Family Folder

I've seen this guy riding around a couple of times (I counted him going both ways on the Longfellow when I did my bike count)  but I'd never seen him with his passenger.

What you can't see from the picture is that this is a folding tandem specially designed to take a kid on the back- the Bike Friday Family Traveller

I can't actually tell how it folds from the photos,  but it claims to fit in a suitcase. 

I don't know if it would be simple enough to fold on a daily basis, but if it were, it could be a good solution for someone looking for a kid bike with a tiny apartment.   Longtails aren't much worse than a normal bike to store, but Bakfiets and cargo bikes are not easy to fit in a city apartment.

It claims that the stoker can be from 3'6" to 6'3"  so it would be useful for a long time.

This is clearly their daily child transport bike, as I see the father riding with the empty bike (presumably after drop off) quite often.  I think it's an interesting option that you don't often see for kid transport.

Oh,  and one of the things I noticed during the bike count was the surprising (to me) number of folders.  I didn't track it exactly, but I suspect that it was 10%, which is pretty high.

Shogun goes for Tea

I hadn't seen my friend Silent q recently as she's missed a couple of Women who bike brunches, and since she was also going to miss the next one, we made plans to go for tea together.

Since it was likely to be a lovely Indian summer day, we biked out to The Tea Leaf in Waltham.
We rode along the river path almost all the way to Waltham center, and then cut across to the end of Moody street where the shop is located.   Since she was riding her brand new Surly Cross Check, and I wanted to keep up, I rode the Shogun.
After a bit of rain this morning, the weather turned lovely- crisp and just warm enough to be pleasant, and it was a gorgeous ride once we cleared the heavy traffic part of the path near Harvard sq.

We were starving by the time we got there, and we dove right into the finger sandwiches and sweets before I had a chance to take a photo:

The aftermath of our assault on the tea plate

While we were "in the neighborhood"  we swung by Harris Cyclery, where she had bought the bike for a bit of a mini-tuneup.

I treated the Shogun to a Radbot 1000 rear light, partly because I've been wanting to try one, and partly because I lost one of my planet bike superflashes, and a needed a dedicated light for this bike in case I get caught out after the ever-earlier arriving darkness :(

There was a cool old Raleigh, almost but not quite a mixtie.  It actually has almost an identical frame to a Betty Foy (there was one sitting right next to it)

It had a really cool old school water bottle cage on it:

The cage has a spring-loaded hasp to hold the bottle tightly:

They've improved the Brooks display area since the last time I was there- the oriental carpet seems slightly out of place in a bike shop, but it does definitely set that area apart.

I love the the Rivendell headbadges-  would love to have taken this Atlantis for a spin, but it was closing time, so it'll have to wait for another trip.

At that point we hit the roads, taking Watertown street into Watertown sq, then following the river path on the Boston/Newton side all the way back into Cambridge

Crossing back into Cambridge as the sun sets

When we stopped to part ways,  I was amazed at the honeysuckle growing along the river.  I don't think I've ever noticed honeysuckle along there, and now it's growing on everything-creating an undulating carpet of silver blooms.  It might be an invasive weed, but it sure smells heavenly.

It was a lovely 18 mile ride (according to Silent q's computer,  and the Shogun was very comfortable for that distance. I may finally be breaking in the saddle I think.  I feel more like I'm settling into the saddle and less like I'm perched on top of it, sliding around.  I might start to look for some gloves if I'm riding much further though, as the combination of the skinnier tires/ more vibration and having more weight on my hands makes me really feel the ride in my hands.

Transpo-lectures

There's a good series of lectures at the Harvard Kennedy school about Public infrastructure called "Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and Bikes).  Last year they were all in the middle of the afternoon, so it was tough for me to get there from downtown,  but this year they've moved them all to 4:30-6PM, so I might be able to make it to a few.
The schedule:

·         September 19     Seth Moulton, Managing Director-Lone Star High-Speed Rail (Taubman 401, 4:00-5:30)

·         September 26     Carl Dietrich, CEO/CTO and Co-Founder-Terrafugia www.terrafugia.com (Taubman 401, 4:30-6:00) [to be confirmed]

·         October 3              Gerry Mooney, general manager, IBM Global Smarter Cities-IBM (Taubman 401, 4:30-6:00)

·         October 10            Josh Robin,  Director of Innovation at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority  (Taubman 401, 4:30-6:00)

·         October 15            John Pucher, professor of planning and public policy-Rutgers University, and author of City Cycling (MIT Press 2012) (Room TBA, 4:30-6:00)

·         October 17            Steve Poftak, Executive Director-The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston (Taubman-Allison Dining Room/5^th floor, 4:30-6:00)

·         October 24            Carl Allen, Director of Transportation, Boston Public Schools (Taubman-Allison Dining Room/5th floor, 4:30-6:00)

·         October 31            Aaron Naparstek, founder-Streetsblog, and Paul White, Executive Director-Transportation Alternatives www.transalt.org  (Taubman 401, 4:30-6:00)

·         November  7        Rachel Kaprielian, Registrar of Motor Vehicles-Massachusetts Department of Transportation (Taubman 401, 4:30-6:00)

·         November 14       Mark Joseph,  Chief Executive Officer-Veolia Transportation (Taubman 401, 4:30-6:00)

If you are interested in participating and/or would like more information, contact John Foote at john_foote@hks.harvard.edu. For up to date information see the "events" section of the Taubman Center website- www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/taubman.

Scul Mission: Spokesfest Civilian Escort

I wasn't able to go to Spokesfest 2012 on Saturday, because as an anniversary present, the Scientist took me out to see a play at the American Repertory Theater, which was happening at the same time.  We've been saying we need to go check out the ART for years, and finally we made it happen, but it was too bad that there was a conflict.

The part of Spokesfest that I was really bummed about missing ride with Scul,  since I'm too vanilla to feel confident showing up at one of their regular "missions"   But if I showed up as part of the "civilians"  at Spokes, I thought I could maybe sneak my utilitarian retro-grouch bike in with all the cool bikes without being too obviously out of place.

It turns out that I did get to see the "mission" go by, as we were just getting home as they hit Harvard Sq.   It also started to pour just as they were arriving, so the video is from my front porch, which isn't quite as close up as I'd like, but it's still fun to see the fun bikes go by.   I did see a fair number of "civilians"  although the ranks may have been thinned by the rain.

My favorites are the guy with the Disco ball at about 0:16 and the last guy.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to record sound (or probably had my finger on the microphone).  It's unfortunate because that's a big part of the Scul experience- thumping disco that you can hear from blocks away.

Watching the Pedestrians

One of the things about traveling on a bike, is that you spend a lot of time studying the way the city works.   I started doing it out of self-preservation, because noting  infrastructure and patterns helped me ride more safely.  But I've become a self professed traffic geek in the process, endlessly studying Streetsblog and Strongtowns and Bike Portland, for the latest ideas and theories about livable streets.

All that studying causes me to draw conclusions about the ways that infrastructure influences the way that people behave in the city.   For most drivers, the infrastructure works well most of the time, and it's fairly easy to get from point A to point B  (there are many parts of Boston where this is not completely true, but mostly the right of way is clear and defined, and you just follow the signs and signals and uninterrupted lanes to where you're going.   Biking has gotten better in that respect: there are more and more bike lanes, and drivers in Boston are more and more aware of bikes and better about acknowledging their right of way or "sharing the road" with them.  But there are still lots of places where bike infrastructure disappears at critical points, or lights don't trigger unless there's a car, or places where the best way to get from A to B is either unclear or feels unsafe.

And then there's the pedestrian experience.   The Boston area is a great place to walk, for many of the same reasons it's a good place to bike: density, interconnectivity, good transit.  On a bike you instinctively interact more with pedestrians than drivers do- they're on eye level with you, you can communicate easily with them, and there's a sense of traveling through the same shared space.

In my "studies" I've noticed a huge difference between how pedestrians behave in Cambridge and  in Boston, and I've been wondering what explains it.  In Cambridge, there's a fair bit of jaywalking, but mostly it's the kind that doesn't cause problems for anyone else: i.e. it doesn't get in the way of the person who legally has the right of way.  As soon as I get into Boston though, pedestrians start to walk out from between cars mid-block,  and there's a lot more jaywalking in front of you just as you get a green light.  It's not like the people are any different, the density of streets and buildings is similar, and the numbers of pedestrians isn't much different.

I've been observing this for 6 years now, and I think I have a conclusion about why this happens- it's not like the populations of the two sides of the river are any different.  But the approach that Cambridge and Boston have taken to accommodating pedestrians has been very different.  In Cambridge, the city has had a policy for a long time of concurrent walk signals,  so pedestrians have a right of way every time the cars going parallel have a light, so there's never much of a wait. There are regularly spaced crosswalks in areas without closely spaced lights, and where those crosswalks are on high speed roads, there are lights with "on demand" buttons. The signalized crossings controlled by the city of Cambridge (for example the ones around Fresh Pond)  operate almost immediately after pushing, with only 30 seconds or so of delay to safely slow and stop traffic. In most places, especially pedestrian dense areas, there are countdown timers too, so that the pedestrian knows exactly how long they have until the light will actually turn.

In contrast, Boston had a longtime policy* of "scramble signals"  where there would be two cycles of traffic,  and then a four way pedestrian signal, which doubles  the amount of time you have to wait for walk signal.  For a pedestrian-heavy city, they had way too many intersections where pedestrian signals were only "on demand"  and after you pushed the button you'd have to wait sometimes through a full cycle of both directions before you got a crossing sign.   That's particularly awful if you have to do that twice to get diagonally across an intersection.   Countdown timers are in the minority, and infuriatingly a lot of the walk signals end long before the parallel light turns yellow, without any explanation of why you can't walk even though the parallel car traffic has the right of way. This is my pet peeve, because people stop when they lose the "walk" signal, but then they realize that the perpendicular traffic doesn't have a green light, so they decide they may as well walk, and they get halfway through the crosswalk when the light changes.   Finally, although drivers in Boston are better than in most places, they're still not great about stopping for crosswalks, and I don't know of any Boston controlled signalized crosswalks.  (The DCR controlled ones on the parkways are pretty bad, often requiring peds to wait 2 cycles before they get a light)

My theory is that when pedestrians feel that the rules aren't fair to them, or create unnecessary hardship for them, they ignore the rules and do what is simplest and easiest for them.  By making things clear and easy for pedestrians, Cambridge has created a place where pedestrians are happy to obey the "rules" and generally don't interfere with other modes' right of way.  In Boston, where pedestrians are forced to wait too long for their "turn,"  are given signals that don't seem to make sense, and aren't given enough legal places to cross, they take the law into their own hands.

There's an obvious parallel to bicyclist behavior here.   If bicyclists are given comprehensive infrastructure that's of equal quality to car infrastructure,  and the system seems fair and logical, I think that they will understand why standard traffic laws should apply to bikes as well as cars, and  you'd get "buy-in" and much better compliance.  More importantly I think you'd get bicyclists to be more like the "polite" jaywalkers of Cambridge, breaking the laws only when they aren't going to endanger or inconvenience anyone else.

*I believe that Boston has revised its policy and in the future, concurrent signals will be typical, but I don't know what their policy is for going back and retiming lights with the old scramble signals.

Updated:  Just to clarify,  I don't have a problem with jaywalking necessarily, just as I don't have a problem with the Idaho Stop- I think that they're parallel situations.  My problem is mostly at lights when people charge into traffic right in front of people who have the right of way.   It's really kindergarten level stuff- taking turns and being fair.  And I think that if the infrastructure is fair, people will remember those primary school lessons and share the public space safely.

Bike Counters needed

Boston Bikes is looking for volunteers to count bikes during rush hours this September.
Bike counts are very important because it's easy for transportation engineers to count cars, and then focus on designing for the car traffic that they have numbers on.  It's harder to count bikes, because it requires a real life person, not just a pneumatic tube*,  and if that data doesn't exist, it's easier for the planners to imagine that bikes aren't a big part of traffic.  How many times have you seen a stupid comment from a driver about "I never see any bikes in the new bike lanes" in the comments section of an article?  We need data to be able to counter that kind of windshield blindness.

One recent result of a bike count was that the city was able to make the case for removing parking and adding bikes lanes on Mass Ave after counts indicated that bikes made up 10-15% of traffic on Mass Ave during rush hour.

Signup via Survey monkey with times and places that would work for you- they're focusing on 7-9AM and 4-7PM.   More information, and the link to the signup here.

*It is possible to buy specialized pneumatic tubes that are calibrated to measure bikes passing over them, but most cities/ states don't bother to buy them, and I don't believe that it's possible to calibrate a tube to sense both bikes and cars- the pressure of a 200lb bike vs a 5,000 lb truck is too different.

Biking for Berries

I've been falling behind on my canning this summer- mostly doing the odd batch of beans, as I deplete the pantry.  I made so much jam last summer and it felt like we weren't using up at the same pace, so I skipped both strawberry and blueberry season (although I suppose the last isn't completely done)  and missed sour cherry season because I was traveling.   So this leaves me peaches, raspberries and figs (although the figs aren't local, they're more of a fall season thing).

I decided I'd try to pick the raspberries myself, and to add some fun to the proceedings, that I'd bike out to the farm.   Thanks to the folks on the Chowhound Boston board, I got directed to Wright-Locke Farm in Winchester (just a few blocks from the Arlington line),  although they also warned me it was up a massive hill.

Partly because of the hill warning, but partly just because I thought it would be fun, I decided to take the Shogun,  which hasn't gotten ridden as much as I'd like because of a series of flat tires.   I wanted to pick a LOT of raspberries, so I wanted some serious carrying capacity, so I spent the morning installing a rack that I bought for it last winter.  I didn't want a huge dutch style rack like my city bikes have, just enough to fasten a small set of panniers.   The petite VO Constructeur rack seemed like the perfect choice.

The installation was fairly straightforward, but I'm not crazy about the system- I think that they may not have been crazy about the system either, because they may have changed it.

The rack I have, had two holes already drilled in the end of the struts.  The idea was that you picked the set of holes that positioned the rack as close to the fender as possible, cutting off the extra length if you picked the higher set of holes.   I believe that they may have changed it since I bought this one, to have no holes so that you can adjust it exactly to the right height, because their online installation instructions start by having you drill your own holes.

As it was, the rack sat about 3/16" too high above the fender, which was too close to drill a new hole really.  I suppose I could have turned the existing hole into a slot and pushed it down,  but instead I just used some rubber spacers between the top of the fender and the bottom of the rack.

The rack has bosses, into which you screw nuts up from under the fender.  This is slightly a pain, because you have to remove the wheel to get the screws in and up.  Not such a big deal to do once, but after the third round of adjustments, not so much fun.

Unfortunately the heads of the supplied machine screws were big allen key sockets, and the tire clearance on the fender wasn't enough for the head to clear the tire.  I tried it out on a quick trip to the compost drop off, and it caused a nasty whining noise. Short term, I cured the problem by partially deflating the tire, but that wasn't a permanent solution.

I detoured to the hardware store on the way home, picking up machine screws with a pan head, although they aren't stainless, so probably I'll redo it at some point.  Although since I don't anticipate riding this bike for long periods in rain, and it lives inside, maybe it won't be a problem.

I was clearly anticipating picking a LOT of berries

Anyway, after too much time fussing with the rack, I was off, and I was a bit worried about time.   It was 2pm, and the field closed at 4pm, so I was running late.   I headed out Mass Ave, and instead of detouring to catch the bike path through Alewife, decided just to bike all the way out to Arlington center and pick up the path there.   The hill ended up not being so bad, although I did make use of the smaller chainring, it was perfectly manageable.

Got to the farm around 2:45, and started picking, but found that through a combination of it being early in the season and late in the picking day, the bushes were kind of picked over.   After over an hour of picking I had a bit more than a quart, but that was all I was going to get.  So much for needing both the panniers and the saddlebag!

I headed back, taking the minuteman all the way, and running into Velouria on the way home.  She was glad to see the Shogun in use, I think, and wondered if having weight on the back made it handle strangely.  At that point there wasn't much weight on it, but there was later, and I didn't really notice any major issues.  It's supposed to be a "touring" frame I think, so you would hope that it could carry a decent load.  Velouria was headed out to Ride Studio cafe for the randonneuring "end of season" party, and invited me to come along.  Unfortunately by this point, I'd was pretty tired, and needed to let the dog out, so I just headed home,  stopping at Whole foods to buy a few more raspberries to supplement my sad PYO.  By the time I got home, I had managed to completely fill the saddlebags, and was glad I'd added the saddle bag as well.  My personal stuff (wallet, keys, camera, lock, extra water) went in the saddlebag, and everything else filled the panniers.

Raspberries have a lot of pectin, so I made cooked jam without anything added- 8c raspberries, 4 cups sugar, a squeeze of lemon and 15 minutes or so of a low boil.  I followed this recipe, although I think she's a bit cavalier about the processing, and did a full 10 minute boiling water canning processing.

The results:

I am looking forward to enjoying them in the colder months on toast, or vanilla ice cream.