There have been some awesome innovations in biking technology this year. Check out these cool lighting systems someone came up with. Or how about this nifty accessory to have your iPhone available while you ride. One of the positives of the poor economy lately is that it is forcing people to turn to alternative modes of transportation. Naturally, with more people biking comes more technological advancement.

One good thing about Europe’s high gas prices is that it turns people away from cars. Never thought I’d say it, but perhaps our gas prices should be higher. People get very power happy with their hands on a steering wheel and foot on a gas pedal. We become so accustomed to it that we forget that it’s a huge, powerful piece of metal that we are pushing along very fast. Every day I see hundreds, if not thousands, of cars driving along with only one person inside. This is ridiculously inefficient. Many of these people aren’t even going that far. With the terrible traffic here in the Bay, especially the East Bay stretch of freeway from Richmond to Emeryville, the time difference between cycling and driving is probably not even that significant. Your body will thank you for it.

In an overweight nation, changes must be made. Sitting all day at a computer is bad enough, but compile this with driving home to a TV screen along with eating fast food, and we are creating a recipe for our own demise.

But, as I said, things are improving. I have high hopes for 2012. Forget about that end of the world nonsense. We’ve witnessed and survived plenty of “raptures” in the past. However, I do believe a more collective consciousness is developing, and it will prove to have positive benefits. We shall be the beneficiary and bicycles may be the benefactor. I have been focusing more on my breath recently, breathing strictly though my nose in order to create and maintain an internal heat. Every breath, especially when I ride. I intend to ride more this coming year, especially now that I am occupied with an office job. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, in preparation for an awesome year!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving” ~ Albert Einstein

The ferry arrived on Coronado and we set off to find the Silver Strand, a long isthmus connecting Coronado to Imperial Beach in the south. The path goes directly underneath the Coronado Bridge, perhaps best known for the infamous confrontation between Ron Burgundy and Jack Black which sent Baxter flying over the side. It then travels along the super nice golf course on the island, followed by an amphibious training base used by NAVY SEALs. We then found ourselves on a thin length of land, with the Pacific Ocean to our right and San Diego Bay to our left. Riders on road bikes were zooming past us along the trail, but we were just cruising on our mountain bikes taking in the sunshine, it was glorious!

When we reached the south end of the Strand, we stopped for a breather and grabbed some aguas frescas from a little Mexican food shop. I had a cup of refreshing watermelon juice, Charlie went for the jamaica. I remember seeing a cool sign for Imperial Beach with a picture of an old school woodie on it. I guess it was one of those classic California beaches, back when surfing was getting popularized nationwide by the Beach Boys music and movies like Gidget.

For the ride home we would take a different route. We rode along the east side of the bay, through Chula Vista and National City. It wasn’t quite as scenic as the strand, but I find it’s one of the best ways to get to know a city. As we got closer to home, we rode through Barrio Logan, a notorious neighborhood known for its gang violence. It was even featured on a couple of those History and Discovery Channel shows: “Gangland” and “American Gangster.” It was cool riding through the graffitied alleys with shoes hanging on the electrical wires above. We don’t really have alleys like that up here in the bay, it’s more of a SoCal thing. The walls were all tagged with the funky Chicano style graffiti.

Finally, under the 94 freeway we began our ascent to my neighborhood in South Park. A few blocks from my house was Hamilton’s, a local beer bar with an expansive, ever-changing menu. We had a couple of tall frosty pints and called it a day.

Here’s a map of my route. I couldn’t get it to embed, but you get the idea, and can click here to see my full Google Map of this epic ride.

It wasn’t long however, before I realized the animosity aimed at bikers by the general public. The campus of San Diego State University was very poorly designed considering the amount of people meandering from class to class (most likely with pit stops at the bar/frat house on the way). No bikes allowed, no matter what time of day or how empty the walkways were. Citations were regularly handed out by the elite forces of the SDSU police.

Riding around on the roads was not respected any more. One time, I was pulled over on my way to school for a rolling stop. I admit I did not come to a complete stop at the stop sign; yes, I broke the traffic law. But seriously, it was a completely empty intersection on a small road! I ended up having two cops search my backpack, even though I had been very cooperative and respectful. I was literally on my way to take a test and had my bag full of books.

The fact that they put so much effort into simply letting me off with a warning wasn’t so much personally upsetting as it was disconcerting. I was riding my regular 7 mile route to school, through an impoverished area where crime is constantly observable. It just seems so strange to me that police driving through a tough neighborhood would see me, a college kid on a bike, as the person suspicious enough to pull over and hassle.

This was to be just the first of my encounters with the San Diego Police on my bicycle. I ended up getting pulled over twice for wearing headphones, and once more for a rolling stop. These were all in the same low-income area where crime was abundant! I literally passed by the same prostitutes walking the street every few days. Yet I received the police officers’ full attention. I managed to make it through 6 years living in SD while only getting pulled over on my bike 5 times. Not bad I guess, considering where local law enforcement’s priorities lay.

So I have returned to the Bay Area, where Berkeley cops make an effort to see that the automobile drivers are the ones acting responsibly, because obviously bikers already are (wink wink). I can freely cruise with headphones now if I feel some music would improve my ride. I can push my pedals down bicycle boulevards straight through stop signs on wide, empty streets designed with cyclists in mind.

Even better, I was recently informed that the SDSU campus has changed, and bike lanes have finally been added!

I am very happy for the students currently pedaling to class, although some other, more regrettable, campus changes have been made, including the demolition of the campus bar Louie’s. I suppose sometimes progress takes sacrifice.

Alright, so they’re not trying to oust that very favorite cafe that exists only in your imagination. But rather, Actual Cafe promises that they’re “not just another wi-fi shack.” I’m totally on board with this idea, because my favorite thing to do in a cafe is to chat with a friend (or a few friends). But think about how many times you’ve gone to a cafe to see everyone with faces buried in laptops, especially at the chain variety of cafe (think Starbucks, Peet’s). It’d be great if people could interact, and not just via social networking platforms.

Actual Cafe provides a place for people to really get together and connect. Sure, there were a few loners on laptops, but they’ll find that it’s no quiet place to work. While there are a couple booths, most of the seating is either at a long bar, or a series of tables that have been pushed together into one long table. You’re sitting right next to whomever else is there, and you’re bound to have to talk at some point. Plus, there’s a high likelihood that you can talk to each other about bikes. That’s because many of the patrons are also cyclists. The cycling community is drawn to Actual Cafe because they have this beautiful indoor bike parking on the wall. You can just see my yellow Colnago in the picture (the second bike from the right).  I have to apologize for the photo quality. My camera was out of commission, so I used my phone.

Anyway, Actual Cafe also has a separate bike entrance that goes right to the indoor bike parking. The bikes are protected from wayward chairs and such by a metal railing. It’s really quite wonderful for the coffee drinking cyclist. The prices weren’t cheap, but the vibe was good, the indoor bike parking amazing, and the food quite tasty.

Actual Cafe also has rotating art exhibits on the wall, and a a bike set up on a trainer with a generator hub that will play a movie for you while you pedal. It’s a pretty cute little hang out spot, and it’s locally owned, so I feel good about that. I may even try to do some of my blogging there–but to avoid being one of those laptop people, I’ll probably try to talk to those sitting around me. Maybe I’ll see you there….

It’s been a wild year for me–driving 2000 miles from Wisconsin to California, then flying back to Wisconsin to get Orion and driving the 2000 miles again (I should probably buy some carbon offsets for this year, huh?).

For me + cycling, it’s been a wild year, too. Some achievements:

• mastered bigger hills here in California than even exist in Wisconsin
• entered a mountain bike race–something I’d been promising myself I’d do again for the past few years
• shed a few pounds (like 20), though I put a good chunk of it back on over the holidays–less weight means faster climbing!
• started working with a personal trainer, who has made me able to endure more pain than I thought possible, which has pushed me to become a better cyclist simply because my power has increased so much.

But of course, there have been some not-so-great cycling moments this year too:

• I planned to ride my bike to BART most days, but have failed. I usually take a bus or occasionally walk, though it’s only a mile.
• I haven’t been on a road ride in over a month, I think. Fail.
• The mountain bike race was hard. Too hard. I realized my skills (and bravery) in technical situations are severely lacking.
• That weight I lost? It’s not so good that I put half of it back on.
• I haven’t increased my stamina much. I have more power, and can get up hills better, but haven’t added any distance to my rides. I’m still happy at around 25 miles–depending on the terrain, of course. 25 miles of straight up is not my cup of tea.

The time is ripe for making New Year’s Resolutions, so why not some that are cycling related? And everyone recommends making your resolutions public–it will help you follow through. So here’s my plan for 2010:

• Trainer riding in the morning! I already run with a friend in the morning a couple days a week, and I really enjoy it. But the other days I plan to do some time on the trainer. Starting with just 45 minutes or so, and working up to more. The “working up to more” part is less about stamina, and more about having to wake up that much earlier.
• I’m going to ride my bike to the very last BART stop before the hills that separate me from work. It’s only a mile to the closest BART stop to me, but it’s a couple more to the next stop. I can’t commit to riding up and over the hills every day, but I can at least ride up to the hills before I get on the train.
• Mountain biking! I desperately want to be good at this, so I need to make an effort to hit the trails. At least once every other week to start, and hopefully once a week in the summer. I want to tackle that Lake Sonoma race again next year, and do well.
• Shed more pounds. So stereotypical, right? But it will make me a better, faster cyclist. And I won’t be embarrassed to post pictures of me cycling on here once I lose my gut!
• Figure out how to make my bulleted text the same size font as the rest of my posts. This is unrelated to cycling, other than with respect to the fact that this is a cycling blog.

What are your plans for this new year of cycling? Any big changes you’d like to make?

If you need some tips on how to keep your resolutions, check out the links below. I find most of the advice given on these blogs to be good advice, and they’re full of insightful information the rest of the year, too:

The Definitive Guide to Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions
from Zen Habits, by Leo Babauta

More Tips About Making and Keeping New Year’s Resolutions Than You Could Want
from The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin

**side note: Gretchen Rubin is one of my very favorite bloggers, and her new book, also called The Happiness Project, just hit stores this week.

Congratulations, Grechen!

Keep it in mind if you need some reading for the upcoming three-day weekend!

**Happy New Year image courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sally_12/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

The paths will link parts of town that cyclists could previously only get to by riding on bumpy roads in need of repair that are also heavily used by motor vehicle traffic.

I’m hoping Emeryville will catch on, and make more of an effort to link itself to the Berkeley paths so I can use these new routes!

You can read more about the details of the expansion in the article from today’s Contra Costa Times.

photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nafmo/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

The Hundreds is one of these projects. It’s a simple idea: 100 days to meet and write about 100 cyclists, each in 100 words. The 100 words aren’t about the bike, either. It’s not about who has the latest technology, or the coolest fixie. It’s about the person on the bike. What a great way to showcase the variety of people who ride! The commuters, the racers, the hipster fixies, the Dutch-esque city bikers, the mountain bikers….the list goes on, and they’re all captured on The Hundreds.

Blake Kasemeir does a great job getting the essence of a person on a bike into 100 words. I’d love to see this project turned into a book–the photos are sometimes a little grainy, but that lends to the realism of them–these cyclists are just like the rest of us, they’re real people. Yet while the photos are very real, the sepia tone makes the subjects seem as though they are special–somehow apart from the rest of us, because the colors of their world don’t match with the colors of our “real” world. In short, he conveys that each of these people is an individual. Each one of them is unique and special, each has a unique bike, and a unique story. Yet they’re just like us. Very cool.

I know if each of these 100 people was given a page in a book, I’d have great Christmas presents for many of the cyclists on my list this holiday season. Plus, you might think that Blake would be bored after completing his 100 cyclist project. What to do now, besides work on getting a book published, right?

Wrong.

It seems that Blake has started a new project, called Know Good Deed. He’s only on deed number two, but it looks like he’s doing something similar to The Hundreds. He’s documenting the good deeds that go on out there in the world. Looks like something worth keeping an eye on–though I’m still holding out hope for a book of The Hundreds.