Author Archives: jm

A good bicycle parking

A good bicycle parking is one of the most important infrastructures to improve bike use. It is so upset looking for your bicycle and realizing that somebody has stolen it that bikers tend not to let it sleep on the street without proper padlocks. An improvement to traditional bicycle parking is a closed one as you can see in the picture bellow. In this case bikes are protected from thefts thanks to the strong, transparent, plastic cover which is accessed through a proper digit code on a console. This gadget is feed with the electricity that the solar panel provides. Other models allow users to access their bicycles by using a card with a chip. The fact of the plastic cover being transparent makes bike owners to check their bicycles without opening the bicycle parking, while bike thefts regret the existence of this infrastructure.

Bicycles and movies

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Movies are one form of culture which can show bicycles under a story. Similarly as I wrote about songs and bikes here, here you have a list about movies and such inspirational vehicles:

6 day bike rider (1934, comedy)
Bicycle thieves (1948, drama)
Cinq tulipe rouges (Five red tulips, 1949, murder mystery)
Skid kids (1953, drama)
Onna keirin-o (1956)
For a yellow jersey (1965, short)
A Sunday in hell (1977, documentary)
Breaking away (1979, comedy-drama)
BMX bandits (1983, adventure)
American flyers (1985, drama)
Rad (1986)
Quicksilver (1986)
The cyclist (1987, drama)
Jo jeeta wohi sikandar (1992. drama)
Il grande Fausto (1995)
El amateur (1999)
Road to Paris (1991, documentary)
Cyclomania (2001)
Le Vélo de Gishlain Lambert (2001, comedy)
Nasu: Summer in Andalusia (2003, anime)
Triplets of Beleville (2003, animated)
Cycling chronicles: Landscape the boy saw (2004)
Hell on wheels (2005, documentary)
Overcoming (2005, documentary)
The flying scotsman (2006, drama)
Island Etude (2006, drama)
Klunkerz: A film about mountain bikes (2006)
Clorophilla (2006)
The cycling genius is coming (2008)
Bicycle dreams (2009, documentary)
The birth of big air (2010, documentary)
Ride the divide (2010, documentary)
The last kilometer (2012, documentary)
Premium rush (2012, action film)
Pantani: The accidental death of a cyclist (2013, documentary)
The Armstrong lie (2013, documentary)
La grande boucle (2013, comedy)
Bicycle (2014, documentary)
Slaying the badger (2014, documentary)
Yowamushi Pedal Re:RIDE (2014, animated)
To the fore (2015, drama)
Yowamushi Pedal Re:ROAD (2015, animated)
Yowamushi Pedal Re: The movie (2015, animated)
The program (2015, drama)
Le ride (2016, documentary)
Blood road (2017, documentary)
Tour de pharmacy (2017, comedy)
The climb (2019, comedy)
LANCE (2020, documentary)
Tour de France: Unchained (2022, documentary)

Spezi

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Bicycles for up to six people, machines for persons with special needs, tricycles, quadricycle, all kind of bike inventions and more… You can find these in your imagination and enjoy them in the Spezi (Internationale Spezialradmesse, in Germany) for a weekend in which you can see and try all of them. Thousand of people and one hundred or more firms show the bicycles diversity.

This event possesses a legendary reputation thanks to its avant-garde. Indeed, some solutions presented as a niche a decade ago have reached to the society nowadays. For instance, special bikes had an enthusiastic base and today more a more people see their potential in the daily life. Spezi goes a further step and gets off the beaten track, commercial, to jut out in curiosities and the dominating headlines.

Moreover, there are concerts, performances on unicycles and an area to camp and a closed zone to sleep if you prefer.

Cargo bikes history

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Cargo bikes are a type of bicycles with special frame, larger than a normal bike, to carry persons, pets and objects. We see them more this year than the previous one. They are folk from year to year. What is its history?

They appeared before the actual bicycles in England back in 1877. It was when James Stanley conceived a tricycle with a platform in order to transport people and goods. The very one of the cargo bike was a machine less attractive with an iron frame, without gears and a small surface to carry loads. However, the improvement in wheels, the larger platform and improvement techniques and even technologies have made them to be more suitable to farmers, craftspeople, postpeople, and riders among others. Improvement continued and cargo bikes were looked from mundane machines to the present beautiful, good-looking ones.

Sara Dykman

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Every year, the Monarch Butterfly, Danaus Plexippus, goes from the USA to Mexico in a massive migration of about 5,000 kilometers. Millions of this butterfly start it with the unique help of their instinct. Sara Dykman accompanied them by pedaling for nine months in which she learned a lot about this insect and came across interesting people. As a result, she wrote the book Bicycling with Butterflies which is plenty of data and rigor as well as humor and lyricism.

In reality, the Monarch Butterfly spends Winter in the Oyamel forests in Michoacan, Mexico and flies to the USA and Canada. When the cold of Autumn arrives, they go back to Mexico. Four generations are needed to complete the migration and lay their eggs on the milkweed plant. Thus, the butterflies which return to Mexico are the great-granddaughter of the ones which initiated the migration.

Sara studied the specie and discovered that this butterfly travels about one hundred kilometers a day. This figure is the preferred one to ride in a day for Sara. She learned a lot about people and butterflies since she claims that we are connected to nature and the force of unity: A butterfly weights 0.5 grams, but if millions perch on a branch, they can break it.

Ruyi bridge

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If you were born in Western countries, you probably identify it as a massive treble clef, whereas if you are a Chinese, you will see it a special, well-known sign immediately. As time goes by, bridges designs have evolved into a more eye-attracting ones. If these bridges are bike and pedestrian friendly, they are better. This is the case of the Ruyi bridge.

This steel and reinforced concrete bridge is located in Chengdu, China, and was approved back in 2016 as a part of the High Technology Zone Principal Landscape Improvement project. It connects two concurred neighbors: Tianfu and the Dayuan Central Park. Their designers inspired in the panpipes, a traditional Chinese music instrument. It is 331 meters long and between 2.36 and 9.23 meters wide. It counts with two spiral staircase for pedestrians and two two ramps allow bikers to access it.

Bicycles and songs

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Bicycles are much more than mere machines. People have developed culture around them and this time I show some of the songs dedicated or related to them:

What is the real autonomy of an e-bike?

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When you surf the net looking for electric bicycles information, bike manufacturers and shops offer it as X kilometers for a complete full battery. They say 50, 80, 100 or 120 kilometers that the e-bike can run with the battery. However, the lack of an international standard makes it impossible to compare e-bikes models. There is a clear, famous statement: the more Wh a battery has, the more kilometers can ride a biker.

Moreover, several factors come into play. For instance, take the same e-bike and the same cyclist, but different wind direction or speed, how many her saddlebags weight, aerodynamics of garment and accessories, wheels pressure, slope of a road, what gear she uses the most or whether she pedals in a cold or warm day (lithium batteries are more affected by low temperatures, thus they perform up to 20% less).

The traditional flux of questions-answers starts by the client, arrives to the shop owner, then the distributor and finally reaches the e-bicycle manufacturer. It would be so easy to make it simpler if there was an international standard. For example, every e-bike on a standardized bicycle roller with a dynamometer would allow to calculate the power and the exact battery consumption. Taking these numbers, manufacturers could apply a -+10 or a +-20 to give bicyclers real data about their products. In the meantime, bikers look for personal experiences about e-bikes in internet forums and specialized webs.

Recumbent bicycles

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Bicycles can be adapted to whoever, no matter his physical condition. In some cases cyclists can suffer if they use a bad saddle which can cause back and ass pain. Such was the reason why at least one bike manufacturer was created. In reality, the bike store is dedicated mainly to recumbent bicycles and by smaller amount cargo bikes. The recumbent bicycle allows biker to pedal more comfortable since she can lean also her back. However, one has to pay attention not to experience an exaggerated curve in the backbone between back and neck.

Positive points (more than allowing disable people use them) are:

– Extra stability thanks to the third wheel

– Good maneuverability after you learn movements and brakes since they are located differently as in a traditional bicycle

– High visibility at ground level

– Pedestrians look at them because the are few recumbent bicycles. The more recumbent bicycles, the more unnoticed will go.

Andy Singer

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Andy Singer was born in New York and moved in Berkeley (California) and Saint Paul (Minnesota). He has not car even in living in the USA and thinking highways are too wide, buildings are too separated and there is too much space for motorways and car parking. This is something that town planners call “sprawl”. As a result, it is a waste of time, space and gas. He also reckons that people who drive cars on a regular basis see the world through their windscreen and do not stop to talk to citizens, neither appreciate their surroundings. He goes a step further and as a ecologist he affirms cars pollute waterway when it rains on highways, as well as negative impacts of gas leaks and petrol industry. Moreover, in his opinion electric cars will not solve these problems since the environmental impacts in the raw material extraction, transformation and end of life will continue. In contrast, a bike uses much less resources than a car and has a longer life expectancy. He finally concludes that as a cyclist and does not pay for gas, tolls, insurances and other expenses for having a car.

Riding in Saint Paul is pleasant thanks to the efforts in building bike lines, is an almost flat location and has large parks close to the Mississippi river. But the worst is pedaling in winter when the temperature diminishes to -30 degrees Celsius. In this case he uses fat bikes (bikes with fat wheels) and a tricycle to go shopping.

Moreover, he makes cartoons about bikes (among others) and does it because he communicates with the world through them and are based on his experiences and interests. He drew for The New Yorker and The New York Times, but most of his clients are independent media.