Magic Spot Flowing

Alaska Airlines helpfully sent me an email notification today reminding me to check in on the web before my flight. I elected to click their helpful link to do so (note to Southwest: you could learn something from this) and was conveniently reminded that my flight leaves from SJC, not from SFO. Oh yeah, right — part of the reason we use Alaska for work travel is that work is much closer to SJC. But somehow I’d gotten it in my head I was going to SFO. Planned the transit trip there and everything.

I am extremely glad that email notification saved me from screwing that up.

Salon’s even picked up the Xtracycle story.

I’ve gotta get one of these soon.

There’s a story that I want to tell, too, which has nothing to do with cycling, but does have to do with a lesser-known vehicular interest of mine: identifying and comparing car models. For someone who doesn’t drive, I pay an inordinate amount of attention to car models. One day I said to someone, while we were in his car driving down Willow Road, “Why do you think Scion has four car models, three of which are xA, xB, and xD, and the fourth of which is tC? Why not xC?”

The person who was driving said to me something like “I think you ask a lot of questions to which there are no really good answers.” We had a discussion for a while about my tendency to ask why about things for which there may be no satisfying answer to the why. He didn’t say as much, but basically he seemed to think it was silly, a waste of mental energy.

Time passed, and I didn’t find out the answer. But eventually one day I thought, I could actually look this up and find out if there are any theories. It turns out that the answer is pretty simple. Wikipedia says:

The name tC does not fit in with its stablemates the xA, xB, and xD, because the name xC has already been taken by Volvo for its XC60, XC70 and XC90 models. According to Scion, tC stands for “Touring Coupe.”

I think they made up the Touring Coupe backronym after they found out about the Volvo XC’s, but that’s pure speculation.

The moral of the story isn’t that all my why questions have (satisfying) answers, but it is that by failing to ask, and disengaging your brain from all these (sometimes exhausting) questions, you may miss interesting little tidbits like this, and the brain-reward that they bring: that feeling of something dropping into place, the world making just a tad more sense than it did before.

Besides, someday I’m going to win a Trivial Pursuit game with this little factoid.

My experiences with transit and cycling in Toronto were almost uniformly overwhelmingly positive. If only it wasn’t so cold there, I’d totally want to live there.

When I first arrived, I got a GO bus and then the TTC subway into downtown Toronto. This had two complications. One, GO and TTC are different systems, so I had to pay for both. But the total was only about CDN$8, so it was still astoundingly cheap for an airport-to-downtown option. Two, the GO bus that I got on went to a station on the other side of the U-shaped line (Yonge/University/Spadina) than the part of the U I wanted to be on, but that was simply fixed by briefly transferring to the Bloor-Danforth line to cut off the bottom of the U. (On the way back I did what I should have done in the first place: take the Bloor-Danforth line to Kipling and the 192 Airport Rocket to Pearson, which costs only CDN$2.75 and is a TTC-only journey. The Airport Rocket has 10-minute frequency during the afternoons — pretty great.)

The TTC is kind of expensive on a per-journey basis, CDN$2.75 per journey, but if you’re taking a long journey it’s quite reasonable, and you can buy at a discount if you get a lot of tokens at once. Transfers between lines are allowed, though you have to remember to pick one up if you get on the subway, and they’re rather finicky about where you can use them — you can’t use them at the station where you got them, and you can’t use them at a station that isn’t a direct transfer between one line and another (though it wasn’t evident to me how closely this was enforced). The one time I forgot to pick one up at my origin, I remembered to get it at my first subway transfer, so that was okay.

It’s relatively quick and pleasant, although crowded (it sometimes required a lot of “excuse me, I need to get out”s). The subway has a minimum frequency of 4-5 minutes between trains, so you’re never waiting long, and I had good experiences with my attempts to find buses and streetcars and get help from their drivers. They could use better signs at stops about routes and timing, but many stops do have the necessary information.

I did quite a lot of walking as well, and found that a nice way to get around, even going into downtown, though it did take longer than the subway. But most of my time not spent on TTC transit was spent cycling around. It was an adventure for me because I was equipped only with a minimal map of the downtown area, and didn’t have a Toronto bike map (allegedly you can pick them up at various places but I didn’t try very hard and didn’t see anything obvious) so I was mostly going on faith and some helpful directions from the owner of my borrowed bike, Crazy Biker Chick. The downtown streets are narrow and often have marginal pavement quality. There are some bike lanes, but not a lot, and some designated routes, but from what I could tell people rode their bikes almost everywhere anyway. Streetcar tracks were frequent and nerve-wracking, and in several cases I put my box-turn practice to good use in order to avoid bad left turns over streetcar tracks.

The most impressive thing was that there were bike racks absolutely everywhere, every 10-30 feet on pretty much every downtown street. Mostly they were just a post with a circle through it that could hold two bikes, about as simple as you can get but very functional. I saw tons of utility/city/hybrid-type bikes, and very few road bikes, while I was there, showing that people are choosing practical options for their environment. I enjoyed riding a very upright bike (a Raleigh Twenty that looks much like the picture at the link — evidently a classic and much-loved folding bike). Most were equipped with a rack or basket of some kind.

I found that the majority of cars were quite polite. A few people passed too close, but by and large I felt that my head was safer unhelmeted in Toronto (I didn’t bring my helmet or any other protective gear) than helmeted here. There were a few cases in which construction and other adverse circumstances made me uncomfortable enough to temporarily decamp to the sidewalk. Shock horror! I think time in Toronto has largely cured me of my default sidewalk anger (one of my 101 goals!), though I still am annoyed by people who ride recklessly on the sidewalk or ride on it where conditions are not very good (too narrow — the sidewalks in downtown Toronto are very wide). I particularly enjoyed my ride on Toronto Island. I took the ferry to Ward’s Island, and rode around and back, enjoying myself in the park and taking pictures, and on my last day there, I was able to see many more things in one day than I could have managed without a bike, so it was not only fun but extremely useful.

One of the things I did on my last day was visit Urbane Cyclist, a wonderful bike shop focused on commuting cycles at 180 John Street, just north of Queen, in downtown. The shop was full of fascinating things. There were urban, folding, and recumbent, and cargo bicycles — including a bakfiets!!! Unlike most shops, rows of shiny new identical high-end road bikes were not the featured item. Instead, the rest of the shop was filled with racks, panniers, mirrors, gloves, jackets, and other useful items. There was a parts section in the back. I picked up a set of road bike bar-end mirrors and a copy of Momentum as well. What a great shop.

Hang on for part 2, about what I actually did between all my subway and bike rides…

I have quite a bit to say about Canada, but just as a quick followup to my last post, gas was indeed very expensive. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a car from my relatives, but my side trip of 194 km (120 mi) one way (so 240 miles total) cost CDN$73.30 in gas (51.077 L @ CDN$1.435/L), plus the CDN$60.06 (40.445 L at $1.485/L) of gas that I put into the tank to leave it more or less full for my relatives (the tank didn’t start out full, so I had to fill up twice).
[My bank indicates I was charged US$72.71 for the CDN$73.30. The other I paid in cash.]

Interestingly, Google Maps is completely convinced that the way I went — Hwy 401 to CR-73 (Elgin Road) — isn’t the best way, but my relatives all insisted that it was the best way. The distance and time given are identical for the route Google suggests and the route that was recommended to me (though the one I actually took, which was given as a slightly simpler alternative, is 2 miles and 3 minutes longer), and doesn’t involve going through downtown Toronto just after the rush hour (something that is indeed the nightmare you might imagine, as I discovered the next day on bike, but on bike it’s not a big deal because you can’t be going that fast anyway). It seems like a no-brainer to me.

That was the only time I was in a car for the entire trip, except for a brief drive with my aunt and uncle to dinner (I took buses to and from the airport). I’m pretty sure we could have gotten to the place we wanted to go faster on the TTC subway than driving at that time, too. I was very impressed by the TTC, but I’ll leave that discourse for another entry, along with my joy at visiting Urbane Cyclist.

This week is the Towards Carfree Cities conference in Portland, and Kent & Christine and Beth both have lovely things to say about life without a car. So many lovely things to say that they’ve said everything I could imagine saying!

My favorite line:

As Peter once told Kent, “I don’t ride my bike because I’m a damn hippie like you, Dad. I ride my bike because I am a FISCAL CONSERVATIVE.”

On my birthday, I drove to the VA in Palo Alto (for the Sequoia ride), to the Farmer’s Market, home, and then to Berkeley, in a friend’s car. While I was on 880-N, driving 65-70mph (and being passed regularly, since this is California), I kept thinking “This is just insane. Why am I going so fast? Where is everyone going?”

Practically speaking, that day was very unusual for me. I had too much to do and too much to carry (a full trunk and back seat) to take my bike or transit. I needed to be able to get to Berkeley in an hour with a whole load of crap, more (I think) than would even fit on an Xtracycle. (You also can’t take Xtracycles on Caltrain.)

What it ended up doing was reinforcing for me how utterly weird it is in my life for me to want or need to be somewhere 50+ miles away in an hour, and how much I no longer enjoy doing that. Slowly, through habit, my life has been reshaped for a more human scale, where ten miles in an hour seems like plenty and trying to locate appropriate places to put a 2000-lb vehicle for 30 minutes to several hours seems bizarre. It also reminded me that I could have made other choices, that it was my own choices that put me in that situation to begin with. Had I made a greater head start on the prep, I could have sent a lot of the stuff back with the other party host, and I would have needed less time for last-minute prep and thus had more time for travel. I’m not unhappy with the choices I made, but I might make different ones next time.

Life without a car is just like any other life: full of evolving choices about how I most want to spend my time.

One of the things I’ve done the past two weekends (in addition to a 50K ride, a 14-mile ride, and a birthday party) was take a local League of American Bicyclists-certified Road I class.

The goal of a Road I class is to take any cyclist who can ride a bike and teach them basic-to-intermediate traffic cycling competency (level label depends on your definition of basic or intermediate), both on the legal and practical side, including road skills and emergency maneuvers.

One might ask why I took the class, given that I am already a fairly competent traffic cyclist. Two reasons: 1) I wanted to learn the emergency maneuvers, and make sure I had no gaps in my knowledge; 2) I wanted to find out if I’d like to learn to teach the course.

The class was interesting. I feel like it’s a lot of material to cover, and you have to be extremely organized to teach it in the minimum 9 hours allotted to the class per the manual. The presentation that we had was a little bit disorganized, and somewhat marred by technical difficulties. I don’t want to criticize the instructor too much because as I said, I think it’s a demanding class to teach in such a short span of time.

To some extent, I wonder if it’s realistic to put the entire class into one unit at all. The people in our class really had a big range of abilities and a big range of interests. I think there are some things that everyone should know to traffic cycle even if all they’re planning to do is ride short distances, but other things aren’t so relevant to everyone, like discussing narrow country roads, nutrition and hydration, and cycling clothes — highly relevant for people planning to ride in those conditions or for longer rides, but not so relevant for people who plan to do mostly short-distance city cycling.

I felt that some of the variation in usefulness could have been addressed just by the order in which everything was presented, addressing the essentials first and extras later, and some could have been addressed by keeping certain topics really on the simple side unless there was interest in spending more time on it. Our instructior did some of this — for example, we didn’t spend much time on nutrition and hydration — but we did spend a lot of time discussing parts of the bike and cycling clothes. Certain parts of the bike are really relevant, but spending time talking about the more obscure bits can detract from basics like wheels, brakes, saddle, chain, etc. Likewise, it’s highly relevant for everyone that it’s recommended to wear a helmet, gloves, and glasses, and a rain cape or light, breathable coat if it’s wet (and have fenders if possible), but not so relevant for everyone to discuss wicking clothes and bike shorts — it really varied in our class on how interested people were (and I was probably the most interested and I already knew that stuff).

There was also some material in the slides which I felt wasn’t extremely important, like “Bike only turn lanes” and “Bike only thru lanes” (same slide). Both pictures were of the intersections near Sand Hill and El Camino in Palo Alto (it was fun to see places that I recognize on slides; several of the pictures were areas that I ride regularly) and they’re quite rare situations and it’s normally pretty clear what to do, so I thought that was a bit of extra information which could honestly be skipped since it’s a generalization of principles you learn separately (directional positioning at intersections — stay to the left of right-turn only lanes). Another slide showed a similar but more extreme situation, on Page Mill at I-280, where both right lanes are right-turn only so the bike lane switches from right to left and you have to merge across. This is not a fun merge, but it has the same basic characteristics as any other merge across right-turn only lanes, just more so.

Everyone in our class could ride a bike just fine; there were no ‘true beginners’. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to teach in the alloted time if there were, since as it was we barely covered scanning, signaling, emergency maneuvers, road position practice, and road test in the time we had, and I think the people with less practice still need more practice, though I was very, very impressed to see them all ride on El Camino Real without completely freaking out!

Incidentally, our instructor was trying very hard to deter people from believing that El Camino is a dangerous and unpleasant road to cycle, and I can understand that, because it’s important for being an effective traffic cyclist to not be intimidated by roads unnecessarily. El Camino is not, as multilane arterials go, all that awful in many places, especially if you know how to position yourself correctly and ride assertively. However, I think she should have been more realistic and acknowledged that many, many competent traffic cyclists (like me) don’t ride much on El Camino because it just isn’t enjoyable. I mean really — if I have my choice of El Camino, Alma, Bryant, or Middlefield through Palo Alto, guess which one I’ll choose? Bryant, of course, because it’s the most fun and it’s pretty efficient (and also convenient to my house). The others are all pretty unpleasant, although because El Camino is so wide in most places I probably would prefer it to Middlefield or Alma. Sure, people can choose the others, should have the right to do so, and sometimes do, but realistically most cyclists will avoid heavily-trafficked arterials most of the time.

The most important part for me, aside from emergency stopping and turning, was a reminder about recommended road positioning. I generally ride as recommended by Effective Cycling, the book by the guy who developed the Road I class curriculum, but sometimes I get lazy and I ride further right than I should because I don’t want to annoy motorists, and that’s not safe behavior. My safety is more important than their brief annoyance, and I should position myself and ride assertively because I’m protecting my safety when I do.

On the whole I really feel like the class is likely very beneficial for the people who take it in terms of understanding the theory and practice of traffic cycling, and really gives a strong foundation of skills for riding, thus giving people greater confidence in maneuvering and making them less likely to make common mistakes. I think I’d eventually like to learn to teach it, although I think I’d have to practice a lot so I could be very organized and do it well. I’m also interested in taking a LAB Road II class if any are offered around here, since the instructor mentioned there is such a thing (but doesn’t know if it’s offered here) and it seems to cover the things I really want to learn and definitely don’t know, stuff relating to group cycling and advanced road cycling techniques.

Disappointment is a funny thing.

I wasn’t sure when I got up this morning whether I was going to ride my bike or walk to the train. I hate to admit it but I don’t always like doing a riding commute. Walking to the train is just so simple, and fairly calm and stress-free. If I want to ride I usually shower the night before so as to start clean, which I didn’t do last night, and I normally don’t ride on Pen Committee meeting days anyway because I don’t like to ride home from them through Redwood City.

On the other hand, I am trying to build up a proper base for starting training for W2W, and that means riding pretty much every day, and really, why not ride?

So I was debating my options this morning. I got up early enough to have enough time to decide. And I had decided to ride, got all dressed and put on sunscreen, and then it turned out my back tire was flat. So I had to decide if I would change the tube, or if I would use another bike (still requires refilling the tires at least, also there’s no seat on the old commuter right now, I would miss the train I wanted, etc), or if I would just go take a shower and walk to the later train.

But even though I kind of started out not wanting to ride, I was disappointed that I didn’t get to do it. It’s funny how that works. And it is a reminder that doing the W2W training is going to take a serious commitment and so far I am not really demonstrating that commitment. I recently decided to order a RoadID since I am going to be riding more, and they say that if you have extra space you can put a slogan or something on there. I don’t have allergies or medical conditions so I did have some space. I decided to put “100% commitment”. It came from another phrase I use in a different context, but it seems appropriate to me. I think I will need the reminder when it is windy or early or hot or I just don’t feel like riding that I decided to do this and I am committed, and that it will mean giving up some things to get what I really want. It means checking my tires and everything the night before so I am always ready. It means going to sleep and getting up earlier and not having so many lazy evenings. It means being committed even when there is nothing and no one to hold me to it except myself.

By the way, if you are interested in a RoadID, they sent me a Tell a Friend coupon for $1 off. $1 isn’t much but anyway, if you want it, comment and I’ll send it to you. It can be used by up to 20 people! I got the purple wrist one.

I’ve complained before (though perhaps not on this blog) about the advice given to cyclists to “ride as if you’re invisible”, because it just doesn’t make any sense. If you assume no one sees you, you can’t ride with traffic at all.

Finally, a piece of cycling instructional material backs me up:

People will often tell you to “ride as if you were invisible.” That advice only makes sense where you’re actually hidden by a blind spot. To ride all the time as if you were invisible, you would have to pull off the road whenever a car approaches from behind. You would also have to stop and wait until traffic clears before crossing any intersection. Instead, ride to make sure you’re visible. Wear bright-colored clothes day and night, and use lights and reflectors at night . Ride in the correct lane postition where you can be seen. Also, test to make sure drivers have seen you. This is the safest way to ride.
–John S. Allen, Bicycling Street Smarts

I’m guessing the crappy knicker thing with Nashbar was just a fluke, because I ordered some more stuff from them recently and it came today and everything looks great. The Cateye magnet works fine with the Cannondale computer I mysteriously either lost the magnet for or which was defectively packaged with no magnet. I also got another Delta Leonardo rack, so soon both bikes will be hung up out of the way. I’m tired of tripping on Meg all the time. And I gave in and got the tire tray too. I don’t think it’ll 100% save the wall, but it should help keep things stable and a bit cleaner. The Topeak Road Morph G mounted perfectly on my down tube — I just wish I hadn’t lost the first one I bought the day I bought it, but that’s entirely my own fault.

And the Nashbar brand thing I got, the Townie Baskets, look seriously awesome. They’re very sturdy-feeling and come with bright yellow raincovers (that store handily in a pocket on the bottom) and some velcro so you can keep them closed when they’re not in use! They look like they’ll work and hold up as well as the rack trunk, which I’ve been really happy with. They’ll be great for toodling around town, especially to the farmer’s market so I don’t have to stick everything in a backpack. Just fill some of my Monde Ami bags and drop them in the baskets.

My saddle soreness is clearing up nicely, if not instantly, and I got a couple kinds of ointment I saw recommended for soothing/prevention and will try to pick up some actual Chamois Butt’r before Sunday.

Minus the bump on my knee from the cabinet at work (owww), things are going pretty well, although I’m getting confused/frustrated by the suggestions in my training books and how picky they seem in some ways, so I’m sure there’ll be more about that later.

So Thursday was Bike to Work Day, for which I was determined to do something more than just biking to work. After all, every day is already bike to work day in that sense. So I decided to volunteer to help out as an Outreach Host for SVBC at an Energizer Station, to provide information and make contact with potential members, as well as to help manage the station.

My first stop was Outreach Training, where I learned what the goal of being an Outreach Host is and how to talk to people about SVBC. It was a fun night with some pizza and meeting other members of SVBC interested in volunteering.

The day of, I had to be at the Energizer Station by 7 at the latest, so I got up at 6:15, hurried through my prep, and made it to Cal Ave with five minutes to spare. The day was scheduled to be almost 100 degrees, so I brought a hat, sunscreen, sandals to change into, and plenty of water. We were between busy and inundated almost the entire time I was there, from 7 to 9:15 or so (after that we were mostly packed up). We gave away all our new VTA maps and many old ones, all our bags, all the bananas, and most of the bagels and coffeecake, along with lots of coupons, goodies, smiles, and support.

I really enjoyed the experience, even more than the Amgen Tour of California bike parking volunteering, which I didn’t count for this goal’s purpose because the Tour isn’t a bike advocacy event, it’s a competitive event. This was all about supporting utility cycling and traveling by public or self-propelled transit (walkers, skateboarders, scooters, and others are, of course, also welcome at Energizer stations). It was nice to connect with other people who have high bike-to-person ratios in their households and commute or do errands with their bike setups. My bike and pannier setup got some appreciation. I saw the full gamut from kids (in bike seats and trailers, or on their own bikes or trail-a-bikes) to roadies (there was a Webcor Alto Velo photo op at the station around 8, a good follow-on from last week’s BTWW kickoff event at Webcor).

It started to get pretty hot around 8:00, and by 9:25 when I headed out to work it was very hot. I had to stop several times on my ride to cool down and guzzle water, and I was not appreciating the conductivity of my metal water bottle. Every time I had to stop for a stoplight in the sun, my self-created breeze disappeared and I felt like I was melting. But I made it to work all right, even with a bagel stop. The bagel shop employees kindly let me bring in my bike and gave me some tape to make sure the bagel bag stayed shut and attached to my bike.

One of the most encouraging things for me is that this year I got a lot more positive response from my coworkers. Two of them already bike to work either regularly or occasionally, and did on Thursday. Another rides a lot but doesn’t normally commute that way, but decided to map it out and ride in for Bike to Work Day. Three more are considering it, and our CEO said he will ride someday when he doesn’t have meetings. I am hoping for a company BTWD later this summer, maybe when it isn’t 99 degrees outside! If we really get everyone who’s considering it we will have 8 out of the 25 people in the office riding — 30 percent. And everyone else at least appreciates the bagels. :-)

The day ended with a trip down to San Jose for the Bike Away From Work Bash at Gordon Biersch. I wanted to bike down, but work called, so I grabbed a Caltrain and enjoyed more conversation with fellow cyclists. I missed the food at the party, but got drinks and good company, and missing the food only provided an excuse to go to Ben’s later, so it wasn’t so bad. I finally got home, tired and happy, around 10:30.

I’m sure this is only the first of many SVBC volunteering events I’ll be doing, and it was a great start.