Flyin' Wheels of Flextro

Congratulations Team,

We conquered the month of May. Many of us rode more than ever before. Every member of the team has logged over a hundred miles.

The next step is the Flying Wheels ride on June 17th. Lots of options to choose from 25, 50, 75 or 100 miles.

Check it out: http://www.cascade.org/EandR/flying/index.cfm

Update: Flextro & Yesler Pedals enjoy a well-deserved pancake fest:

Bike to Work Month ripple effect

It's amazing, the impact of Bike to Work Month around the office. Not just the miles, the motivation, etc., for the team members themselves. But the water-cooler buzz, and the effects tangible and intangible on a lot of folks. Here are some impacts I've noticed:

• Our coworker, Melanie, not part of the team, has just sold her car -- and by happenstance scored a free mountain bike! One of our own Flextroids, Gabriel, might be next to lose the pollute-mobile... Then, maybe Flextroid Jeremy?
• Down the hall a few cubes, floormate Greg, not an official Flextroid either, has scoped out a bike route from South King County to downtown. First steps...
• Gabriel's partner Jill has begun bicycling to work.
• We have gotten to know our teammates better, by going out on morning espresso rides and Friday happy hour rides. This has created new synergies around the office. (And since we're all in the alternative-modes business, this helps further the cause.)
• We have prompted SDOT to fix at least four big ugly bike-tire-eating potholes, thus improving the safety and quality of Seattle's bike environment -- and literally helping pave the way for more bike commuters.
• I've dusted off my comfy lawn-chair bike, the recumbent, after a long hiatus, and realized it's fine for the downtown commute in spite of its supremely laid-back attitude. Flextroid Tom is eying recumbent options. More comfort = more bicycling!
• We've started thinking about implementing some version of a Ride in the Rain challenge for January. UW does this and gets tons of participation (more, it's said, than even UW's May Bike to Work Month participation).
• What else has been happening, inspired by Bike to Work Month?

Bike Movie Night

Wallingford Neighbors for Peace has a great series of documentaries, each followed by cookies and discussion, called Friday Night at the Meaningful Movies. It's a great series and group, and really gets some important, compelling stories out there on a range of topics. On Bike to Work Day there were three short flicks, one about a NYC messenger-entrepreneur, one about a Vancouver fun-bikes & bike-powered machines collective, and one a reflective piece on American culture's peculiarities around bicycling, compared to "everybody-bikes" places like Beijing & Amsterdam.

• The NYC messenger, a very athletic urban rider, is an above-the-knee single amputee -- an injury he sustained when saving a kid bicyclist from getting run over by a truck. Note to all able, nonbicycling citizens: you now officially have No Excuses.
• The East Vancouver group, Pedal Works, featured in Easy Rollin', builds one-off crazy bikes (such velo-mutations are known as choppers), and shares the joy in street festivals featuring pedal-powered sound systems, spin-art paint spinners, and smoothie blenders. They bring joy, know-how, and participatory spirit to all sorts of pedal-power sustainable energy projects. Locally, see Seattle's chopperific Dead Baby Bikes. Also, Pedal Works works with Maya Pedal, supporting home economy in Guatemala with bike-powered laundry machines, etc.
• The third movie (Return of the Scorcher)'s interviewees bespoke of the non-integratedness/non-normality of bike transportation in the US compared to other places with everyday bike transportation. Scenes of thousands of bikes flowing through urban intersections in China were an inspirational marvel. In various everyday-bike places, people bike without making it a sweat-drenching speed contest; they bike in normal daily clothes; they use bikes in myriad utilitarian ways. Upshot: Car dependence is alienating, while bike reliance is invigorating, connecting, inspiring, endearing...

Discussion followed; Bicycle Alliance of Washington (me) and Cascade Bicycle Club (Jack) provided info, and Ron from Everett's Sharing Wheels spoke of his upcoming second annual Bike for Peace from Washington to the other Washington. Discussion touched on: coping with car traffic, getting street repairs in Seattle, going car-free and car-lite, the merits of bikes & equipment both simple & cheap and fancier, helmet laws, getting back on a bike after a childrearing hiatus, and bicycling across the country and the generosity of the peace community...

Next...Flextro: The Movie?

iYa estamos en Mexico!

iArrrrrriba Flextro! Ya hemos biciado mas que 1700 millas -- que chido. iFiestamos, muchachos! [We're already in Mexico! Uuuup with Flextro! We've now bicycled more than 1700 miles -- cool beans. Let's party, dudes!]

Ride of Silence

Joining bicyclists in 200 other cities, Seattlites took to the streets in a silent streaming flow of a thousand bicyclists in the warm evening air last night. It was a recognition and a mourning and a call to action about death and injury on the road. Flextro was there -- Stacie, me, capitan toby, Paulissimo, and others. Afterward my better half and I chatted with Gypsie, who's recovering from being hit by an idiot in a vehicular assault hit and run. Nearby was a friend of hers who rode the Ride of Silence on a tandem, solo, in a skeleton-printed jersey. Watching him bike with the empty bike seat behind him and a symbol of death emblazoned on his shirt, among hundreds of us quietly pedaling up the middle lane of Fourth Avenue downtown, was poignant and powerful.

It's my abiding belief that the vehicular menace is really the elephant in the living room. It's amazing to me that we tolerate the level of destruction of life and limb caused by motor vehicles in the U.S. Deathswise, it's the equivalent of twenty 9/11's every single year. As horribly grim as it was, 9/11 didn't leave very many injuries in its wake, but motor vehicles cause millions. And yet we continue to organize ourselves around, and invest in, car dependence. I think if we would just reflect on it, we would realize that we have found the weapons of mass destruction, and they are all around us. And that there is, if we choose it, a better way.

Feel the bikegeist

Front page lead story in the Seattle P-I today was all about Bike to Work Month ("Seattlites put their soles to the pedals: In May, the streets are for biking"). The gas prices and the nice weather are conspiring to make bicycling to work the preferred alternative. I'm really impressed that there are over 5000 official participants who collectively have saved 14,000 gallons of gas and burned 9.9 million calories in just two weeks! What's more, a quarter of them are brand new converts. With the support of coworkers and local bike groups (and validation from the P-I), more people are trying bicycling. With the Seattle Bicycle Master Plan rushing down the pike (kicking off within weeks, completing this calendar year), you can really feel the bicycle zeitgeist -- or shall we say "bikegeist"?

Flextro Skid Roadies group photos

White Line. A poem by David Stallings

It runs
the dark road,
often coned by my bike light.
The steady line is my focus;
I breathe with it like a woman in labor.
Downhill it is my trusted guide,
but its deeper meaning is in the long uphill.
With its counsel I have reviewed my deepest concerns:
divorce, health, life course, the world.
Patiently listening to arguments
with myself and others,
it remains dispassionate
until thought is exhausted,
and there is just
pumping crank,
deep breath,
and white
line.

But can they fix a seam?

Not to become the Blog de Potholes, but here is a new challenge for the street repair team: longitudinal cracks. This one is on Dexter, southbound south of Lee St. Others are characterized by heaved concrete panels with bike-eating expansion joints. (Inevitably the expansion joint falls exactly where the natural bike desire line is, about 3-4' from parked cars.) Let's see if street repair can tackle this one... and if that is successful, let's see what can be done about some of the other, nastier streets.

Potholes 0. Ranger 3.

This is amazing! I wrote in the two man-eating potholes on my street at 10:30am on Tuesday. By the time I came home on Wednesday they were fixed! Go Pothole Rangers Go!!!

About us, the Flextro Skid Roadies

We're a hybrid of Flexcar Seattle and Metro Commute Trip Reduction. So we're natural, nay zealous, car-free commuters. Both groups are proud sponsors of the Cascade Bicycle Club Education Foundation's Group Health Commute Challenge. We hail from all over town, but we work in the historic Yesler Building (Seattle's 1909 city hall), on America's original Skid Road. If we can only rally this busy group for a photo shoot, we'll post it.

Welcome Crosstown Traffickers! Blog *your* ride

Welcome y'all. What's your commute like? Post a comment!

Pothole rangers deliver! 2.5 business hours to fixed

Great job SDOT! Done when I walked into the building this morning 8:30am...with an extra skim coat by the end of the day.

Before, during & after beauty shots, 5th & Terrace pothole:

Another pothole, encountered by Flextro's own Arklyn @ 12th & Jackson, was submitted to SDOT for repair via web 5/10 evening 8:30pm. Go SDOT...Flextro is watching!

UPDATE 5/11 - Fixed, in less than 24 hrs.

Pot Patrol

Inspired by Emily, I called in two potholes one my street that have been eating people alive lately: Last week I saw a paraplegic man stuck for several moments when his wheel chair fell into the hole and last month my mom blew a tire and bent her rim when the other pothole swallowed her car.

Instant Bike Advocacy: Paging the Pothole Rangers

Getting better bike facilities doesn't need to take months. What can we do during Bike to Work Month to make things better, now? Let's put the city's Pothole Rangers to the test! We have our very own pothole here at the Yesler Building. As observed as we left on Cinco for our Stellar jazz-navigation tour, it's on the southwest corner of 5th & Terrace, in front of the fire hydrant. To get it fixed, I completed the pothole/street repair request form here. (See same link at right, too.)

Here's what I put on the online form, submitted on a late lunch break at 2:57pm on 5/8/06:
Location: 5th Avenue at Terrace St (by Yesler Building).
Description: Pothole on 5th Ave., in front of the fire hydrant at the southwest corner of the intersection. Note: It is in the bicycle travel corridor in the right lane of 5th Ave. Our Bike-to-Work Month team (Flextro Skid Roadies) requests that this be fixed as soon as possible. Thank you very much.

Seattle DOT, the clock is ticking -- and Flextro Skid Roadies are watching! Let's see if it's fixed in 48 hours. Thanks in advance Pothole Rangers. Stay tuned for Pothole Rangers II: The Challenge, in which we find out if they can fix a bike-tire-eating lengthwise seam along a bike lane (or in a bike desire-lane). Also -- submit and share your pothole tales.

UPDATE Tuesday 5/9: Fixed!

Cinco de Maio

It was like the first day of summer vacation

Four friends on four bikes. Blue sky. And a vague destination in mind. Friday night after work four Flextroids set off from the Yesler buidling in search of margaritas in Georgetown. Along the way we relived childhood bike fantasies galore.
Led by intrepid Jazz Navigator Emily we trailblazed unfinished sections of the Chief Sealth; spent a glorious hour zig zagging the ridge of Beacon hill looking for the 'secret' way down to Georgetown; raced sprints to the red lights and finally locked our rides to the fence of Stella pizza on Airport way.

I know you really can't plan this stuff. But I hope it happens again...

Blog your ride

Another beautiful spring day with lots of bicycles out there on the road (and filling up our Goat Hill Garage bike rack). So -- what's your ride like? Stacie, just how does one find one's way here from Lynnwood; or Pam, from Seward Park; or Paulo, from the north 130's? Blog it -- either in comments or by posting (login at Blogger.com). See you in the bike lane! (or the breakroom). Oh, and by the way -- we're in Oregon by now, miles-wise! May-hee-co here we come!

The Transformation of Bus Chick

Yo Flextroids:

Check out this cool blog: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/buschick/

I've been talking to bus chick about combining biking into ther bus routine and she's game. Keep reading her blog to see the transformation of Bus Chick to Biker/Bus Chick.

Happy May! Commute Day 1

A beautiful, cool day to kick off Bike to Work Month! Spring is springing everywhere, puffy clouds above, making for an invigorating, nearly sweat-free commute -- sans rainjacket, yay. On my Wallingford/Fremont-originating commute, I enjoyed cycling up the new, freshly painted westbound bike lane on 34th. This new, vintage 2005 bike lane was something I and others struggled to get put into Fremont Bridge approaches seismic retrofit construction plans back in 2004. The Burke-Gilman Trail was slated to be closed thru Fremont for 18 months, without any provision for westbound cyclists. Yikes!! Last time they did that (for Adobe area construction in 1999-2000), cycling on 34th was totally haywire, with wrongway cyclists using the odd, one-way eastbound bike lane on the south side of the street -- a dangerous bike-on-bike and car-on-bike disaster. So, a bunch of cycle heads (Cascade's David Hiller, me from the Bike Advisory Board, the Bicycle Alliance, and pedestrians, with support of the Fremont N'hood Council, a bike enthusiast from the Fremont Chamber, and others) convinced a rather recalcitrant SDOT capital projects manager to get smart. The result: after a nearly year-long push (involving city councilmembers, SDOT directors, multiple meetings w/capital projects folks and their rather bike-naive consultants) they finally agreed to give up one of two car-driving lanes (parking was agreed to be important by all) and stripe a "temporary" westbound bike lane during trail closure. (And, it's been there the better part of a year, with no traffic issues, 'til other unrelated construction projects kicked in, making Fremont a bit messy overall, regardless of westbound bike lane or no westbound bike lane.) Well, 2007 is when we'll fight to make it permanent, but it was a great win, and every day I bike it and see others bike it I think how great it is that it's there. It's less than half a mile, but it's a beautiful bike lane (striped both on the outside of the bike lane AND the outside of the parking lane), and I'm proud of all the people biking there and enjoying a margin of safety and comfort that they wouldn't otherwise have had while the trail is shut down. Ah, the little victories!

Electrolited

Thanks to cap'n Tobias for the family size can of electrolites. (Flextroids needing salts and mineral replacements can find it in the lunchroom.)

By the way check out the 386 teams already signed up!

My vote for best name so far:

"Weapons of A** Destruction"!!!!