Wondering why? Some cities are noticed when....

I have started wondering why some cities are listed and noticed as being "cycling friendly" and others not. I see a lot of praise for facilities in various cities. And I see that Ottawa has had them for a while. Back in the 90's we had Contra flow lanes, and we still have one for access to bridge into the city center. Thanks to the NCC we have had multi use recreational paths through out the core. We have had roads built with larger lanes so cars can share. We had campaigns before the web was around calling for vehicles to "share the road". A successful advocacy group the brought Canbike courses to the masses. A sporting group that has weekly rides with some special activity rides for members. We have had very successful valet bike parking at our world class music festival "Bluesfest". Advocacy and education is promoted via Citizens for Safe Cycling, who have been a strong force since the 1970s. We have bike stores who are involved in all aspects of cycling, bike polo, bike racing and even bike riding. We have bike builders who build and ride bikes that the Atomic Zombie would be proud of. The only thing I can think of is we have no custom builders who are local and well known. Does anyone have any other ideas, what are we missing? Do we need famous racers (Gord Fraser, Jim Glover). Fancy night rides, wait we have one the second one is coming this year. Famous ride with lots of riders, how is 2,000 riding from Ottawa to Kingston and back the next day. I have got the ideas started, fill in folks.

Brian

Thoughts on bike parking at Landsdown park

After you had started your blogs on the cycling facilities for the park I started hunting. The best I found is the volunteer staffed San Francisco stadium. It is actually a better idea for volunteers, esp those who want to see the event (for free). The precedent for giving tickets is already in use at the Bank, bus drivers get to see two periods of hockey games (perk with OT). Most of the cyclists who would take advantage of the valet bike park have been well versed at Blues Fest. Both how it is done, and how long after an event it takes to get bikes. And there are members of CFSC who know how big an area is required for close to 700 bikes, and how many volunteers per event. It would have to be done valet style because any other method creates havoc. A good idea would be to utilize the cattle castle or the bldg the farmers market is using for winter. https://picasaweb.google.com/bikeboy999/TripToNAHBS2011#5580266369355491842 This photo is before we figured out the A frame could not take the weight of too many bikes. Here is after we re-enforced the A frames. https://picasaweb.google.com/bikeboy999/TripToNAHBS2011#5580266639771535138 Some of the bikes being stored at the North American Hand made bike show were so unique they were happy with the valet service and did not care about getting their bikes in a quick time. Like this guy's bike, https://picasaweb.google.com/bikeboy999/TripToNAHBS2011#5580267388187045666
I think the most we parked at one time was 300 to 350

Rest of trip aka Montreal part.aka post NAHBS

Well the rest of the trip by train was not as bad because the train out of NY was leaving after daylight. The train arrived early in the AM at Penn station. It was not as long a wait as day 1 as I found that the station had free wifi. So I took out the netbook and plugged into a wall when battery told me to. Around 6:30 am I got restless and decided to lug my pack and go outside of the station and see the streets of NY near the station. WOW, is it ever loud with all the horns honking continually in front of the station/Madison Square Garden street. Since I was getting a bit hungry I decided to go looking for a food I could eat and not have an allergic reaction to. Well I found an eatery that had a great price, $1.99 for two eggs on toast sandwich. As it was being cooked I asked the chef to put a bit of pepper on it, he must of thought I said cover it with pepper. I went back to the waiting area and consumed the peppered egg sandwich. The train was full of people for the trip to Montreal, watched a couple of steve martin movies and enjoyed trip. Arrived in Montreal at 19:40 and walked over the hotel where better half was staying for conference she was attending. Well it was a time for discovery of a diff part of the big city as I had a problem with my netbook. I had to buy a USB stick and find a place to download a bootable copy of Fedora Core 12. I found an internet/computer repair shop that had a reasonable download speed. It took 45 minutes to download the 675mb file. Well I was able to rebuild my netbook so I could check my email and forums. I googled the words "best hamburger Montreal" and found out our favorite place has a bit of competition. This one called M:BGR is one of the top places. La Parayse is really good, fast and inexpensive. M:BGR is really good, fast and pretty expensive and can get down right astronomical. First the funny thing as shown here in this photo and the larger one to show what and where it is.
He shoots


He scores. Here is the burg that I ordered, the waiter told me it was their version of a big Mac. The Big Zak My SO's burger was a regular burger topped with pulled pork.
Well it appears that when we go to Montreal we have to visit
La Paryse and Camellia Sinesis. Well the routine involves inviting which ever member of the family is going to school or living in Montreal. This year was our nephew's turn. Here he is pouring tea to drink, instead of just getting a small pot. click on photo to run video The end of the trip was an uneventful trip back to home by VIA train.

Trip to NAHBS 2010, day 3

Day 3 was just as uneventful as the previous day for the bicycle show part of it. There was a young man with a cool method of carrying a baguette. He was saying that he got the bread for free, but found out that someone was trying to steal his rear wheel at some point earlier in the day.


At the show was this really cool setup, a flame thrower attached to frame.

The photos for the rest of the show that I took on the Sunday. One of my favourites is/was the booth Banjo with the Xtracycle clone. After the show as I was walking back to the hotel I came upon a modified Xtracycle, it looks like someone is making the ride safer for their young ones. I left the hotel for the train a few hours early and decided to go to the british pub in town. However it was closed at the time I went because of an earlier opening for a soccer match. So I found another pub/eatery for a Guiness. While there I stumbled upon a new way to serve a bacon cheeseburger and am happily passing it on. The process is to slice the top and bottom buns in half, cook them like a grilled cheese (gc) sandwich. A slight modification I have made to it is put the onions and bacon in the gc part, and the hamburger after being cooked ends up in the middle. The local restaurant I frequent called Su Casa in Orleans Ont made it with the modifications, and it stays perfectly together unless a slippery tomato is slipped on the meat. Then I went to the train station to wait for the trip home.

On the train trip home I sat down beside a young man who was wearing some closed headphones. As we were talking about headphones and music it came about that he was in a band. I recommend you give it a listen as it is pretty good music. Note: from the download page you can find all sorts of lossy and non-lossy compression.


Enjoy the photos and music.


B

Trip to NAHBS 2010, day 2

Well for day 2 of my trip I woke up and went to the show. Nothing exciting happened except for seeing and photographing some really nice handmade bikes.

Lawn mower powered by human effort


The rest of the day 2 photos are here.

Trip to NAHBS 2010, day 1

Well I left Ottawa by bus for a connecting train to go to NAHBS in Richmond Va. I had to get a drive to the bus station, and I wanted to be kind to my chauffeur. So I decided to take the 6:00am bus instead of a 3:00am bus. My SO/Chauffeur was woken at 5:00am to get me to the bus. One of the reasons I did not chose 3:00 was the weather was fine. Well shortly after leaving Ottawa the weather took a tiny turn for the worse, snow was blowing across the roadway. I thought not a problem the bus is just going to fly through the crap. Well the other road users slowed way down and my worry meter started working overdrive. And there went my chance to nap as I had purposely stayed up so I could sleep on way to train. As the bus continued on we passed vehicles in ditch and one was on it's roof. Worry quotient creeping up more, and I started to think that it was a bad idea to give 90minutes layover time. I talked myself down a few notches by thinking that a big city like Montreal will have bus lanes. Ha, when we got close to the city around 8:00am the bus comes to a complete stop a few times. Since I was at the very front of the bus I asked the driver if they still stopped at the train station. He said, "no, that they go directly to the bus station since last fall". I asked what time did the bus get to the station, and he said "around 8:40-8:50, and the metro is in the station". Well the bus arrived at 8:45 and I got to the Amtrak station to pick up my tickets in 15 minutes, leaving 30 minutes to spare. Well the train left the station on time to head for New York where I had a 6 hour layover. I was hoping to store my luggage in a locking locker while I was going to check out the city. Well since there are no lockers the only thing to do is sit and wait. It was nice to find out that the train to Richmond is electric until Washington when they switch engines. As I got off the train in Richmond I met some fellow passengers on route to the show. One of them was there to be a judge for the show, J.P.Weigle. I was able to get a few hours of shut eye on the train, but not enough. The early morning arrival allowed me to get a room and crash for a while. I then went over to see where the show was, and saw that there was a party that night in the hotel sponsored by Bicycling magazine and Blue Moon beer. At the party there was a contest to see who could ride the 500 virtual meters against the clock. The final was 1k, and the winner of both the men and women are and here There are a few photos to remind me of stages of the trip. Day 1

Santa parade Ottawa 2009

There was an event on Dec 5th where 22 human powered vehicles (and a few e-bikes) participated in a parade. The bicycles ranged from homebuilt tall bike to a short wheel base recumbent bike being pulled along by Rudolph and a mini Santa. Trikes were well represented in both delta and tadpole designs. Blackburnpete was riding his Sun EZ-3, wingbatwu on his Trice and me on my Catrike road. The other trike is one we have nicknamed "hammerhead", in some of the videos you can see the operator lifting the wheels off the pavement. BTW the ring on the front of hammerhead contains leds frozen in distilled water.




When the photos come more description will be available. All particpants had fun and are making plans for our local St. Patty's day parade.