OK, I get it that this is an attempt at whimsy. But ya gotta wonder about an ad agency that sooooo misunderstands the intended audience. It is not the case that women are going to find getting dirty on a bicycle cute. It is not the case that people are going to choose bicycles over cars if riding bicycles makes their lives more difficult.

This image is also counter-factual. One does not have to get dirty or wet riding a bicycle in work clothes. Just check out any photograph at Copenhagen Cycle Chic. If one rides a proper bicycle (i.e. with a chain guard and fenders) one is not likely to suffer the indignity pictured above — an indignity that absolutely will keep average people — average women — from commuting on a bicycle.

You want women riding bicycles to work? Show them this photo:

(Published by permission of Copenhagen Cycle Chic)

What the offending image represents is designers getting a little too cute while understanding a bit too little about the kinds of things that make people not want to ride bicycles.

Thankfully there’s plenty of time before the 2011 Bike to Work Week to kill this idea and dream up something useful.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle commuting, bicycle culture, bicycle equipment, commuting, cycling

Thank you!

Please click here to begin.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle commuting, bicycle culture, bicycle politics, bicycle safety, bicycle trails, cycling

I wanted certain of my demographics to be counted (to name a few):

• 3-person, middle-class family owning 1 car
• Commuting by bicycle and on foot
• Living within 1 mile of work
• Wife works in a home office

I wonder what will change for us by 2020.

Technorati Tags: bicycle commuting, bicycle culture, cycling, walking

My daughter and I ride one block on a sidewalk against traffic.

There — I said it.

This bit of sidewalk merely takes us north on Fremont — a 30-mph collector — to the next residential street — Loren — where the real journey to MSU begins — the entire, grueling 3/4-mile trip.

When I’m riding alone, I pull into traffic on Fremont and execute a proper left turn onto Loren or Delmar. My daughter, who is still getting used to riding in traffic, doesn’t see the point. It’s just one block. It’s just easier and faster to take the sidewalk.

A few times I tried to force the issue by pulling onto Fremont and letting her go her way — thinking she’d pick up the hint.

OK, you can stop laughing now. She’s a teenager. If I want to slow myself down that way then I can just huff and puff to catch up. She’s movin’ on.

I could force the issue by forbidding such behavior. Sidewalk riding can be very dangerous. But playing the parental-power card can be counter-productive. It’s also not a good way to think about riding a bicycle. There are a few circumstances in which the sidewalk is a reasonable choice.

This morning routine isn’t one of those times, IMO, thus my embarrassment. I spend about 20 seconds each morning hoping no one sees me as I follow her lead. She follows my lead in most things now traffic-wise. So that’s a good thing.

Technorati Tags: bicycle commuting, cycling

And by now this walking has become habitual enough that, if for pressing reasons I do not or cannot walk, I feel that an important part of my day is either missing or has been denied me. I feel, intellectually, the loss of walking the way I would feel, physically, the absence of caffeine, life’s most pleasant addictive substance. Deprived of my walk I am deprived of time to be alone, of time to think, to be reminded that I live in the world regardless of how sedentary and abstract my life might otherwise be—in it rather than over or across it. Without my walk I feel bereft of time and occasion to see the built and natural landscapes at human speed, from man’s eye-view.

But, more fundamentally, I am firm in my resolve to walk the mile and a half because it matters to me that I know both how the cold feels and what it means, neither of which can be known by my walking eight steps into an already warm car, driving a very short distance, and then walking a few dozen steps from my warm car to my (usually) heated building. To know what the cold feels like I must have the chance to be cold, and then the resolve to be cold, for how the cold feels is known by observation, and observation (as John Muir knew well) is impossible without a willing subjection of the self. I must feel the regions of the skin tighten, the mysterious surfaces harden. I must feel the burn of exposed flesh in the stinging wind. I must feel the hardening even of the soles of my boots, which in such weather as this lose their cushion. I must feel the many ways in which life itself becomes hard.

Even with the hardness of the cold, walking or riding a bicycle as basic transportation is still a higher quality experience than driving for me. But it’s a quality that you won’t come to know unless you allow yourself to make a commitment. After you come to know it, getting in a car becomes something to be avoided — a nasty, brutish experience best saved for when you have no other choice.

Apparently there’s another winter storm headed our way. If I drove to work I might be worried about it just as I might be worried about the price of gas, which I have again forgotten.

I may get the chance to ride today. My daughter is competing in a debate tournament at a local high school — about three miles away. The roads are clear this morning. But I’d have no problem walking that distance either.

I reject the idea that my transportation choice — burning calories instead of carbon — is a more moral or ethical choice than someone’s choice to  drive a car (although I’m happy to point out the moral failings of how some people operate their cars). I mean no such implication. I’ve written before about changing the world by making quality choices for one’s self (re: Robert Pirsig). Far too many people are stuck in circumstances that make driving a necessity. They are stuck partly by their own choices, but those choices were to a large part constrained by our country’s subsidizing and promoting the automobile as the primary mode of transportation.  It’s partly this recognition that prompted the 1-mile Solution (even this simple idea is not possible for some people).

And, finally, there’s no reason to confine walking and riding a bicycle to purposeful movement from point A to point B. Nothing says you can’t get out there and just do it for the simple joy of it — no matter what the weather is doing.

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, bicycle commuting, car culture, commuting, cycling, transportation, utility cycling, walking, weather