boxing day, montreal — today, ottawa

I picked up a new messenger bag to replace my aging, worn, ripping, broken-buckled, stained, smelly yellow bag. A messenger friend of mine suggested Cocotte, a Montreal based company. After doing a little research, I decided to go with their Alfredo bag.



I spent part of today with some of Ottawa’s hardest working professional cyclists — the capital city’s bike messengers. Icy slush in the streets doesn’t keep experienced couriers away from work. As Crazy Dave said, today was a nice day. (more about these urban heroes later)

twas the night…

twas.jpg

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Extension of greenway hours a win for commuters

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
December 22nd, 2005

DURHAM — One reason Lars Trost took his current job is that he knew he could bike to work from home. His office is about six miles south Forest Hills West, and it was important to him to find a route he could ride safely at night, since he often leaves work in the dark. After months of riding, he feels that the American Tobacco Trail is the safest and most direct route.

Ever since Daylight Savings Time ended in October, Trost, like most bike commuters in Durham, finds himself riding home in the dark most of the time. Trost says that after dark he’s not comfortable riding in the traffic of Fayetteville or Roxboro streets, his only alternatives to the ATT. So, he chooses to ride Durham’s most popular greenway instead.

One evening a little more than a month ago, he left work around 6pm. The sun had set, but his path was lit by a headlight mounted to his handlebars. Near the ATT’s intersection with Cornwallis Rd, a Durham Police Officer patrolling the trail pulled him over and issued a warning for trespassing.

The officer pointed to a sign near the intersection and noted that the American Tobacco Trail, like all parks in Durham, closes at dusk. The officer advised Trost that the next time he is caught on the trail after dark, he could be issued a $135 fine.

This incident brought to light a problem for Durham’s greenways. If users rely on greenways to get to and from different sides of town, then why should the trails close at sunset? Doesn’t closing greenways at sunset limit their utility, especially in the winter months when the sun sets as early as 5pm?

While greenways are parks, they are parks of a different sort. Linear parks double as transportation corridors, and transportation is more than a daytime activity. Whereas recreational cyclists have more flexibility to arrange rides at convenient times, commuters are at the mercy of their work schedules and mother nature.

Trost isn’t alone. “I see the same people every morning on my way to work”, he says. “If I had to guess based on my experience, I’d say close to a hundred people a day use the trail.”

Through email, Trost initiated a conversation with the Durham Police Department, City Council, and the City’s Transportation and Parks and Recreation departments. A meeting was arranged, at which the City acknowledged that it would be squandering a resource if a transportation corridor is unavailable to those who need to use it.

Bike commuters in other cities also face the problem of dusk trail closures, so Durham was able to look to other places for solution models. While some municipalities, such as Baltimore, Maryland, address the problem simply by exempting commuters from the trail closure, how to enforce this exemption creates a new problem for law enforcement. The idea of establishing a permit system was also looked at. But requiring cyclists to register with the city in order to lawfully use a greenway after hours would prevent folks from spontaneously using Durham’s greenways to bicycle to and from a Durham Bulls game.

After hearing from Trost as well as many other commuters who use Durham’s greenways as transportation routes, Darrell Crittendon, Director of Parks and Recreation, decided that extending the hours that the trails are open is both the simplest and most democratic solution.

As of Monday, December 5th, the Parks and Recreation department extended the hours of the American Tobacco Trail from dawn until dusk to 5AM until 10PM.

Crittendon also notes that The Durham Police Department (DPD) will continue to monitor the ATT for safety throughout the extended usage hours. He encourages any commuters who use the trail at night to consider using a buddy system. The more traffic there is in any area, the safer it tends to be from a public safety perspective.

None of Durham’s greenways are lit and the City does not plan to install lighting along the trails. So, if you’re going to ride the trail at night, be aware that it will be dark. From sunset until 10pm and 5am until sunrise, Durham police will be enforcing the state laws concerning nighttime cycling.

All cyclists riding at night must be equipped with a headlight visible from at least 300 ft. and a red tail light visible from at least 200 ft. All local bike shops carry these lights, which can be attached to either your bike or your clothing.

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NC General Statutes
20-129. Required Lighting Equipment of Vehicles.
(e) Lamps on Bicycles. Every bicycle shall be equipped with a lighted lamp visible up to three hundred feet in front when used at night and must also be equipped with a taillight or rear reflector that is red and visible for up to two hundred feet from therear when used at night.

misty morning stops

piano man

One of several metalwork sculptures in the Sutton Station courtyard in south Durham.

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Cross-country bike trail teaches much about time

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
December 8th, 2005

She turns around, sees reminders of how far she’s ridden, and thinks about how different the world seems when you’re on a bike. The hills she’s finished climbing look so innocent from a car and feel so challenging on a bike.

She looks ahead and sees how far she has yet to go. The road is arrow straight and flat. Lined with corn and soybean fields on either side, her path stretches to the horizon.

Judy Martell, 55, of Durham is a little less than halfway through riding the American Discovery Trail, a 6,800 mile patchwork of paved greenways, state parks, and roadways connecting Delaware with San Francisco. In 2001, she woke from a dream with a goal to use her own two legs to get her from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

A month ago, she reached St. Louis, Missouri.

If she were to ride the entire Discovery Trail in one effort, she estimates it would take her anywhere from a month to a month and a half. Whether to raise money for a charitable cause, bring attention to an injustice, or just to experience the changing landscape of our vast country on a more human scale, Martell says “there are a lot of people who are doing it straight through on the Discovery Trail, biking or walking.”

“I do it in chunks… in sections, because I can’t do the logistics of being away from home long enough to do it all in one shot,” says Martell. When she knows she’s got five free days coming up, she starts to plan the next trip.

For most of the route, she’s been riding alone. But friend Alison Carpenter also of Durham recently kept her company from Cincinnati to St. Louis.

Traveling at the speed of a bike allows a different perspective, says Carpenter. “Life’s just fleeting from an automobile on a day to day basis. Then you get on a bike… and time just sort of disappears, everything changes, and your perspective becomes ‘eat, drink, bike, sleep, bike.’ It was definitely a meditative experience.”

Carpenter had never done any long-distance bike touring before. “The first day was mentally challenging. We did fifty-five miles in the first day, and I’d never ridden fifty-five miles at once,” she says. “[The] second and third were more physically challenging. But, after the third day I felt like, ‘alright, I can do this’.” By the end of the fifth day she had a hard time letting the trip come to an end.

Her pluck speaks to the c’est la vie attitude that got them through parts of their ride; it was not without challenge. Martell lost her GPS device early in the trip. At one point they ended up riding on a limited access freeway with tractor trailers passing a little too close and too fast for comfort. And on their last day, they found themselves riding through the headwinds of a tornado system that hit Illinois later that day.

Nor do they forget the killer leg cramps, a semi-paralyzed left hand, and the ka-chunk of an adjusting chiropractor’s table that still rings in their ears.

But, then there was the time they stopped at a restaurant and a pickup truck driver who had passed them thirty miles back welcomed them with a “you made it! Alright, way to go!”

Or the time they rolled up to an auto-auction with a vending machine tucked behind a fence decorated with a “dealers only” sign. After sneaking in to get water from the vending machine one of the dealers struck up a conversation with the two weathered and worn-out cyclists.

And they’ll never forget that warm, inviting cafe — with fresh baked bread — in, “where was that cafe again?” Carpenter asks.

Riding through the country side and small towns endeared them to the folks they passed. Martell and Carpenter feel like the people they met along the way would not have been as open or willing to strike up conversations if they’d been just another driver passing through.

Planning for a trip like this is not as difficult as you might think, says Martell. That is, if you plan the way Martell does, it’s not that taxing. She likes to leave a lot of the details to just work themselves out. But, not without reason.

“I think we get into this box of ‘it’s a scary world and let’s stay in our safe route’. But when you put yourself out there, then you’re reminded that the world’s not that scary. Life is going on in these little towns just like it is here. It’s just a different pace in a different place,” she says.

“A yearning for pure spontaneity is human nature,” says Carpenter, “but at the same time that time runs together on [a trip like this], it also becomes more precious.”

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For their ride, Carpenter rode her 1980s Motobecane with downtube shifters and Martell rode her custom recumbent, made here in Durham by Wayne Schnackel.

Information on the American Discovery Trail can be found at http://www.discoverytrail.org/

morning commute


district officer on bicycle

A “district officer” is depicted on a bicycle in Arowogun d’Osi-Ilorin’s Chief’s House Door, a wood carving from around 1920. The carving is part of the permanent collection at the new Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

helmets required

slick as ice

An icy wooden plank bridge makes for a dangerous ride.

The best way to ride on a slick surface (wet or icy) is probably not to ride on it. But, if you’re like me and you don’t want to get off the bike (or you like to tempt fate), then lift up slightly off the seat (this shifts your contact points with the bike to the pedals and effectively lowers your center of gravity), pick a line before you enter the icy patch and stick to it, and do not turn, brake, or accelerate while on the ice. Unless you’re on a fixie, the best thing to do is probably coast over the ice.

Winter is nearly here. Be careful out there everybody.

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