I travel very little, and haven't been to many American cities for any length of time, let alone ridden a bike around one. I have always been pretty envious of the good people of Portland, and the legendary support that cyclists find there. If any of you live in Portland or have good knowledge of how it really is, I would love to get some comments. Is it the Cycling Nirvana I have built it up to be in my mind?
This post was prompted by something I read on sweetbike.org recently that only added to my impression that Portland is a zone of alternate reality, a parallel universe of some kind where people aren't even a little uptight.
Apparently, in this land apart, when a group of off-the-wall people leave a big trashy pile of bikes somewhere for use in an off-the-wall cycling activity and some of those bikes get stolen, the powers that be gives said people 10K to build a monument to which said trashy bicycles can be attached.
I'm not a big fan of re-posting the content from other blogs on this one, so check out what I've been describing by clicking here. Can such a place really exist? Portland, as I imagine it anyway, is almost beyond my comprehension.Like I said earlier, if anyone reading this is into dispelling or affirming Portland's mythical status as a cycling town, please go for it in the comments.
Signing off from the very Real and "Normal" London, Ontario,
When you ride your bicycle on the road and act just as a car or motorcycle would act, you are engaging in "Vehicular Cycling". As a year-round bike commuter, I use a mix of riding styles depending on the context. When there is room for me to ride on the right and allow vehicles to pass without having to come too close even when there is opposing traffic, I do so, noting that I never ride as far right as the gutter. I strongly suspect that my version of "too close" is a little closer and scarier than many cyclists would advise, and I am probably assuming more risk than I should, but I'm OK with it for now. I spend 99% of my time on the street, but I have been known to ride on short stretches of sidewalk when it makes sense to me. I never ride a sidewalk with pedestrians on it... that's one of the times it stops making any sense. I treat most Stop signs as Yield signs, and obey all traffic lights with extremely rare exceptions. When it comes to intersections, I go into full VC (Vehicular Cyclist) mode, merge with traffic and use the left or right turn lanes as any car would. I queue jump on the right when it seems safe enough and doable, and on the odd occasion squeeze through gaps between cars and curb that I probably shouldn't.
As you may have guessed, it would be wrong to characterize myself as a true blue Vehicular Cyclist, but I have been hanging out on blogs and web sites that are committed to VC lately. Some of that content has begun to rub off on me, and I am finding myself practicing VC in more situations than I used to. This blog entry is about a section of my "late for work" shortest commuting route that has been made ten times easier by being a Vehicular Cyclist, taking the whole lane and riding on a very busy street rather than on some quiet ones.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and so a video must be worth several million! Please watch the videos that follow for a summary of what I've been writing about. Since I have stopped doing this part of my route the old way, I rode the streets I used to after work in order to get the comparison video; thus the difference in sunlight angle/time of day.
Video 1: My Old, Quiet Street Way
Video 2: My New, Busy Street Way
Ironically, if I were driving my car, I may well follow the "quiet" route in Video 1 in an effort to skip the slow-down associated with the light. On a bicycle, however, I don't have the power or size to just shoot out into traffic the way I could in my car, and using the flow-control features of the big intersection saves me valuable "late for work" seconds or even minutes and lowers my risk and stress. Sometimes, busier is better.
Thanks to stuff like this, I can actually enjoy riding in traffic.
R A N T W I C K 