Category Archives: Advocacy

Welcome to Bike Commuting, Try Not To Hurt Yourselves

We’re in the midst of Bike to Work Month. Here in Seattle, it is a big deal. The Cascade Bicycle Club, backed by a small army of corporate sponsors, goes above and beyond to promote bike commuting with the Commute Challenge and a slew of bikey events and parties. Cheesy as some of the promotions can be, they seem to really work.

In May at least, Seattle sees a huge spike in bike commuting. During rush hour, it’s not uncommon to see lines of bikes 20 or 30 deep at red lights along major bike routes. Last year, on bike to work day Cascade estimated there were over 20,000 bike commuters on the road. It’s always a pretty amazing sight to see.

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Elly Blue Wants to Show You Portland by Bike


Elly Blue traveling Portland by Bike.

Bike activist, writer, and previous Bicycle Story interviewee Elly Blue has a new project in the works called PDX by BIKE. She and business partner Meghan Sinnott are working to create a bicycle travel website and publish a companion guide book that helps bicycle tourists rent bikes, see the best sights, find the best way to get to said sights on bike, and attend the best bike events around Portland, Oregon. In their own words:

It’s a travel guidebook, but with a twist. You know all the good stuff at the front of most guide books about local history, catching the bus, which bridges you can bike over, and tips for doin’ it like a local? That’s what’s in our printed guide–but geared towards bikers.

Meanwhile, all our specific listings—like where to rent a bike and what awesome events are going on while you’re in town—will be on the web where they’ll never be out of date. Don’t worry, the printed version tells you the places you can go to use the web.

If you want even more tips for your trip, we’ll send you a custom itinerary based on your interests, complete with bike routes to get there.

The guidebook will be locally printed and full of gorgeous images by local “drawist” Matt Gauck. It will be bursting with our years of observations and collected tips. It is our hope that with this book on hand anybody on any budget can hop off the train in Portland and immediately be biking like a local.

Elly and Meghan are currently crowdsourcing funding for the publication of the companion travel guide. Check out their Kickstarter page, watch their pitch video, and see if this is the sort of bikey project you want to support.

PJ Park: The Long Ride To Maya Pedal


PJ and his Big Dummy in Antigua, Guatemala. Photo from PJ’s blog.

Last week, I wrote a short post about an awesome organization in San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala called Maya Pedal. The group re-purposes old bikes into bicimaquinas—pedal-powered machines used for washing clothing, drawing well water, shelling nuts, milling grain, and more. After I posted it, a friend of mine told me that one of his co-workers at the Mt. Rainier Bike Co-Op in Mt. Rainier, MD is currently volunteering for Maya Pedal. That co-worker is MRBC founder PJ Park who is not only volunteering for Maya Pedal, but rode his bike all the way to San Andrés Itzapa to do so! PJ told me about his work with the organization so far, his long tour from the United States to Guatemala, and what Maya Pedal needs to continue to succeed.

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Maya Pedal: Progress Through Pedal Power


Pedal-driven water pump. Photo from Maya Pedal

Utility bikes have seen a surge in popularity in North America in the last few years. Seeing a long-tail cargo bike or a Dutch Bakfiets go rolling by is no longer cause for a head-snapping, slack-jawed stare—for bicyclists at least; the general population might feel otherwise.  I recently learned of an NGO, however, that puts bikes to work in such remarkable and utilitarian fashions that it puts even the finest smugness flotilla (see BikeSnobNYC for that reference) to shame.

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The Psychology of Cyclist-Hating Drivers

It seems safe to assume that you, the reader of this post on a site dedicated entirely to bikes, are intimately familiar with the special vitriol American drivers reserve for bicyclists. The worst rhetoric presents itself in the comments underneath nearly every mainstream media story that so much as mentions bikes (it’s hard to get in a full rant as you speed by that bastard cyclist rudely using the road built for your car. “Get off the rooaaaa” is usually the best they can muster). Comments range from screeds about bikes not paying for the roads therefore not deserving to ride on them to disgusting quips about injured cyclists getting what they deserved for riding where they don’t belong.

The ignorance and faulty logic of bike-hating Internet commenters is frustrating to no end, but it’s somewhat benign in the grand scheme. When that same hatred manifests in the mind of someone behind the wheel of a two-ton vehicle, however, it is incredibly dangerous. Enraged drivers suddenly feel justified as they try to scare cyclists by “buzzing” them, honking, cutting them off, yelling, or throwing something.

What the drivers often don’t take into consideration (at least I don’t think they do) is the razor-thin line between a scared cyclist and a severely injured cyclist that’s been hit by a car or run off the road. Occasionally drivers take that hatred to extremes and try to intentionally injure or kill cyclists. On of the most sickening examples of this happened in late February when a 47-year old man intentionally plowed his car through a large group of cyclists riding in critical mass in Porte Alegre, Brazil.

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