Tag Archives: bike

5 Tips for Biking to Work in the Rain

by LucyMorshead Posted on September 29, 2017

Biking to work is a wonderful way to commute. It’s healthy, eco-friendly and saves you tons of money on gas! However, biking to work becomes instantly a lot more complicated in inclement weather. How do you stay safe when visibility is down and it’s cold and wet outside?

Whether you’re dealing with a thunderstorm or a spring shower, these tips for biking to work in the rain will help you get to work safe, on time and completely dry. Before you know it, you might actually learn to love riding in the rain!

5 Tips for Biking to Work in the Rain

1.?Bundle up

First things first, you need to learn how to layer. Layers trap your body heat, ensuring you stay warm during cooler weather.

If you’ll be riding in the rain, you’re going to want to choose a waterproof jacket, rather than a water-resistant one, to keep you warm and dry. Look for a garment that is seam-sealed (turn the garment inside out to check), but also has vents to help release body moisture without letting rain?in.

Your jacket of choice should also fit snuggly over a wool or synthetic polypropylene-polyester base layer, which will help keep sweat off your body (so you don’t get chilled when you stop moving). Just make sure it doesn’t restrict your movement in any way.

Here are a few bonus features?you’ll want to check for as well:

Comfortable cuffs that fit tight around your wrists
Pockets where you can stash your phone and other essentials

2.?Be as visible as possible

Reflective clothing is your friend! If you’re going riding in the rain, make sure you’re wearing a variety of items that will ensure you stay visible on the road. Some great options include: a high-visibility vest, a flashing?light for both the front and the back of your ride and reflective spray (yes, spray!) that helps you show up in the dark and washes off when you’re done.

3.?Learn?the rules of the road

Biking in the city is hard enough as it is; keep yourself safe by following the rules for bikers on the road. Here are some of the basics:

Behave predictably ? stay visible, leave distance and yield as much as possible
Ride on the right side of the road and not on the sidewalk
Yield before entering major?roadways ? stay behind crosswalks and away from the curb
Look before moving laterally or turning ??check your blindspot and?use hand signals
Use correct lanes ? choose right, left or thru lanes like you would if you were driving
Stay visible to motorists who may cross your path and make it clear you need your space

Following these rules and signaling properly will ensure you stay safe and visible to other drivers on the road.

4. Know your bike

Find?a safe, rarely-trafficked area to test your bike’s behavior. How does it respond to wet conditions when you brake? Do you find it more difficult to control? In what specific scenarios should you be wary when you’re riding for real?

Riding in the rain is more challenging for obvious reasons: everything gets slipperier when?wet. So keep an eye out for painted surfaces, metal manhole covers and?rainbow oil residue.?You’ll also want to be careful when you turn; sudden movements or leaning could cause you to spin out.

5. Embrace it

Unless you live where the sun always shines,?rainy days can really mess with your biking schedule. So brave?the rain, power through with confidence and bike like the hero rider you know you are.

Are you a cyclist? What tips do you have for our other riders? Let us know in the comments!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Tips for Biking to Work in the Rain

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Norway is building a billion-dollar bicycle superhighway

by JaymeCarvosso Posted on March 4, 2016

Norway is building a billion-dollar bicycle superhighway

By on 4 Mar 2016commentsShare

There’s goes Norway, making the rest of us look like lazy, gas-guzzling, emission-belching, planet-wrecking Neanderthals again.

The country announced last week that they will be investing 8 billion Kroner — or nearly $1 billion — in an extensive network of superhighways. For bikes.

The system, as CityLab reports, will include 10 two-lane bike roadways around Norway’s largest cities, designed for both in-city travel and long distance trips. While the new bike infrastructure will surely be good for growing strong lungs and tights buns in Norway, the investment is more about addressing climate change than encouraging exercise: The Norwegian government wants to increase the annual number of bike trips by up to 20 percent by 2030 as part of their plan to reduce the transportation sector’s carbon emissions by half.

There, is however, some resistance: Cycling is less common in Norway than it is in most of Scandinavia, not in small part due to the climate (frigid) and the landscape (mountainous), and some leaders say bikeways are a waste of good Kroner that should be spent rebuilding the nation’s road and rail systems. Besides, much of the country is pitch black and covered in ice for most of the year.

Regardless of the cost, Norway is making moves to invest in infrastructure for the future. The country’s massive fossil fuel industry has been hit by the global downturn in the price of crude oil, leading to a devaluation of their currency and an unbalanced economy. Since oil prices plummeted, fossil fuel employers in Norway have cut 30,000 jobs, and investment in the economy has dropped by a third. Norway, according to economists, must diversify their revenue sources to avoid collapse. And with the investment in biking, they’re diversifying their transit options, too.

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Norway is building a billion-dollar bicycle superhighway

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Missing David Carr

by ConnorHowell Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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David Carr was a bundle of genius wrapped up in the most unlikely packaging. Once, when I was working at the Washington Monthly, he stopped by our scruffy, roach-infested Dupont Circle headquarters for a visit. He didn’t get three feet into the office before another editor physically tried to shove him back out the door. He thought Carr was a homeless person who’d wandered in off the street. Steve Pomper will never live that down, but Carr and I had a good laugh about it. But that was the thing about him, especially as the wheels really started to pop off his battered body: The disguise was deceptive.

Behind the guy who often looked like a derelict was a formidable intellect and an unmatchable gift for language. Carr hired me to work for him at Washington City Paper. Even today, I can re-read my old clips from my days at City Paper and identify the brilliant one-liners that were all Carr. The “jackknife of joy” and other Carrisms that found their way into my stories have become like code words for those of us lucky enough to be in his tribe.

Carr has been a steady figure in my life for 20 years. For someone who had had such a messy personal history, he was a rock as a friend. Even after he launched into media superstardom, and it seemed he knew just about everyone worth knowing, he was always there when it counted. When I got engaged to my then-editor, Erik Wemple, Carr was the very first person we told. He was in my wedding, and gave the appropriately off-color rehearsal dinner toast. When my mother-in-law dropped dead in the supermarket unexpectedly, he was there for the funeral. He scheduled his whole summer last year to make sure he could be around to celebrate Erik’s 50th birthday. He loved my children and they love him.

David Carr, with his favorite people: Jill Rooney Carr (right), Erin, Maddie and Megan Carr Carr family

In spite of the manic pace of both his work and social life, David knew what was important. He was fiercely loyal and just generally fun to have around. Loud and outspoken, he was never afraid to put his foot in his mouth—what he called his “social autism.” Two summers ago, at a lake in the Adirondacks, I introduced him to a coworker and her husband, who was wearing a life jacket on the beach. Carr razzed him mercilessly about sporting the vest on dry land—only to learn later that the guy couldn’t swim. He’d try speaking his loud, terrible Spanish to a street vendor, only to be told later that the vendor was from South Asia. At those moments, he could laugh at himself, and no one ever held those sorts of things against him because Carr’s gaffes were invariably accompanied by such enthusiasm and effusive interest in whomever he was talking to at the time it was impossible not to love him.

To this day, I don’t even know where Carr went to college, which is unusual for anyone who’s spent any time in Washington. He might have liked to drop a few names, but Carr was the ultimate anti-snob. As someone who also has a forgettable college record, I loved that about him. Carr was brilliant, but he also got where he was with agonizing hard work, and working smarter than everyone else, not because of his pedigree or other credentials. That work ethos and determination carried over into his personal life.

Even though he was a physical wreck and a chain smoker, he continued to go on regular bike tours organized by his good friend John Otis. The last trip, in the Adirondacks, he did in spite of a set of ribs broken after falling off his bike in a training ride. For years, I’d wondered how he managed to keep up with the far fitter cyclists he traveled with. I thought maybe he was simply fueled by competitiveness and his determination to keep going in spite of his failing body—a defiant “fuck you” to his own mortality. To an extent, that was all true. But a few years ago, I learned the real secret.

In 2011, I went to China for a visit, and Carr, a man with a friend in every port, hooked me up with his buddy Ruthie, who lived in Shanghai. Over dinner, Ruthie, who’d been on several of the bike trips, disclosed Carr’s secret: He got a head start. Carr would get up and hit the road several hours before the other guys so he could keep up. If anyone had ever wondered how someone like Carr, with his history of addiction and jail and all the other stuff, ever made it to the top of the media pyramid, this story seemed to sum it all up nicely.

Over the past few years, Carr has had a bit of a haunted look about him. He’d lost weight. His health problems seemed to be dogging him more. I think everyone who knew him well recognized, at least subconsciously, that Carr was not going to be on this earth long enough to need a rocking chair. But I think we also had some collective denial about his mortality. To use a cliché he wouldn’t approve of, Carr genuinely was a force of nature. I think maybe we assumed he could go on like that forever, pulling the all-nighters, smoking, drinking gallons of coffee, working like a fiend, and talking, talking and talking. But of course, he couldn’t. And so here we are, devastated, grieving, missing our irreplaceable friend. I think Jake Tapper spoke for a lot of us who knew and loved Carr when he wrote in an anguished tweet today, “What the hell are we going to do now?”

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Missing David Carr

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Bike culture: Not as white as you think

by Bob Hurley Posted on May 29, 2013

Bike culture: Not as white as you think

By Claire Thompson

Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious

Even as it grows in popularity, cycling just can’t shake its reputation as a pastime for spandex- or skinny jean-clad white people. But a new report from the Sierra Club and the League of American Bicyclists challenges that common stereotype, spotlighting a decade of rapid growth in biking among communities of color.

From 2001 to 2009, the percentage of trips taken by bike increased by 50 percent among Latinos, and by 100 percent among African Americans — compared to only a 22-percent increase among whites. This, the report notes, is in spite of the fact that communities of color often lack the kind of infrastructure that makes biking safer, easier, and more appealing. Twenty-six percent of non-whites said they want to ride more but worry about safety (compared to only 19 percent of whites); 47 percent of non-whites said they’d ride more if they had better access to secure places to park and store their bikes (versus 32 percent of white folks).

These safety concerns aren’t unfounded: The report cites data from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition indicating that neighborhoods with the largest share of people of color have lower distributions of bike facilities, and that the lowest-income neighborhoods have the most bike and pedestrian crashes. Those neighborhoods have the most to gain from an increase in cycling: The nation’s poorest families spend the biggest chunk of their income on transportation — 30 percent. The average yearly cost of owning and operating a bike is only $308, compared to $8,220 for an average car.

Simple infrastructure upgrades can have major impacts on riding habits, says the report:

In New Orleans, the installation of a bike lane on South Carrollton Street dramatically increased the number of diverse riders, including a 135% growth in youth, 115% rise in female and 51% increase in African American bicyclists.

Red, Bike & GreenA participant in a Red, Bike & Green family ride.

As traditionally underrepresented cyclists grow in number, groups supporting them are increasingly popping up and pushing for bike-friendly policy changes. The report highlights how organizations like Oakland-founded Red, Bike & Green, L.A.’s Multicultural Communities for Mobility, and Chicago’s Girls Bike Club can give marginalized cyclists a political voice and a support system, both of which are critical for increasing ridership. In Atlanta, for example, local groups rose up against the city’s failure to include Black neighborhoods in its distribution of bike lanes, and successfully petitioned planners to reconsider their designs and refocus funding. And 36 percent of people of color (compared to just 21 percent of whites) say an active riding club would encourage them to bike more.

That need for solidarity is what prompted Jenna Burton to found Red, Bike & Green:

Even in the bike-friendly Bay Area, a black cyclist was a bit of an aberration. This led Burton to start an all-black cycling group, simply because “I wanted other black people to be just as excited about bike riding as I was.”

It’s a simple goal that makes for an effective strategy. The report found African Americans twice as likely as whites to agree that they’d have a better perception of cyclists if they represented a “broader cross section of Americans, such as women, youth and people of color.”

That’s just the change we see happening. And if we want the cycling population to more closely reflect the changing demographics of this country — the women, youth, and people of color leading us into the future — it’s essential that this healthy, sustainable, and cheap transportation option become more accessible and appealing even to those who wouldn’t be caught dead in spandex.

kellan

Does this mysterious sticker represent the family vehicle of the future?

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Will New York’s next mayor keep the city’s bike lanes?

by kastijoo8753 Posted on February 13, 2013

Will New York’s next mayor keep the city’s bike lanes?

By Philip Bump

This May, New York City is expected to unveil its long-awaited bike sharing program, adding 5,500 bikes at various stations around Manhattan and Brooklyn. Eventually, the city will have 10,000 blue, Citi-branded bikes rolling around its streets.

Ed Yourdon

While the city may soon have more bikes, it may very well have fewer bike lanes — depending on who is elected mayor in November. From the Times:

In the early stages of the campaign for mayor, the candidates have expressed little enthusiasm about the expansion of bike lanes, and a few have made comments that suggest they may seek to erase some of them. …

John C. Liu, the city’s comptroller and a likely Democratic candidate for mayor, said in a phone interview that removing existing lanes would be “a likely scenario in some parts of the city,” particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, if he succeeded Mr. Bloomberg. …

Joseph J. Lhota, the former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a Republican candidate for mayor, also said he “could see” removing lanes that he deemed problematic. He noted that some bus drivers along the B63 route in Park Slope, Brooklyn, had complained about the perils of sharing space with bike riders.

Even public advocate Bill de Blasio suggested that bike lanes that “haven’t worked” should be scrapped. (Public advocate, for those wondering, is a New York-specific elected position intended to serve as a sort of civic ombudsman. It is often most effective at preparing candidates to run for other offices.)

Bike advocates and Bloomberg staffers suggest that rolling back bike lanes is unwise and unwelcomed. While opponents of bike lanes are often noisy, the Times also notes that they see 2-to-1 support among New Yorkers.

At least one candidate recognizes the value of bike lanes, even suggesting an expansion. Interestingly, he’s the candidate who came surprisingly close to upsetting Bloomberg’s bid for a third mayoral term in 2009.

Cyclists remember William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller and a likely Democratic candidate, for pledging, during a 2009 campaign against Mr. Bloomberg, to rip out a bike lane on Grand Street if he was elected. In an interview last week, he said he had no intention of removing lanes, and added that he would even consider expanding bike projects if the bike-share program, scheduled to begin in May, proved successful.

If the program is successful, and the city has 10,000 residents and tourists biking around congested stretches of midtown and lower Manhattan, there are two options: more bike lanes and added safety, or inadvertent Critical Mass-style road closures and biker fatalities. The candidates for mayor can be the judge of which will be a more effective tool for winning reelection.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Anti-Agenda 21 bill is back in Arizona, wants to eat your brains

by anjunonstennyao Posted on February 6, 2013

Anti-Agenda 21 bill is back in Arizona, wants to eat your brains

By Susie Cagle

Charles A. Nesci

Which state is valiant and insane enough to lead the fight against the United Nations’ blueprint for a more sustainable world, i.e. those vile and dangerous plans for global social control community gardens and bike paths known as Agenda 21? Yes, it’s wild, libertarian, sprawly, water-importing Arizona!

Last May, less insane heads managed to prevail in the Grand Canyon State, shooting down a bill that would have prohibited state and local governments from adopting anything even a little bit related to sustainability and Agenda 21. But the idea has crawled out of the grave in the form of SB 1403 [PDF], a new bill that would prohibit any local government in Arizona from implementing any “creed, doctrine, principles or any tenet” of Agenda 21.

“Any way you want to describe it, Agenda 21 is a direct attack on the middle class and the working poor,” the bill’s sponsor Sen. Judy Burges said during a hearing on it in 2012. “The primary goal of Agenda 21 is to create social engineering of our citizens and it will impact every aspect of our daily lives.”

Or not at all. In fact, Agenda 21 calls for helping poor people and the environment both. Too bad it’s been sitting around gathering dust for 20ish years!

But speaking of social engineering, Arizona is also looking at a bill that would allow teachers to tell kids that climate change is but a fairy tale! Suddenly I’m not so worried about their bike lanes.

Not even sure what it’s like to live in this crazy place? Here an Arizona community meeting freaks out about both of those things. (Bonus smooth jazz soundtrack. You’re welcome.)

For extra fun, local Sierra Vista, Arizona residents can check out the “Agenda 21 and the Threat to State Sovereignty” presentation next week, presented by the Tea Party and two of the state legislature’s consultants. $5 admission at the door, BYO tin-foil hat.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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