A word about the election

Commuting with my Downtube

Haven't posted in a while because I've been crazy busy. But I love my Downtube bike. It's solid and it rides well. I got a seatpost mounted rack for my work bag and then I found that I couldn't find a way to solidly hook the bag onto the rack, so I had to buy a specially made bag for the rack.

Once we have the time change, I'm going to be riding home in the dark so I have to start thinking about reflectors and stuff.

One complaint about the bike is that it doesn't fold very compactly. I saw another guy on the train with a Dahon and that thing was tiny. I feel self conscious bumping into people with my big ole folder.

My folding bike

So I'm going with the Downtube folding bike, a white one. It should arrive any day now. I'm excited.

I really wanted an orange one, but the white one is what I won on ebay. I'm probably not going to modify it very much other than adding a rack and something to keep it folded on the train.

RIP Corinne Crawford

RIP Corinne Crawford. She sounds like a beautiful, remarkable young woman.

Test embedding video

This is the same video that I posted about earlier. I want to see if I can embed it in my blog. If you haven't watched it yet, here's your chance.

Bike advocacy and conservatives

I know that the vast majority of bike activists out there are left leaning and liberal. That's okay. We all want the same thing. But keep in mind that just because a politician is a liberal doesn't mean he/she is on our side.


Take for instance SF mayor Gavin Newsom. He's a liberal Democrat and he's been terrible for bicyclists. He refused to close Golden Gate Park to car traffic on Saturdays, vetoing the proposal. Compare Gavin to NYC mayor Bloomberg who closed Central Park every day of the week. Mayor Bloomberg may be an independent now, but he ran as a Republican, he closed the park as a Republican, and he is still identified as a Republican. This is especially meaningful to me because I learned how to ride a bike in Central Park on a day when they closed it to cars.

I also found this newsletter titled "The Citizen Cyclist" with the statements below.

Who are our real friends?
Whenever I come to regional or national conferences like this, I always hear about things happening for bikes in Madison because it is a "liberal" place. The reality is, we have found that the liberals in this town would rather patronize us than help us: "Your being too radical, tone it down, you'll never end the American love affair with the automobile" – all given in very fatherly tones as they vote down good bike stuff. I consider this entrenched, smug, liberal tyranny to be a major impediment to progress for biking and walking.

On the state level, the republicans have been our allies more often than the democrats (I'm not a republican by the way). Our republican governor, recognizing the value of bicycling to the state’s economy, has repeatedly reinstated bike/ped money into budgets that the democrats had eviscerated. It was a conservative Republican assemblyman who wrote & sponsored the modernization of our state’s bicycle traffic laws—laws that would make even John Forester [http://www.johnforester.com/] happy! We have a very republican Dane County Supervisor fighting for a bike path in her district; same story in the city. Meanwhile, liberal democrats can’t seem to focus on anything but raiding federal bike funds for more highway building or moronic, ineffective helmet laws. So I hope I’ve made the point that liberal places and liberalism are not the secrets to a bike happy place. Make your allies where you can; speak to whoever will listen. Get obnoxious if you have to.

I'm glad someone else noticed.

Another bicyclist dies

Another San Francisco bicyclist died last week with little fanfare.