miss.spin

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/10/we-wont-get-more-women-bikes-until-we-have-stores-cater-them/3541/

This is what I am talking about.

While I am currently studying the impacts of infrastructure on women’s desire to bike, I know from personal experience that new gear is always a persuasive factor in hopping on the ol’ steel steed. And I have to admit that I turned away from the idea of a women’s specific road frame for this bike back in my roadie-heavy days, but my growing knowledge of women’s travel behavior is showing me that it is okay for myself or anyone else to feel more comfortable using certain “women’s specific” gear. Whatever makes it easier for the ladies to choose a bike over a car for one, half, or all of their trips.

Thanks to Paul, my European traveling companion, for the link.

Susan B. Anthony 1896 taken from Mia Birk’s novel Joyride

If not for the mention of suffrage I could believe that this quote was from recent.

Announced last night at the Pro walk/ Pro bike conference was the host city for 2014’s gathering. It is none other than my beloved hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! Check out the Post Gazette’s article here. I received the news a few days earlier thanks to a few fellow Pittsburghers from BikePGH and the City of Pittsburgh attending the conference.

Steve Patchan, the City’s incredibly tall Bicycle Coordinator, along with Scott Bricker, Executive Director of BikePGH, presented the exciting news. Steve and Scott did a great job of showing Pittsburgh’s inherent character and remarkable infrastructure (both bike/ped and other) along with a little Pittsburgh humor that satiated my homesickness for the ‘Burgh. 

Steve and me

I have learned a ton and made a handful of great connections at Pro walk/Pro bike. However, I think what I have taken away from attending this conference is even more confusion of what coast I will end up on in one year. I have to say that thanks to Steve, Scott, and the rest of the Pittsburgh staff I had the pleasure of hanging out with I am being swayed back to the East coast quite easily.

Mikael Colville Andersen, Pro Walk/ Pro Bike 2012, Long Beach California

I am in Long Beach, California for Project for Public Spaces’ Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference. It feels pretty incredible to be in a room with 900+ professionals all of whom believe in the power of bicycling and walking to shape a community.

The main reason I am attending (and the reason for this blog) is to attend the first ever National Women’s Bicycling Summit on Thursday. Check out the lineup of speakers here.

Needless to say, I am giddy with excitement to be here. Expect summary posts to wrangle all of this amazing information I will be absorbing!

This video was taken over the course of a year by Red Peak Branding in New York City. It shows a time-lapse video of an old but accessorized bicycle being slowly picked away, component by component, until all that is left is the frame. Then, on day 270 the frame vanishes too.

I had to watch it a couple times to pick up on some of the neat details the original article brings up. The theft aspect is not as striking to me as a Eugene resident. We see this kind of bike vandalism quite often. I want to do an experiment like this, but I fear it will not prove to be very interesting material. Two weeks in the bike may be locked up safe and sound one day, and then on day 15 it very well may be completely missing. This is a highly likely scenario that would provide but 20 or so photos. It would be interesting to see how long it remained intact in comparison to New York City, the two cities that Kryptonite does not ensure bicycles using the company’s locks. Maybe I will give it a spin anyways.

Disclaimer: Miss Spin does not advocate for any kind bike theft. However, she does advocate for any kind of bicycle-related time-lapse videos.

I pulled apart Oregon’s House Bill 3149 (HB 3149) a while ago for a policy brief. It was a policy insuring car owners who opted to enroll their vehicle in a peer-to-peer carsharing system, making some money while their car sat idle for odd hours of the day.

If any of you are like me you’ve got a couple of extra bikes just lying around your house waiting to be ridden. You have the road bike for riding-riding and racing, the commuter which will most likely not be rentable because it is almost always in use by you, and you have the 1-2 speed cruiser (mine is soon to be introduced in a post to come, stay tuned!). This website allows you (well, you in New York and San Francisco) to put one of your steeds up for rent for a price per day determined by you. Prices range from $4 to $50 for bikes of all sorts. Check out the details on the link provided.

I would love to make some cash money off of my lovely steeds when not in use and help out a fellow bike enthusiast. And this is just another way showing that bikes can use the same systems that cars are implementing. Fingers crossed that it is successful.

Bill Nye’s City of the Future. Just disregard the fact that Bill also has a “how to talk to aliens” video linked on the youtube page.

Cheers to a constant tailwind.

One year ago I shipped my bike across the country. I disassembled the components, lugged the 56 pound case two blocks away from my temporary home at Fox Way, said goodbye to a fantastic job selling chocolate, hugged some of my nearest and dearest friends for the last time, and put on my metaphorical helmet to prepare for a new life in Oregon.

My legs have not stopped pedaling since.

p.s. nearest and dearest friends- come visit!

I recently wrote a letter to Mayor Kitty Piercy. It was not a letter of complaint. It was not a letter of praise (although she constantly does wonderful things). It was a letter to suggest a temporary change.

When I returned from my European bicycling adventure I hopped on my bike and transgressed back to my old travel behaviors and favorite routes. I intended to take the 12^th Avenue bike route from Polk Street to the University area, but alas I was confronted with a blockade. I had just come back from a month of being catered to as a cyclist through construction and then I encounter this:

It was startling and I had no idea whether to go left on a 3-lane one-way street (11^th Avenue) and ride on the sidewalk against traffic or go right on another 3-lane one-way street where I would have to cross traffic to enter the bike lane which then swerves into a funky little S-shape to get through the intersection. Neither way was pleasant, and neither way was my beloved, safe, residential, mid-block connector on the 12th Avenue bike route.

The red pin marks the beginning of the construction on the 12th Avenue bike route, stretching across the entire block. One way streets are both north and south of the red pin. 12th Avenue is a beautiful ride, primarily residential and not highly traveled by cars.

I immediately got angry and thought “why didn’t the City think of a way to reroute bicycles?” and then I realized that I am an intelligent individual that just returned from a month of study with a wealth of knowledge. I can apply some of that knowledge right here. Marc, my professor, urged us to find ways to apply what we saw in Europe to our own city. I was having a really hard time doing this mainly because the changes seem so drastic for our roads.

But this can be done. There is constant buzz amidst the UO campus about making 13th Avenue into a two-way cycle track. There just never seems to be enough persuasion for it to happen. But now that a primary east-west bike route is out of commission for X amount of time, and that construction is for a student-like residential complex, why not experiment with a two-way option for cyclists. It could be used to reroute cyclists in a safe way during construction and serve as a temporary trial run for future possibilities. When construction is done it can be removed…or it can stay.

My professor’s urge for change lingered in my head for a few days until I finally reached my breaking point. The sidewalk I was using as a detour had been blocked off, and no alternative was offered for the users (bikes or pedestrians). I had to say something, so I posted a message on my study abroad class’s Facebook group suggesting a change. Marc piped up and encouraged me to “tell the City, tell [my] friends to tell the City, tell them to tell the City.” I wrote a letter to good ol’ Kitty Piercy and hand delivered it to the City Managers office last week. Contact me if you would like to read and if you feel the urge to contact her yourself.

And alas, this is how I decided to reach more people. If you ride 12^th, if you ride in West Eugene, if you ride a bike at all in Eugene, if you are my mom or sister and are worried about my safety riding the wrong way on one-way streets (only once because of the dag nab sidewalk closure), if you want to see bicycle detours during construction just like car detours tell the City of Eugene. Write the transportation planners a letter, give them a call, pop into the office and say something to the transportation planning group, tell their interns Hannah and Kory, tell someone and make it aware.