This time it is about me.

Been awhile since I personally posted, so here you go.


I was riding the other day, and my pedal fell off, stripped completely, luckily I was only a couple of miles from my house. Note: in case you were wondering it is almost impossible to pedal with only one pedal.

I took the bike to the shop the next day, and saw they had a 2004 Fuji Touring bike ( barely ridden)that someone traded, just happen to be my size. So I bought it. I prefer 26in wheels, but have been having some 700cc withdrawls since i sold my 700cc Surly lht last fall. For the last year I have been riding my 45 lbs steel mountain bike which I love. Now I am riding this Touring bike and I gotta tell you, I am liking it. I am going so dang fast, it is scary, I forgot how much I love steel road bike. The Fuji will make day tours more doable and give me some more distance.

I am a big believer that all bicycles are good.  I like mixing it up.

Right now, I feel like I am a 260 pound Tour de France contender because of the difference in rides. Don't worry the Tour De France said no to my application...something about no cheeseburgers becuase of the steroid fed beef, "screw that, no cheeseburgers, no TDF!" ahhhh C'est la vie, maybe it is for the best.

I saw a cool bike touring group called Wheeled Migration from Chico, CA. Check it out. I may be heading out to Chico soon. I dig what they are all about: Look at the cool poster for their next ride!

I am diging the cool fall weather and I am almost done with my first book. Look out.

Peace until next time, see you on the road.

and remember...Live Free Or Drive! Bill

Panniers & Peanut Butter a book review

Book Review by Bill Poindexter

Panniers & Peanut Butter by Laura Crawford and Russ Roca

“We have a love-hate relationship with Peanut Butter.”
The first sentence of this fantastic book sets the fun mood for the reader.

Panniers & Peanut Butter is a great how to bicycle touring guide by two people who live the lifestyle. Whether you are an arm chair adventurer, a S24O tourist(get the book to find out what this means), a multi day bicycle tourist, or an adventure cyclist, you will, I promise, love this book.  The book is broken up into relevant sections: touring styles, bikes, bedrooms, kitchen, porch, office, and wardrobe. Laura and Russ take turns with the writing which gives this book the rich uniqueness of feeling like you are sitting across a picnic table from them.

They keep it simple, only sharing information about the equipment they are using, how it works for them, and what they like best.

They added some information I have never seen in other books about bicycle touring. A section on their Porch, fun. A surprisingly fascinating section on tying knots with a link to videos on how to tie knots, off beat and extremely helpful. The Office, answers the question what equipment is needed to document the tour while on it.

Quotes, in between chapters, from a relevant past articles on their blog add flavor, my favorite, was the first, “The Great Fear.”

I have to share this from the Great Fear, “My Greater Fear is that I will rot beneath a matrix of fluorescent lights staring at the carpeted walls of a cubicle, or that I will wake knowing exactly what I will be doing every minute of every day for the rest of my waking life, or that I will wait until I am old and enfeebled to give myself permission to live.” Wow!

The photography is incredible and brings you into their adventure.

There are many other links to relevant information. I, with all e-books, make sure I read the text first all the way through, off-line, and then go exploring the links later.

“This e-book is our attempt to get you geared up and excited - and we hope itʼll help you find your way out your front door to explore what lays just beyond your usual path.” From Panniers and Peanut Butter.

The book can be purchased from their site at, http://www.pathlesspedaled.com/.

Enjoy!

Street Films

Are you familiar with Street Films? You should be, they are an amazing organization that in my opinion does more to promote carfree living and alternative transportation than anyone else.

We interviewed one of their team, Clarence Eckerson, jr in April, here is the link to that interview.

CLARENCE ECKERSON JR is the Director of Video Production for Streetfilms. He’s been documenting advocacy transportation for over ten years and been often referred to as “The hardest working man in transportation show biz,” for his dedication to make difficult concepts more accessible and entertaining to the general public. He’s shot and edited over 150 Streetfilms on an eclectic array of topics.


With no formal video training or education in an urban planning field, Clarence attributes much of his accumulated knowledge to never holding a driver’s license. Much as Jane Jacobs channeled her instincts and absorbed all about her, Clarence was always observant while riding a bike, walking or taking transit for commuting and mobility. Realizing the car was given an unfair advantage in thick, pedestrian cities like NYC - where accommodation of the car intrudes on people’s enjoyment of daily life - he wanted to do something about it.

He began volunteering at Transportation Alternatives in 1997 and soon became the head of their Brooklyn Committee campaign. In an effort to inform and cajole more people into riding bikes, he relinquished the post after two years to develop a successful cable program called bikeTV in 2001. That experience led to eventually being hired by Mark Gorton in 2004 to produce mini documentaries of on street conditions in NYC, a few years later that morphed in to Streetfilms.http://www.streetfilms.org/

99% of all footage he shoots has been by bike, foot, train, or bus, which gives his filmmaking a real, in-the-moment feel. Recently, NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told him he was the “Great Translator”, a term he also holds near and dear to his heart.

What is National Complete Streets Coalition and why does our Mayor not know about it.

I was recently (a couple of months ago) at a town hall style meeting in Kansas City with the Mayor. It was sponsored by a pedestrian and cyling advocay group. Toward the end of the meeting someone asked what type of Complete Streets program was in place for KC. The Mayor replied,

"Complete streets? I don't know what that is, what is that?"

Being fairly new to advocacy myself I realized even I did not understand complete streets or the history of it. I thought I would share with you all.

Borrowed from the Complete Streets site:

The National Complete Streets Coalition                                      

"The streets of our cities and towns are an important part of the livability of our communities. They ought to be for everyone, whether young or old, motorist or bicyclist, walker or wheelchair user, bus rider or shopkeeper. But too many of our streets are designed only for speeding cars, or worse, creeping traffic jams.


Now, in communities across the country, a movement is growing to complete the streets. States, cities and towns are asking their planners and engineers to build road networks that are safer, more livable, and welcoming to everyone.

Instituting a complete streets policy ensures that transportation planners and engineers consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind - including bicyclists, public transportation vehicles and riders, and pedestrians of all ages and abilities."

The sight itself is very easy to navigate and host a wealth of information that is relevant to the cause.

Additionally they have a great blog too
http://www.completestreets.org/news-blog/blog/

I would like to encourage anyone interested in learning more about alternative transportation and/or wanting to be involved to check out their site and join.

See you on the road!
Peace, Bill

Cyclists are inferior to motorists?

Inferiority Complex : many pedestrians and cyclists sometimes feel and act like they are inferior to drivers.

Comments by John Forester, P.E.

"I have used the term "cyclist-inferiority" in several applications, but these application all serve to describe aspects of the false concept that cyclists are inferior to motorists.

The political application is that it serves the motoring organizations, and therefore the highway organizations that they control, and in addition many politicians, to consider cyclists as inferior to motorists. By considering cyclists inferior to motorists, government can deny to cyclists some of the important rights that apply, in legal terms, to drivers of vehicles, but which are commonly supposed to apply to motorists, because cyclists and motorists are the only significant users of the nation's roadways. The rights denied are denied purely for the convenience of motorists. The most important of these are the right to use most of the width of the roadway, and the right to use roadways at all when bike lanes or bike paths have been produced, or those roadways which cannot be reached by driveways. The only reason for these restriction s that stands up to scientific analysis is the belief, on the part of motorists, that cyclists delay motorists.

The social application is the extension of the above political excuse to characterize cyclists. The official view is that 95% of cyclists are unable to learn how to obey the traffic laws. Of course, they conceal this behind propagandist jargon, terming the ability to obey the traffic laws "expert skill" and those with it the "elite." Since cyclists are very little different from the population at large, that means that, supposedly, 95% of motorists must be incapable of driving properly. However, the meanness of that attitude is demonstrated immediately by the obvious reluctance of the same motoring organizations and motorists to restrict motor-vehicle driving privilege to those who demonstrate an expert, elite, level of skill. No, as long as you drive a car, only considerably below average skill is required to receive a driving license. It is absurd to consider that most adult cyclists are incapable of knowing how to obey the traffic laws when most adult cyclists, in the USA at least, have been certified by the government as having that knowledge and skill. The only excuse for this absurdity has to be the false idea that riding a bicycle makes you temporarily incompetent, an incompetence from which you recover the moment you get behind the steering wheel of a motor vehicle.

The superstitious application of the phrase cyclist-inferiority refers to the feelings induced in people by the propaganda which has been used to promote motorists' interests. These feelings include the ones that cars own the roads, that cars don't look out for me, that I, when on a bicycle, am an intruder onto their range, from which they will eject me by either threats or death. One pervasive and effective form of that propaganda has been the traditional bike-safety propaganda program (it never was safe cycling instruction and cannot be called that), which taught cyclist-inferiority superstition, no matter how dangerous that was for cyclists. Thirty percent of car-bike collisions in the Cross study (mid 1970s) are caused by the cyclist obeying the precepts of bike-safety education.

The psychological application of the phrase cyclist inferiority refers to the cyclist-inferiority phobia, complex, or superstition, depending on severity of the case. This is the sense that:

"I, the cyclist, don't really belong on the road, which is owned by the cars, and that I am unable to follow the traffic laws for drivers of vehicles, or that if I did I would quickly be smashed."

"The roads are very dangerous places where everybody is against me, and where I have no place that I can call my own to which I could retreat as a place of safety. Since the greatest danger is from cars, which operate to my danger, obviously the greatest danger to me is the same-direction traffic that comes from behind. To protect myself from this great danger, I must do all that I can to avoid same-direction motor traffic, to defer to it when it is present, to always give it the right of way, etc., including promoting bike lanes and bike paths to protect myself from this danger."It suits motorists, which means most people in the USA, and therefore the various governments of the USA, to have cyclists considered inferior to motorists. That provides the excuse for doing things that clear the roads of cyclists for motorists' convenience. And it assists them a whole lot if cyclists cooperate by considering themselves to be inferior to motorists.

For all of these reasons (and there are probably more), it is accurate to apply the name of "cyclist inferiority" to the type of cycling and the associated feelings, superstitions, and political urges that carry out this program of motorist superiority"


John Forester, P.E.




Walk, bike, have fun! Peace, Bill

Abby rode-community profile

I love the beginning of Fall. Apples, pumpkins, cooler weather, the air heavy with change, child like anticipation of the holidays, and time spent with friends and family.

I was for a bike ride to a local farmers market yesterday. I  was meandering through old neighborhoods I serendipitously connected paths with a long time cycling neighbor, Abby.

One of the greatest things about walking, biking, or taking mass transit, it allows people to interact if they choose to and promotes a healthier community.

I first met Abby 10 years ago. I would see her riding in the Prairie Village area, sometimes alone, sometimes with her father. I had just started the car-free life, and I was bicycling for the majority of my transportation needs. I noticed they dressed in regular clothes, comfortable shorts with cotton t-shirts and they never seemed to be in a hurry.  They always seemed happy and content while riding. I remember thinking how special their time together must be. Father and daughter, bicycling though the wilds of Kansas City, exploring, talking, engaging in life, how cool.

Since then, I have seen Abby on the road every year, in all kinds of weather and all times of day. She, like me, mostly rides her bike solo.

Our conversations were always kept to a quick, "Hi," or "How are you?" as we passed each other on the streets.

Until...

Yesterday, after taking a turn on the same street we found ourselves rolling side by side, this time going in the same direction.

We had a great conversation and Abby became more than just a passing snapshot on the road. Chatting about everything from our jobs, to the types of bikes we like to ride, to learning she sometimes commutes to work on her bike from the Waldo area to downtown KC. Married, with two kids I thought it great she incorporates alternative transportation into her life.

I finally headed to the farmers market, she rode with me and then took off on her own to finish her ride whilst I foraged for fresh veggies from some local organic farmers at the Brookside Farmers Market.

It was good to finally connect with Abby.

See you on the road! Peace.

What people are saying

"I enjoy reading your posts and advocacy for biking and using less fossil fuels - I completely agree! A perfect day for me is when I can leave my car in the garage and I can either bike or walk everywhere to do my errands and socializing. We live in a great community that is right on the train line (13 minutes to Philly and my work) and we can walk to the grocery store, movie theater, hardware store, 5+10, restaurants, bars, playground, schools, etc. Living minimally, small footprint and not giving in to the "bigger is better" mentaility that so many Americans have (I hate it!). But it is political and people like to slurp up their energy! " From Dana, a friend in Philly, PA