Fallen Into Knowledge

What a beautiful day for a bike ride, I thought.
Since the roads up here are still covered in gravel, I tossed the fixie in the car and headed to Sauvie Island.
I had high hopes: Three laps around the island. Roughly 30 miles. But, hey, its flat and I wasn’t planning on going fast.
Reality set in pretty quickly. It’s only been a couple of months since I was riding everywhere all the time, but even still, it hurt. I was surprised how much the wind (read: light breeze) affected me, and how unaccustomed my body is to the bike. To be fair, I was riding the fixie, which tends to amplify any roughness in the road. And yet, I only made it around the island once.
That’s it - time to get in shape. Another ride is planned for Sunday

Again this year, I went with the family out to Camas, where my aunt and uncle have a house on the hillside overlooking the river. Dad and I rode up on our bikes, which was excellent. Also Again this year we had to laugh at the view over Portland: Oregon’s Fireworks laws certainly don’t seem to be working all that well. We agreed that we saw more airborn fireworks over Portland than we saw on the Washington side of the river. At some point, if a law is completely disregarded by such a large percentage of a populous, is it advisable just to drop it?
A fun time was had by all.

After the Taco Ride tonight, I transfered the above pictured liquid into another carboy for second fermenting.  Looks tasty, right?  Okay, beer doesn’t actually look all that appetizing until it is ready to drink.  All you can see above is some sediment and yeast hanging out at the top of what you can’t see - a cloudy liquid:  at this stage of the process the beer is very much a living thing.  It can’t be rushed, and it is very much worth the time invested.

Tonight was the kickoff parade for Pedalpalooza 2006.  Pedalpalooza is a two and a half week long festival of bicycling with dozens of events.  I have posted some pictures if the parade both on this site and also on Flickr.  If you want to join in on the fun, go check out the calendar of events

Things to Consider
Bike:

Your bike has to get you from here to there safely, reliably, and pleasantly.

Make sure that whatever bike you use for commuting is is good working condition: that it is the appropriate size, the brakes work, the wheels are straight and true, and the tires are fully inflated. Sure it is important that your bike not fall apart while riding; but more than that you need to be able to trust it to respond predictably if you need to quickly avoid some obstacle. It needs to be in good working condition. Regularly maintain your bike, or pay a competent bike mechanic to maintain it. I do most of the maintenance on my bike, but I also have a mechanic true the wheels on my bike every year

A commuting rig needs to be reliable: It needs to get you there and back. I suggest investing in tires with a Kevlar lining, for they virtually eliminate puncture-flats. If you also keep your tires fully inflated you will drastically reduce the occurrence of the other type of flat tires: pinch-flats.

Obviously we ride what we have; but if you can afford it, and are interested in bike-commuting on a regular basis, a bike with quality components is much more reliable and needs less maintenance than a “department-store bike.”

Your bike must also be pleasant to ride as a commuter. Yeah, those dual suspension mountain bikes are cool - and great off-road, but they aren’t the best for commuting; those shocks absorb much of the energy that you exert trying to go forward, and the wide knobby tires have a high coefficient of friction - they slow you down.

There are three common types of commuting bikes:

Mountain Bikes:

Typically, a mountain bike will offer a more relaxed gearing and riding position. Just make sure the knobby tires are replaced with street tires.

Road and or Touring Bikes:

Skinny tires and drop bars: these bikes were make for the road - where your commute will happen. They are typically lighter and take less energy to get (and keep) moving fast. The riding position takes a bit getting used to, however. And, road bikes can be expensive.
Track Bikes - Fixed Gear or Single Speed:

The perennial favorite of bike messengers - who make their living on bikes - and, more recently, of urban hipsters, who think they look cool. Track bikes have fewer parts and are by that virtue more reliable. But of course, neither do they have any gears to make things easier on the hills.

One more thought on the commuting bike: It need not look fancy - in fact, the more expensive your bike looks, the more of a target it will be for thieves. Also, if your bike has quick release skewers in the wheels consider replacing them with skewers that lock the wheels on the bike.

Lights:

You need them; it is both illegal and unsafe to ride at night (or dawn or dusk) without lights. Keep in mind that in the city lights are not so the rider can see but so that the rider can be seen. Annoying blinking lights are good, because they are hard for a car to ignore. Also, bright reflective clothing is important: Don’t give drivers any excuse for not seeing you.

Bike Lock:

U-type locks are better than the alternatives: plan on investing in a quality lock - it will be expensive, but probably a fraction of the cost of replacing your bike.

Rain Gear:

I live in Portland, and bike commute year round. I have had several types of “rain gear” for bikes and have found that “GORE-TEX” is the only stuff that works as advertised. It is worth every penny. Remember that we are not likely to continue an activity that we find unpleasant, and bike commuting while wet is unpleasant.

Also consider some booties that slide over your shoes and keep them dry - wet feet are no fun, and, as grandmothers everywhere would say, “you’ll catch your death.”

More and more people are choosing to ride their bike as a means of transportation (as opposed to solely as recreation). This is wonderful. All things considered, riding on the rode is not appreciably more dangerous than driving; however, ones relationship with the traffic changes while on a bike. This fact - what it takes to ride safely - requires thinking in a manner that many new bike commuters are unfamiliar with.
Today I was alerted (via the Shift2Bikes email list) of a great article about riding safely. Read it. If you drive in Portland, or anywhere with a significant number of cyclists on the road, there is good stuff in there for you, as well.

Link to Article

Well, I finally got it back.
If you’re not privy to the story, here is the short version:
I bought a bike - oh - a month ago.  Having ridden I noticed a persistent creak in the crank, so I took the bike back, and sure enough the crank was cracked.  Campagnolo offered to exchange it with a brand new crank.  This was wonderful! The crank normally costs several hundred dollars, and it was a couple of years out of warranty, so this was wonderful news.
Unfortunately,  Campy took their sweet time shipping the crank out.  Three weeks, to be exact.  So although I have owned the bike for a month, I have had possession of it for just a couple of days.
But I got it back!  And..I am waiting for the sun to come back so I can ride it more.

Why I Ride: A Theological Response.

When I tell people that I have chosen a bicycle as my primary form of transportation I often get queer looks, as if I had just made a category mistake. Surely theology tells us about the nature of God, and to live our neighbors, but about transportation? Yes. About transportation, too.
Theology is talk about how we relate to God (or better, how God relates to us) and how we ought to relate to the world and each other in the world. Theology affirms a life in the world that reflects the character of God (righteousness of God in bible-speak) in the ways we interact with each other and the earth. Theology demands that we act ethically, and also observes that acting ethically requires others. Life happens with and amongst people.
Several years ago I became concerned about how the automobile changes the way we interact with the earth and how we are lead to interact in our communities. I noticed that communities that were built assuming cars as the appropriate means of transportation tended to isolate people from each other. No longer did houses face the streets with porches from which people are invited to linger; instead the houses are dominated by their garages and the houses tended to face toward the fenced off back yards, away from neighbors. I also noticed that such amenities as parks, grocery stores, and coffee shops are too far from most new homes to walk (or ride), and it is often unsafe to try as there are no sidewalks in many of these new “communities.” So then, I observed that some newer neighborhoods, designed to be car friendly, were made people un-friendly. While these neighborhoods are certainly made to be efficient, they are thereby made in such a way as to make neighborliness almost impossible: efficiency is the enemy of neighborliness.
So I moved from the suburbs into Portland, into the Buckman Neighborhood, and I got rid of my car. By bike (or on foot), one’s relationship to the city changes: my range is smaller - beaverton is truly another city. But that’s okay, because i no longer have to go far to get what I need: the park is two blocks away, the grocery store is seven, and the coffee shop is one block away. Whats more, when I go to these places, i have time to see: the scenery is no longer whizzing by at forty miles an hour. I find that moving slower gives me more time to appreciate.
While on a bike, or on foot, I am not isolated from other travelers: I can greet people, I can (and have) talk with neighbors and strangers, riding along side them, while on the way to work or the store. It is easy to stop and talk, something that driving in a car - encased in tons of metal, radio drowning out ambient noise, and moving at high speed - makes practically impossible.
I was talking with my friend Ian about this recently, here is an excerpt from an email:

Friday, as I was biking up to Multnomah for a meeting with a student, I happened across Nate Meenen near the Sunnyside environmental school. So we stopped (in nearly the middle of the road, hehe) and chatted for a while, as we didn’t get much time to talk a Critical Mass the week before. A great conversation, there in the sun: later that night he came over and I helped out with his forthcoming blog.

The moral, of course, is that neighborliness, and community, is aided by having a transportation method (not to mention urban planning) that allows for spontaneous conversations with neighbors and or strangers (I met Mark Ginsberg - a local bike hero - as I was riding home form MBC the other day - he was riding to work - another good conversation). Riding is not just about protecting and preserving the terra firma, but also about re-creating neighborhoods where people know each other and talk to each other.

Of course, biking is also better for the terra firma. The Bible says that we are to be care-takers of the land - that we live one it, but do not own it. Driving has an enormous environmental impact, in addition to an enormous social impact.

I choose, then, to ride my bike because it connects me to people and to the earth in a way that being in a car cannot.
Being on a bike tends to make me more aware of my world and other people, it also makes me more aware of myself. I am healthier because I ride: when I ride I feel the weather, feel my legs working to pedal, I earn my hunger and enjoy my food more: I experience myself as a person with a body; as physical and mortal. And this is a good thing, for this is how we are created.
Is driving a sin? No, truly it cannot really be compared to stealing or killing another. The actions of getting in a car, turning the ignition, and transporting oneself from here to there - nothing in this set of actions constitutes sin. But driving does, it seems, change the way we interact with the world: it leads us to treat others as less-than-persons, as objects: and this is a sin. And so I choose to ride as my primary form of transportation: it is for me a theological choice.
And, lest we forget: it is also more fun to ride.

Crap.  That is is lame Title.  I am not dead, as one might think from the regular nature of my posts.  I am amazed that people show up here at all - no new content in ages: and yet y’all are faithful.  Thank you.
I am not dead, though I should be after watching “Fight Club” four times this weekend.  I am doing this for a paper I am writing, not out of any particular masochistic tendencies.  This school thing is closing in on a break: and I am really looking forward to it.  This term has been rough; not because my classes have been particularly difficult, but because I have no real motivation to speak of.  So much so that I just ended that last sentence with a preposition and didn’t move to correct it.  yeah.  That much.
In other news, I fell off my bicycle the other day.  Which is to say that I dove into a cement piling.  The kind made to stop busses.  Busses and errant cyclists.  I am pleased to announce that the cement is sufficiently hard enough to stop a flying cyclist in his/er path.  I am also pleased that I didn’t break anything.  Pay attention out there - this has been a public service announcement.

Last fall, in order to fund my commuting bike, I sold the bike that my Dad built for my Mom, the bike I rode for as long as it fit me:  it was a Tomosso - built back when they really were handmade in Italy.  This bike was beautiful, it had Colombus Steel, lugs, and a full group of Durace components; it was also bright pink (it was originally built for my mom, remember).  I loved it anyway - it was light and responsive, and I mourned the day it was too small for me, because i knew then that it would be a long time until I could afford a bike like that again.
So, Last fall I sold the bike to fund a commuting bike, a bike that, whole nowhere near as nice as the Tomosso, would function well in getting me around town.  I was gratified when the Bike shop owner who sold the bike told me that it had sold to a bike messenger gal who fell in love with it on the spot.  At least I knew that the bike was in good hands.
Fast Forward to two weeks ago, roughly.
From an email received on July first:

“The article is about Kristine Ann Okins, 25, the 4th cyclist in one month’s time to be killed, she was hit on Monday, and died Tuesday. She was biking at Broadway & SW Washington at 9:17 am when the collision with a truck happened - I’m often biking at the same place at the same time on my commute - but I happened to be bussing that day.”

Mom wondered aloud to me if she had been the woman who had bought the bike, to which I replied, ” it is highly unlikely, and she (working at the time) would not have been riding the pink bike at the time.”

Well, I was half right.

Today, on my way home from church, I stopped at River City Bicycles to grab a larger messenger bag (mine was coming apart at the seams due to it’s being too small).  I selected my bag and happened to see this hanging from the ceiling:

Yup.  That’s the one.  No doubt about it.  When I saw the bike I had no idea that it was hanging in memorandum.  I was nevertheless dumbfounded:  the ceiling at River City is (literally) a museum of highly valuable and historic bicycles; and while I was not surprised to see a Tomosso in the collection, I was very surprised to see the Bike I had grown up riding hanging from the ceiling.
I told this to the employee standing near me, and he finished the story:  It had, in fact, been purchased by the young woman who had so recently been killed.  Strange, eh?  The employee said, “the hair on my arms is standing up right now.”  me too.