Bike Commuting in Columbus

I'm starting a new blog all about bike commuting in Columbus. If you're interested, please check it out and join in the discussion I'm trying to start up.

Bike Commuting in Columbus

Pedal Power Push Proposed

Mighk Wilson (yeah, he spells it Mighk, apparently), bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for Metroplan Orlando, wrote an article in the Orlando Sentinel to discuss the steps that might be taken to reduce our nation's reliance on gasoline and foreign oil, and naturally his first thought was bicycling.

It only makes sense, obviously - but you won't believe some of the ways it actually DOES make sense, like the Norwegian study that says every dollar put into bicycle infrastructure improvement is recouped threefold in lack of health care costs, due to people actually being in shape from riding.

Most of the article is taken up with what might need to be done for bicycles to be more accepted as transportation and not recreation, which only makes sense as the world is set up for gas guzzling and not pedal-pushing.

It also makes a great point that is lost on many people who read about solutions to sprawl, global climate change, energy security, etc.: bicycling is not being pushed as THE answer. There is not going to be ONE answer. Bicycling is only part of the solution to this problem, obviously. Not everyone is going to be able to ride a bike everywhere. I don't ride my bike everywhere. I just ride it as often as I can. Some people can't ride because of a lack of ability. Some just have to go too far. Some need more cargo space than a bike can give. But I'm going to guess that MOST people could use a bike for most of their errands.

Read the article. Wilson just makes good sense.

Ice Bike!

Well, today was the coldest yet - a compression-shorts-loosening 6° wind chill factor. Add to that the fact that the wind was probably worse for a cyclist due to the increased wind factor from just riding a bike.... and I'm surprised I didn't lose parts. MY parts, not the bike.

But the funny thing is, it wasn't really that bad to ride in. I had the same stuff I always wear:

• my work socks
• hiking boots
• polypropylene long underwear
• bike tights
• long sleeved t-shirt
• fleece jacket
• windbreaker
• balaclava
• helmet
• 180s earmuffs
• bike gloves.
  

And it was fine. Sure, it was a tad chilly, but the glasses once again made the problem of too much tearing up go away, and just being out and getting some exercise made me warm. I wasn't exactly sweating when I got TO work, but I wasn't uncomfortable.

Layers, layers, layers. Not just for tortes any more.

Little Things Count

Last night on the way home, I took care of a problem that was starting to plague me greatly with the advent of our snowy weather.

Having caught a few snowflakes in the eyes on the way to work with our recent snowfalls, it was time to get a pair of glasses for riding. So I got some Tifosi Slip glasses at BikeSource with a polarized lens. Makes a world of difference to have those on, let me tell you.

First, the obvious - things stay out of my eyes. Snowflakes, dust, etc. You wouldn't think that a snowflake in the eye would be that big a deal... but it is. Stings for a second and then you have a few seconds where your eye recovers. And you spend the entire ride squinting and hiding your face. Second, the wind and cold that was making my eyes water (not a real danger while riding but annoying at times) is gone. And today was a good test of that, with a 19-degree (Fahrenheit) temperature.

The venting on them is great. Even when I wear my balaclava and my breath gets pushed up under the glasses and they start to fog, that fog goes away quickly when I get moving. Nice design on the vents. And they cover my entire eye area, so that my eyes are well protected. Quite a bargain!

Another Cold Bike Ride, Problems Almost Solved

Today's bike ride was a 22 degrees Fahrenheit venture that my Christmas gifts all helped to conquer. Mom and Dad got me the Cannondale Chamois tights and Gloves, Jenn got me 180s earmuffs, and I threw on my polypropylene long undies and balaclava and was just about perfect. Most notable was that my hands weren't being brutalized through my up-till-now adequate fleece gloves as the Cannondale gloves did the job well. The only exception to this was my legs were a TAD bit chilly with the very light wind.

Now, this was an all downhill trip so my legs don't really get a chance to get warm while I'm going to work, but that doesn't change the fact that it's cold out there and with a heavier wind it's going to be brutal. A pair of wind pants would probably do the trick nicely. I know of a couple that I'm looking at online right now, hopefully they won't be too pricey. I had been using my Columbia rain pants but they're not so great in the cold weather, though they rule for rainy weather.

I'll Take Potpourri For $1000, Alex

Just a little bit of catch-up to cover the holiday happenings here, before I go off tomorrow on whatever the result of the Sugar Bowl is.

• Christmas was great. I got to spend some quality family time at home with Jenn and Duncan and he really had a good time (though I'm getting a little weary of his Wiggles piano). Duncan also got a pair of padded (of course) hockey sticks and a ball. He's happy as a clam - the kid has picked up on hockey as his favorite sport, for whatever reason, and he runs around the house with one of the sticks, not flailing it around as much as I'd feared, and having a great time trying to hit the ball.
  
  For myself, I got a lot of James Bond stuff from my wonderful family; a pair of bike tights, some gloves, and a pump/repair kit from my folks; a beautiful Irish sweater from Jenn; and some other fun trinkets from various other folks. The tights are going to work out nicely, I think, plus they show off my sexy legs really well. ;)
  
  The one disappointment - our global-warming-addled climate not having enough snow for me to take Duncan sledding on the sled I restored for him for his gift. Hopefully we'll get some of Denver's weather.
  
  
• The best bowl game I've seen so far is the Fiesta Bowl and the upset win by the Boise State Broncos. Despite my disappointment that the Glendale staff didn't paint half the field blue for the visitors from the potato state, the game was the most fun to watch of all of them. Normally I hate the NCAA's overtime structure, but darn it if that wasn't a great one. To watch a team actually go for a two point conversion instead of playing it safe and taking the one-pointer to force a second overtime period was a joy. And I always (with one notable exception, Jenn) enjoy watching Big 12 teams look like a bunch of over-hyped jokers.
  
  And the incurable romantic in my heart appreciated Fox covering the post-game proposal by Broncos star running back Ian Johnson to his cheerleader girlfriend... true Americana there!
  
  
• I started a new twist on my workout routine - instead of saying "I'm gonna work out every day" or something like that, I am going for numbers this year: I set a goal for the year of 100,000 Hindu squats and 30,000 Hindu push ups from the Matt Furey Combat Conditioning workout. And keeping track of those reps all year long will hopefully help me to have something to really strive for. We'll see... check out my other blog if you're curious about how that's working out (no pun intended).
  
  
• The Sugar Bowl has me a bit scared. LSU is gonna be tough, and we've not played up to our potential in a lot of games this season (with the exception of the Penn State game). Hopefully Weis has the boys ready. And hopefully we'll be surprised as we were back in the Cheerios Bowl a decade ago.
  
  
• I watched a great documentary from Discovery Times that I'd Tivoed a couple months ago (finally) called Addicted To Oil. Created by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman, it goes into the damage that oil does to our national security and to our climate, really breaking it down and showing the effects on both our security and the world's weather. He also goes into oil alternatives for both vehicles and general consumption, pointing out the good and bad of the various ideas. Very cool - check it out if you have the chance.
  
  And yes, I still need to see An Inconvenient Truth though I know most of what he's talking about already.
  
  
• On a similar train of thought, I watched Syriana over the holidays. This movie was outstanding though very disturbing at parts. Theatrically, it was a bit confusing, though that's part of its charm - you never are quite sure what's going on any more than the characters themselves are. It's definitely a movie you can see over and over and make new connections all the time.
  
  But the more important thing to take from it is the hypocrisy of the oil industry and its proponents in the government. The part that got me the most is when the eldest son of the emir, Nasir, is talking about how the US wants his brother to be the new emir because they consider him a Communist, simply because he decided to sell the country's oil to China as they offered him the best price (a very capitalist idea, wouldn't you think?).
  
  Go see this one if you haven't already. Though, if you're looking for a typically buff and sexy George Clooney in it, you're going to be watching the wrong movie because he reportedly put on 30 pounds for the role.
  
  
• There are still a couple things I want to get for my biking experience - a set of bike lights for the dark days and for my own safety, and some panniers so I don't have to use a backpack (and hopefully are a little more waterproof than the backpack I'm currently using. A set of fenders would also be nice - so I don't have to keep putting on rain pants.
  

I think that's everything.

Auto-Centrism

This morning I had to take a different route to work because I was dropping off a rental car at the Budget place. So I put the bike and my work stuff in the back, dropped it off, and rode to work. And I discovered something that I already knew, but illustrated in a way that I hadn't considered before.

My bike is not heavy enough to set off those pressure plates under the road that control the traffic lights. I sat through two iterations of the light at the corner of Lane and Fyffe/Fred Taylor on tOSU's campus before this occurred to me. I was trying to turn left and no one else was, so I finally had to wait for an open spot and fly through. My attempts to be a considerate cyclist and follow the rules of the road were waylayed by the auto-centric roads.

Most of the time that hasn't been an issue, as there have been plenty of cars to trigger the lights via their gas-guzzling weight, but not today. And that strikes me as pathetic and anti-pedestrian/cycling.

Bicycle Lunch Issues

Today I biked about a mile and a half away for lunch (to Chipotle. Those of you who know me personally know that this is not odd in any way). I really liked getting out of the office and getting some exercise over lunch, and getting over to Kingsdale Shopping Center wasn't really that big of a deal.

My only issue was with the guy who decided he needed to honk at me because he got stuck behind me when there was traffic in the lane next to ours.

I just take it as jealousy:

1. Because I was on a bike and he was in a car.
   
2. Because I didn't care that I was holding up traffic and he did.
   
3. Because I wasn't contributing to global warming and he was.
   

The impatience of people absolutely amazes me. I probably held him up for a whole ten seconds while I tried to shift lanes (naturally, the people in the lane next to us weren't exactly helpful).

But all this comes back to a problem in the city of Columbus of which Paul Dorn reminded me in his blog about San Francisco's traffic in the days before the 1906 earthquake: automobiles don't see their presence on the road as a privilege, but rather as a right. And that simply isn't the case. It's a privilege that you get because you fulfilled all the steps for getting a driver's license and you've not broken the traffic laws to the extent that you've had it taken away. Being a pedestrian or a cyclist is a right. There's no license necessary for a cyclist or a pedestrian.

Motorists need to get that through their heads.

Coldest. Ride. Ever.

Okay, today was tough. The issue with the balaclava not protecting the top of my head well was still an issue, and so were the cold hands. But I still persevered and rode in to work today.

A note that only you guys may get: boxers don't work too well for a bike ride. I'm gonna have to get more boxer briefs, I think. Enough said on that. It'll be warmer, too.

Some other stuff I'm going to need includes some wind/rain pants. Until I get going, the legs get a bit cold. And even when I am going (and I generally wear fleece-lined pants in the winter) it's not quite as toasty as I'd like.

But I still got to work feeling great, so it's not like I'm going to give up the bike any time soon.

First Snow Bike

Just as Jenn was leaving for work this morning with Duncan it was starting to snow, and by the time I was ready to go there was a fair bit on the ground. And, more importantly, on the road. So my first bike ride in the snow was today. Luckily my balaclava from REI arrived last night so warmth on the face wasn't a problem. Three things stood out:

1. My bike gets better traction on snow than I thought it might. Those big knobby tires do the trick pretty well. The only slippery times I had were instances where it would have been slippery whether I was on foot or in my car. And I just put my feet down and slid along on four points instead of two. Not that big a deal (though it surprised the hell out of me the one time I had to deal with it.

2. The balaclava did the trick for keeping my face warm nicely. Strangely enough, though, the top of my head was a bit cold. I may have to find some sort of helmet cover for the winter so that less air gets through it (as it's built for maxiumum air running through your hair, since most people don't bike much in the cold.

3. The hands are still cold. I'm going to have to find some real biking mittens or something.

All in all, though, I enjoyed the experience. I took it a bit slowly, but not too slow, I thought. And the looks on people's faces were great, as usual. :)

More Than Just Face Chap

In my first big discovery with the biking to work thing (which I've had plenty of time to practice this weekend, unfortunately) is that I am going to need something to cover my headphones on my telephone (Motorola SLVR, so it has iTunes) while I'm listening to podcasts on the way to work. All the wind rushing past them is making it impossible to hear anything! Also, the ears are getting frostbit.

I've ordered a balaclava to try to alleviate the problem... we'll see how it does (BTW - if you're looking at getting me bike stuff for Christmas.... don't get me a balaclava now).

Bike Commuter Guy

Yeah, that's me. I'm bike commuter guy now. Since I got a lock for my new bike (thanks Jenn, Mom and Dad!) I've been doing the bike commuting thing. First it was to our old office down on West Campus at OSU (The Martha Moorhouse Medical Plaza, for those of you keeping track at home), which allowed me to take the Olentangy bike trail for the major portion of it. I LOVED that route - it allowed me to stay out of traffic and enjoy the wetlands and river while I was riding to and from work.

Now, my office has moved to 650 Ackerman - which is even closer to my house (by a mile or so - nothing in Columbus is too far away, of course). Takes me about ten minutes to get to work, and on the way to work it's almost all downhill so I don't have to worry about being too sweaty when I get to the office. I have to deal with a little more traffic, but for the most part cars don't give me any problem. Either they're too nervous around a cyclist to get near me, or they appreciate my efforts and give me room (I think it's probably the former). Luckily I'm a pretty big guy and sort of hard to miss on the road...

The only tricky part has been weather. The days when it's not wet out there are no problems - just dress in a couple layers and I'm good to go. But on wet days... there's another issue. I have a full rainsuit that I wear (it's yellow, which is good for visibility), but the water runs down the legs of it and into my shoes. So I probably need to either bring dry socks and shoes and wear other shoes while on my commute, or get some gaiters of some kind to let the water run past the openings of my shoes. I've been looking around a bit to see how other folks work around this problem. There are a few websites out there for bike commuting and I've been slowly checking them out as I have time.

The other tricky thing, I think, is going to be the cold. I'm not a person who gets real cold in winter, but I'm probably going to need some sort of balaclava to wear on the bike so I don't get face chap. Plus I'll look like Snake Eyes from GI Joe while I'm riding. Sweet. I just need to carry my sword on my back to complete the image. And perhaps not wear it with a bright yellow rainsuit. :)

Congratulations Floyd Landis!

My new sports hero, Floyd Landis, took home the maillot jaune in a classic Tour De France that started off on a questionable note but then featured one of the greatest sports performances of all time.

People wondered who was going to replace Lance Armstrong... we may have our answer if the hip surgery goes well.

ESPN.com: Page 2 : Do yourself a favor: Watch Landis

Jim Caple of ESPN is with me... Landis and the Tour are THE biggest thing going on in sports right now, BAR NONE.

Especially with the World Cup over.

The New American in Paris

For those who were amazed at the exploits of Floyd Landis in yesterday's stage of the Tour De France, check this out. The man is simply an animal.

Tour De France versus The World Cup

I'm a sucker for international sports - especially the ones you don't get to see too often in America. Obviously soccer falls less and less into that category as time goes on, but the Beautiful Game will always have my attention (even when it's not that beautiful, like the Germany/Italy game yesterday). And as the World Cup is drawing near a close, I'm getting sucked into another event that I've grown to love: the Tour de France.

Now let's start out with that last word: France. I don't share most of my countrymen's dislike of France, as basically all the reasons people give for France being hated are the reasons America is hated - we only think about ourselves, we only act in our own self-interest, etc. To me, that's just hypocritical. Most people don't even know WHY they hate France, they just know that they do because "everyone else does." Well, I have never been one to do something just to keep up with the Joneses, and I'm not going to start now.

To sit back and watch the Tour is, to me, an exercise in loving the purity of sport. Now, to folks who know anything about pro cycling, that's going to sound weird. Pro cycling is, without a doubt, one of the dirtiest sports in the world as far as performance-enhancing substances are concerned. But once you get past all that crap, the actual event itself is simple. Cycle as fast as you can for three weeks and you win. No referee judgment calls, no time outs, no time wasting, etc. Get to the finish line in once piece.

After watching Totti flop around like a displaced smelt for 120 minutes on Tuesday, to watch a bunch of guys just cycle as hard as they could throughout the beautiful European countryside was very refreshing, soothing, and exciting. And getting caught up in all the nuances of the tour - the roles of domestiques, the activity in the peloton, the excitement of the breakaways, and the final mad dash to the finish - was just fun.

And possibly my favorite thing about the Tour is the land they're riding through. Whether they're in France or making their way out of France on one of their jaunts through Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc. you get to see small-town Europe at its very best. The pride the Europeans take in their towns is so refreshing. Houses that have stood for hundreds of years are still being used. Narrow streets that were never made to handle automobiles are carefully maneuvered by cyclists as fans of the sport come out to cheer on the competitors and show off the pride they have in their communities. Ruins of old churches, castles, etc. dot the landscape. And the beautiful scenery of Northern France, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Languedoc (among other places) just make me want to visit even more.

Lance may not be there this year, nor are Basso and Ullrich (again, due to a doping scandal), but the Tour is doing just fine without them. There's more of a feeling of a lion sitting in wait as the peloton looks for someone to make a move to be the new big dog. Will it be Floyd Landis? George Hincapie? Tom Boonen? Or will some other upstart come along and start a new legend in this event? Only time will tell. But I'll be watching and enjoying every minute of it that I can.