I rode down to Mandarin to meet some friends and ride bicycles. I started the ride with the evening’s storm chasing me. I pedaled furiously to stay out of the wrath of the showers and San Jose Blvd took me out of the path of the storm quickly. I didn’t realize that I was steadily riding into another planet. A parallel planet. The planet of ranch styled homes built for cars.

To the credit of the ‘planning’ department, the parking lane provided along Hendricks between San Marco and Baymeadows is quite nice. Other than the few times you have to move into 50 mph traffic to pass the cars parked on this lane, it pretty much keeps a cyclist out of traffic. Once you reach Baymeadows, it is a different story.

The parking lane becomes a car lane. It is less than 14 feet wide and infested with motorists who haven’t seen a bicycle there before. Everything built here is to the scale of cars. The six lanes of traffic, the numerous strip mall shopping centers with driveways jutting out into the main road, the people stranded on one side of the road looking for ways to cross etc. Even the traffic lights are made for the speed and acceleration of cars. The five of us on bicycles started to cross several traffic lights when they turned amber while we had just stepped into the intersection of a six lane road. Needless to say, the intersecting traffic got their green light while we were still in the intersection.

A bicyclist feels like Gulliver in Brobdingnag where he was the size of a thumb and at a serious disadvantage.

The real problem is in the planning done decades ago. There is no blaming anyone for it now. It has been done and over with. The question is what could be done today to ease transportation issues. When people have to make a choice between car related expenses and food for their kids, it is not a healthy society. This is not a developed society anyone wants to grow up in. This is not a society anyone wants to leave behind. A frequent and well networked bus service and street cars supplementing some form of rail infrastructure comes to mind. Rail not only makes it easier to travel the length and breadth of a large city, it also brings economic development.

Yehuda Moon has the right attitude for riding in this traffic. This comic strip and the company of my friends is what kept me sane during my trip.

I organized a cargo bike picnic ride last Sunday. I wanted to promote the utilitarian aspect of bicycles so people can supplement some of their car trips on a bicycle.

Seven people showed up, including me. The excellent company made up for the lack of participation by far.

The ride was promoted paper free. No posters and leaflets. In the age of blogs, RSS feeds and feed readers, it is pointless to print posters. Ride information was shared on Urban Core and Bikejax, both very  popular websites. I also created a facebook event where 30 or more people agreed to attend in spite of the Tour de Cure going on. Lakshore Shwinn, a local bike shop that carries xtracycles also sent messages on twitter and facebook.

Many people who missed the bicycle ride are probably at work watch oil spewing out of the extraction site on bp’s live feed. They shake their heads in disappointment to bp’s lack of proper oil spill containment and to the damage done to sea life and beaches. They may even shed a tear at the sight of oil drenched birds. They prepare to end their work day and make their way home in the comfort of their gasoline powered cars. Over the weekend, they will probably make their way to the grocery store or a restaurant in their cars, run into friends and talk about boycotting bp, then drive their cars back home.

I like to hope that people would do something to lessen their usage of gasoline. It causes pollution, spills and war. It also supports the car tax. I hope they replace some of their trips with a bicycle. Even a short trip.

I have been riding two days to work and am upping it to three. I am supplementing my bicycle commute to work with my motorcycle. 14 miles is quite long.

I am also drooling on the pictures from the Cargo Bike Race in Copenhagen.

A friend recently moved next door and her work is literally a stone throw away from her apartment. She get a lunch break which she uses to get out of the office and walk her dog. She willingly agreed to walk Laya for me if I chose to ride my bicycle to work. Since I am not in the best of shape, I am only riding to work twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday. I want to get to 3 days and eventually all 5 days.

My work is a 28 mile round trip and it involves climbing the Acosta bridge. The morning rides are very refreshing. The afternoon rides are a little tiring. Between the sun and 5 PM rush hour traffic, I am fighting several battles on my bicycle.

I am riding my xtracycle to work. It is the only long distance bicycle with multiple gears and a rock solid construction. Moreover, the heavy bike gives me a good workout. This is my second week and I can already feel the difference. Moreover, this is an appropriate activity for Bike Month rather than group ride with police escorts like this one: link

Riding a bicycle does not save me a whole lot of money since I am only offsetting minor wear and tear on the motorcycle and negligible fuel usage. Yup, I have been getting over 75 miles per gallon on the little Kawasaki. All I did was reduce my speed on Phillips Highway from 50 to 45. Enjoy the graphs and charts. Happy motoring!

I have a hard time understanding the second amendment. I do not know what the gun-laws are in other countries and my views are not affected by them. When I question the second amendment, all I get is, “This is America and we have the right to bear arms.”

Well, I am sure every country in America does not have the right to bear arms. Semantics aside, I don’t get any reason other than it is their right. The question, “What is the reason it is easy to walk out of a gun store with a semi automatic AR-15?” is answered by rephrasing the question itself, “It is our right to bear arms“. It starts to sound like an infant not wanting to give up their toys, not a reasonable explanation supporting an amendment made to the constitution by the Founding Fathers.

Don’t even get me started on the Concealed Weapons Permit (wikipedia link).

I went shooting at a gun range this weekend. My friend owns a couple of hand guns and we shot them. I shot approximately 100 bullets, most on a Beretta 9mm. My first shot was with the 9mm. It took me by surprise. This gun handled and shot a lot better than the Sig Sauer P238. I even managed to hit a couple of bulls eyes. One in the chest and one in the head.

The mechanics of a gun, like the mechanics of anything well engineered fascinate me. I was excited to operate it, much like I was excited to operate a lathe for the first time. Except, on a lathe, I created a product of value. With the gun, I shot up a target. After we were done with shooting, I was not overcome by a sense of manliness but by a sense of satisfaction and respect for a gun. A bullet packs a lot of power and I hope to never use it. It was also an enjoyable experience.

It has not changed my stand against the second amendment. Cars are not too far from guns. I had a few close calls while riding my bicycle to the gun range. Nothing spectacular, just normal Jacksonville traffic.

It is more difficult to acquire a license to drive a car than it is to purchase a gun and bullets. Allowing motorists to talk on cell phones, change radio channels, make conversations with co-passengers and listen to music at a loud volume while driving is quite irresponsible. A car can be very dangerous even at low speed impacts for people who they hit. With this logic, I should be against the DMV licensing and driving rules too. Well I am and I think everyone should be subject to a mandatory full fledged driving test every other year and all cars should go through an inspection every year.

Just as there is a possibility I might purchase a car again, there is a possibility I might buy a gun. The difference is that if I ever give up my car free life, I will buy a completely utilitarian car. Contrarily, I’d purchase a gun purely as a hobby. I don’t have anything to protect. They can steal my motorcycle, TV and laptop. Everything else is old and used. It is not worth protecting these assets by having someone’s blood on my hands. Protecting a family is different. I don’t have wife and kids and am therefore not qualified to comment on it.

Even if I ever buy a car, I will continue to ride bicycles for transportation. On the other hand, if I ever own a gun, I’ll never carry it concealed.

No position is absolute. Times change and with time changes the angle with which we look at a problem. I often evaluate my position against the car tax. It is a position of protest against the City of Jacksonville making people spend a large sum of money every month in the name of basic necessities.

Days like today make me evaluate my stand. It was starting to rain by the time I was leaving work. I left early to beat the rain. The rain caught up with me by the time I reached I95, the last 4 miles of my 13 mile commute. It is here that grooves are cut along the road to help cars. Motorcycles be damned.

Climbing the Acosta bridge was very challenging. It is already super windy on the bridge. Even more grooves give the motorcycle a mind of its own. By the time the motorcycle climbed near the top of the bridge, the cross wind started to push it into the next lane. The grooves cut on the road aid the wind making the motorcycle even more unstable. There was nothing I could do to compensate the shift. A heavier motorcycle will compensate for the wind and the grooves but it costs more money. If I money was not an object, I would never protest against the car tax.

I reduced my speed, stepped down a gear while making a mental note to not use the front brake. The red Camaro behind me was surprisingly understanding and kept a safe distance while I negotiated a freshly wet curving exit lane. I later saw the sticker “Harley Davidson” on the rear window. They probably knew the limitations of a motorcycle on a windy rainy day on top of a bridge.

This somewhat righteous protest of mine is based on an absolute truth. The truth that even a minimum wage employee is required to either buy a car and pay running costs or waste time and effort waiting for busses.

I feel compelled to carry out this protest even if nobody is listening. This protest was never supposed to be easy.

We have been reinforcing the utilitarian prowess of a bicycle by providing free valet parking at the Riverside Arts Market. People who choose to use their bicycles as modes of transportation are being encouraged at the market.

We have met many amazing people arriving at the market on their bikes. From little kids on trikes to mommies with kids in a trailer. Since we are always occupied at the market guarding the bikes (with our dear lives), we never get an opportunity to ride and hang out with these amazing people. Hence, we came up with the Cargo Bike Picnic Ride. It is a three mile leisurely ride in the friendly streets of Riverside that ends in a picnic. People are encouraged to bring their picnic gear, games, beverages, musical instruments etc. along for the ride.

Information Website: http://shekscrib.com/cargobikepicnic

Date: Sunday 23 May, 2 pm

Start: Five Points Coffee & Spice (820 Lomax)

End: Memorial Park

If you have parked with us, here is a chance to ride with us and hang out at beautiful Memorial Park. If you haven’t parked with us yet, you are welcome too. Anything that can carry cargo is allowed, including your backpack. Bring your friends along for the ride or simply have them meet us at Memorial Park for the picnic.

Having spent the last week bouncing around on my motorcycle in a 20 mph cross wind, I was super sensitive to every feature on the road that is not motorcycle friendly. The most important ones are cracks on the road between lanes and at a curve and the grooves cut on an interstate to facilitate rain water flow. I encounter these grooves on bridges across the St. Johns where the winds are especially choppy. My protest against Car Tax is more challenging than I thought.

Most roadway design engineers are not motorcyclists or bicyclists for that matter. These two groups usually get left out during planning. When a co-worker asked me how my commute has been lately, I decided to bring forth the issue of grooves cut on the road surface. I made a case that it is designed for four wheeled traffic and is potentially unsafe for motorcyclists. Tires get caught in the grooves which make the motorcycle follow the grooves till they get traction back. This happens back and forth and the motorcyclist is helpless in controlling the machine efficiently. Lighter motorcycles like mine feel it more than some heavier ones. An accident at interstate speeds with moving traffic can be fatal.

Motorcyclists are about 2% of registered vehicles. My coworkers made a point that roads are designed for the majority. They argued that it is my choice of lifestyle to ride a motorcycle and the engineers should not have to bend over backwards to accommodate my personal life choices. I am sure some of his comments were friendly banter but it made me think about concept of designing for majority. It effectively puts a price-tag on the value of a motorcyclist’s life. What is an acceptable price of anyone’s life?

What determines majority?

Is it just number of registered cars v/s motorcycles? The cars win hands down. I have designed a different method of scoring majority that is fairer and somewhat biased.

It has two factors:

Factor One > Occupants per 100 lbs

Factor Two > Gallons per 100 mile per occupant

Assumptions:

• Average motorcycle = Suzuki SV 650
• Average Car = Honda Civic
• One occupant per car
• One occupant per motorcycle
• Fuel efficiencies from company websites

Factor One – Occupants in a vehicle per 100 lbs. Single rider on a 650 cc street bike that weighs 500 lbs will have a score of 1/5. A single motorist, which is usually the case, in a Honda Civic weighing 3000 lbs will have a score of 1/30. Every Honda Civic on the road is equivalent to six motorcycles. Factor One result = 6.

Factor Two – Gallons per 100 mile per occupant. A 650 cc motorcycle gets around 55 mpg (city + hwy). Therefore, the single rider uses 1.81 gallons per 100 miles travelled. A 2010 Honda Civic gets 29 mpg (city + hwy). A single occupant uses 3.44 gallons every 100 miles driven. Therefore, a Civic user is 1.9 times the fuel footprint of a motorcycle. Factor Two result = 1.9

Factor One multiplied to Factor Two gives 11.37. Therefore, each motorcycle on the road gets multiplied by 11.37 to become a car equivalent. With motorcycles being 2% of registered vehicles, for every 98 cars on the road, there were 2 motorcycles. Now, for every 98 cars on the road, there are 2 X 11.37 = 22.75 motorcycles on the road. That is a share of 18% of traffic. Even though a minority, it is not negligible any more.

There are factors such as less wear on the road by motorcycles due to low weight thereby requiring less road maintenance that I have not considered. I have also not considered how motorcycles are unfavorable in adverse weather conditions since I ride all year and it has nothing to do with considering roadway design. Noise pollution on some larger cruisers and choppers is also not considered since plenty of cars have loud exhausts and a lot of them also blare loud music. Most motorcycles don’t come with sound systems.

I am a little biased on my two factor calculation but every road designer and transportation engineer is biased towards cars. I don’t feel guilty.

All of the above rant and pseudo-mathematics mostly try to convey that cars take a front seat in any planning. Cars are convenient, safe, protected from elements and quick. Motorcycles are not that convenient, safe with proper training, not protected from elements at all but are quick. Bicycles are neither of the three but probably the safest. Bicycles are convenient if one lives in a bicycle-centric city. Cars do cost the most amount of money to purchase and operate. They suck people deeper into dependence than a commuter motorcycle does. Yet, we promote it.

We are supposed to be the smarter of the mammals!

It is a small sized board that was light enough to be pinned to my cubicle wall. It was the statistics tracker for my car-light days.

Since I was sparsely driving my car, I decided to track what I was exactly doing.

• The first line says when I last filled up my gas tank. 14th august had been 26 days since I I updated the board last. I put my car up for sale (link)  in the beginning of October which shows when I stopped updating the board.
• The next line tracks the gallons used since the last fill up. In 26 days, I had driven 143 miles at the rate of 24.5 miles per gallon and used 5.8 gallons.
• I had ridden 923 miles since I started commuting by bike in the end of May 2008. A coworker added “Days ridden in Tropical Storm : 1″ since I rode to work and back on one of the first days of tropical storm Fay hitting us. Riding in strong winds and rain was challenging but I lived just two miles away. That was also the day I did not get honked or yelled at.
• I tracked days that I had not driven the car. This prompted me to question the times I did drive thereby thinking of alternatives. The xtracycle was purchased out of this statistic.
• My goal was to ride atleast 250 miles a month. Below that, I measured the miles I rode each month. Since I stopped tracking by the end of September, I never updated this board.

Keeping track of various numbers helped me make a sound decision about a drastic change in lifestyle. The anxiety I felt was minimal. It was also a good motivator to keep riding. I did not openly track the money I was saving in car payments and insurance. Those were constant expenses.

Discovering this white board brought me back good memories. Those were very passionate days and played a strong role in making me what I am today. It is because of those days, and that whiteboard that I joined forces with Matt at Bikejax and executed a successful bike valet. We are expanding it this weekend due to higher numbers of commuters to the Arts Market.

The city of Jacksonville would provide recycling buckets for free to its residents. They stopped that for some reason. When I moved to Riverside, I was excited to be able to recycle. People told me that I had to use brown paper bags. Even COJ would pick up waste for recycling only if it is in a marked blue bin or a brown paper bag.

I shop with a canvas bag. It seemed redundant to ask for a brown paper bag to throw away recyclables since not using is better than recycling. I started separating my recyclables from regular trash from day one in my new apartment. The first few loads were thrown with regular trash. I couldn’t find recycling bins anywhere. That till my friend spotted one at Home Depot while scouting for Bike Valet related stuff. I bought one today.

Recycling is the last stage in conservation of resources. The first is reducing consumption. I filled up my new blue bin with junk from the pseudo-recycling-trash-can. It was mostly full of dog food cans, some plastic soda bottles and two beer bottles. The plastic soda bottles are what my friend consumes when he spends time here. I mostly buy fresh produce and very little packaged produce. That keeps my consumption low.

Have you looked inside your recycling bin lately? What can you do to reduce what goes into that bin?

After the middleburgh rest stop at 23 miles, the girls kept riding. They refused to stop every 10 miles or so. I let them pedal ahead and stopped after the intersention of SR 16, 34 miles into the trip. I drank water, let blood flow into places starved of it and checked google maps to find the state park. We had decided to meet at the state park.

Feeling a little refreshed, I got back on the saddle. The road looked uphill as far as the eye could see. That can be a serious demotivator if you are close to hitting your wall. A few miles through, I saw the girls resting outside a white fence of some farm. They asked me to stop but I had a good momentum going. I didn’t want to break it. So, I yelled back,” see you at the state park” and kept going.

41 miles into the trip was Golden Head Branch state park. It costs $2 to get in for a bicyclist. I did not pay and stopped by a bench near the gate. By the time I had mixed a bottle of Gatorade, the girls arrived. They seemed to be in high spirits till they saw my exquisite roast beef sandwich. They had eaten soggy tuna salad sandwiches sitting by that fence.

This stop was also my wall. I had given in all I wanted to give to this trip. I wanted to give up. My butt was hurting but recovering well at stops. My upper back and right shoulder were beginning to hurt more reminding me of all the training I did not do. My legs and quads were totally fine. No sign of any discomfort there. I must have used gears properly. After spending 45 mins at the park, we headed towards Keystone Heights.

There is a new segregated bike path that starts outside this park and goes all the way to Keystone heights. It is about 6 miles long. We passed a lot of lakes with very low water levels. I guess some neighboring big cities (Jacksonville) are sucking up the Aquafir.

The ride though Keystone Heights was the best stretch. The road was curvy and a good mix of some downhill and some uphill. SR 21 goes through downdown Keystone Heights. There is not much shoulder here till you reach Melrose.

There is no better way to see Keystone Heights than on a bicycle.

We stopped at a gas station in the 50 mile mark before reaching Melrose. I sprayed all chains and gears with a grease. The girls got ice for their water. We should have stopped longer and eaten something. All I had was a drink of water. Right after Melrose on SR 26, five miles from this stop, my stomach told me I was hungry. I stopped and watched the girls ride away. After a snack of trail mix and water, after facilitating more blood flow, I set off again. This was 54 miles into the trip. The next six miles were slow. I saw the girls at some point way out in the horizon but never caught up wih them.

At mile 60, I stopped at the intersection of US 301 and SR 26. No sign of the girls here either. Under a shady tree, I devoured some more sandwich, some sweet potato chips and 16 oz of Gatorade. I walked and stretched. 30 mins after this stop, I set off again. The stretch of 26 after 301 is also a joy to ride in. Moreover, Gainesville city limits are less than ten miles away. I powered through this section using the remaining of my quads. The shoulder and arms were killing me.

A mile before the intersection of 223 and 26, the girls called me. They had taken a turn and weren’t sure of it. That was a good call since it would have added a few extra miles to their trip. I met up with them, snacked and drank water, then set off on SR 222. This is NE 39th street which goes along Gainesille airport.

The fast riding seemed to have taken a toll on the girls here. They no longer sped away towards their destination like before. Their speed was somewhere around 6-8 mph and they kept at it chatting and singing. I was having to brake in order to stay behind them. So I took off and reached the Gainesville city limit sign. After I took a picture and called a friend, the girls arrived. We spent more time taking pictures which should show up on facebook soon. With five miles left to go, we got back on the saddles.

We turned on Wlado Rd which has a segregated bike path into the city. Our speeds were a leisurely 10 mph on the 2 miles of this trail.

77.91 miles later, I was taking a hot shower in my friend’s apartment reflecting on this impossible accomplishment.

I did not think I could do it. My appreciation goes out to the girls who after exhaustion and severe sun burn want to ride back. I am catching a ride back. I am just not masochistic enough.

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