Map of every velodrome in North America

If you are wondering “WHAT THE HELL IS A VELODROME?!,” please proceed to the bottom of the post.

So I finally took the ol’ thighs to Portland’s own Alpenrose Velodrome and I think I may have been gravely stricken with the track cycling bug.  Bother.  Oh sweet, sweet bother.

So I thought to myself where in North America can I stand to live, now that I may need to live near a velodrome?

As always, I turned immediately to the internets to find exactly what I needed, a map of all the velodromes in north america.  GUESS WHAT? There was no such map.

Well, now there is. Presenting…

My Map of Every Operational Velodrome in North America:

Note that not all of these velodromes are created equal.  Just one in the US is indoor (in LA).  Canada has two indoor velodromes, in Vancouver and in London, Ontario.  The degree of banking (the angle of the walls that make up the turns aka the scary bits) vary significantly between tracks, as do the lengths.  Portland’s velodrome is very steep and built to a mile standard rather than a metric one, leading to odd start and stop positions for metric events. The Mellowdrome in Asheville, NC is actually not a velodrome; the local cycling community has obtained an old automobile racing track.  The track is neither properly ovoid nor truly banked (just 4-8 degrees compared to Portland’s 43 degrees).

And while several of the velodromes are either brand new or currently under construction, at least one has been neglected to the point of unusability – Dorais Velodrome in, you guessed it, Detroit.  You can see from the air just how beaten up it is.  You can read about that track’s decline and discover by the bike polo set here.  I did not include the Dorais Velodrome on the map.

So there you have it.  Don’t move to Omaha if you want to throb some serious quad on the track.  As for me, I have to now throw my weight into a new bicycle subgenre, which means a possible new bike (spine shiver!).  those who know me will not be surprised to learn that I am considering yet another life for my stalwort old Redline 925.

WHAT THE HELL IS A VELODROME?
It is nothing more or less than a special track built for bicycle racing.  Numerous events, mostly of relatively short distance and blisteringly fast speed, can be held on the velodrome.

If you are in a track race, it might look like this:

And sometimes they look like this:

And I KNOW you want to see a crash, and I am happy to deliver.  Make sure you watch to see Bauge’s legendary save.

How to photograph bicycle utopias

Dear participants in the 2k12 SchlossyB Copansterdam Bike-topia-palooza,

Look, I don’t want to rain on your holy-moly-denmark-is-rad parade here, but did you know that we are all counting on you?  Are you aware of the extraordinary level of responsibility that you all have?  Are you?

Here’s the deal:  We need to you take really good pictures of the bicycle stuff that you are seeing.

We (and I mean us at home, the home front, good ol’ ‘Murica) need you to do this because we badly need CHANGE for many reasons that Dr. Marcy Marc has told you about in detail, and we are simple so we have to SEE it to BELIEVE it.  That’s where you come in.

Last year I took a few helpful pictures of my time in Amsterdam with the class (see also this blog post).  Not enough.  Not nearly enough.  I wish I had spent wayyyyyy more time and effort on documentation.  So the guide that follows is to encourage you to spend that time and to give you a few tips to hopefully maximize your success and efficiency as you do it.

So…

TED’S SUPER FRIGGEN EASY GUIDE TO PHOTOGRAPHING BICYCLE UTOPIAS

In several rules…

#1: Take a HUGE number of photos.

This is both the simplest advice and the hardest to follow.  Take an infinitive number of pictures.  Photograph everything, from several angles, several times.  I once heard that for each photo that actually makes it into National Geographic, there are something like 70,000 photos taken of the same story that aren’t good enough.  Aspire to that number.  Don’t be afraid to be a tourist with a camera in your hand, at least some/most of the time.  Like I said, we NEED you to get pictures of the cycle tracks, the riders, the signs, the bike racks, all of it.  And to get good ones, the only sure way is to take a HUGE number.  Seriously do it.

#2: Take some time JUST to take pictures.

Plan it out.  An afternoon of your freetime.  Go out, stand on corners, take a picture of everyone that goes by on a bike.  Roam around and photograph intersections.  It seems like a chore now when all you want to do is go to Tivoli and eat open-face sandwiches and “experience” Christiana, but trust me, you will be glad for all the time you spend focusing solely on taking photographs of the stuff you are really there to experience, the bicycle infrastructure.  Try to take 5 or more hours while you are in each city JUST taking photographs.

#3: Get close.

It’s an old adage of photojournalism: if your pictures aren’t good enough, you weren’t close enough.  Get close.  This is especially important with the kinds of point-and-shoot cameras that you probably went over to Europe with. Let your subject fill the frame.  Wait until oncoming cyclists are RIGHT there before you snap.

#4: Take a bunch of pictures of the same thing.

Don’t just get one.  If there’s something worth photographing, it’s worth photographing several times from several angles.  You will be very glad you did this, later.   If you don’t have enough memory card space for this, go buy more memory cards.  Seriously.  Buy them.  Try to get at least three angles of anything worth shooting.  If it’s a moving scene, see if your camera has a “sport”mode or other mode that takes pictures in quick succession.

#5: Charge your camera.

Every night.  No exceptions.  WE ARE COUNTING ON YOU.

#6: Rule of thirds.

Look, I don’t make the rules.  But there are some things the brain just likes, and when it comes to two-dimensional images, rule of thirds is a key to making an attractive image.  Essentially, you are going to organize your photo into 1/3rd chunks, like this:

As you can see, the horizon line is 1/rd of the way from the top.  The subjects (boat, island) are at the intersection points of the lines that make the thirds.  This is one of the core principles of graphic design, so you are encouraged to think about it.  Images where the subject is dead-center are actually not desirable in general.

TRY TO IMAGINE THAT GRID OVER YOUR PICTURES AND ORGANIZE YOUR HORIZEN LINES AND OTHER MAJOR LINES IN THAT WAY.

#7: Photograph everything

This is rule 1 rehashed.  Here’s the deal: you don’t yet know what point you will want to make to people back here about what you are seeing over there.  Do yourself a BIG favor and get enough evidence of a high enough quality that, whatever point you eventually want to make, you are able to make it.  Taking a huge amount of pictures and generally following the above rules is the ONLY way to do this.

#8: SHARE!!!! NOW!!!!!

Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, dropbox, whatever you please.

OKAY!!!! Please let me know if you have questions or need other support.  We are all just sitting here in America waiting for you to see (AND RECORD) what you need to in order to FIX your deeply flawed transportation system back here. No pressure.  I can’t wait to live vicariously through your HUGE number of pictures.

Best,

Ted Sweeney

once-and-future bike-utopia photographer

 

 

PS: on video…

Video is good too.  Take some video.  But don’t do it at the expense of still images.  Still images are the easiest to spread and share, and don’t require editing.  If you have the skills to create awesome mutimedia/video heavy stuff, then you already don’t need my advice.  By all means get some nice clips of bike rush hour, intersections, etc.  Just make sure you get LOTS of still images as well.

Video: Cross Crusade #1

The Cyclocross season is going strong, with the start of the Cross Crusade last weekend.  Cyclocross is like parkour in the mud with a bicycle.  Though I had a terrible time last year, I showed up once again at the first Cross Crusade race last weekend at Alpenrose, one of more than 1,400 ‘crossers to participate.  I used my GoPro camera to shoot a video, and, in an odd and unexpected turn, actually edited the footage and posted it online.  Enjoy.

Video and pictures of cycling in Amsterdam

This summer I had the excellent opportunity to investigate the storied bicycling utopias of Amsterdam and Copenhagen.  While I’ve written about the experience before, I haven’t posted many of my helmet cam videos of cycling in Amsterdam and some of the pictures I took.  Let’s fix that.

First, I’ve put together this video to give you a sense of what it feels like to ride in Amsterdam.  Enjoy in HD.

Separate and Safe: Cycling in Amsterdam from Ted Sweeney on Vimeo.

The goal with the video is to lull you into a feeling of comfort and glee, as that is the general feeling one gets when actually (rather than high definition virtually) cycling in Amsterdam.  The network of dedicated cycle-tracks (the ones separated from traffic) and bike-friendly streets hinted at in the video is complete and fully connected; you can get everywhere with this level of comfort.  Pretty nice.

Most of what can be said about bicycling in Amsterdam has been said before: normal people blah blah blah work clothes yadda yadda no need for helmets yeah yeah yeah practical bikes yackity yackity children on board etc.  I think it’s nice if we can let pictures do the talking.

A Dutch man told me that it’s wacky to fear cycling in the rain; “you aren’t made of wax–you won’t melt.”  I don’t really get it, because wax is generally water resistant anyway, but I love the phrase.

That man is particularly lovely.

Amsterdam is defined by the number of bikes roving about and locked up within it.  It’s interesting to think; if there were just a single city in the world that had accommodated cars to the degree that every American city has, we would certainly be thinking of that city as the “Car City” in the same way that Amsterdam is a “Cycling City,” and we would marvel over (and blog about) pictures of its large, packed parking lots, impressive interchanges, and normal people behind the wheel.

There’s something really nice about children being carried on bikes.  I wonder if that’s just the bike advocate in me, or if there’s a universal appeal to it.  It just seems more elegant than stuffing them in a minivan.

If these pictures don’t innately appeal to you, think of this: how much money are these people saving by not owning a vehicle (they may own one, but they certainly don’t need the several cars that most American families require)?

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, mostly because it feels ramshackle and lived in. The bikes chained everywhere really contribute to that.

I’m really aware of the serious liability that is the worship of European bicycling infrastructure.  Here’s what I mean; it’s never going to be enough to say “look, they are doing it/have done it in the Netherlands” as we work towards good public spaces and good cycling infrastructure in America. Quite the opposite is true; dwelling on foreign success makes these ideas seem foreign, unusual, curious.  What is foreign, unusual and curious at this time in American history is to have the political will to accomplish stuff like this, to really idealize public space for people through smart investment.  We are limping along, burdened with the cost of our car infrastructure.  Still, these pictures and videos are just a sideshow, not the antidote, not the American solution.  They are ideas and possibilities, and if they jog your imagination just a little bit, that’s all I can hope for.

I think we’ll leave it there for now.  I’ll get a Copenhagen video together for all you nerds out there.

Time lapse bike-assembling videos

I’m here in the Outdoor Program Barn converting my touring bike into a cyclocross bike.  It got me thinking about a couple of videos we made in the past year, of assembling bikes in this very spot.  First, there is the sickly charming “Gotta Build Katy a Commuter Bike;”

Barf bags provided on request (email me). Then, there’s a more relaxed video of metransfering the components from my old Fuji roadbike to new De Rosa frame:

The time-lapse software is for mac and it’s called Gawker, very functional and free.  It can easily use your built in i-Sight camera to make timelapse videos.  Adding the music is on you (I recommend beer and your guitar).

The many lives of my Redline 925

This post is about my commuter bike, which is also the first real bicycle that I owned as an adult.  I’ve found that the first real bicycle one owns as an adult tends to be formative; it’s the first bike you get that actually fits your body, that has features selected by you rather than by Santa, that you personally wonder about accessorizing.  That bike, which one also tends to ride for adult purposes (going to work or on errands, going on longer rides for exercise) is the one that gains an air of legitimacy in your life as a real vehicle.  It’s also the bicycle that a lot of Americans never get around to buying.  Never owning a bicycle (that fits you, that you picked out) as an adult means that bicycles never prove their legitimacy to you.  I am convinced that if most Americans simply tried riding bicycles that fit them, they would “get it.”

Again, this post is about my Redline 925, my first real adult bicycle.  I bought it on craigslist when I returned to Eugene and UO after my year in AmeriCorps (07-08).  I knew nothing about bikes at the time.  I called up two bicycle-geek friends and made them not only pour over the CL ads with me, but also come out with me to look at the bicycle (also, Peter had a Subaru, and I had no vehicle whatsoever).  My geek friends kicked the tires on this bike, criticized the guy selling it with words I had never heard like “trued,” and got the price down for me.

The 925 is a single speed commuter (9-2-5, get it?  GET IT!?) bike with a flip-flop rear hub, meaning you can choose to make it a fixed gear with just a little bit of work. The frame is essentially road-bike shaped.  Instead of the original mustache handlebars the guy had added some Cannondale drop bars, which made the bike feel fast and race-inclined.  I liked that.  I zipped all around Eugene with the glee that comes with the first adult bicycle.

Atop of my first adult bicycle, I started to notice all those little things about the transportation system that all cyclists notice; the potholes, the spotty bike-way network, the death-cheating situations, the fear, the insults (I’ll never forget my first major car-bike altercation; a guy almost hit me as he turned left, and hollered back “get a car, faggot!“).  All of a sudden, as someone who relied on the bike for my personal freedom in the city (well, in Eugene), I cared about this stuff.  In a major way, my first adult bicycle made me care about this stuff.  Before I knew it I was on the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, learning firsthand how the city and community were trying to deal with these issues.  I took a bicycle maintenance class at the UO Bike Program, and soon afterwards took an opportunity to become coordinator of that program.  I had also acquired my second adult bicycle, a yellow entry level Fuji road bike, and had started riding and racing with the UO Cycling Team.  About a year and a half after letting my first adult bicycle, the Redline 925, into my life, everything I did revolved around bikes and bike advocacy.  I think the Redline was the start of all of it.

Last fall, I wanted to race Cyclocross.  Cyclocross is a combination of the best parts of mountain biking (interesting courses, dirt, more eclectic characters) and road biking (fast road bicycles, tight clothes, bright colors) with mercifully short races, obstacles that require you to get off and carry your bike, and a beer swillin’, bring-your-dog-to-the-race kind of attitude.  Unfortunately, cyclocross bikes have some technical differences from normal road bikes, meaning I couldn’t use my Fuji.  I was facing the prospect of having to get a new bike.  Then I hit on a solution: I could use the Redline 925.  It had room for the big tires needed to make cyclocross work.  Since it was singlespeed, there wasn’t much that could break.  As long as I found the correct gear ratio (how big the single gear is), I would b able to ride the whole course with ease.  Here’s the redline set up for cyclocross, though still with my commuting bell on it (which I would ring liberally during races):

When I did finally get the gear right, I had a great time in those races.  I mostly raced with the beginner category, so I had a chance to be competitive.  I even came in first at one race:

I won a beer. Go Ducks. Photo by Al.

The Redline, made to ride around town rather than on the trail, performed pretty darn well for cyclocross.  That leads into my overall message here, which is that one thing I love about bicycles is how versatile they are; even one single bicycle can be made to suit a very wide variety of needs with minor modification.  When I needed the Redline to be a cyclocross racing bike, I just took off the fenders, put on some nobby tires, and went for it.  Sure, purists shamed me for having road-style caliper brakes that lack the “mud-clearance” of cyclocross-standard cantilevers, but hey, being able to make my commuter do double duty instead of shelling out $900+ for an entry level ‘cross bike is a pretty damn fine deal.  After the ‘cross season, the Redline went back to commuter duty, with a grocery rack and fenders.

While I was on my Northern European bicycle tour earlier this summer, I thought a lot about the kinds of bikes Europeans ride around their cities, and the features those bikes have.  Really, in my mind, I was continuously re-accessorizing the Redline.  By the time I returned I was absolutely rearin’ to set it up as the ideal city bike.  So… from cyclocross bike to Dutch city bike in ten months… I bring you my new and improved first adult bicycle!

Here, again, is before:

And, drumroll… AFTER!

It’s summertime, so I haven’t put the fenders back on, but I’m sure you can excuse that in recognition of all the extraordinarily practical features this bike now offers!  Starting with sexiest-first, we have the Pletscher Double Kickstand:

It has new handlebars (Nitto Allrounders) that give me an upright riding position (but not too upright, purists, don’t you worry), finally allowing me to take babysteps away from the craven, hunchbacked crouch of the road racer:

It has a new magnetic generator light in the front.  These are especially popular in Copenhagen.  They require no batteries, and they are difficult to steal.  I use it mostly as a backup light, but it’s nice to know that if I forget my removable lights I am still legal and somewhat safe.

And of course there are the racks from Gamoh:

These racks are pretty serious about hauling things.  In full recognition of the arguable pretentiousness of hauling things by bike, I am compelled to share with you some of the recent loads this beast has hauled.

There was our new vacuum, a craigslist buy:

A whole load of group camping gear for the Pedal Project overnight trip, with some help from my Bike Friday trailer (bought that at a garage sale a while back for $20; Bike Friday sells them for the rather unbelievable price of $200-it’s just a rubbermaid container on a simple frame, though the hitch is pretty ingenious):

Finally, I hauled a huge load of unneeded things to the Goodwill on Franklin the other day; the box on the back really tested the limits of what the rear rack can carry, but I made it there with no mishaps. (w/ disembodied hand, below).

The racks are great.  Gamoh also sells them with an extra rail wrapped around, to make a bit of a basket, and with wood panels between the bottom rails.  These ones, the “porteur” style, are about $40-$50 cheaper than the equivalent CETMA.  When I want to get a few groceries, I put them in a bag and bungie the bag down to the front rack.  No problems yet.

Of couse, my bike is missing some essentially Euro features.  I may still add a chain guard.  I don’t really have a good way to attach the rear wheel lock, and it really isn’t very useful in bike-theft heavy Eugene anyway (I do think rear wheel locks are cool, though).  So far, rather than switch to something springy and leather, I’m sticking with my WTB saddle that has served me well though all the phases of the Redline.

Part of my journey from knowing nothing about bikes to being overly obsessed with them has been about trying out the different contexts that involve the bicycle.  From basic commuting to recreational riding to racing, to advocacy and back to commuting, this Redline has been the physical manifestation of my own progression through the world of bicycles.  I have no idea what urge will seize me next (mmm… internal geaaaarrrrrrring), but I have confidence that my first adult bicycle, the Redline 925, is up to it.  Your bike probably is too.

Photo by Fred Sproat, from Andy Clarke‘s visit to campus to award us the Silver Level Bike Friendly University award.

The Pedal Project: build a bike and ride

I had a fabulous opportunity last week to be a part of the inaugural Pedal Project.  This is a program the UO Office of Sustainability put on for incoming students, one of several such programs.

The program had an ambitious plan, and I was nervous about it.  The idea was to bring in some students who had never worked on or even thought all that much about bicycles before and have them build up bikes from scratch.  They would then use these bikes they had built to navigate around Eugene and get an introduction to urban transportation issues related to sustainability.  Finally, they would ride those bikes a few dozen miles to an overnight camping spot.  All of this would take place over four days.

Now, I put bikes together.  It’s not especially challenging.  The parts are, in general, made to fit together; you just need to have the right parts.  But I am a supergeek, and most of my time is spent thinking about these things.  I was a supergeek about bikes for quite a while before I actually put together my first bike.  That “build” was certainly not my first time working on bikes or using bike tools.  For these students, it would be a bit of a rude introduction.

And then a bike camping trip? Even people in Eugene who ride bikes around town quite a bit scoff (too much, methinks) at the thought of using them for recreation, or to ride any strenuous distance.  How would these students react?  Would the bikes even survive the trip?  Would the general scuffle with logging trucks and debris-in-the-shoulder and rolling hills that is the greater Eugene area riding environment forever scar these folks and keep them off of bikes?  Usually these things have to be eased into.

Clearly, we were all but doomed to fail.

And yet…

The students took bikes that had been donated to the UO Bike Program by Lane Transit District or the Eugene Police department and set to work stripping off their old components and building them up as single speed mountain bikes with coaster brakes.  That’s the standard setup the Bike Program uses for its long term bike loan service (with which students can check out a bike for $15 per term for up to three terms) because it yields a reliable bicycle that doesn’t take much maintenance to keep going.

They set to work for a day and a half attaching all the necessary parts; rear coaster wheels, chains, seatposts and saddles, grips, front brakes, fenders, single-speed cranksets, bells, racks with baskets, pedals, and magnetic generator lights.  I buzzed around with some direction and teaching, but make no mistake; the students assembled these bikes themselves, from scratch.  They came together with a motley but oddly unified look that I really like.

They built these bikes, rode them around town a bit on a scavenger hunt, and the very next day loaded them up for an overnight bike tour.  Now, I am very willing to claim, in full ignorance of whether the statement is true or not, that this is the first time ever in the history of our wet and spinning world that humans have assembled their very first ever bike that they’ve ever worked on and then immediately ridden that same bike on an overnight loaded bike tour.  First time.  Ever.  No big deal.

Okay, yes, Shelley and I pulled trailers with some of the gear and food. Here’s my own bike loaded up for the adventure (in solidarity, I went single-speed as well).

We headed out the Fern Ridge bike path through West Eugene, on our way to Fern Ridge reservoir to camp.

It was a very hot day, and I’m not going to say there wasn’t any grumbling or dehydration, but in general the mood was high.  Empowered.  Kickass.

We were on some busy roads too, and went over some hills.  We survived.  Thrived, even.  We made it to our camp site at Richardson State Park and got situated.

The bikes performed very well, by the way.  None of them completely disintegrated on the ride, a testament to the care the students put into creating them.  True, we had a few wheels rubbing frames (quickly corrected), but we didn’t even have any flat tires.  Once camp was established, we headed down to the balmy waters of Fern Ridge for a soak.  It was an OK evening aesthetically:

We ate some burritos with quinoa (an unfamiliar foodstuff for most of the students) and told some ghost stories and went to sleep.  Shelley and I didn’t have a tent and inexplicably got rained on blah blah blah and soon it was morning and we packed up the bikes and headed back to campus.

Here is a link to our whole route, though you should note that I had to fight with Google Maps a bit and the real milage is around 38 (at the end point “B” there we really just got back on the bike path and rode back to the start).  On the way back we used the course of the Eugene Roubaix road race, traversing the gravel section and struggling up the little hill on Cantrell rd with our single-speeds.  Here’s the group coming to the end of the mean, mean gravel:

We got back to Eugene a little bit overheated but satisfied, I think, with our effort.  I’m not going to say there wasn’t some grumbling about butt pain, but everyone marveled just a bit, just enough, over what we had accomplished.  Before leaving town, the students donated their bikes to the UO Bike Program, so that they can be loaned out and used for centuries or even millennia to come.  The students will be back to move into student housing next month.  I’m not too worried about this group.

So there you have it.  For the first time in the history of our oscillating, dark-matter-filled universe, five folks who didn’t initially necessarily give a crap about bikes built some anyway and then immediately went on the kind of adventure that a lot of other folks might think is crazy to undertake.  For my part, I had a total blast.

I haven’t described the whole program: The students also got tours at the Center for Appropriate Transport, Bike Friday, Arcimoto (most fun test drive of my life, thanks guys), and UO Campus Recycling, and had a good time discussing the disturbing yet excellent Who Killed the Electric Car? With the bikes and the camping trip, that’s an awful lot for four days.

Next post: a despicable geek-out about the Euro-inspired upgrades I have made to my commuter bike, complete with many bikepornographic shallow depth-of-field close up shots.  Mmmmmmmmmmm.  Stay tuned.

Tour ends in Copenhagen! Observations of this cycling city.

*for an update on how my face is healing from my crash last week, go to the end of this post.

After several short, wet, nasty riding days, our tour arrived, triumphant if frazzled, in Copenhagen.  Here’s our route: it’s not exact, but it’s close.

Gmaps puts it at 999km, and I’m okay with that.  It doesn’t reflect how much we got lost, so the total actual kilometerage is probably closer to 14 trillion.

We’ve been here in Copenhagen for four nights, and I can therefore offer you some Copenhagen cycling observations in no particular order:

*No bicycle wayfinding signs of ANY kind.  None.  No “Centrum” signs, no pointers towards “ideal” bike routes, no “Nørrebro, 2km ->,” nothing (that I have seen).

*Almost no bicycle parking.  This is the most striking difference from Amsterdam.  Copenhagen has a small number of racks that clutch the front wheel of the bike.  I have seen zero racks that accommodate locking the frame to the rack.  Most blocks are bike rack free.  Many of the supermarkets have no bike racks or bike parking places, and the same is true of the major cultural sites.  People warned us about theft here, and then elaborated saying that what we needed were the rear wheel locks.  That is genuinely all that is used here, even at night.  They talk about a bike theft problem but no precautions are taken beyond those rear wheel locks.

*Feels like a big, car-oriented city.  The roads are exceptionally wide and the auto-traffic is not impeded in the same way that it was in Amsterdam.  There is a greater sense of stress on the road; the zen of the dance is not present in Copenhagen.  But I still feel safe enough, much safer than the US. Cars expect bikes and do not cross a cycle-track without yielding.

*The bikes are different.  There are a good number of Dutch bikes around, mostly from Batavus and a Danish brand called Kildemoes.  But there are a lot more sporty, road, or flat-bar commuter bikes.  The upright riding position is much less common here.  Bikes are also less likely to have racks and even fenders.  And as I mentioned, the bikes aren’t locked.  This is an American bike thief’s dream.  I have seen so many full carbon mountain bikes locked just to themselves with the kind of cable lock you can get at Hiron’s for $4.95.  But rumors that “all the bikes are nice” are inaccurate.  They are nicer and newer and higher-tech as a set than the collected Amsterdam fleet, but there are still plenty of clunkers, spray-painted bikes, etc.  All that said, I strongly desire to import one of these.  The fixed gear aesthetic is a much bigger deal here than in Amsterdam.

*Helmets are common.  This was a relief to me, actually, because I’ve been wearing my helmet since my accident and I was concerned I would look out of place.  I don’t.  It’s certainly not a majority of people but it’s probably 10% of people.  There are bike racing-style helmets, skate-style urban helmets, etc.  A similar mix to what you see in Eugene.  Males wearing helmets seem to be among the faster riders on the road.  I have not observed the same with females.

*Sidewalks are very narrow.  I’m trying to make this a list of observations rather than judgements, but I am tempted to call Copenhagen a bad city for pedestrians.  Blocks are long, roads are frighteningly wide (four car lanes, a bus lane and wide cycle tracks on each side is a common configuration) and the sidewalks are narrow even before shops put out signs and chairs and tables; with those, the sidewalks barely accommodate two people walking next to each other.  Bikes ignore pedestrian striping but cars seem to be pretty good about observing it.

*The cycle tracks are great.  They are wide, they are on just about every street, they are orderly (people follow the rules and clearly signal their intentions), and they keep things flowing well.  I quickly got used to the two point left turn and I like it pretty well.  I like how consistent the bike network is in Copenhagen.  The cycletrack is uniform on every street.  It’s the same color, the same pavement type (asphalt-yessssss), starts and stops in a consistent fashion at intersections, and is signalized with clear, uniform lights.  Germany had a mishmash of different pavers, shared-sidewalk, sudden dumps into the road, etc.  Even Amsterdam would put you on cobblestoned canal streets or make you learn to figure out new turning arrangements.  It just feels more clear here in Copenhagen.

*Signals.  Just before they go green, both the red and yellow spots light up to let you know it’s about to turn.  People use that signal to mount and start that first slow pedal stroke, so that by the time the light is green they are proceeding through the intersection.  This system seems to keep traffic flowing really nicely.  I also appreciate that there are absolutely NO bicycle or pedestrian demand buttons at intersections.  Nowhere do you have to declare your intention to cross in order to get a signal.  All the signals are automatic.  This simplifies things and helps me feel like a legitimate user of the road, not one who is always requesting exceptions with the use of special buttons.  Finally, these signals are much easier to read than those in Amsterdam.  There are usually about five places you can look in the intersection to see your signal; every signal light lights up on all sides, so you can look across the intersection to see your signal, you can look next to you (like in amsterdam), and you can even look at the master signal hanging above the very middle of the intersection.  The bike right-of-way corresponds with the car right of way in all but a few very clear cases, and so you have plenty of assurance about what your status is.

That’s probably good for now.  On to the Face Update. This part is a bit disgusting, so don’t read it if you aren’t into scabs, etc.

My face is healing nicely after my nasty crash last week.  My wounds have completely scabbed over, and the scabs have chipped away to the point where I have a nice, neat goatee-shaped scab on my chin and a nice, neat Hitler-stache shaped scab on my upper lip.  In fact, I can see people mistake the scabs for facial hair when they look at me.  It’s all in their face.  At first glance they’re like “oh, my, what a pleasant and orderly goatee this fine young American is sporting, a tasteful soulpatch if ever I saw one.”  And then their eyes narrow and then widen a bit and then narrow again and they are clearly like “oh wait, oh… oh no, that’s… that’s flesh.  What on Earth… no, no..”  It’s a fun silent exchange to have.  I’ve taken to calling the scab my meatbeard.  It’s okay, you don’t have to like it. Katy calls me Pangaea-face, because the scab is breaking apart and flaking off just like that bygone Paleozoic supercontinent.

That’s it for now. We are trying to mail or bikes back to the USA and guess how much fun that process is? We will leave Copenhagen either today or tomorrow.

VERY SPECIAL THANKS to the good folks at Ben Ben Cykler for helping me out with advice and with bike boxes for us to get rid of these bikes.  They build beautiful custom rigid mountain bikes.

Tour Update #2: Face-Plants and Danish Ambulance Rides, or Don’t Read This Mom

WARNING: Blog post is pretty long and contains gory details of my bike crash yesterday.  You will be warned when they are coming on.  I recommend that you read them, though.  You can handle it.  And I know you’re curioussssss…

Katy and I have arrived in Denmark.  We cycled from Hamburg to Lübeck (which is quite beautiful) and the next day from Lübeck to Kiel.  Those two days of riding were absolutely gorgeous, a sunny roll through idyllic pastoral scenes of rolling hills, wheat fields, and flashes of lakes between trees.

Unfortunately, my rage at the incompetent German cycle wayfinding signs grew to a point where I missed some of the enjoyment of the rides.  I was busy composing letters in my head that I would send to the German Department of Pretending We’ve Got a Good Long DIstance Cycle Signage Network.  That’s unfair, but seriously, we continued to be pointed in the wrong direction repeatedly.  The signs stopped corresponding with my maps of German cycle routes (the expensive ones sold at all the Tourist Informations), so we basically winged it and got lost many times. I’m glad I have my compass.

We were headed to Kiel to catch the ferry we’d heard about from there to Denmark;  Upon arriving in Kiel, we learned that this ferry does not exist.  With a little more research online, we found that it ceased to exist eight years ago.  After grousing for a bit, we got on a train back to Lübeck and then another one out to Puttgarden, which does have a Ferry connection to Denmark.  Not only did we lose two days, but our arrival point in Denmark made it very inconvenient for us to access Aerø, the Danish island paradise that Rick Steves told us about.

We pedaled north from the creepily dead and uncharacteristically impoverished town of Rødby (our first night of camping in Denmark right off the Ferry, where Danish teens revved their motorbikes in the woods behind our tent, hooting and hollering such that I could only imagine a chainsaw-horror situation).  We had an absolutely gorgeous night of camping on Avnø fjord, where we shared some Danish camping shelters with two families of Danes. One of those families was on a bike tour from Copenhagen with their two tween and one toddler daughters.  The camping was free and right on the water, which meant an exceptional sunset view and a very large number of mosquitoes.

 WARNING Okay, here’s where it gets gory.  The next bit is not for the easily-nausiated.  Executive summary for those folks:  I’m totally fine, just a little scarier looking. Now for the insatiably curious…

Just as we entered the town of Naestved after leaving our wonderful camping spot, I suffered a pretty awful bicycle crash.  Here’s what happened: we were riding along the nice Danish cycle path when a strap that I had lashed down on top of my front rack got loose and found its way into my front wheel.  I heard a wrenching and popping, and the front of my bike stopped dead.  I realized immediately what had happened, and was just starting to curse myself for not attaching that friggen strap better as I was hurled forward and over the handlebars.

It was a face-plant.  I threw my hand out to halt the oncoming asphalt, but it was no use.  I landed, essentially, on my mouth, sliding a bit forward on my face like any good Wiley E. Coyote moment or failblog.org video.

It pays to have a wonderful partner who acts like a pro under pressure.  Katy was right there with the towel and the deep-breathing recommendations.  For my part, I sat cross legged on the ground spitting out blood and wailing.  I could move my toes and I clearly hadn’t broken any bones, so I was mostly worried about my facial injuries and, yes, my poor teeth.  Ma and pa paid so much to have those teeth perfected (ma always wished she had had braces) so I was concerned that I had wrecked a good investment with a little bit of Danish cyclepath face-loofah.

Now I know I have complained about mixing cycletracks with sidewalks, but you know what’s great about that?  People are right there if you faceplant on your bike. One man was there immediately helping us, but he did not speak any English.  Then our savior for the day showed up.  This woman spoke perfect english, called the ambulance for us, arranged to have the first man take our bikes to his nearby home and hold onto them for the day, and gave us all the information to get back in touch with her and him.  Like any good American conscious of his light coin-pouch and the awful dollar-kroner conversion, I wondered whether the ambulance was necessary, but Katy, chillingly, assured me that it was.

The ambulance showed up, and for the first time in my life I was loaded inside.  The attendant helped me staunch the flow of blood from my face and gave me an icepack to take the swelling down.  I told him I was worried about my teeth and he took a look and said “the teeth look OK.  They went right through.  You have a hole.”  Well.  A hole.  Glorious. “Well, good,” I said sheepishly, trying to act cooool.

The ambulance ride was about thirty minutes.  The attendant told me this was because Denmark is having to cut costs and close hospitals, relying on fewer spread further apart.  The topic of cost broached, I asked him about what the ambulance ride would cost me.  “Cost? Ambulance service is free in Denmark. Sometimes people call just when they are lonely.”

Well, it was really happening.  I was getting my first free, high-quality European medical care.  We rolled into the emergency room and a doctor surmised that I had no significant neck injury and probably no concussion.  He told me that one or two stitches would close up the hole that my teeth had gouged in my lower lip, “but I can’t stitch the top.  The substance is gone.”  Well.  Substance gone.  Glorious.

A Danish med student stitched my lip, carefully and fully explaining all the mistakes she was making and the difficulties she was having in that charming Euro-English (“oh no, I touched the table and I must get new gloves…”).

I was outta there in an hour, folks. Katy asked about payment and, I shit you not, got laughed at.  However,  I have to get the stitches out in five days.  When I told the doctor and nurses that I would be in Copenhagen then (godwillin….) they argued a bit and warned me that I would probably have to wait eight hours or more in a  public hospital for something as trivial as stitch-removal, and that I should probably look for a private practice and cough up the kroner to have it done fast.  So I may yet get to see both sides of the socialized medicine coin.

Was I wearing a helmet?  Yes.  We’ve had them on most of the time since our frustrating ride to Hamburg last week.  I’m not sure how much the helmet helped me in this crash.  My teeth and lips took the fall, but looking at the helmet later, it was clear that the forehead part was crushed in.  It’s not cracked, but I think I would at least have more facial abrasion if not a banged-up brain if it weren’t for that funny hat.  Will this experience make me an insufferable helmet advocate?  I am not sure.  I will say that every time I’ve fallen off my bike, I’ve been awfully glad to have one on.

The bandages are not flattering.  I look like a cross between a nutcracker and a bird with my awkward bandaid-beak.  While all the talk of holes and lost substance makes it sound pretty awful, as does Katy’s analysis that it looks like I got “cheesegrated,”  these wounds are going to heal up fine.  The hole is closed and already looks much better, and the upper lip gouge will probably just leave a badass facial scar.  My freaky mug has already terrified and enthralled many a Danish child on the street and in our hostel. While my front teeth initially had that loose, punched-in-the-face feeling, they have steadied and are really just fine minus some very small chips at the edge, incredible given that they broke my fall.

Better.

Here’s the silver lining of the whole situation: that woman who helped us out initially continued to completely save our asses.  When we got back to Naestved, she was at the station to pick us up.  She took us to the hostel and expedited our booking a room there, as she knew the hostess.  She took us to her home, where she had a glorious chicken dinner prepared.  We ate on her beautiful enclosed back porch with her husband, who had built the house himself and who barely spoke a word of English.  His wife brought out a big container of Heinz Ketchup and asked “all Americans need Ketchup, correct?”  I worked like a champ to politely shove chicken bits through my bandage hole.  After the meal,  she and her husband hitched up their trailer to their little Peugeot and we drove over to get our bikes from the man who had stored them.  After that they took us to the hostel.  Imagining the logistics of doing all of this without her help is scarier to me than another face-plant.  We are totally humbled by her kindness and generosity.

So, what does all of this mean for our bicycle tour (we had planned to arrive in Copenhagen today, Friday, before the fall) and our lengthy Euro-trip thereafter?  Very little.  We are taking a rest-day in Naestved, in this hostel that used to be a convent.  It is just as well, because it is pouring rain and we haven’t done laundry in about twelve days.  We will otherwise continue on as before, though I may do a few more Phantom of the Opera street performances than originally planned in order to make some dough.  Europe, especially Scandinavia, is quite a spendy place. My bike’s front fork is toasted, but I should be able to find one easily here in town.

Stay tuned for news of our triumphant ride, at last, into Copenhagen.  Good health to all those reading, and please, keep the fucking rubber side down.

Bike Tour Update #1: Problems with the German Cycle Network or The Ungrateful Bastard

Some thoughts about bicycling from my tour so far (this was written when we were in Hamburg last Sunday):

*Netherlands outside of Amsterdam: not as bike friendly as I was lead to believe.  In Hoorn and Harlingen, for example, we were very hard pressed to find the bike routes through town.  Harlingen seemed to have a few token bits of separated path through it’s center, but mostly shared roads that felt awfully car-oriented.  Still, people rode there.  Children alone, mothers with children, all of it.  But they weren’t there in the same numbers.  In Hoorn we got badly lost because the bikeway atop the dijk was closed. “turn around and follow the detour signs” was the instruction, and those detour signs were difficult to locate.  I learned later from one of my hosts that the dijk path in Hoorn had been closed for three years. A far cry from my experience cycling into Amsterdam from Schiphol, where a whole side of the freeway had been given over to bikes because the bike-specific tunnel was undergoing maintenance.  All that said, my second visit to Groningen left me much more pleased with the bicycling experience.  The core is very well served by bike lanes and bike streets fanning outwards.

*Saw a moped critical mass in Groningen.  Thirty mopeds, taking over the paths, riding slow, bleeting their awful little horns.  Among the worst things I have ever seen.  To be fair, I don’t think it was actually a politically motivated group, but the association was clear in my mind.

*”Bike touring” is relative and my trip is no big deal: Sure, Katy and I entertained the notion that just maybe we were sorta hot shit for riding our bikes from Amsterdam to Copenhagen.  Then, our very first night, we stayed with a family through warmshowers who had cycled from Amsterdam to Bangkok.  Our first night in Germany we stayed with a couple who had cycled for two years in South America and Central America.  Sheesh.  It is serious business.  We are now incredibly humble to the point of apologizing about our little pedal through the three most bike friendly countries in the world.  Except that…

*Northern Germany; bit of a let down cycling-wise.  The German cycling infrastructure is simple.  They turn part of the sidewalk a different color by using a different paver or different colored brick, and bikes are to travel along that path.  Intersections feature a variety of treatments; at least, they have a striped crossing slightly distinct from, and next to, the ped crossing.  Sometimes they are red thermoplastic.  Sometimes the red thermoplastic has a bike symbol.  The crossing lights sometimes have a bike underneath the ped symbol, probably about 50% of the time on bike routes I’ve been on in Hamburg, Oldenburg, and smaller towns I’ve passed through on the way.

*Dutch pastries and German beer are extremely agreeable, and good fuel for bicycle-operatin’.

*I mentioned hosts and warmshowers above.  We have received great hospitality so far on our ride, with people graciously having us into their homes, preparing delicious meals for us, giving us rooms to sleep in, staying up with us and feeding us beer and conversation until late, and having breakfast ready for us in the morning.  It has changed my understanding of hospitality and I am very grateful. Having the bike-tourist thing in common with folks is a great way to overcome the barriers of stranger-ness.

*Long distance bike wayfinding: awesome, until it’s not.  Both the Netherlands and Germany have very complete and commendable bike signage networks, including major long distance routes denoted by special signs and symbols in addition to the signs indicating the bike direction to the next town.  In the Netherlands, we occasionally lost the “LF” routes we were trying to following, usually in towns.  We suffered minor inconvenience locating them again.  In Germany, we followed the HH/HB from Bremen to Hamburg.  It’s a great, beautiful route and the signs are great… except for when they inexplicably became impossible to follow, contradictory, and then non-existent.  We got turned around, routed right onto freeway off-ramps, and pointed in bizarre directions several times.  I’m grousing, obviously, but I think the point is that it’s essential that long distance routes are done right.

*Reasons I’ve heard that the Dutch like to ride bikes: I’ve been asking everyone (finally getting my class interviews done, hey hey).  First reason given is always that the Netherlands are flat.  Second reason tends to be something about the practicality of cycling (it’s the fastest).  Third reason tends to be the observation that it’s very inconvenient to drive, especially if you also want to stop and park.  Fourth reason usually has to do with the Dutch cultural mindset (my favorite: my host in Groningen told me that the Dutch are stingy, and they will always save a euro or two by cycling, or having their children cycle rather than putting them on public transit.  I’ve also heard it attributed to the flat social hierarchy, the fact that everyone learned as a kid, and one curious observation that, according to the person who shared it with me is a common statement about the Dutch; they are a culture of “6”s, referring to mediocre-but-passing scores (6/10) on schoolwork and exams.  It is meant to imply that the Dutch are not strivers, and are happy to settle for “adequate”).

*Great things I’ve seen:  I was very impressed by the Afsluitdijk, the view from Groningen’s Martinitoren, Bremen’s main square as well as the Böttcherstraße (proof that we can choose to make all of our public space exceptional and unique if we want, no ifs ands or buts), and by the World Triathlon Championships we got to watch today in Hamburg.  Australia took it in a sprint finish.

*Got stung by a bee… in the armpit. Little jerk got through my jacket and my shirt.

*Finally put my helmet on on day 9 of the tour, when the HH/HB to Hamburg took us over some rough cobblestone descents and single track in the rain.  Felt bad about, it was starting to become a whole thing and I was imagining being able to say “yup, carried my helmet with me through three countries and never felt like I needed to put it on.”  Alas, Germany wouldn’t let me get away with it.  The harrowing last few kms into Hamburg would have made the difference if the cobblestones had not.