Off the Rack, On Your Back

Buster Keaton exhibits proper dandy cycling form.

Myself and a few cycling designer colleagues often like to bemoan the fact that there is very little fashionable clothing you could wear cycling. Of course there is plenty of high-performance gear but, the argument goes, nothing you could wear to work. Something that allowed movement, breathability, water resistance and practical, well-placed pockets.

That was then, this is now. Our new complaint is more likely that there is no fashionable cycling clothing you can afford. As that much maligned urban creature, the Hipster, has taken to cycling (especially cycling on bikes without fenders or chain guards), there are an increasing number of clothing options from casual to, well, not so casual. There are doubts about the financial viability of a dinner jacket or tuxedo made for cycling.

In fact, there are so many options, mostly expensive ones, that it would be impractical to tackle them all in one post. When a company like Levi's dedicates an entire line of jeans and jackets to cycle commuters you realize the days of this as a niche market are numbered.

For myself, I contend that it's really more about the bike than having high-performance kit designed to look like street fashion. A commuting-friendly bike equipped with baskets, racks, fenders and a chain guard would most likely accommodate any clothing. Yet, there is something really great about having clothing that deals with sweat and rain that you can wear anywhere. I admit to having a minor jacket fetish (I own more stupid looking Gore-Tex jackets than one man should admit). I can't explain it other than to say for years I wore ill-fitting, poorly cut clothing from outdoor outfitters because they were lightweight and water resistant and I didn't even commute by bike. The only problem was I looked like a German tourist reading to hike the highest peaks. No offense to German tourists, but, you know, fanny packs… really?

To that end I'm going to opine about the following companies and their wares. I'm sure there are more, and this list may be expanded but if you're looking for such clothing and accessories and don't want to bother with my bullshit, here's the list. There is a North American bias and I know there are European and Japanese brands not shown here, but difficulty in availability means they would be impracticable to show here.

Levi's Commuter Line
Rapha
Aether Apparel
Outlier
Vulpine
Betabrand
Arc'teryx Veilance
Nau
Icebreaker
Chrome Industries
Mission Workshop
MEC

My Morning Jacket

This morning it was raining a bit so even though my "ride" to work is two minutes or less, I threw on my light-weight rain jacket (it's still very hot in Toronto). I didn't bother throwing the rain cover on my knapsack.

Two minutes later, my laptop bag was soaked, my arms were drenched and my shoes soaked through. Two minutes. For two minutes it was like riding through a car wash. When I sat at my desk, I double checked three of my four weather apps, all which were reporting light rain. The amount of rain was small, the intensity would've power washed graffiti from brick walls.

“…an increasing trend in extreme events”

Light rain is not actually a concern. My beloved Castelli Leggero jacket is perfect on hot days with light rain, but that was not what I just rode in. My typical approach to wet weather has been to wear light weight, quick dry clothing; you're going to get wet but at least you can dry out quickly. But as I've grown tired of wearing trail clothing and eventually just started wearing street clothes (because let's face it, trail gear might look normal in Seattle or Ottawa but not anywhere else). That meant riding a bike with fenders and chain guard to minimize street spray and just some typical rain jacket. As I started extending my riding season, fenders and rain jacket just didn't cut it. This spring, as wet and cold as it was, I thought I had cracked this problem. Comfortable merino wool base layers,  light weight rain gear, plus a bike with fenders. But today, that "light weight rain gear" let me down. Don't get me wrong, the Leggero jacket is still the tiny perfect jacket to throw in a bag or take on a ride for just-in-case scenarios, just not for it-is-raining-like-an-Indian-monsoon type scenario.

Which is in fact, the real problem. You can read all about it in this report: Historical Trends In Short Duration Rainfall In The Greater Toronto Area
The upshot is this for a ten-year period: "No consistent trend in annual extremes was identified but an increasing trend in extreme events for some months, particularly May, was identified."

Sort of like what happened in July when a typical month's worth of rain fell in a few hours. The total rainfall for the month wasn't significantly greater but the intensity of it meant extreme flooding and crop damage. Thus our storm sewers and other hydrological structures need to be designed for extreme rainfall, not typical rainfall.

And not just our "hydrological structures" but also our hydrological clothing. So I decided to just give up on all my other kind of "okay" rain jackets and fork over well earned dollars to purchase one known to be one of the best on the market. I also upgraded my rain pants. I'm done messing around. No more mister nice guy. I don't care if I look like a member of the junior SWAT team or an astronaut on furlough. I just want to arrive dry-ish. For awhile I've had different jackets for different weather; one for wind (Gore-Tex), one for hard rain, but not breathable and no hood (Cannondale), one 100% waterproof not breathable with hood (MEC) and one for light wind and rain (Castelli).

Now, with this Showers Pass jacket I'll have a water and wind resistant, breathable jacket with detachable hood. I stop here. No more will I wonder what else can I do. I will have done everything and this is it. This is as far as I go. Hopefully, I will go far.

il traffico Romano

In economically depressed Italy, bicycles have outsold cars by as much as a quarter of a million in the past year. Though as you can tell from the video at this link, my guess is that helmet sales are in a slump.

I wonder if Italians, like Americans after World War II, saw bicycles as a sign of poverty rather simply a pleasurable and practical mode of transit. As their affluence grew after the War years, did they turn their hopes and aspirations to automobiles and abandon cycling? Think of The Bicycle Thieves where the father's fate depends on a bicycle and anyone seen as a bike thief was practically lynched. Or is this more of a Roman thing, where the frenetic pace of traffic simply made cycling too hazardous or intimidating? It's so strange that countries with a great sport cycling traditions such as Italy or Belgium could have cities like Rome and Brussels that lack cycling infrastructure. Of course, it's all relative. I've been told by people who lived in Rome they never saw a cyclist or it was rare or only someone decked in Lycra. I was told a similar thing about Brussels but when I was last there, a new bike share program was in place and cyclists seemed common enough. Compared to Toronto's streets, London seems like a vision of Hell's Outer Ring Roads yet cycling continues to grow there. While I probably don't agree with Boris Johnson on too many things, I do agree with the need, as he puts it, to "de-lycrify" cycling.

Enjoying cycling for sport is great. Enjoying cycling for just everyday life is important. Additionally, I've only just discovered that Lycra is a product of Invista owned by Koch Industries, Inc., owned by the notorious big-business-small-taxes-pro-oil Koch bros. So, you know, it's sort of ironic that a product so closely linked to sports such as cycling is produced by a company much more interested in the success of the automotive sector.

Not that a ban on Lycra from cyclists would put a dent in Koch Industries bottom line, but it seems pertinent to at least recognize the irony. The stretchy, comfy, stinky, easily-laundered, non-ironing irony.

Ride On

Just over a week ago I rode in the Ride to Conquer Cancer which benefits the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Luckily, over 220 kilometres I didn't have a single "mechanical" and only a couple of times did I have to tell my legs to "shut up". Hopefully, this video above will give some insight on what the ride was like.

The work of the people at Princess Margaret and advancements they've made in the treatment of cancer have been remarkable but there is still a lot to be done. That's why this ride is important. That's why the money everybody gave is important.

Years ago a friend asked me if I cared about money, and I said, "Yes, yes I do."

He asked, "Why? Money can't buy you happiness? It can't buy you love?"

I knew my answer then, and I know it now. Money buys freedom. But it buys more than that. Money buys the resources we need to find new treatments and fund research. I think it was Pierre Burton who wrote about the coercion of poverty, and if funding or lack thereof is one of the things coercing how we cure a disease, that seems to be the easiest of many complex problems to solve.

The total amount raised in this year's ride was over $19 million. It's said to be the largest fundraising event in Canada. While I was enjoying myself out on the open road, I also enjoyed meeting so many other riders, some far more experienced than me, and some just starting out. It was a privilege and humbling and I'm glad I was able to do it with the help of everyone who contributed.

My personal "history of fundraising" is fraught with unsold boxes of chocolate covered almonds or raffle tickets so I was pretty intimidated with the minimum goal you agree to when you sign up for the ride.

Thanks again, again and again.

Begriming One City at a Time

“Apparently Rabinowitz's hearing is going because she can't hear how ludicrous she sounds. ”

I don't live in New York City. Sometimes I wish I did, though now is not one of those times. The furor (or is it "Führer"?) over the bike-share program in New York right now is running unusually hot. While some are already claiming its success, others, namely bitchy old Conservatives, or people who have lost parking spots are claiming the program is more evidence of the dictator Bloomberg running roughshod over citizen rights. In this video, Pulitzer Prize winning conservative journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz uses phrases such as "Fascist" to describe Bloomberg, saying the bike program "begrimes" the city, controlled by the bike lobby which is an "all powerful enterprise". Who's running NYC anyway? Is it Mayor Bloomberg, the dictatorial Fascist or the all powerful bike lobby? I doubt two such undeniably evil forces could peacefully co-exist. Someone please explain to me why Conservatives are so quick to trot out words like "Fascist", "dictator" or "Socialist" when they are displeased with progressive policies? I'll never understand the guile and hatefulness of the Conservative mind. What, exactly is so frightening about a bicycle? A few hundred bicycles are "begriming" the city, but a century of the internal combustion engine is fine? I hate to tell you this, Dot, if you don't mind me referring to you with that belittling nickname, but that thick layer of grime covering New York City limestone and granite (which is probably from Indiana anyway) and smudging your summer whites is from automotive traffic, not bicycles. Apparently Rabinowitz's hearing is going because she can't hear how ludicrous she sounds.

Another claim I keep hearing is that the racks of Citibank bikes are a fire hazard? I assume that if cars were parked there, they wouldn't be a hazard because they could be towed away? Or that "New York isn't Paris, or London, or Amsterdam". If New Yorkers really think their streets are more dangerous than London's, I have news for you. New York streets are like buttercup filled meadows compared to the insanity that is London streets.



None of this unexpected from the WSJ however. I'll never really understand the ire of conservatives versus bicycles? Bicycles are completely unthreatening. There has been one death of a pedestrian from being struck by a cyclist in over a decade in Toronto. Dozens more pedestrians and cyclists are injured or killed by automobiles every year. Bikes without bicycle lanes don't take any of the road away from cars or trucks, and even less than that when in bike lanes. Bicycles do not impede the traffic of commuters, emergency or commercial vehicles. Bicycles do not cause road congestion or fuel price hikes – which, conservatives fail to notice, is caused by a failure of Capitalist markets and the near monopoly of three companies colluding on prices and supply via their refining facilities. Sadly, it is true that some cyclists ride like assholes and disobey traffic regulations. I'm only glad that drivers are there as shining examples of vehicles that never roll through stop signs, red lights, never park illegally, always signal when required, make safe lane changes, never go the wrong way on one-way streets or hardly ever drive on the sidewalk. That was sarcasm. A dull tool used to explain simple arguments to stupid people.

What is Rabinowitz so angry about? That she has to look before opening her cab door? No, it's that bike racks look distasteful in fairytale New York. Horse shit from mounted police or Central Park buggies is okay. Gaudy electronic advertising is mandated in Times Square not that the Times is located there anymore. Let's be honest. She doesn't care about fire hazards or cyclist deaths. She just doesn't like the way the bike-share stations look. She also doesn't like Mayor Bloomberg and his "nanny-state" policies. My guess is Dorothy Rabinowitz likes Tiffany's, breakfast at Balthazar, seeing shiny limos transporting high-priced whores to coked-up overpaid financiers, gleaming hotels which have neither rat shit in the basement nor bed bugs in the linens, rows of yellow cabs idling in the streets and lovers sitting on benches looking at the Brooklyn Bridge – though why they can't look at the Brooklyn Bridge from the back of their limo is beyond me.

It remains to be seen whether New York's Citibank Bike-Share program will be a success or a failure but I think you have to wait and see. Or you could be like Dorothy Rabinowitz and spew bile and rhetoric without reason or intelligence.

Update: As expected, the Bike Snob has had a lot more fun with this over at his blog Bike Snob NYC. Enjoy.

Bowling Shoes For Your Head

These helmet rental Vending Machines aim to keep cyclists using a bike share program safe… buuuuuuut part of me thinks it's a way to cover liability issues surrounding rented bikes without helmets.

HelmetHub hasn't rolled out in any cities yet but I imagine they are targeting cities like London, Paris, Montreal and New York with extensive bike share programs. Users can rent the helmets or buy them. One reason Bixi can't even approach Vancouver is their tyrannical local bike helmet law means you'd have to bring your own helmet to ride a rented bike. Now that there's been a death in Toronto after someone tried doing bmx style bike tricks on a Bixi, there might be some acceptance of the idea of this bowling shoe for your head here too. The details of that death, a guy not wearing a helmet trying tricks on a Bixi bike at 3:45 AM at Underpass Park, led police to conclude "Death by Misadventure" – in other words not a typical use case – meant it didn't really lead to any helmet law rally. That and mayoral scandals have kept any other issue off the radar. Though CBC did their best by constantly referring to the bike as a "Bixi" as if the brand should sound alarms.

My reaction is somewhere between "Ugh…" and "what the 'eff'?" or similar derivatives. Who would want to wear someone else's lid? Also the size of the kiosks are akin to two stacked refrigerators which I doubt would be acceptable in New York City where affluent neighbourhoods have already complained about the scale of the bike share racks appearing on their streets (take one of many pills you probably have laying around to control your mood, New Yorkers). Not to mention how these things vend the helmets out the bottom into a metal rack where if said helmet were to fall to the ground it would void the warranty (another issue I have with helmets is any unseen crack makes the thing instantly useless so say standards agencies such as Snell and CSA thus fuelling fasle sense of safety and righteousness of the wearer).

I do wear a helmet but only so I have a place to put my Obey sticker, and maybe to shut people up about it. Yet, I don't care for it all. Not so much for the helmet hair (you need hair to have that problem, I presume) but my particularly and peculiarly small noggin and unique physiology mean the strap of any helmet of any sport puts a most unwanted strangle hold on my throat right where that gag-reflex starts.

So then, "thumbs down" on another convoluted way for one group to cover their ass by making another group cover their head.

New Greenbelt Bike Route

This interesting development came to light today. Someone is finally realizing that Ontario could replicate Quebec's Route Verte with only a modest investment in signage, planning and marketing by focusing on the Greenbelt. Ontario is full of 100 km rides that are disconnected by rail lines and expressways, leaving only the most intrepid cyclist to endure. Providing a planned route through the Greenbelt will make bike touring easier and bring tourists to locations they might not go to.

All of this makes perfect sense. Cycling is a popular tourism activity. To my knowledge a recent report suggested some 80% of tourists in Canada are domestic (that is, from other regions in Canada). As the number of Canadian tourists rise, the number of international visitors have dropped. Promoting an Ontario bike touring route around 600 km could prove a popular week long visit. At a glance the Greenbelt tour could easily be extended by joining up to the existing (though questionably supported and signed) Waterfront Trail thus making Niagra Falls a Western end point, and Kingston an Eastern node. Which might tack another 150-200km to the route and make interesting connections to Via rail links.

How much would such a plan cost? About $500,00 apparently. For an industry that generates almost $400 million that means an additional outlay of about less than 1/100th of a percent. That's the way tourism works right? You spend a little on advertising and you make a bit more when you attract more customers. This "additional" funding isn't even new but comes from existing money from the Greenbelt Foundation. Win, win, right?

Then I made the mistake of reading the comments section. Don't know why I did that. Sort of like stepping in dog shit even though you saw it there and told yourself to watch out for that. While there are many positive comments there are the typical snarky ones as well. In that mix are people who inevitably believe:

• This will cost a lot of money to maintain
• It will be paid for by new taxes
• Cyclists will be getting a free ride, because "tax payers" are paying for it thus cyclists should pay a licensing fee.

Let's go point by point, here.

No New Funds Required
They are spending $500,000 of existing funds. No new money required. When was the last time any new tourist attraction cost as little as half a million anyway? Toronto Aquarium anyone? Most transit studies won't even get out of bed for less than a million.

No New Taxes
See above. Why would you have to raise revenue for something that isn't using new money?

Cyclists Get a Free Ride
We already pay for those roads and their maintenance. Not to mention, if the ministry of transportation widens the road shoulder, which could accommodate cyclists free of charge, these roads will last up to a decade longer before needing remediation. These roads aren't even toll roads so that means drivers are the ones getting a free ride (or heavily subsidized rides at least). By the way, who do people think cyclists are? Tax-free nobility? Cyclists are tax payers too, so they are in fact, paying for the roads they use. If drivers believe fuel taxes pay for their roads, they are mistaken. Property taxes, HST etc. pay for these roads, which are taxes everyone pays. Even people on inline skates pay taxes (I assume).

Bicycle Licensing
Do you require a license to walk down the street? A license for ice skating? A license for skiing? A license for skateboarding? Rollerblading? Of course not. That's silly. I do believe if you are operating a thing with a motor, you need a license. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats – all need a license. E-bikes? Please, yes. But a bicycle? Back in the day when Beaver was leaving whatever Beaver was being left to, someone tried to introduce bicycle licenses. In the end, police forces said, "This is stupid" and so everyone agreed.

I'll never understand this way of thinking other than those opposed to everything are opposed to everything. I mean, "Lighten up, morons." A thing that you don't have to pay for and you won't even notice will bring revenue to your town and the province. Let it be.