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Wednesday, August 16th, 2006
9:54 am - The Quay to the City
Interesting public space project in Toronto

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Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
8:37 pm - Bicycle mpg
If you look at fuel costs alone, cycling is actually more expensive per mile than driving a typical car: Bicycle mpg with various choices of fuel. Of course, this ignores the maintenance and purchase costs of cars vs bikes....

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10:34 am - Seattle transport surveys
Two surveys worth filling out if you live in Seattle:

Sound Transit are looking for feedback on long-term public transport plans

The City of Seattle is looking for detailed feedback on bike infrastructure

My impression is that the city is quite serious about improving bike infrastructure, but really needs feedback from people who use it.

[update: the Sound Transit survey includes some really dodgy charts. Pay attention to the scales before using them to decide on anything.]

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Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
10:50 am - Revised poll
Please use this poll instead of the previous one )

I had set up the last question on the previous poll in the wrong way - this one allows you to choose more than one option. Just to make it clear, because the previous version failed to: I'm interested in all the modes you use routinely, not just the one you use the most. For instance my answer would be tick all of "Own car", "Public Transit" and "Bicycle".

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9:30 am - A quick poll
Update: I made a mistake on this poll, so please use the updated version instead. Sorry.

I'll explain why I'm doing this in a week or two, when I either have enough responses to say something interesting or get tired of waiting for that to happen.

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Saturday, July 15th, 2006
9:22 am - More brilliance
The Greater Lyon Velo'v project - a public bicycle network with 3000 bikes and stations every 300 metres through the central city, and prices set such that using one is by far the cheapest way of making short trips (free for half an hour or an hour, just expensive enough after that to encourage people to return them to the stations). London would do well to imitate.

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8:50 am - Brilliant
I've just found out about a wonderful invention: the dynamo light-up pedals. They are of course no substitute for constant lights, but additional light while moving can never be a bad thing, plus it's a fail-safe for those annoying days when the battery dies because you forgot to turn the light off in the morning....

Apparently SPD- and toeclip- compatible versions are in the pipeline; now I just wish they'd do ones that don't flash.

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Sunday, February 12th, 2006
11:33 am - Crazy cyclists + bad puns == teh win
Maybe I'll start using this journal properly again some day. Until then:

La Coupe Des Glaces.

[yeah, it's an annoying Flash site, but just look at the photo gallery.

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Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
11:20 pm - Terrifying
The rocket powered bicycle.

I wouldn't worry about getting up Queen Anne Hill with one of those.

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Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
9:54 pm - Equipment
I was asked to detail my biking equipment, so I will. I'm not as much of a gearhead as I used to be though, so this is going to be pretty vague.

man, I ramble. This ended up being very long, and it's probably of no interest to anyone but he who asked for it. )

current music: We are Devo!

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Thursday, August 25th, 2005
9:06 pm
What's a better show of real patriotism -- cutting foreign oil consumption by occasionally riding a bike or slapping a flag sticker on your SUV that gets 11 miles to the gallon? - from ESPN.com by way of Northwest Environment Watch

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Wednesday, August 24th, 2005
2:44 pm - Ghost bikes
I'm settling in, and after a trip to London (which will take up the next two weeks) I'll start setting myself regular targets again. For the moment I'll just say that I'm really enjoying cycling in Seattle, but it is very hard work, and I'm doing much shorter rides than I was in Cleveland. Whereas in Cleveland I would go on a ride with a single significant climb in it (typically the way home from the Cuyahoga or Chagrin river valleys), here I do that climb on the way to the farmers market or back from downtown or the UW. And then another, and another, because there's not many places I can get to without a hill. It's doing my fitness some good, and certain hills that I keep repeating are already feeling less daunting.

Anyway, I mainly wanted to go online today to post a couple of links:

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Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005
7:01 pm - Last post from Cleveland!
I'll run the past 10 days together, since there's an enforced break about to kick in:

Miles biked: 50
Lengths swum: 64 (~= 1 mile)
Targets: 60 miles and 30 lengths. Fate giveth, and fate taketh away - I just ended up spending more time on campus than expected, and having less time on the road, so I went swimming 3 times. I guess the extra swimming counterbalances the 10 mile shortfall on the bike....

Since Spring Break I've exercised more consistently that any time since I used to be seriously into kung fu. Annoyingly I don't seem to have lost any fat (time to think more seriously about my diet I guess...), but I definitely feel a difference in fitness. I'm significantly faster up Edgehill, 30 lengths in the pool tire me less than 20 did in March, and it takes a third flight of stairs to get me out of breath. This is all very pleasing, and I hope I don't lose too much of that in 10 days of sitting in a car and not moving a great deal.

Tomorrow [info]nein09 and I set off for Seattle tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it a lot. I just hope my expectations aren't unrealistic.

current mood: optimistic

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Monday, June 20th, 2005
5:33 pm - The Race Across America
There's hardcore. And then there's completely insane. I take my hat off to them.

Link from [info]nein09

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Saturday, June 11th, 2005
10:06 pm - 1% extra free!
I'm highly unlikely to get on the bike tomorrow (other plans), so I'll post the weekly numbers now.

Miles biked: 55.55
Lengths swum: 28
Targets: 55 miles and 28 lengths

a rant )

Next week's targets: 60 miles and 30 lengths. It will be my last week of doing this in Cleveland, and I imagine I'll want to change the system once I'm settled in Seattle given that the ground is so much hillier there, access to a swimming pool may be more or less convenient depending on exactly where we live, and I'm pretty determined to get back into kung fu, having even been given a referral for a good teacher there.

current mood: angry

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Monday, June 6th, 2005
12:57 am - The week just gone
Miles biked: 60½
Lengths swum: 28 (odd-numbered targets don't work all that well because I feel like such an idiot walking the length of the pool to get back to where I started, when I could just swim it)
Maximum speed: 41 mph
Targets: 50 miles and 27 lengths. This is why I won't get too hung up on the odd bad week, as long as there aren't consecutive bad weeks.

>50 of the miles were travelled in one day on a mammoth bike ride, because I hadn't done very much travelling anywhere at all during the week, and was car-bound on Saturday.
road report )
Next week's targets: 55 miles and 28 lengths.

current mood: fookin' knackered mate

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Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
8:36 pm - Last week's progress
Miles biked: 46
Lengths swam: 26
My targets for the week: 45 miles and 26 lengths

In case you're wondering, it's not a coincidence that I only just surpassed the cycling target. This was the first week in which I did an extra circuit (just adding a loop in South Park to a grocery run) in order to meet the target. In other words: this system is working for me.

Targets for this week: 50 miles and 27 lengths.

more thoughts )

current mood: pleased

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Thursday, May 26th, 2005
5:57 pm - Last week's progress
A little late due to an uncooperative hard drive....

Miles biked: 36½
Lengths swum: 0
My targets: 40 miles and 25 lengths

For some reason my energy level crashed for a few days, hence the no swimming. I also didn't get around to going on any rides for the sake of riding, and evidently this is the limit of where commute cycling will take me. I'm not terribly impressed with myself, but sometimes you have to know when not to push yourself too hard....

Targets for this week: 45 miles and 26 lengths. I did the swimming today, but I'll need to do quite a long ride for pleasure over the weekend to make that one. It's about time I started going on longer rides again, and the weather looks promising, so here's hoping.

current mood: disappointed

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Monday, May 16th, 2005
11:38 pm - Weekly progress
Miles ridden last week (up to and including Sunday): 41¾ (of course, the ¾ is the most important part)
Lengths swum: 24
Target for last week: 30 miles
some ramblings behind the cut )

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Thursday, May 12th, 2005
3:31 pm - Being seen by drivers
Being seen by drivers is obviously one of the most important issues in cycling safely on streets. I had started writing some visibility advice in response to [info]ibm's post looking for bike-buying advice, but I moved it here because I realised it's relevant to all cyclists.

A few pieces of advice on accessories, based on cognitive psychology research I was involved in a few years ago:

behind a cut because the lecture got rather long )
OK, I think that's it for now, so I'll stop lecturing. I'll probably make more safety posts over the summer though; it's one of the things I had always been meaning to do with this journal.

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