs

Laser Safety

I have always taken the streets of Boulder for granted. We have been lucky enough to have designated biking lanes for all our cyclists. I never really thought of what life would be like without these lanes until recently. I just got back from a trip to Chicago, another biking enthusiast city, and a rather creative invention was brought to my attention; Laser Light Lanes. I found this innovative idea on the top floor of the Chicago Art Institute, and apparently quite a few cities are catching on. The idea was first thought of in Massachusetts. The basic concept is to promote cycling safety at night in locations without designated bike lanes.
The inventor had witnessed one too many of his friends clipped by traffic, and decided to take action. He came up with a device that attaches to the back of virtually any bike seat. This device uses a laser pointing mechanism to paint a wide enough lane for bikers to safely cruse along the streets with traffic. The laser lane is also narrow enough for cars to pass by with ease. I can only imagine seeing a group of cyclists ride by with neon colors trailing close behind. At first glance it might seem a little ridiculous, but the idea actually makes a lot of sense. It would allow for anyone to ride at night on the streets of virtually any city without worrying about cars drifting into your vicinity. There are plenty of cities around the U.S. that aren't as favorable to bikers as Boulder is, and these Laser Lanes would allow biking enthusiasts around the country to enjoy their own personal lanes. Could this be the future of biking?
Investors of this product are excited to put it on the open market. They understand how expensive it can be for some cities to construct miles and miles bike lanes on pavement, and how dangerous it can be to ride on streets without them. Once it is made available the designers want it to be functional and affordable for everyone with a bike. The gadget would primarily be used for night riding, but it would be extremely useful for cities that don't experience much daylight throughout the year. Its beams are also bright enough for every passing car to see and understand that a cycler occupying that portion of the road.
We should consider ourselves fortunate to have lanes and trails all throughout Boulder. However; these Laser Lanes could prove beneficial in the near future for riders who need to traverse those dark dangerous roads.
Until next time, keep those wheels turning!
Nick Wachs

Good Intentions

Sometimes even the best of intentions can go amiss, and it is true, sometimes too many chefs really do spoil the soup. At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful, never satisfied, and always upset bicycle snob, I have to write about some good intentions out on the road that generally go wrong, and that need to be fixed.

The cyclist's usual and greatest frustrations when it comes to dealing with automobiles are obviously those situations when the cyclist is nearly smashed and run over. These scenarios include cars making crazy left hand turns, drivers who are texting and unknowingly driving in the bike lane, and the infamous and terrifying blind right hand turn. While these are the typical cyclist gripes (and with good reason), there is another automobile action that is just as annoying, uncomfortable, and potentially as dangerous.

The situation I'm talking about is when drivers, attempting to be conscious of and helpful to the approaching cyclist, just stop in the middle of the road to let the cyclist complete his or her left hand turn. While I fully believe this is done with the best of intentions, and the hopes of somehow protecting the cyclist or of providing the cyclist with a high priority on the road, it is one of the most awkward and potentially dangerous situations for a cyclist to be placed into.

First of all, it's extremely uncomfortable because the cyclist, waiting for a gap in traffic in which to make the turn is suddenly and unknowingly thrown into the position of literally holding up traffic, as everyone must now wait behind this hyper-sensitive, awkward, stopped driver. Beyond this, however, it can be very dangerous if the cyclist is trying to turn across two lanes of traffic. With that one car stopped in the middle of the road, the cyclist feels pressure to hurry and make the turn then and there, but often, the cars coming in the other lane, or those stuck behind the suddenly stopping driver, speed past them. If the cyclist is pressured into making a turn at the same time that other cars are speeding around the traffic jam in the other lane, this could lead to a potentially bad collision. Finally, it's never a good idea for cars to just stop in the middle of traffic -- when drivers do this, they are putting themselves at risk of being rear-ended and causing a pileup. In short, when automobilists try to help bikers by suddenly stopping in the middle of traffic, they actually put everyone at risk: cyclists must uncomfortably make turns, cyclists risk being struck by traffic in other lanes, and the cars themselves risk an accident.

Throughout my daily commutes, I make several left hand turns, waiting for holes in the traffic to cut across the road, into the turn lane, and finally making the turn. In doing this, I've experienced the above scenario quite often lately, and while I'm sure the car drivers are doing this with nothing but the best and nicest of intentions, things work better and safer all around if we all just stick to the agreement: bikes are treated as real vehicles on the roads with rights and responsibilities, riding in the designated bike lanes, using hand signals to turn and enter traffic, etc. If everyone involved acts in accordance with this, the roads will be safer and more efficient -- automobilists can get to wherever they need to and so can the cyclists.

Biking in Japan (日本に自転車を乗っていること)

Last summer I finally went to Japan.
It was my absolute dream for most of my life I still can’t believe it actually happened! I frequently look at the thousands of photos I took from my tiny 2 megapixel camera phone to remind myself it wasn't all some vivid and wonderful dream.

I have to say, bike riding in Japan is quite the different experience, especially compared to Colorado. I stayed in a small village named Nagahama in the Shiga prefecture. Kyoto’s about an hour by train.


My purpose there was to learn Japanese puppetry (人形浄瑠璃―Ningyou Joururi) and improve on my language skills before my last semester of Japanese classes.
Every morning I rode this bike (RIGHT) to the Tonda Puppet house. It had three gears, a self-powered light, a conveniently large basket in the front and of course a bell (that I overused quite a lot).
It was a bit scary not wearing a helmet, but biking in Japan is a lot safer than in the US. There are almost no cars and everyone is just so wonderfully courteous!
And of course, every morning: THIS is what I got to ride past:



It was like being in a movie and SO unreal! There were just rice fields, distant mountains and clear blue skies (except when it rained).
Something interesting I noticed about Japanese bike riders is that you'll almost never see someone just riding a bike for the heck of it. People mostly just use bikes for getting place to place.
Also, most Japanese people are Buddhists, Shintoists or both, so there's a general fixation on the sanctification of nature, which of course means,
NO MOUNTAIN BIKING! (GASP!)

Here’s another picture of the main shopping center in Nagahama. The streets are really made more for pedestrians than cars or bikes. They're so narrow you can BARELY fit two cars side by side (and that's two JAPANESE cars that are considerably smaller).

There are so many of these pictures to sort through! But I'll be sure to post some more pictures of my biking adventures in Japan soon!
^_^

Daydream Roads and Lightning Bug Rides

I was recently turned onto FatCyclist.com, a solid bike blog, definitely worth checking out. In particular, I read a story by guest contributor Tim Joe Comstock, entitled "My Proudest Moment: Trailer Park Cyclist vs. Cervelo Guy." Tim Joe tells his bicycle story in a beautiful simplicity that matches the genuine purity of the cycling his words describe. Pedaling a 1981 Schwinn LeTour on the same roads as multi-thousand dollar Cervelos and gear-head roadies in expensive lycra (and as this story relates, sometimes out-pedaling them!), Tim Joe reminded me of why we cycle -- of the unique and unequaled joy and beauty of pedaling a bike.

For me, the real highlights of Tim Joe's story are the following:

"But while I may sound bitter or disillusioned, I am not. Because I ride a bicycle too. The same roads my 'superior' colleagues pedal on are open to me, also. And listen, man, I ride them. After thirty years of hard labor in the construction industry, after two marriages and houses and kids and lawyers, topped off with this never-ending 'recession' and all the loss that results from loss: I ride my bike. A lot."

and:

"I was into mile 30 on my Saturday ride, just cruising along on my 1981 Schwinn LeTour, loving the day and day-dreaming on the empty country road that I like to use for my day-dreaming ride."

These passages really capture the beauty of cycling. We ride because while we love cranking and riding fast, we ultimately love going slow enough to notice flowers, overgrown yards, the Flatirons, and to daydream. Like Tim Joe, I hope we all have our own daydream roads and that we take some daydream rides, even if it is only on that bike ride -- that one moment to breath -- between a stressful day at work or school and an equally challenging night of homework.

After reading Tim Joe's words, I am reminded of some of my favorite cycling memories, and they all seem to be the ones that very clearly remind me that although life can definitely be rough, there are still patches of it worth seeing. Not to be melodramatic or anything, but maybe there's something to the fact that before bombing the descent we have to crank up the hill, and sometimes the best nights on a tour are those immediately following a vicious headwind.

The bike memories from my life that I love are riding the shoulders of empty roads during the early evenings in North Carolina, just as the lightning bugs come out, and the exhilarating rides through busy city streets, leaving cars behind me, turning a frustrating day into a great one.

Regardless of the bike being ridden, the gear being used, or the clothes being worn, there is something pure, simple, beautiful, and even redeeming in being outside and pedaling a bicycle; and I believe, setting everything else aside, this is fundamentally why we cycle.

Wheels of Freedom

Hi there!
I thought since this is my first blog post here, I'd take a sec to introduce myself.
My name is Arielle and I am now one week buff bus free. Yay!

I live at Bear Creek apartments and for the past year, I have ridden the Buff Bus to and from class every single day. The aggravations of an inconsistent bus schedule mixed with the frequent and lengthy breaks taken at Will-Vill finally became too much to handle. I missed the convenience of having my bicycle; the autonomy it gave me, the freedom, the feeling of the wind through my hair!

Well, you may ask, why the heck didn't you ride your bike?!
There's a very simple reason for that.

The weekend before last was a monumental one for two reasons:
One of which being the fact that I finally got more than five hours of sleep.
The other, was freeing my Raleigh 24-speed bicycle from its lock at my mom's house. It had been locked up for well over a year and showed signs of rust around the axles and frame.
Every time my mom or I tried to free it, the lock proved frozen and immobile. I was afraid that between the harsh winter and extreme weather swings this year, that this bike surely would never ride again.

However, a miracle occurred!

When I tried it this time, I suppose because of the warm weather, the lock came apart easily and after a short inspection at the CU Bike Station, and some much needed air in the tires, it was perfectly rideable again!

Now with these beautiful spring days on the horizon, the opportunities for riding my bike to and from CU are plentiful. Now I can not only have have a healthy cardio workout to start my days, but be able to see the splendor of spring without the separation of the bus glass window.
THANK YOU BICYCLES!!! :)

The Door

The car-door. An object of serious infamy and pain for some unfortunate cyclists. While I myself have never been car-doored, one of my really good cycling buddies has, and in light of a recent Unofficial Bike Guide post that described such an event from the perspective of an automobilist, I want to provide a view of car-dooring from the perspective of the cyclist. What follows is the raw, uncut, and uncensored interview between myself (AS) and my car-door-surviving friend (A):

AS: So, you were car-doored, huh? Please describe this experience -- how did something like this happen?

A: I was riding home from class at ASU in Tempe, AZ one afternoon, and turned onto a side, residential street to get off a busy, main road. I was riding in a traffic lane as there was no bike lane on this street past a truck parked on the side of the road when all of a sudden, just as I was passing the mid-section of said truck, the driver's door flung wide open. As I was riding at a decent clip, I had absolutely no time to change course, brake, or do any preventive action. I crashed straight into that door (it should be noted that the elapsed time from the moment when the door opened to the time when I hit the door was probably less than half a second). I was lucky that it was a tall truck because I just hit the door, lost all momentum and landed in a heap with my bike right where the impact happened. If it had been a lower, car door, I would have flown over the door and suffered severe road rash, if not worse.

AS: Please describe the damage done to both you and to the car.

A: I ended up with the wind knocked out of me, and a huge black eye, plus some scrapes and bruises. Amazingly, my bike was completely fine. The door of the truck was bent beyond the range of the hinges (basically, "hyper-extended"), and would not shut again.

AS: What were the reactions of you and the car driver?

A: It all happened so fast for me that I was basically in shock. I was light-headed, couldn't breathe, and basically couldn't believe what had just happened. The car driver was actually angry. He didn't check that I was okay, he was upset that I had broken his door. He asked me for my phone number so we could figure out a way to settle the incident. I was in no fighting mood at that point and gave him my number. He called his insurance company, and they actually came to my house, interviewed me, found I was not at fault, and ultimately awarded me $250 to not sue him.

AS: What most shocked or surprised you about this experience?

A: As a generally cautious biker, I was surprised I didn't see anybody in that vehicle. I was even more surprised that the driver didn't take the 1 second necessary to look in his mirror and check for bikers, or other cars going down the road, and yet still proceeded to fling his door open as far as possible. Lastly, I was really upset that he was more concerned with his door than he was about the mutilated person lying on the ground.

AS: Could this situation have been avoided, and if so, how?

A: Definitely. The driver definitely should have checked before opening his door into traffic. If a car had been going by, he still might have lost his door, and it still would have been his fault.

AS: What could you have done to prevent this situation? What could the car driver have done?

A: I suppose I could have made myself more visible, but as I did not see anybody in the truck, I had no reason to feel like I needed to make myself visible for nobody to see.

AS: After surviving this, has your riding changed at all, and if so, in what ways?

A: I always give parked cars at least 5 feet of space. Believe it or not, this actually saved me recently from a repeat incident.

AS: What are your final thoughts, advice, rants, apologies, or dilemmas regarding your car-dooring incident?

A: Bikers should always be alert and prepared for a driver, even when sitting in a parked car, to do something unexpected. Even if certain laws are in place to prevent certain actions from happening, the truth is, some things still slip through the cracks, and it is better to be prepared for something like that to happen than to trust that the "law" will protect you. By the same token, as most of us who ride bikes probably also find ourselves as drivers from time to time, be courteous to those around you and protect your fellow bicyclists from harm by taking a moment to look around you before proceeding.

My own final thoughts: it is absolutely ludicrous for anyone to assume (as the driver did in the above example) that these incidents are somehow the fault of the cyclist. A person pedaling a bike on the right side of the road (as our cyclist above was doing) is following all the laws that he or she is required to, and it is insane to think that cyclists must somehow peer into every parked car, checking for inattentive drivers, and ready to swerve around suddenly opening doors (the apparent assumption of the car driver above). Bottom line: cars – all cars, whether moving or not – must recognize the bike lane (or if there isn't one provided, the far right side of the road) as a legitimate lane of traffic, and likewise, must respect cyclists as legitimate travelers. An automobilist would never just stop in a car lane, blindly open the door, and step out into the road, so why does this happen in bike lanes? Car-dooring is dangerous, and as is usually the case in bike-car collisions, one side loses out a lot more than the other (click here). These types of unfortunate incidents are sad reminders of the dangers and overall lack of protection that too many cyclists face all too often, and usually, at the hands of inattentive, careless, and sometimes entirely ignorant car drivers.