Is that a boat?!
I’ve been riding the bakfiets full time since Mr. Blazer mashed up my Raleigh. I love my LBS, but they’re a tiny shop. With Memorial Day weekend coming up, they said they’d need at least a week and a half to order the rim and build the wheel. I could have gone to the other shop in town and probably gotten it back sooner—and would have if I didn’t have other bikes to ride—but I couldn’t have ridden there with the kids and the busted wheel all together in the Bakfiets, which is what I did last Friday afternoon when I was the one watching them.
The other shop in town is far down a busy avenue with no shoulder. I have to cross a bridge over the expressway—also with no shoulder—and pass two on/off ramp junctions. I have ridden it twice and it was both times completely unpleasant. I would never take the kids that way. My LBS, on the other hand, is on a quiet, mostly residential street just outside the university campus. The ride there is 100% lovely. I can wait for the new wheel.
I wish I had a picture of the kids and the wheel, because it’s a great example of how the bakfiets makes some tasks easier than they would be with a car. With the bakfiets, I put the kids in, buckle their belts, drop in the wheel, and off we go. We ride right in through the front door of the shop and they can sit in the bike while I drop off the wheel. If we’d driven, I’d have had to wrangle them into their car seats, fold up the stroller and put it in the back with the wheel. Then on the other end: find parking, pull out the stroller, unfold it, unharness the kids, strap them into the stroller, then somehow push a double stroller while carrying a dirty bicycle wheel. Then repeat the whole process to get them home. (Not to mention S had the car all day, anyway).
So the wheel is in the shop and I’m riding the bakfiets to work. It’s hot now, a little summer preview. People are out in droves, on the streets, on their porches. They love talking about the bike and they give it glowing reviews. These interactions alone are enough to convince me utility cycling could take off anywhere if only local governments would dedicate the resources to building infrastructure. People want to ride, they just don’t want to do it without a high level of subjective safety.
Most of the talking is actually shouting and waving from a distance. A woman walking her dogs said it was “the best thing I’ve ever seen,” which is a pretty serious claim and one I probably wouldn’t argue. Mothers immediately launch into safety conversations, namely that they’d much rather have their kids up front where they can see them than trailing behind under a canopy. Another conversation I have repeatedly goes like this:
“Did you make that?”
“No, it’s Dutch.”
“Of course! The Dutch sure do love their bikes.”
Which is true, but it’s not the fetishized kind of love we Americans have for our bikes where components glitter in the fading light of day (N.B. I have plenty of those pictures myself. Who doesn’t like a pretty bike?) The Dutch love their bicycles the way some people love their Hondas: they are reliable transportation, the end. It would hardly be called love if they were asked to define it. It’s so central to their way of life that it would be akin to asking a retired American if he loved Social Security. He wouldn’t call it love, but if you tried to take it from him, you wouldn’t hear the end of it. (Yes, I realize this is probably the world’s saddest analogue.)
The best shout so far came from a guy in a pickup who asked if the bakfiets was a boat. Which got me thinking. Henry, are you reading this? How about an amphibious conversion kit? Four plugs for the drain holes, bolt-on pontoons for the rack instead of panniers, and a flip-down paddlewheel driven by a bottle-generator style something bolted onto a seat stay. Brilliant! You’d have to say goodbye to the dynohub and the lights, but it would certainly be the best thing anybody had ever seen at the beach (or on the canals…?)
Meanwhile, looks like someone has already had this thought. Or at least half of it.
Filed under: bakfiets, Dutch, My Bike | 7 Comments
Tags: amphibious, bakfiets, bicycle, bike, boat, Dutch
I got hit on Bike to Work Day
After eight years of commuting by bike, I got hit by my first car today, Bike to Work Day. I’m fine, by the way.
I came to a stop at a T intersection. I positioned myself in the cross walk because I like to be as far out as possible so everybody sees me. A Blazer approached from the right with its left turn signal on. It slowed to let the opposing traffic clear. I waited, knowing the Blazer was going to turn into the lane next to me. Instead, after the traffic cleared, the guy in the Blazer turned and drove head on into my front wheel.
He got out of his car and was very apologetic. He even offered me $40 for the damage, which was kind and unexpected. But the worst part was what he said: “I didn’t even see you.”
That’s never a valid excuse for a driver. If you’re piloting two tons of glass and steel, you are responsible for seeing everything in your path. It’s a crime that our laws don’t automatically fault drivers in these situations the way Dutch laws do (and that’s one reason they have the safest roads in the world).
But what was especially incredible about his not seeing me is that I couldn’t have been more nakedly visible. It was quarter to 8 in the morning, clear, 70 degrees and sunny. I was stationary and had been before he approached the intersection. On top of that, he was turning into the wrong lane.
He said he’d been watching the kids on the corner to be sure they didn’t dart out when he made his turn. He instead hit the one person who was actually in the road.
It happened slowly. It was no big deal, thankfully. He couldn’t have been going more than 8mph and he was already braking when he ran into my wheel. The Blazer just rolled up on it and the bike stayed where it was. The wheel is tacoed, but not so much that I couldn’t limp the rest of the way into work. It’ll cost a lot more than $40 to have it rebuilt though.
I’m out on my bike everyday, so this was bound to happen, but the irony here is pretty much unavoidable. It reminds me of the Transport for London ad campaign from a few years back, only this time I was the bear.
Filed under: commute, My Bike, Try not to do this | 5 Comments
Tags: bicycle, bike, car, taco, wheel
Bakfiets is a toy
Warning: toddler video.
Filed under: bakfiets, Dutch, Kids | 3 Comments
Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, Kids, toy
Will it fit? Of course it will.
It’s a box of cushions, so it doesn’t weigh as much as it looks it might, but it’s still a huge awkward box. The bakfiets doesn’t care. The only differences between carrying this and other loads is you need a little more room around cars and you can’t see exactly into which potholes the front wheel will land. Otherwise: easy. Especially when you consider if I’d taken the car, I’d have had to have taken out both child seats and folded up the back row in order to fit it in. I was already halfway to FedEx by the time it would’ve taken me to do all that.
Three months in and I’ve reached the point at which you feel completely at ease with a new bike. I know how sharply it corners and how long it needs to stop; I know which gear is best for the terrain and I’m in it before I spin out or get caught too high; I can maneuver with the confidence I have on my Raleigh (but the maneuvers aren’t as sharp, clearly).
The strange revelation is: I’ve come to understand that it’s a bike. That should be intuitive—obviously it’s a bike—but if you haven’t grown up with this style of riding, the novelty of it can put you off. People ask if it’s difficult to handle, if it feels like it’ll tip at any moment, if hills are impossible, etc. All very good questions! While it certainly takes some time to acclimate to its particulars, the answer really is: no, it’s a bike, just like any other. Who would want a bike that’s difficult to handle? Or one which would tip over while you rode? Why should this be any different? Once you understand that, you just get on it and ride and never think about those things again.
P.S. The bakfiets will also make you strong. You really have no choice in that matter. Ride it with your kids and groceries in a moderately hilly city for three months and you will find you’ve added a couple mph to your average speed when you finally get on your road bike for the first time all year. Either that or tire pressure really does make a difference after you get a floor pump with a gauge and discover your tires have been woefully underinflated all these years.
Filed under: bakfiets, Useful Things | Leave a Comment
Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, box
We have a perverted work ethic. What may have started as a religious drive to be closer to God or the effort needed to coax blood from the field stones of New England to survive has in the intervening years turned into nothing more complicated than brute-force quantity over all else. Our work days make the Lowell girls look like teenaged slackers. Our vacation time is little and routinely intruded upon. We get and send emails at all hours of the night and on weekends. If no one else is working at 1am, how is what you’re doing any different from writing lines for mouthing off in high school art class?
But arguably the most egregious thing we do—and the one which directly affects those around us—is we come into work when we’re sick. The culture makes us feel bad for taking a day to recover. It’s an atomized guilt pumped into the ventilation system in every American office. We by now have it in our bones. We offer to work from home. Or we slump into the driver’s seat and against our natural instincts, we drive ourselves in, plague-faced.
And if we cycled to work? If we had a physical barrier which would keep us away if we were unable to pedal for twenty minutes? We’d get the rest we needed. We’d keep from infecting our office mates. We’d know when we were fully recovered and we wouldn’t push ourselves directly into the next round of exhaustion.
That’s what I discovered this week. I could arguably have carted myself in yesterday with the car, fading flu in tow, but I couldn’t have ridden. Turns out I would have been miserable—as I got worse in the afternoon before I got better—and I most definitely wouldn’t have kept my sick to myself. So that’s my new metric. If I don’t feel up to riding, I’m not well enough to work.
Filed under: commute | 1 Comment
Tags: bicycle, bike, commute, sick, work
Maybe no landscape is more common or more recognizable in America than the big box retail highway. It’s everywhere and everywhere it’s the same: four lanes of traffic, lights at the major street intersections and mall entrances, miles and miles of empty sidewalks. What zoning relic mandates those interminable sidewalks? If you want to visit the next shopping complex over, you have to get in your car and drive to it, a la LA Story. Walking is less an option than a death wish.
Above is a picture of one of those complexes off a retail highway near where I live. The orange dot is the only entrance/exit to the entire facility. It’s a T-intersection where the now 6-lane state highway meets the 5-lane access road for the strip mall, movie theater, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. The dot represents this sign:
That’s right. All along this highway and at the mall intersections if you pay close attention, you will see bicycle signage and markings on the road. I can’t begin to tell you what this sign means. Stop for green? Wait for a green light before pulling out into six lanes of 45mph traffic? You think? Whatever the case, it’s a ridiculous conceit. I have ridden my bike in a myriad questionable road situations, but I would never—not even in my youngest idiot days—ride a bicycle on this highway to get to this mall. Look at the intersection more closely:
Satellite photos have a tendency to make everything appear simpler, like a picture of a diagram, but when you’re on the ground this is a very unpleasant junction, even in a car. In the lower right corner on the pavement in the far lane, the DOT has painted bike icons. This road has no shoulder and no dedicated bicycle lane; those icons are essentially sharrows. You’ve waited to turn left into a mall before, so you know just how heavy the traffic density is here. Factor in the impatience multiplier that comes from a day of shopping and you have a lot of unhappy drivers jammed into a road with zero space for bicycles. Do you think the drivers will share? You would be mad to find that answer.
What I can’t understand is how an idea so poorly executed ever made the leap from planning to practice. I’m reminded of the New York City zoning regulations of the 1960s which allowed developers to build taller in exchange for public spaces at the street level. What seemed like a good deal instead became a gift to the developers as they quickly learned to build these spaces as inhospitable and inaccessible as possible, so as not to have to spend to maintain them or actually welcome in anyone from the public.
Is something similar happening here? Did somebody get a grant for cycling infrastructure only to use a fraction of the money for the signs and paint? Skimming off cycling grant money, ha! What would they have made, $500? Occam’s razor says this is more likely good old fashioned incompetence. It’s still a stunner to see it in person. Had anybody involved ever ridden a bike in their life? It’s really that bad.
Filed under: cycling infrastructure | 2 Comments
Tags: bicycle, bike, cycling infrastructure, mall, roads, shopping, traffic
Thank you for the kind words of encouragement, concerned passer-by! Fortunately, for every grouchy old man on the street who disapproves of the bakfiets, we pass dozens of others who are fascinated by the whole endeavor. We met old man on the way to the twins’ 15-month doctor’s appointment this afternoon. On the way back, we stopped for snacks, and S came along. She rode on the rack for the three blocks to the cafe and when we pulled up, the people at the tables outside told us our entrance was the best thing they’d seen all day. (We will shortly get a photo).
I’m continually amazed by people’s enthusiasm for the bakfiets and for bikes in general when we stop to talk. If I were to gauge the state of cycling in our town based on those conversations alone, I would conclude the streets must be clogged with bikes, which they obviously aren’t. That best thing you saw all day could be your life! You just have to get on your bike. It’s not the terrible, awful danger we make it out to be. The longer I ride, the more I’m convinced our unique brand of paranoia and fear is what stunts our drive to get our bikes on the streets.
Now, enjoy this photo of R at the playground, post-check-up, post-shots, post-meltdown, post-juice-and-cookie, post-gravity.
Filed under: bakfiets, Kids | 2 Comments
Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, grouches, Kids, twins
Heavy
Big bag of nails in there somewhere, too.
Filed under: bakfiets | 2 Comments
Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, heavy
Bikes Can Work 