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Gamification
Gamification is the use of elements related to games into non-game contexts. It means making people feeling the positive impacts of playing games from video games to board games. A lot of companies have used this technique to attract the attention to the products and services they sell in the last years. They have looked for improving user engagement, increase organizational productivity, flow, learning, crowdsourcing, employee recruitment and evaluation, ease of use, usefulness of systems, physical exercise, traffic violations, voter apathy and more. Yet the world of bikes has been used it to improve its use through marketing strategies.
The public bicycle system Bicing from Barcelona, implemented it through an app to accumulate points by riding bikes, achieving challenges or checking the stations anchors. Riders won awards thanks to these points. The Move Us project was launched by the public bus company in Madrid and works similarly as Bicing except from the fact that it focuses not only on bikers, but also on people in general.
Strava Metro uses gamification to help bikers to establish a track when they need to, plan bike lines and analyze the city traffic.
Tall bike
A tall bike is a special type of bicycle which is part of the commonly known as monster bikes. In a few words, it consists in two bicycles one above the other. Just pick up one bike without seat, pedals and handlebar, so with only wheels and frame, and weld it on another bike without wheels. As a result we have a double bike as you can see in the photo bellow. Of course, the chain length must increase since the distance between sprockets and crankset has increased. And as you can imagine, this simple concept has evolved to more incredible monster bikes.
From the biker perspective, riding a tall bike changes the way you ride a normal bike. You need an extra push to climb the tall bike. Once you reach the seat, you have a better vision since the higher you ride, the less obstacles impede your sight. Moreover, your visibility goes up as your shape is higher even towering over vans. Furthermore, you can carry more bicycle bags. This last point has had important considerations in long routes such as the Quico one. Finally, people amazes when seeing one tall bike.
Bungee cords
When transporting goods in a bike, one can put them in a basket or in a bicycle bag. There is a third option which consists in tying them to the luggage carrier with one or two metal bungee cords. Bungee cords are composed of one or several strands forming a core covered in a woven cotton or polypropylene sheath.
They are ideal for such a purpose as they are elastic, thus allowing to use extra length and making more pressure at the same time. Indeed, they end in hooks at their extremes in order to ease their anchorage. It is quite recommendable not to anchor the moorings directly into the luggage carrier, rather it is better to give a spin to the cord extreme you want to anchor to the luggage carrier and then put the hooks into practice. This is because you do not want the bungee cord extreme to be released in the middle of a ride and this way the anchor is secured. If you are thinking in buying bungee cords, I recommend to invert money in good, high quality ones since they will last much more time.
Cochistas
The word cochista does not exist in any Spanish dictionary. Perhaps there is an equivalent word in your mother tongue. It is a word which was made up to define a person who uses the car for everything from moving to another city to buy bread in the bakery at about two minutes walking. They believe themselves as the city owners and whatever change towards a more sustainable traffic is imposed in the streets by public institutions, causes a total, irrational rejection.
What these people does not understand, or not want to understand, is the reality. They fall for the automotive companies ads which equal cars to freedom. Quite the contrary, cars are prisons. The car owner is chained to fuel, taxes, insurances and so on. The evil impact is completed with the loss of health (pollution, disgusting noises, lack of exercise), environment (pollution and noises) and the waste of money. You know, the unique chain which frees is the bicycle one.