Read the full post on roychristopher.com.

And if you’re more interested in the evolution of bicycle technology and what it meant for women, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (MIT Press, 1989) edited by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch has some great essays concerning both.

Thanks to Laura Brown for the link. Onward.

Don’t ask me why, but if an airline knows you have a bicycle in your luggage they will charge you—up to $100 each way! Luckily there are ways around it and you don’t have to let that stop you from flying with your bike. With the right kind of bag and packing job you will be able to breeze through check in with no problems, and without shelling out any extra cash.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT BAG
Although airlines charge you if they know you have a bike, they don’t charge you for military gear, hockey equipment, or golf clubs. So here are a few options for “bike bags” that you can take on a plane without paying anything extra.

Read the whole piece–and see the video–here.

That is all.

Happy 2011, everyone.

[Art by Cartlon Reid]

If you know me, you know that one of the only things I love as much as music is bicycles. Well, David Byrne’s own Bicycle Diaries (Viking, 2010) explores and explains why they’re so seductive in ways I never could.

This book was written almost by accident. That is, Byrne’s fascination with bicycles and writing about seeing the world from behind handlebars was unintentional. He first started riding them in New York in the early 80s, finding it easier to get around by bike than by cab or subway. Then came the feeling of freedom that riding bicycles affords. Later in his career, Byrne discovered über-portable folding bikes and started taking them with him on tour…

Check out the full post over there.

On a Bicycle:

1. Assume You are Not Welcome: No matter what the signs or laws say, motorists do not want you on the road. Keep this in mind and ride accordingly. Obey the laws, observe the lanes, be aware, and keep in mind that they can kill you.

2. Do Not Switch Roles: If you cross in a crosswalk or “become a pedestrian” for any reason, do it for real: get off your bike and walk it. This simple move could save your life.

3. Respect the Pedestrians: Remember that in most cases, sidewalks are for walking. In areas of high pedestrian traffic, bicycles should react as such (see rule #1).

4. When in Doubt, Get off the Road and Walk.

On Foot:

1. Beware of Bicycles: A lot of people on bicycles don’t know that they’re not supposed to ride them on the sidewalks and in crosswalks. They just don’t. To me, the hierarchy of the road goes Feet, Bicycles, and then Cars, but not everyone agrees with me. Keep this in mind. Also remember that sometimes cyclists are just trying to get away from speeding cars and out of harm’s way. Often the sidewalk is the only (somewhat) safe place to be.

2. Obey the Law: The laws for pedestrians are more clear-cut and better-known than those for bicycles. Follow them and keep yourself safe.

3. Stay Off the Roads Whenever Possible: Cars will kill you. They won’t mean to, but you’ll still be dead. Stay away whenever possible.

In a Car:

1. Assume Cyclists are Idiots: Give them as much leeway as you can manage. In a lot of cases. they know not what they do. Just treat all of them like the lose cannons some of them are and remember that you can kill them with one misstep.

2. Slow Down: In most situations where you’re likely to meet a cyclist or a pedestrian in your car, you shouldn’t be going very fast. As a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, I find cars careening frighteningly fast through neighborhoods, near institutions with frequent and large pedestrian traffic, and cyclists in the mix as well. Slow down, especially in these cases.

3. Know the Law: Right of way is a lost art. In most cases, you’re the last in line, but will be yielded to by others (i.e., cyclists and pedestrians) because you’re driving a lethal weapon. Keep this in mind when you mingle with the unprotected.

——–

These few ideas don’t cover everything, but they do address a lot of the issues I’ve confronted trying to get from A to B on foot and on wheels. Let’s keep an eye out and try to keep each other safe out there.

Here’s what the Okay Mountain site says about the show:

“Paradise Has Relocated” attempts to capture the lifeless remains and emptiness of a once thriving and historic island devastated by Hurricane Ike in September of 2008. Ike was the third most destructive and costliest hurricane to make landfall in the United States, destroying and flooding 75% of homes and landmass. The project deals with the physical dead space and ghostliness of Galveston- post hurricane. Each image whispers of an ordinary past lost to the ravages of Mother Nature. The everyday objects left behind in haste suggest former human inhabitation. The unoccupied landscapes, fractured structures and mundane interiors I have carefully composed compel the viewer to look beyond cultural stature and financial complexities, and question geographical location.

The geographic anonymity of my photographs prove that such devastation is not reserved for the third world but stand right on our doorstep. This is important to remember given the current state of world climate change. Unfortunately some believe that this may be the final blow for Galveston. With an already anemic economy and population decline that predates Ike by 50 years, survivors who are re-building or relocating, feel that their mythical land never fully recovered from the first Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

Sandy’s book Paradise Has Relocated is available from Blurb (where there’s also a full preview!). A percentage of the sales will go directly towards Hurricane IKE relief, so do good and buy a copy.

This build centers on a Spalding “Blade” ladies hybrid frame that was left in the garbage at my old place here in Austin. The geometry is not super aggressive, but it’s very up-right — definitely not a “cruiser.” That helps when tackling the small but frequent hills in Austin. It’s a single speed but pretty easy (170mm cranks, 39-16 gear ratio), which also helps. This thing is set up strictly as an around-town bike and not one that you would consider taking on long treks.

The front end sports a basket I found on an old Schwinn someone left by a dumpster here in Austin (that I will likely rebuild later), handlebars from a mountain bike someone was throwing away in Dothan, Alabama (I used to run them on my old Schwinn fixed-gear), and front and rear caliper brakes (from the parts pile).

I’ve had these rear baskets since the eighth grade. I believe they were left in the garage of the house my family moved into then. Somehow they’ve survived fifty-odd moves and are now firmly affixed to this build. There are lighter, easier ways to haul things on one’s bicycle, but this bike was built for next-to-nothing and is probably the most useful bike I have. I rode it everywhere exclusively for two weeks straight after I finished it, and I have to say that it’s perfect for running errands around town — and damn fun to ride.

Portland is a serious bicycling community. But not so serious that it can’t have some fun with its bike lanes. Some wag painted a whole bunch of Mario Kart items along a stretch of North Williams Avenue in the city.

The symbols include speed boost arrows, bananas, mushrooms, and stars. So far nothing exotic or offense-based, like the shells. They’re there to provide a little humor and inspiration to cyclists commuting home.

Here’s the full story.

In the early 90s, AT&T ran a series of commercials that posed some futuristic, technologically enabled task (e.g., “Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away?”), and then answered it emphatically (”You will.”), claiming they’d be the company to technologically enable such a task. I believe they’ve all come to pass except one. As Stewart Brand once said, “Technology marches on, over you or through you, take your pick.”

I can’t help but think that many of the technological advances we debate and marvel about were downright inevitable. In 1982, when I first got a computer, one of my main intentions was to get a modem and connect to databases. My eleven-year-old self wasn’t as hungry for information — I could’ve gotten the same stuff from the “database”  down the street known as “the library.” I was hungry for the idea of connectivity. The idea that I could connect my computer to other computers and exchange information. The idea was exhilarating.

Doesn’t that feeling, one that I shared with plenty of people by then, make the internet inevitable?

Didn’t your first unassisted ride on a bike feel like flying? Riding that two-wheeled bridge of balance is like taking off on wings of your own. In more sober tones, Marshall McLuhan (1964) aligned the two activities as well, writing,

It was the tandem alignment of wheels that created the velocipede and then the bicycle, for with the acceleration of wheel by linkage to the visual principle of mobile lineality, the wheel acquired a new degree of intensity. The bicycle lifted the wheel onto the plane of aerodynamic balance, and not too indirectly created the airplane. It was no accident that the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, or that early planes seemed in some ways like bicycles (p. 182).

Supposedly birds evolved the same way. Dinosaurs became bipedal via their large, counterbalancing tails. Eventually the same concept morphed wings.

Karl Popper (1968) called it “exosomatic evolution” (p. 238), adding that now we don’t grow faster legs, we grow bicycles and cars; we don’t grow bigger brains or memories, we grow computers. McLuhan continues, writing, “The transformations of technology have the character of organic evolution because all technologies are extensions of our physical being” (p. 182). Software and city blocks are as natural as ant hills and broccoli.

The argument that technology is organic begs the question of what to do about it: How do we maintain control over our contrivances?

The argument that technology is organic answers the question as well: We maintain control over our contrivances in the same way that we maintain control over our lawns. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.

References:

Brand, S. (1988). The media lab: Inventing the future at MIT. New York: Penguin.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Popper, K. (1968). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. New York: Oxford University Press.

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And here they are, the AT&T “You Will” commercials from 1993:

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