I saw these bikes at Interbike

I thought they were nice in a subtle,elegant sort of way
http://nyti.ms/8ZGcbC

Going by Bike In Montreal

Bold Fashion Statement

It's been another long while since my last post as life gobbles up big chunks of time. July 13th marked the anniversary of "Life Without a Car" and while I still don't own a car, I have not been riding more than once or twice a week. The store has been very busy and there was that whole wedding thing going on. Cathy and I tied the knot in a nice little ceremony outside on what I believe has to have been the nicest day of the year. (Last Saturday). We just got back from our honeymoon in Montreal, Canada. We picked Montreal for it's European charm without the whole international flight hassle. Plus, we heard that it is a "bicycle friendly" city. I don't know if friendly is the word I would choose but there seems to be an acceptance from the motorized traffic that bicycles are a part of the system and it all worked pretty well. Separated bike lanes on major roads and marked lanes as well as sharrows on others keep the bike traffic moving nicely. The interesting part was that motor traffic moved smoothly as well.

Bixi Montreal from Brendan on Vimeo.
One of the cool things about Montreal is the "Bixi" bike sharing system. All around the city you can find Bixi stations with bikes available for you to hop on and go. It's cheap and easy to get around and it's fun! While we were in Montreal the weather was uncharacteristically hot and it got a little uncomfortable riding to and fro but all in all the "Bixi" is a great way to get around.

Masion Des Cyclists

On Friday we took a Bixi ride from our downtown hotel to the "Maison Des Cyclists" across the street from the "Parc De Le Fontaine". The Maison houses the administrative offices of Velo Quebec Association, the main cycling advocacy organization for the province. The Maison also has a terrific cafe that makes great coffee, a book and map store and a travel agency that specializes in bike trips. 

At the Maison we spent some time with Marc Jolicoeur, the Director of Research for Velo Quebec. Marc graciously took time out of his day to give a couple of un-announced advocates from New Jersey the low down on the cycling movement in Montreal which now boasts over 360 kilometers of separated and/or marked bike routes. It's amazing to me that the city has made the commitment to active transportation that includes bicycles even though the harsh Canadian winter makes riding very impractical from November through April. However, as Marc pointed out, it didn't happen overnight. They have been working on this since 1985! So why is it so hard hard to get people on board with the active transport concept here in New Jersey? The demand exists, the benefits are obvious, and the return on investment is large-- I just don't understand the resistance. 

On another day we went on a three hour tour (insert Gilligan's Island joke of choice) around the Montreal. We were led through the city on bikes by a very knowledgeable guide who brought us to many of the city's historical highlights and along some quieter back lanes to show us how regular Montrealers live. We rode on rented hybrid bikes and had to wear the oh so fashionable blaze orange vests but the ride was a lot of fun-Definitely a departure from our regular ride experience. 

Learning about the canal

Without a doubt, Montreal is a fun place to visit. Great food, generally nice people, lots of history, plenty of shopping (bring money!), the Olympic Park, Botanical Gardens, museums and a very happening nightlife scene, all make for a memorable trip.

Now it's back to work for a busy fall season getting the store ready for 2011 and enjoying the crispy autumn riding weather, a welcome relief from our record hot summer. Yes, life is good when you "Go By Bike".
Click here to see the whole album!

One Year In!

It's been a year since I started "My Year Without Cars". It's a bit of a misnomer though because it's not like I just made all the cars disappear. No, cars are a fact of life--to be tolerated and dealt with like noisy children or hemorrhoids.

I started out to see if I could change my lifestyle to become independent of the automobile/oil slave culture that seems to dominate everything. So how did I do, you ask? Well to be quite honest I am somewhat disappointed with myself because I couldn't cut the strings entirely. That's the part of my personality that never accepts any results--good enough never is. My own assessment is that I could have done much more. But then again, as some people have pointed out to me, I did a lot.

Here are some stats:

167 recorded trips

2,630 miles

127,479 feet of vertical climbing

Average speed 15.7 MPH

167,072 calories

I actually had more mileage but for various reasons they were not recorded so I will go with the record.

Believe it or not at least 90% of the mileage was "car trip replacement". So what does that mean in terms of impact? Well, rounding the numbers a bit, I saved about 110 gallons of gas. Multiply that by the amount of carbon in a gallon of gas (6 pounds for those of you scoring at home) for a total of 660 pounds, multiplied by about 3.7 when you combine it with the oxygen in the air and I saved about 2090 pounds of carbon dioxide. Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot but imagine that we could reduce the number of car miles driven in the US by 10%. Let's do the math--200 million cars driving an average of 12,500 miles per year. That's 2.5 trillion miles times 660 pounds of carbon dioxide. I don't care who you are, that's a lot of CO2 right there! (Picture Larry the Cable Guy reading that last bit for effect.) Anyway, you get the picture, if we could reduce that by 10% we would make a significant difference. A little change individually can add up to big numbers together.

So what else happened this past year? Well,

I'm in better shape than I have been in a really long time.

I finally did sell my car and gave myself a $6000 "raise" in the process.

I joined the New Jersey Bicycle Coalition as a board member and mounted the first ever New Jersey Bike Summit bringing together advocates from around the state.

New Jersey received a Bronze rating as a bicycle friendly state from the League of American Bicyclists and moved up to eighth from 10th place on the ranking list.

I raised $1500 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and completed another ride in Austin, TX.

I inspired several people to shake the bonds of oil slavery and use their bikes for transportation.

I convinced ten other people to ride their bikes to the supermarket with me and buy a turkey and then deliver said turkey by bike to a Foodbank Thanksgiving food drive.

I experienced the changing of the seasons in a way that car bound people never will.

I rode a mountain bike with my best friend to the top of the Tourne at sunset and asked her to marry me. She said "yes"!

All in all it's been a pretty good year. So now what? In the spirit of continuous improvement (because good enough never is), I will continue my quest to cast off the oily chains of petroleum addiction, to wit:

I will double my transportation miles.

I will continue working to make New Jersey a better place for cyclists (watch out Portland, Jersey is in the house!).

This year we will get a "yes" vote on a 3 foot passing law protecting vulnerable users including cyclists, pedestrians, emergency workers, etc.

I will convince at least 30 people to join the Coalition.

So there it is. One year since I started. Maybe I should change my theme to "A Life Without Cars".
See the year in pictures here:

The year in pictures

Bike Commuting and The Suspension Of The Desire For Comfort

Bike To Work Week Rain Day from Brendan on Vimeo.

Watch the video above before continuing on. It's only a couple of minutes. 

Can you picture yourself riding in these conditions? When I ride on these kinds of days I always get to thinking and this ride was no different.  While cruising along with the trucks whizzing past me and the chilly drizzle coating me in gossamer dew like the automatic watering system in the A&P produce section, as the water dripped from my helmet I had another one of those "Aha!" moments. I realized that part of the reason I have these brainstorms while  riding in less than ideal circumstances is that my brain is shutting off the part that demands physical comfort and focusing on the internal stuff. It's just a defense mechanism, pure and simple! I think this is the thing that allows us to do stuff like climb Mount Everest, or pick up decaying road kill, or change stinky diapers. 

When we need to, we have the ability to push through unpleasant circumstances in order to get something we want. When we do it enough, the circumstances simply become circumstances and no longer push us out of our comfort zone. We can get used to anything. 

When it comes to getting people change their behavior, i.e.-not using their cars for trips under 2 miles-, it just won't happen until the painful circumstance of paying $5 for a gallon of gas overcomes the potential discomfort of using their own power for transportation. We can build bike lanes and parking, put up share the road signs, spend money on public awareness campaigns, etc. --None of those things will have a broad impact until people can overcome the perception that they are going to be uncomfortable. The biggest hurdle that we face in preventing us from ruining our planet is that, as a nation, we are soft. We have lost touch with our ability to "tough it out" and our selfishness is preventing us from thinking globally. 

When I ride past the lines of mini-vans, and SUVs and sports cars filled with overweight, donut eating, stressed-out oil slaves, with their telephones pressed to their heads as they carelessly weave about totally separated from the world, I want to shout out to them "wake up and seize your power, it's not too late!"

But unfortunately they are too comfortable to hear me and, sadly, will never realize the gifts they possess. 

The Power of Choice and Commitment

Can an alcoholic really quit drinking if the house is full of booze? Is it possible for an overweight person to lose weight if the cupboard is filled with Twinkies, chips, and soda? Maybe, but the odds are against success. And so, like the junkie who must quit heroin or die, I sold my car to drive no more. When I started the year without cars last July, I figured that I could park my car and just resist the temptation to use it except when absolutely necessary. But when the weather turned rough and the winter darkness took over both the sky and my mood, I couldn't resist the comfort of heat and separation from the elements. I used my bicycle very little from December through March. Yes, I was very busy with planning the New Jersey Bikes Summit and I needed to travel a lot, but the reality is I chose driving my car because it was easier. I can’t really say that I was forced to drive--I chose to. But now I am choosing to not drive and getting rid of my car is the best way for me to be able to stick to my choice. It feels good to be able to make this harder choice. Unlike my friend Javier, who rides to work everyday in every type of weather, I have a choice. Lot’s of people who say, “well, that’s good for you, but I have no choice” don’t realize that they do have a choice but won’t own up to it. If you choose to drive in a car, that’s fine. I guess my point is that people make up all kinds of rationalizations and excuses for their behavior without accepting responsibility for their choices.

Us humans have an amazing capacity for willful ignorance. I don’t think most people would say they don’t care about their health, or the environment, or the safety of their neighbors, but if you looked around how could you conclude that they did care? We continue to eat poorly, smoke, drink, waste resources, drive like idiots, poison our air and water, treat our neighbors with contempt and just generally make bad choices as though we were forced to do these things. We can get caught up in listening and reacting to one “expert” or another on just about any topic but at the end of the day I think most of us can judge good from bad, healthy from harmful, right action from wrong. But here we are, willfully ignoring that many of our choices will lead to results we know that we don't want. We know it ahead of time and we do it anyway and then act surprised when it happens. People dying in accidents involving drunk driving are a great example. You have a couple of drinks, you know your impaired, you get in your car and drive home anyway. Whoops, you killed someone on the way. Then you hire a lawyer to try and get you out of it because you don’t want to suffer the consequences of your choice.

My choice to ride my bike on the street presents a real possibility of injury or death as a result of my choice. The person who chooses to send a text message while driving might veer into the shoulder where I am riding and run me over. We will both have to accept the results of our choices.  

beau coup bottles

beau coup bottles
Originally uploaded by brendan61

One of the signs that bicycles are a priority at our house.

Winter is Over!

Wow, it's been over a month since I've posted! Early spring is always a very busy time of year for a bike store and this year has been particularly so. The weather turned nice a few weeks earlier than usual and as a result the floodgates have opened and the deluge folks looking to get back on their bikes has been overwhelming. Here below is a short film from the "great flood of 2010" that happened a few weeks ago. Some people are still recovering from flooding.  Riding a bike in rain has been interesting, to say the least!

The Great Flood of 2010 from Brendan on Vimeo.