January 5

Today was a telecommuting day, but I found time to take a seven -mile ride in the evening to meet up with Dale on his commute home and to stop for groceries.

First Commute of 2012

From Daily Rides of 2012

The streets are a mess, the sun goes up after I get to work and sets before I get out, it's cold, and the ride isn't particularly scenic -- but I really enjoy cycle-commuting.  It's easier to load up my computer and head off in the early morning to work than to take a recreational ride around the lake on a sunny winter afternoon;  having a reason to ride is a big part of my motivation.  (5.4 miles round trip)

Winter cycling on ice

From Daily Rides of 2012

Every year since 2002, when I first tried to take at least one bike ride a day, Minnesota weather has stopped me in my tracks. This little Anura trike took me around Lake Harriet today and then up an icy hill toward home.  Even without studded tires, its traction is impressive.  (Dale was riding the one with the larger wheels and the studded tires.)  It was another day for a short ride, just three miles. 

Just 364 more days

From Daily Rides of 2012

Without the Greenspeed Anura trikes, the idea of cycling every day of 2012 would already be dead in the water (or perhaps it would already be "on ice").  As it was, I had to zig-zag uphill at one point.  Dale had it easier on the trike with 20" rear wheels and studded tires, but mine was running ordinary tires on 16" wheels. 

We weren't very ambitious.  A 2.6 mile ride to the post office to mail a 100th birthday card to Dale's childhood dance teacher and then to the co-op for some groceries was plenty. 

365 to go

Ten years ago today, a New Year's Day group ride inspired me to try biking every day for a whole year -- an elusive goal that I've never achieved yet. 

Trying to bike in bad weather introduced us to velomobiles, studded tires, lobster gloves, winter biking shoes, and delta trikes.

Our good-weather cycling has expanded to include hundred-mile rides, a 1008-mile cycling vacation, daily commuting by bike, and bike errands all over town.

Now it's time for another attempt to take at least one bike ride every day of the year.  The first day of 2012 brought a layer of ice and fresh snow, with high winds and falling temperatures.  We waited until evening and took a ride around Lake Harriet in the dark, meeting only three pedestrians and no other cyclists -- and no wonder, since the bike path was slick with ice.

One down.  Three-hundred and sixty-five to go.

[The ride -- about three miles, with a Greenspeed Anura trike;  Dale was on a modified Anura with 20" rear wheels fitted with Schwalbe Winter studded tires.]

Tiny Trike Rally

We rode with friends to a local restaurant with sidewalk seating to celebrate having a warm late October day.

50 years -- what a difference!

 A dozen reasons that cycling
year-round and cross-country
is better in 2011 than in 1961

In 1961, when I bought my first bike, cycling in Minneapolis/St. Paul was a summertime recreational activity. In 2011, you can see bikes on our streets and paths at all hours, every day of the year.  Biking is better than ever.  Here are my choices for the top 12 changes of the past 50 years:

1.  Practical bikes: my Dunelt 3-speed bike wasn't geared low enough for Minneapolis hills; it lacked a rack; panniers were unheard of. It did have fenders and a chain guard -- features that vanished from popular bikes for many years after that. Now, several manufacturers and importers offer fully-equipped bikes for all-weather cycling.

2.  Luggage options: racks and panniers carry gear and groceries securely. Waterproof bags are easy to find now. Long-tail bikes and gear trailers handle loads that were impossible to deal with even just 30 years ago. 

3.  Effective lighting: less than ten years ago, I would stop commuting at the end of October and not resume until March or April. It was simply too dark, and the available bike lights were faint, expensive, and unreliable.

4.  Safe routes: miles of bike lanes, bike trails, and bike freeways have given cyclists in Minneapolis (and many other cities) safe and fast routes to popular locations.

5.  Bike parking: I remember riding downtown in the 1960's and having absolutely no place to lock up a bike. Now my employer provides a weather-protected, card-access, secure bike cage closer to the door than any of the employee automotive parking spots. Downtown Minneapolis offers a variety of whimsical, practical, sheltered, secured, and just ordinary bike parking facilities. Grocery stores put bike racks next to their front doors.

6.  All-weather clothing: in 1970, I bought a cycling raincoat in Denmark; it was the last one I saw for sale for the next twenty-five years. I still use it occasionally, but the twenty-first century brought a wide range of cycling clothes for every sort of weather.

7.  Weather radar on the Internet: in 1961, dangerous weather came without much warning. The advent of weather radar on television was an improvement, but the biggest change came with animated weather radar on the Internet. Suddenly, it was possible to see when that 50% chance of rain would hit. You could pick your commuting time to coincide with a big gap in a storm. With smart phones, you could even update your information from the seat of your bike.

8.  Google bike routing:  it's still "beta," but bike routing on mapping programs is a terrific way to find a way from A to B that doesn't require "I" for the Interstate.  Just this week, Google plotted me a route across a freeway using a bike bridge that I'd never noticed before.  (That freeway was new in 1961.)

9.  Studded tires / three-wheelers:  if you've been cycling for more than 50 years, you don't want to be falling over on the ice.  Studded tires for bikes have gone from a do-it-yourself project to a whole rack in the local bike shops.  For those of us who want even more security, three-wheelers now come in sporty versions like my Greenspeed Anura or the Hase Kettwiesel -- perfect for a winter commute or a little ice-bike racing.

10.  Internet cyclist-to-cyclist communication:  bike commuters and tourists can find each other now.  Internet forums, specialty magazines and websites, and social networking sites let us share our enthusiasm, ideas, and interests in ways that we couldn't imagine fifty years ago.  When Copenhagen proposes a network of bike freeways, the news travels instantly to blogs around the world, and I can click-and-brag to the Danes about the ones we have in Minneapolis.  Back in 1970, when I landed in Amsterdam and encountered my first bike freeway, it came as a total surprise.  Good cycling ideas can spread around the world faster than ever. 

11.  Cell phones, especially smart phones:  you can go out for a ride, knowing that you can find your ride partner, call for help in case of a mechanical problem, or make, check, or change reservations while on the road.  With a smart phone, your location can even appear on your ride partner's phone -- or on your blog, if you are doing a ride that would interest your "followers."  What a concept!  I was a fan of science fiction in the 1960's, but this was beyond anything I could imagine.

12.  GPS (and waterproof maps):  if you've ever had a map dissolve in the rain at just the wrong time, you know the value of the waterproof map -- and better yet, the GPS device.  Cycling in Copenhagen in 1970 with a paper tourist map offered none of the carefree enjoyment of riding around the city in 2009 with a Garmin.  You can ride confidently far from your own turf, and you can always find your way back. 

ROAM 2011

ROAM's riders and velomobiles are home. Organizing my photos is taking longer than I had expected, but many of them are up on Picasa now, along with captions. Like many of the riders, I didn't have nearly enough time during the ride to talk, take pictures, or upload information to photo-sharing sites and this blog -- or to look at everyone else's postings and photos. Much of that will wait for the long winter nights. For now, there is this set of photos on Picasa.

SAG for velomobiles

I first caught sight of the velomobiles along Highway 12 near the Missouri River, where they had camped (Mobridge on Lake Oahe). Singly or in groups of two to six, the brightly-colored vehicles cruised past fields of sunflowers and wheat. I caught up with them at a gas station where they pulled in for snacks and to get directions around a detour.

Local interest was great, with many people stopping to talk with the riders.  Small-town reporters came out and photographed them, and articles appeared on local news sites -- in contrast to later days in Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, and Washington.

The first day, as the riders followed Highway 12 from Mobridge to Aberdeen, there wasn't much for a SAG driver to do.  The official detour around a construction site would have taken them far to the south.  The smaller roads that bypassed the highway to the north included a section of gravel.  I waited by the beginning of that segment, but most of the riders went through under their own power.  Three of them decided that their machines were unsuited to the conditions, and I ferried that group across.  I camped with the group in Aberdeen.  In the morning, one North American rider with an electric-assist system needed a ride to a bike shop in Willmar, Minnesota, so I drove the long stretch on Highway 12 to drop him off, then back to Benson, where the group was camping.

Some recumbent cycling friends from western Minnesota had shown up there, but I barely had time to talk with them when the sheriff stopped by, looking for someone to direct the riders away from a dangerous intersection in town onto a safer and shorter detour.  I spent a while parked on the side of Highway 12, with an improvised sign pointing the way to the shortcut.  The City Manager stopped and talked for a while.  He had spent several years in Germany and had biked across the country while he was there.

The night in Benson looked as if it might be a wet one.  Weather radar showed a storm approaching, and lightning announced that it had nearly arrived, but as it drew close to the campground, it split and went to the north and south.  The campground offered a quiet circle road.  On a weekday evening, ROAM riders had it to themselves.  I took a quick test ride in a Go-One EVO velomobile, finding that it felt amazingly smooth and light.  Mark Lynch, who was driving along in his Mazda Miata, coordinating direction-finding, passing out water, and generally helping with organizational issues, as he gathered information about velomobiles, took the opportunity to try out some additional ones.  People from town drove through and stared, or stopped to talk.

The next morning, I had a couple of velomobiles to transport to the Twin Cities.  One German rider was suffering from tendonitis, and North American rider Merrill Gay needed a rest day, so we loaded up a red Quest and Merrill's Alleweder for the trip to Minneapolis.  Merrill rode with me int he truck. We dropped off the velomobiles at the campground in Baker Park Reserve, stopped at my house to pick up four trikes and three crockpots full of casserole that my husband Dale had set to cook that morningl  We stopped to pick up some cold local beer and went back to Baker Park.

We hooked the trikes together into a train, and riders enjoyed taking it around the park on the beautiful paved trails.  Everything was going well.  Recumbent riders and velomobilists from the area were picnicking with the ROAM riders.  Dale arrived and brought coffee. 

Then the disaster.  Dale was riding on the front of the four-trike train, with our friend Liesl in the second position, and two strong local riders on the back. We hadn't thought to warn the two strangers about the need to slow down in curves.  As the trike train wound its way through the woods, they accelerated just as Dale started to put on the brakes.  The sudden power from behind was more than he could overcome, and the trike train left the path and smashed into a tree.  A pedal on the front trike sheared off and made a hole in his thigh, while a wheel on the other side of the lead trike "potato-chipped" from the force.  Liesl, who had been braking, came out okay, but the trike behind her snapped its fork.  The two riders on the back were uninjured.  Cell-phone connections in the park were poor, and Dale couldn't reach me, so Liesl ran back to the picnic area.  I picked up Dale with the truck, loaded the trikes in, and drove home.  Our plans to ride through Minneapolis and St. Paul with the velomobiles -- with Dale borrowing Merrill's Alleweder while I would take some of the ROAM riders on the trike train -- were ruined.

I dropped the trikes off for inspection and repair.  Two were okay, but two needed extensive work.

Dale didn't have any broken bones, but his thigh was twice its normal size, his shin was scraped and swollen, and he had a nasty wound.  He couldn't get out of bed to visit the campground at St. Croix Bluffs Regional Park the next evening, but I had made the reservations there and had to stop by to help with check-in.  Leaving Dale with his leg up and bandaged at home, I had one last visit with the riders before they left for Wisconsin, then I returned the truck to the rental center.

100

Made it!