If I were the Bike Czar! Hear the song!

Note: be sure to listen to the song: If I Were the Bike Czar to the tune of If I Were a Rich Man. You'll find the link in green below.

Here's the cyclist-in-chief (actually taken by Brandon of the AP last July just after Barack Obama secured the Democratic nomination) leading by example.

President Obama is a cyclist it seems, and we know he's been putting his cabinet together so I got to wondering. He just appointed Gil Kerlikowske as the new Drug Czar. I know Gil--former Seattle Police Chief--so I thought if Gil could be our nation's Drug Czar why couldn't I be appointed by President Obama...to be the Bike Czar.

Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were the Cycling Czar?

If you want to hear what it would be like if I were the Bike Czar, listen here! Hint: if you minimize the audio player and go back to this page you can read along as you listen.

Follow the Bouncing Ball:

If I were the Bike Czar
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum
All day long I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were the Cycling Czar.
We wouldn’t have to drive cars
Ya da deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum
If I were the biddy biddy Bike
Yidle-diddle-didle-didle Czar.

I’d build a wide highway for bikes by the millions,
Just for (the) cyclists of the town.
Fine smooth lanes, no chip seal, glass or nails
There would be ten long bikeways just going up
And ten even longer going down
And singletracks for cyclists of the trail.

I’d set up shops with tubes and patches and glue
And pumps for folks to use for free
Cycling without flats, the wheels just whirl.
With each loud “ooh” and “mmm” and “ah” and “yeah”
We’d show how the cycle gives us glee
As if to say “We are a cycling world.”

If I were the Bike Czar,
Randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneur
All day long I’d pedal pedal pum
If I were the Cycling Czar
We wouldn’t have to drive cars
Randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneur
If I were the pedal pedal Bike
Pumping, pumping, pedal pumping Czar.

I see my bike, my Fuji, looking like a Bike Czar’s ride,
With a proper leather seat
Randonneuring dream, she’s my heart’s delight
I see her putting on airs and racing for the town signs
Oy, how the other bikes she’d beat
Riding all the brevets day and night.

The most important folk in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them
Like Velocio the Wise
“If you please, CurioRando…”
“Pardon me, CurioRando…”
Seeking cycles to return us to blue skies.
And it won’t make one bit of difference
If they’ve driven all their lives
When you’re Czar they get out of their cars!

If I were Czar we’d have the things that we need
To wash in the office place each day
We’d surely have some soap in the shower stalls.
And we’d slow down global warming with our pedaling
Getting stronger every way,
That would be the sweetest thing of all!

If I were the Bike Czar,
Randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneur
All day long I’d pedal pedal pump
If I were the Cycling Czar
We wouldn’t have to drive cars
Randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneuring, randonneur

Barack, who is our Prez and is our star
Why subsidize what is only just for cars?
Bicycles would really go so far
If I were the Cycling Czar!

Performed by Janak Jayapal Preston and DartreDame. Engineered and produced by Janak. Lyrics by CurioRando in collaboration with Janak and DartreDame. If you enjoyed their performance, please let them know by commenting. They'd be grateful.





Keep your fantasies alive,
CurioRando

Jan Heine Interview Coming! Read All About It!

Yep. The editor of Bicycle Quarterly, Jan Heine, will be here soon, and we'll get his views on randonneuring for newbie randonneurs, equipment, and the social history of cyclotouring and bicycles among other topics. Fascinating interview.

In the meanwhile, here are a few more bicycle-on-the-Link-Light-Rail pics.

Here's the scene from this morning's commute. See my bicycle hanging in the foreground on the left?

Here's a bunch of empty bicycle lockers at the Sodo Station. Interesting that you can see into them. What's the thinking there?

Bike Route alongside the station. Only goes one block the direction I went: South.

The Sodo Station art features a gateway comprised of a beam, a level (on top), a red "carpenter's" pencil vertically on the left, and a square on the top right!

Written on the pencil is: "Made in U.S.A. Union".

Back in my bricklaying days, we called those pencils "Brickie Pencils". Why give the wood butchers credit?

Just kidding! Just a little craft rivalry humor. Got ya!

In the end the joke was on me. I tried to pick up this hammer wondering whether it was left over from some construction project. Nah! This again, including the benches in the background, is at the Sodo Station in the industrial part of town. There are tools on the benches too. They don't move. They are art. Got me!

If you look carefully in the gateway photo, you'll see an arc "scribed" into the pavers by the pencil, much as you'd do to draw a circle with a compass. It all makes my little mason's heart flutter.

Keep it plumb and square,

CurioRando

Get on Board Cyclists: Link Light Rail Opens!

Waiting for the Train.

Our long awaited Link Light Rail trains opened Saturday to much fanfare and 45,000 trips. We Seattlites were giddy with excitement. All smiles, waves & gawking.


After Datre Dame, our friend Vesteinn and I completed our pre-Century training ride Saturday we hopped on board for our inaugural rides. What fun!

I tried to clip in while my bicycle hung from the hook inside the train car, but other passengers started to shoot worried, confused looks my way.

Seemed to me my bike and I would take up less room!

Vesteinn likes the train!

Me and my bicycle going for a ride...on the train!

"I see that train a comin'"

Sculptures in the Beacon Hill Station 160 feet below street grade. A beautiful station.

If you squint you can see Mt. Rainier. From the high rails just as you head into the Tukwila Station you get a fabulous view of our iconic mountain. Trains reach 56mph on that spot!

Demonstrating the anti-homeless butt-leaners.

Vesteinn and his new best friend.

Dartre Dame is tickled by the train!

Bike Valet!

Of course it was Bike Works in Seattle that provided the Bike Valet at an event I attended this evening.

The pic above is of Bike Works volunteer (staffer?), Jayanthi, who locked up and watched your bike for a few dollar donation to Bike Works. All this was for the Community Alliance for Global Justice or CAGJ. I was honored that CAGJ asked me on behalf of my union to give the keynote for this year's Strengthening Local Economies, Everywhere Dinner. Because we represent grocery and food processing workers among others, there is a strong connection between the work of CAGJ and our membership.

The CAGJ website says this about their work: Organizing workshops, guest speakers, film screenings, and study groups, we offer the community information about corporate globalization, its local impacts (including on the food we eat!), and the economic and agricultural alternatives we have as resources for resisting it. We seek to connect folks in the Puget Sound area with their local farms and food producers by organizing farm tours and our annual community gathering, the Strengthening Local Economies Everywhere Fair and Dinner.


Everything about CAGJ is sustainable so bicycles are prominently featured. The flags I believe were all made by volunteers and children.

Check out CAGJ...and Bike Works!

Don't you just love how bicycling fits into a sustainable world? I do!

Keep it sustained,

CurioRando

I Am Willing, Century Training & Ginger Ninjas

Last post I waxed on about Holly Near and her song I Am Willing. Here are the lyrics:

I am open and I am willing
For to be hopeless would seem so strange
It dishonors those who go before us
So lift me up to the light of change

There is hurting in my family
There is sorrow in my town
There is a panic all across the nation
There is wailing the whole world round

May the children see more clearly
May the elders be more wise
May the winds of change caress us
Even though it burns our eyees

Give me a mighty oak to hold my confusion
Give me a desert to hold my fears
Give me a sunset to hold my wonder
Give me an ocean to hold my tears


Saturday, Pramila aka Dartre Dame, our friend, Vesteinn, and I did a training ride in preparation for their first century ride coming up soon. It's the Seattle Century, a benefit for Bike Works in Columbia City which is in Seattle.

We can literally coast our bicycles from our house down to Bike Works without pedaling, it's that close. Bike Works is fabulous.


Always a sucker for High Wheelers!

Vesteinn cycled strongly.

Cooling Down!

I never heard of them, but I'm checking out the Ginger Ninjas. They are sponsoring The Pleasant Revolution Bicycle Music Festival Tour 2009. Cool enough.

It is August 22 and features: "500 miles, 50 Bands, Gazillions of Bikes, 15 Venues." Even cooler. It happens in Eugene, OR; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; Vancouver, BC. Wow!

They are looking for volunteers, and I like their website, and I dig what I heard of their music. Check them out for yourself.

Holly Near's lines "For to be hopeless would seem so strange, It dishonors those who go before us" are so powerful.
I am holding those lines close.

Keep it honored,

CurioRando

Randonneuring Women: Where are you?

This is my mother, Hazel. Isn't she beautiful?

Yep, inside and out!

Friday night I went to see Gloria Steinem and others (most notably my wife, Pramila Jayapal aka Dartre Dame when she posts here) at Town Hall in Seattle. Gloria was really great. She takes up little space and always graciously puts others forward. But when she does speak, she's right on. Lovely, especially so today in the age of self aggrandizement.

Holly Near was part of the panel and was good there, but when she sang she really opened up the souls of the audience. Really beautiful. I especially liked her first song, I Am Willing. An unusual song that proves that smart lyrics and a deep message can be wonderfully melodious. No need to pander to popular genre or form.

Here's Holly Near. This photo is from her website. In my photo she looked like an ant she was so small. Here she is in her glory.

The event was called Hedgebrook Presents: A Conversation with Gloria Steinem. Hedgebrook is a rural retreat of 48 acres on Whidbey Island in Washington State "where women writers come from all over the world to write, rejuvenate, and be in community with each other," according to their website. I've been there (during a rare invite-the-men-occasion), and it is a fabulous setting where women writers get an opportunity to go deeper than they are able to at home. Pramila used to be a Hedgebrook board member. Over 700 folks attended the sold out event where Gloria and Holly were revered for good reason.

Pramila, I felt, balanced the discussion by bringing it back from the primarily writing theme to the world of activism and social change, broadening the discussion. Gloria, of course, is all about social change, and I've begun to reflect on her impact on me.

First, my mother was a charter Ms. Magazine subscriber, and I used to read it as a teen. My mum worked to support our family, and as roles were changing my mum was living proof of the change taking place across the country. I must say I've got ambivalence about women and their work. First, of course women should work however they want wherever they want. Problem is women still don't get paid equally; what is it now about 80 cents to every dollar a man earns? Less still for women of color.

My ambivalence comes from the fact that it now takes two wage earners (or multiple jobs for each person) to make ends meet. It's not just choice driving women, it's economics. Women and men alike aren't earning enough, women always less still. Women should work if they want to, but many moms work because there is no other choice (I'm ignoring one of Gloria's admonitions to express rather than persuade. She posits that expression wins people over more truly, so I'll work at stifling my persuasive tendencies). Let me say it this way: I support choice, and it saddens me to see the victory many women worked toward become the double burden of remaining the primary care giver WHILE being a breadwinner too, all due to worsening economic times for all.

And how do we expect moms or dads to work without affordable quality child care?

But my mother worked, cared for us, was and is smart, and stood up for herself and her gender. She got ridiculed for being a Ms. subsciber and much more. I'm sure I don't know the half of it. I'm proud of her, and seeing Gloria Steinem reminded me of my mother's struggles, and for the role modeling she provided. Thanks, Mum!

So, my question, given all this, is: why don't more women--a woman randonneur is called a Randonneuse--participate in randonneuring brevets?

Some do, and I've met them, but not that many. I suppose I could go through the Randonnuers USA (RUSA) membership list and count, but I feel quite confident in guessing it is less than 10%. Don't you see more women than that percentage participate in other bicycling activities? One answer of course is obviously economics again. Randonneuring is resource intensive. And time is a precious resource. Time to train. Time to participate. Also, equipment isn't cheap.

So, I'm not asking rhetorically. I want to know. If you are a randonneuse or wannabe randonneuse, can you enlighten us a little? Why do you think it is that few women randonneur, OR am I wrong? And, finally, what could we men creatures do to open it up?

The picture above is of my favorite woman cyclist: Dartre Dame!

Keep it open to all,

CurioRando

My Randonneuring Bicycle, Part 3: First Tease

My new ride, to be completed in time for the 2010 season, will be built by Pereira Cycles. As a tease, here is a photo album of a previous Pereira Randonneuse. Mine will also be a 650B bicycle.

Enjoy!

See also Part 1: The sum of her parts and Part 2: More than the sum of her parts and Part 4: Let the Build Begin!

Keep it anticipated,

CurioRando

UPDATE: For an updated look at the randonneuring bicycle I'm having built up, check out this post.

Riding around the world...on a highwheeler!

• If you haven't noticed by now, I'm a sucker for high wheelers (and no, it isn't the Bunnies). That's why when I heard about Around the World on a Bicycle, by Thomas Stevens and first published in 1887, I couldn't resist.
  
  Really, around the world?
  
  Yep.
  
  Around the World on a Bicycle was republished by Stackpole Books in 2001 with an introduction by Thomas Pauly, and everything about it is daunting:
  
  
  
• Going around the world



• Riding a high wheeler



• Through undeveloped land over the roughest of trails



• Amongst people who had never seen a bicycle



• With essentially no supplies other than a slicker



• Eating whatever came his way



• Sleeping outdoors, in mangers, wherever



• Writing over 1000 pages



• No Control Stops



• No Perpetuem!

How to begin describing such a journey? Let's have Stevens speak for himself after a brief setup.

Stevens writes of his Hungarian companion, Igali, whom he fell in with for a spell. Igali had his own bicycle, and was considered the ultimate sporting cyclist of all Hungary at the time. Stevens adjusts to Igali's slower pace by riding ahead and waiting in a comfortable spot for him. There is a little tension around tempo, but it resolves as they ride along and encounter adventures together and learn to appreciate one another more deeply.

My companion is what in England or America would be considered a "character"; he dresses in the thinnest of racing costumes, through which the broiling sun readily penetrates, wears racing-shoes, and a small jockey-cap with an enormous poke, beneath which glints a pair of "specs"; he has rat-trap pedals to his wheel, and winds a long blue girdle several times around his waist, consumes raw eggs, wine, milk, a certain Hungarian mineral water, and otherwise excites the awe and admiration of his sport-admiring countrymen.

On the Slavonian national dance:

Livelier and faster twang the tamboricas, and more and more animated becomes the scene as the dancing, shuffling ring envdeavors to keep pace with it. As the fun progresses into the fast and furious stages the youths' hats have a knack of getting into a jaunty position on the side of their heads, and the wearers' faces assume a reckless, flushed appearance, like men half-intoxicated, while the maidens' bright eyes and beaming faces betoken unutterable happiness; finally the music and the shuffling of feet terminate with a rapid flourish, everybody kisses everybody--save, of course, mere luckless onlookers like Igali and myself--and the Slovian national dance is ended.

On the popularity of the wheel:

Many readers will doubtless be as surprised as I was to learn that at Belgrade, the capital of the little Kingdom of Servia, independent only since the Treaty of Berlin, a bicycle club was organized in January, 1885, and that now, in June of the same year, they have a promising club of thirty members, twelve of whom are riders owning their own wheels.

In addition to cultural misunderstandings, mechanical breakdowns, sickness, attacks, headers, and severe weather, Stevens had to walk much of his journey as he had just one gear. Despite this, it took him 104 days to travel from San Fransisco to Boston, the first cross country cyclist. Eight months later in May of 1885 he left for England returning back to San Fransisco in January of 1887 via France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Slovinia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Azarbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Singapore, China and Japan. Some 13, 500 miles "wheeled" he says.



Stevens can be compelling at times, but also repetitive. I'm probably one fifth of the way through its 1000+ pages, and I start and stop because there is no real drama apart from his various escapades. He's thorough, and I'm learning a great deal, but it ain't a great read.

I can't seem to find attribution for the line drawings, but as you can see they are fabulous.



His feat is remarkable in so many ways, but the detail that gave me heart as I contemplate the Paris Brest Paris in 2011 is that he decided to ride cross country just two years before he embarked. At the point of that decision he hadn't yet ridden a bicycle!

And, the one he rode, a Columbia Bicycle by Pope Bicycle Factory, cost him $110. Consider that a tea set then was $4.75, a sewing machine $13.50, and set of parlor furniture was $17.50 according to the Introduction. Even a 425-pound buggy cost only $44.50, so my custom bicycle isn't looking too bad in comparison.

All together, I'm enjoying my long distance journey with Around the World on a Bicycle, but like his journey: it isn't for the faint of heart.

Keep it high,

CurioRando

This land is your land. Happy July 4th!

What a land in which we live! Who knows better than the randonneurs who tour it?

The only one I can think of is Woody Guthrie, seen here on YouTube singing his This Land is Your Land love song. He gets us pretty good. Here's my favorite stanza:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In honor of the 4th, here are a few ride reports--many with fabulous photos--about our land:

Pennsylvania: New Jersey Randonneurs progress and ride reports of the PA 1000k

Alaska: Alaska Randonneurs on the Alaska 600k

Washington State: Rando(m) Adventures on the SIR Spring 600k

Utah: The Utah Randonneur Zion Canyon 200k

Oregon: Oregon Randonneurs Mark Janeba's Covered Bridges pre-ride 2009

Colorado: Colorado Brevets Lyons-Berthoud Populaire

Georgia: Research Trailer Park Audax Atlanta Summer Solstice 300k Brevet
California: MAXP.net San Francisco 300k Brevet
Minnesota: http://www.biketcbc.org/randonneur/ portal to several Minnesota ride reports
Keep it free,
CurioRando

Prolonged sex, lightning bugs, crick fishing, and...oh yeah, randonneuring

Now that I've got your attention (as you'll soon learn, for males it mostly pays to be bold), I want you to adjust your eyes to the darkness, and imagine a soft, moonless and still summer evening. The come-on is expected, so you wait for it. Nobody moves. You hold your breath an instant...and there it is at last. A male lightning bug flashes his unique-to-his-species light that roughly translates to: "Calling all lightning chicks, I've got your nuptial gift right here! Calling all lightning chicks."

If you hail from a lightning bug part of the country (firefly to some), you know what I mean. Mixed with other pre-pubescent hot summer memories is the distinctive smell of the dank and musty lightning bug you've captured and put in a jar with a knife-pierced lid. It is an unmistakable odor. Every kid from a lightning bug homeplace knows what I'm talking about.

I loved that smell, and I loved our lightning bugs. The best place to find them was down by the crick, underneath the willow tree and amongst the forsythia bush branches. Our crick was, and still is, called Dirty Camp Run.

I know what you're thinking: it's not "crick", it's "creek". Well, I have it on great authority, Patrick McManus, that a "crick" is not only different from a "creek ", it is not a "creek" pronounced differently. Patrick is a fishing writer-humorist, and he knows all about workingclass cricks and how to fish them. Even if you're not a fisher, his post is hilarious.

Now, thanks to the New York Times story yesterday I understand why all those lightning bugs were hanging around the crick flashing every summer eve: to prove their nuptial gifts worthy to the lightning chicks. Science Reporter Carl Zimmer covers the research of Tufts researcher, Dr. Sara Lewis, that is all about the mating of lightning bugs.

Basic lightning bug mating lore:

• They remain coupled for HOURS. HOURS.
• They part at dawn; not sure about the whole cigarette thing.
• The males flash to attract females who lie in the grass waiting for The One.
• Males' flashes vary according to species.
• Males deliver a "nuptial gift", a coiled up nourishment package if you will, to the females in addition to sperm.
• The quality and size of the "nuptial gift" may determine the success of reproduction.
• Females judge the size and quality of the "nuptial gift" based on the boldness of the flashing.
• In one of Nature's cruel ironies, one species of lightning bugs predates on the others and favors those with the boldest flashings.
• Females insist in Cosmo surveys: the bigger the gift, the better.

Enlarge this graph from Lewis' research to see the call & response of lightning bugs. Lovely.

And here is a picture of modern day Dirty Camp Run, our crick, from Bridges and Tunnels of Allegheny County, Pa. It was so named by the Native Americans of our neck of Penn's Woods (Pennsylvania) in great honor of His Majesty's soldiers and the dirty camp the soldiers kept. To the Indians, it was simply the crick that ran by that dirty old, smelly camp the British soldiers lived in: Dirty Camp Run.

Today, it is so channeled up that it floods routinely, hence its relative fame. Pitcairn residents (downstream) blame Monroeville (where I grew up) land use practices, according to the Times Express. I feel for poor old dumped upon Dirty Camp Run and those unlucky residents affected by the flooding.
So how does this all relate to randonneuring? Well, if you go back to my earlier post of June 14, 2009 I talk about transport stages (where randonneurs rush in relative unison) and interest stops (places of interest where randonneurs "tour off their bicycles" to learn about the point of interest) during brevets.
I'm imagining a brevet where randonneurs start about 5pm and cycle a transport stage to a certain lowland area along a crick that is known for its lightning bug habitat. After cycling at high speed for hours, the randonneurs pause for a sex patrol control. One objective could be to count how many different species each randonneur confirms (by the males' distinctive mating flashings, of course). Cycling speed could play a role in that slower randonneurs might have less time to count the species (though lightning bugs do couple for HOURS). Or, the randonneur who finds the male with the shall-we-say "healthiest nuptial gift" could win a Lady's Choice award.
But seriously, I can imagine an enchanting evening brevet where the break or midpoint control could be a special lightning bug infested habitat. Why not?
One reason why not, unfortunately, is the decline of lightning bug habitat. Now Public reports that urban development, pollution, and artificial lights are culprits in the decline. I loved our polluted crick, Dirty Camp Run (though with intense mixed feelings as it was perhaps also responsible for my sister's polio), but the continuing destruction of its habitat is emblematic of our current path.
For the sake of our sexed up lightning bugs, we've got to turn this planet/ship around.
That's another reason I dig randonneuring. As it did when it was conceived, randonneuring pushes the presupposed limits of what one can do on a non-polluting bicycle.
Keep those "nuptial gifts" coming,

CurioRando
Post Script: DatreDame (aka Pramila, my wife) insists that I failed to point out the salient data point from the research, that there is a 20:1 ratio of male lightning bugs to female lightning bugs? What is she trying to tell me?