Suburban Assault

I told myself that I wouldn’t let myself slack off this past winter. I’d like to think that, for the most part, I haven’t.

However, I worry that –  in reality – it’s only been short, slow rides on the weekends. I even busted out the beach cruiser on Sunday. With such a mild winter, I really don’t have an excuse – other than not having enough time. The days were shorter (and I don’t like to ride at night), while work and other projects have been using up most of my motivation. In retrospect, my excuses are lame.

I feel that this has taken it’s toll on my legs, stamina, and not to mention, my gut. Even the short 3-mile trips to my local Starbucks has become a chore.

I was never a strong or fast rider, but I was pretty impressed with my resilience to last summer’s heatwave. My 13.5-mile commute to my office was a pleasure, even during the 100 plus degree return home. My goal, this year, is to start that commute earlier and do it more often. I plan on doubling what I did last year.

I’ll start this weekend, with a longer ride, to a Starbucks that’s much further away.

Contrary to what you might have heard about north Texas, it does rain around here – a lot. Sure we’ve had some of the longest stretches of drought paired with triple digit temperatures, but when it comes – it comes. I’m not talking about that soft, misty stuff they get up in the northwest – that I can handle. I’m talking about a Texas thunderstorm.

The local TV weather folks typically refer to our thunderstorms as ‘severe’ – with thunder and lightning that would make a Greek god, jealous. Not to mention producing enough downpour, notorious for dangerous flash floods.

But even as ‘severe’ as they get around here, storms usually don’t last more than a few hours. Today’s downpour is one of the few exceptions, going on for 12 hours, so far.

Because I’ve been caught in a couple of them, I’ve become an avid weather watcher – especially before I ride long distances. There’s nothing worse than getting caught several miles from home in one of Texas’ thunderstorms.

Sorry that it’s been a while since my last post. I spent a good part of last weekend in Austin, Texas for the SXSW Interactive conference. As with everywhere I go, I’m always on the lookout for good bike scenery. Well, in Austin, that wasn’t much of a problem. Here are just a few, random sightings.

This first pic is from the SXSWi welcome party, hosted by Frog Design and Microsoft. They always have cool, interactive games to play. Just like in the movie TRON, this is a light bike game where users pedal for more speed and steer to block their opponent with their light trail. The crowd can watch the progress on the big screen.

Similar to what BikeDFW has with their bike smoothie machine, Google had stationary blender bikes.

The Austin Convention Center’s bike parking racks were always full.

As well as other racks around town.

Velolet and Tern offered demo loaner bikes for those lucky enough to be registered and early.

And of course, there were the bicycle pedicabs. These folks were everywhere, day and night, rain or shine.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Far North Dallas Advocate columnist, Emily Toman to talk about biking in north Dallas. She was collecting perspectives from a few different types of cyclists to get a broad scope of local bicycling. I’m afraid I might have used up my time by rambling on about my love for riding.

I have to admit that I’ve been in such an odd flux with my view of cycling advocacy, that it was really hard to lock down a definite opinion about the topic. I feared that I might have come off as a bit random or, perhaps, vague.

From these interviews, she wrote an article called The Future Of Biking In Far North Dallas. If you like cycling in Dallas, you should take a moment and read it.

Included in the article were fellow north Dallas cyclists including Chris Curnutt with BikingInDallas and vehicular cyclist Richard Wharton. The article does a great job at articulating the struggles of bicycle advocacy in a city defined by urban sprawl. My takeaway is that a bike plan, which includes a better cycling infrastructure as well as rider education, can lead to a better cycling community in north Dallas.

I’ve been bookmarking a few bike related things that I’ve been wanting to write about, but I never really have the time. For now, I’ll just share the links.

Velolet Bike Rental – These folks have a cool concept. Their goal is “to become the #1 centralized bike rental hub. The place where people, globally, go when they want to rent a bike.”  They aren’t a traditional bricks and mortar type business, dealing with expensive overhead of opening up stores across the country. Instead, they “help cyclists rent bikes when they travel by connecting them with other cyclists who have bikes to rent.” Velolet Bike is sort of like a one-stop bike rental head-hunter. Hopefully, I’ll get to try them out in Austin next month, when I’m at SXSW Interactive. Through Tern Bicycles Austin, they are offering up free folding bike share/demo/loaners (first come first served) to anybody who pre-registers with them.

Road ID: Rules of the Road – I saw this while watching last year’s Le Tour de France. Road ID put out a cool little series of Rule of the Road videos. I really like this company because of all they do to keep cyclists safe on the road. If you don’t already have a Road ID, you should get one.

Pedal Powered Talk Show – Admittedly, I haven’t seen all of the episodes yet, so I’m not sure if the content is really worth sharing. I’ll have to give them an “A” for original idea. If you’re going to start a talk show that’s going to compete with the Lenos and Conans of the world, you’d better come up with a cool gimmick. This one happens to appeal to me. They’ve “taken the classic talk show format and built it into a cargo bike. With our pedal-powered production studio they can go anywhere and do anything; from talking to notable authors on the side of Mount Hood to interviewing local indie bands on a barge in the Willamette River.”

Bike After Dark – There are some great lighting solutions popping up on the market lately, all giving riders better visibility on the road. Bike After Dark‘s product turns your wheels into rotating beacons of light. Based out of Dallas, these guys will “revolutionize your night riding experience with The Fireball Mark II, a rechargeable, water resistant, LED bike light system that will help keep you visible when biking after dark.” You should really check out their videos.

Apothocurious! Hot Bike! - Here’s another idea that gets and ‘A’ for originality. This lady wants to make her taco stand more transportable so she came up with the idea of doing a taco bike. Right now, it’s just an idea. If you want to help her get her project up and running, click over to her Kickstarter page and become a backer.

Peace Pedalers – I’ve been reading about these guys on the web. They’re also featured in an article in Urban Velo. “Peace Pedalers started in 2002 with two full-time riders, Jamie Bianchini and Garryck Hampton, who began riding their own tandem-single mountain bikes called “Tangles” on an around the world adventure. They each rode in the front seats and picked up hundreds of “guest riders” from dozens of countries who rode on the back seats from a few minutes to a few weeks. It was an epic adventure indeed.” They’ve also captured over 1000 hours of video, that will soon make it into a series that will be very interesting to watch.

Major Taylor Club of Austin – Here’s a really cool group that started up in Austin, Texas. “The Major Taylor Club of Austin was established in 2011 to honor and prolong the legacy of Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor, who in 1899 became the first African American champion in cycling history and arguably one of the cycling world’s greatest sportsmen. Faced with a racist majority in the sport that pulled every legal and illegal shady tactic they could, Major Taylor still managed to maintain his humility, keep all bitterness at bay and become a world champion. Read More. 

Yet another reminder that no matter what your route – road or sidewalk – you’ve got to stay alert for the nut jobs in cars. Here is a traffic/pedestrian walk light that was taken out last night by, what I would assume, somebody losing control of their vehicle and rolling onto the sidewalk.

The dose of reality for me is that I’ve stood behind this pole many times, watching traffic spin around that corner at great speeds. I remember tucking myself behind it with the false sense of security that I was safe from those cars. I mean, what were the odds of a car getting over the curb and through a huge metal pole? Right? Stay safe. Keep an eye out for traffic around you.

The cool thing about the city of Richardson is that they were out there fixing it the next morning – much faster than it’s taken them to fix the burnt out bulb that was in the “walk” sign.

Rain – I don’t mind. Cold – is not a problem. Rainy and cold – just sucks. If I had some better, winter rain gear, I wouldn’t mind so much.

I suppose that there are days like this so that I can get things done around the house.

In addition to all the new bike lanes and multi-purpose trails that are available in Richardson, Texas – there are now some new bike signs going up.

Maybe it’s because they’re new or maybe because they do a better job at visually communicating to road users, but I feel these are working harder to promote cycling awareness than the old signs seen around Dallas (see below).

Aside from stating the obvious, these signs are letting folks know that Richardson is a bike friendly city and that they recognize that there are all types of riders, that use all types of routes.

The following image is of a Dallas bike route sign (worn out and lost in the clutter):

I’m always on the lookout for bike related movies. Since Premium Rush got delayed from January to August, I thought I would write about another movie. While flipping around Apple’s Trailer site, I ran across a movie called The Kid With A Bike.

From their site:
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the deeply moving new film by the Dardenne brothers (L’enfant, Rosetta) delves into the emotional life of troubled 11-year-old Cyril (newcomer Thomas Doret). When his father (Jeremie Renier) abandons him, Cyril obsessively tries to find his bicycle– after all, his father must have cared about him enough not to sell that off, he reasons. Almost by accident, he becomes the ward of a kind hairdresser (Cecile de France), a woman who seems surprised to find herself so determined to help him. With his wild, unpredictable behavior and his disastrous search for father figures, Cyril risks losing her–though she refuses to give up without a fight. Full of heartbreaking betrayals and unexpected grace, THE KID WITH A BIKE is a film about a child, abandoned to the elements, learning to become good.

Obviously, this is not a movie that’s truly centered around a bicycle, like it’s title might imply. It still looks like it will be a good film to watch with some great storytelling and touching drama. If anything, this is going on my Netflix queue.

You should be able to find the U.S. release of this film on March 16.

The better trailer can be found here. You can also watch the Youtube version:

We stopped by the Dallas Bicycle Cafe last Sunday. I had a blueberry muffin and White Rock Trail Latte, which was really good.

I’ll do a full review, once I’ve visited a few times. For now, click here to see some pics.