This news report is a tantalizing look at cycling in Indonesia’s capitol and largest city. There’s a huge grassroots movement (the Bike to Work organization has 50,000 members) and a weekly ciclovia called Carfree Day, but people on bikes still need to contend with terrible traffic and a lack of bike infrastructure. Worth a watch.
Archive | 2011
Real books are just hotter
Posted onJust came across this sweet article by someone who works at one of the last big independent bookstores standing about the need to counter the seductive advertising of e-book readers and remind the world that real books are really freaking rad. His advice: Publishers should tantalize consumers by evoking books’ sensory pleasures: the smell; the […]
A video tour of the bike dance movement
Posted onI’m writing about bike dance teams for one of my upcoming zines. I keep wishing I could include video clips in the zine – it’s a limitation of print, but one of the bonuses of having an accompanying blog. Here’s a selection that spans the wide and fascinating variety of what’s going on out there […]
Biking in Joplin after the tornado
Posted onPhoto from the US Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District Joplin, Missouri resident Chris Patrick emailed yesterday to say he’d been thinking about my writing about bikes and the economy in light of his experiences in the wake of the tornado that destroyed a large part of his town this May. He wrote: “Since […]
Crowdsourcing the revolution
Posted onMy so-called out-of-control life
Posted onSometimes I’m tempted to go where all the successful young lady writers seem to be going these days. I know I have it in me: I could write a damn intense essay casting a glamor on the parts of my life that the lascivious world probably wouldn’t mind reading about. Sex, drugs, despair, abandon, adventure. […]
Adaptive cycling on the go
Posted onWhile I was writing about adaptive cycling for people with disabilities two weeks ago, I remembered the adaptive adventures of my friend Ellee Thalheimer – yep, the one who’s writing the book on bike touring in Oregon. Ellee testing her one-armed setup for tour in 2007.
Bike economics, the book -- almost
Posted onOver breakfast a couple of weeks ago, I decided in between coffee refills that I wasn’t done thinking or writing about the bicycle economy yet. I’ll make it into a book, I decided. The book itself is still a ways off – in the meantime, though, I’m remixing the best parts of the ten columns […]
A news roundup for the carfree at heart
Posted onI’m trying something new – a weekly roundup of the kind of news I follow closely but don’t otherwise have an outlet for compiling. This will be similar for the Monday Roundup, which I’ve been doing for more than two years running at BikePortland. That used to be a general transportation/bikes/urbanism selection of weekly news […]
Minot, after the flood
Posted onMinot before the flood (Photo by Elly Blue) We’re throwing a fundraiser for our friends’ flood relief work in their hometown of Minot, North Dakota. What: Tall Bikes Keep Heads Above Water: Punk Rock Relief for Minot Flooding. When: Saturday, July 30th from 2-7 Where: Microcosm Store parking lot, 636 SE 11th Ave in Portland. […]
Bike touring...do it for the economy
Posted onHere’s another post I’m migrating over from my old blog (now retired). Ellee’s bike touring guidebook to Oregon is now much closer to reality than it was when this was posted a month and a half ago. I’ve been inspired by her passion and entrepreneurialism to embark on some more ambitious publishing projects of my […]
Biking for both of us
Posted onI wrote about disability and adaptive bicycling for Grist this week in part because, this last winter, the topic hit home. One day, shortly after the new year, my partner fell suddenly and mysteriously ill. For three months, on most days, he was barely able to get out of bed and walk across the house. […]
Able to ride
Posted onCyndi Sutter on her cargo trike. My latest column on Grist, up today, is about bicycling with disabilities. As always, when interviewing people for a story, a heartbreaking amount gets cut for the final version. In this case, I particularly wanted to share some of the practical tips people offered for other folks with disabilities […]
Carmageddon -- Bring it on
Posted onDream freeway. In Los Angeles, where apparently they haven’t yet been briefed about the reality of induced demand, they’re spending a billion dollars on widening an eleven mile stretch of freeway across town, the overwhelmingly congested I-405. This weekend they’ll be shutting it down to traffic entirely, and savvy city officials have dubbed the event […]