Motor-on-a-cycle

As a motorcycle, this one is very cute.

However, I'm sure it is a very smelly bicycle.

Cyclovia is Coming to the 'Peg

On Sunday September 13, Winnipeg becomes the first Canadian city to host this festival. Considering cycling is not very 'big' here yet, this is amazing!

This is what I found in the Winnipeg Free Press:

"Cyclovia coming to downtown

Inaugural street festival to celebrate day without automobiles

By: Bartley Kives

A portion of Broadway will be closed for one Sunday in September as the city holds a new bike-and-pedestrian street festival called Ciclovia.

In what amounts to the first large downtown street party since the Get Together Downtown events held during the Glen Murray years, the westbound lanes of Broadway will be closed Sept. 13 between Main Street and Osborne Street to make room for buskers, food vendors, a farmers' market, a straw maze and activities such as skateboar

ding, street hockey and sand sculpting.

Ciclovia, which means "bike path" in Spanish, is modelled on a festival that began in Bogota, Colombia and has since taken root in dozens of La

tin American cities as well as U.S. centres such as New York City, Miami, San Francisco, Cleveland and Portland, Ore.

"It's a day for people to get acquainted with their communities and celebrate a day without a car," said Stefano Grande, executive director of

the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ, the event's main organizer. "This is a pilot project, and if it's successful, we'll extend the (street closures) north, south, east and west next year."

Winnipeg's version of Ciclovia, which will wrap up with a concert at The Forks, comes with a $50,000 price tag to cover the cost of policing, barricades and bus rerouting. Grande said the city and corporate sponsors will split the cost, which is a small fraction of the $700,000-plus price tag for the Get Together Downtown festivals, which took place on Portage Avenue in 2001 and 2002.

The Ciclovia plan calls for the Broadway street festival to be connected to The Forks with a closed curb lane on northbound Main Street. West of Osborne Street, closed curb lanes on Broadway, Balmoral Street, Young Street, Westminster Avenue, Furby Street, Sherbrook Street and Maryland Street will connect the festival with regular Sunday street closures on Wolseley Avenue and Wellington Crescent. The event is being held in conjunction with Manitoba Homecoming 2010, a provincially sponsored effort to boost tourism in the province by targeting former residents. But the main impetus is to encourage more people to explore downtown without using a car.

St. Vital Coun. Gord Steeves, city council's community services chairman, said he likes the idea of a festival that might encourage people other than hardcore bike commuters to ride downtown.

Steeves said he's both amazed and pleased by the increased interest in both recreational and commuter cycling in wintery Winnipeg over the past four years.

"It's almost to the point where (commuter cycling) is mainstream," he said. "It's not quite there yet, but for cycling to even be considered as a viable mode of transportation is a big deal, because that's definitely a challenge in the Canadian climate."

An officially sanctioned cycling festival may also be seen as a response to Critical Mass, the unsanctioned cycling demonstrations that have occasionally appeared on Winnipeg streets. But that was not the organizers' intention, Grande said.

"We just want to encourage people to come downtown, on foot or on a bike," he said.

Almost two dozen businesses, environmental organizations, cycling groups and other non-profit organizations plan to participate in the festival.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 21, 2009 B2"

If the Cat-in-the-Hat Rode a Bike...

it would probably look like this...

Rejuvenating a Road Bike

This weekend, the Geek started working on N1's triathlon bike.

It has been torn down to its individual pieces for rehabilitation.

The wheels took a great deal of scrubbing and the liberal application of Pink Solution to break down 20 years of grease and hayfield dust.

The wheel hubs are amazingly clean; more so than I expected.

The Geek replaced the bearings and is now looking for a dust cap to fit the wheel.

This box of bits are the next step. Maybe we should buy shares in the complany that makes CLR.

An Old-Fashioned Word

On August 17 I published my first instructable (instructables describes itself as a 'make, how-to and D-I-Y site).
Later that day, I received an e-mail from them, as follows,

"Hi!
Your Instructable "Bicyling Modestly in a Skirt" was just featured by one of our editors!
Look for it on the Instructables homepage within the next 30 minutes. Being featured means we think you are awesome. Keep up the great work!
http://www.instructables.com/
-Eric"

Now that is pretty cool; who doesn't want to think they are awesome?

Then yesterday I received this e-mail,

"Your Instructable "Bicyling Modestly in a Skirt" just became popular!
Look for it on the Instructables homepage within the next 30 minutes. Being popular means lots of people are checking out your Instructable and telling us they really like it. Keep up the great work!"
I was frankly a little puzzled. As an instructable, it isn't that exciting or ground breaking. If you want to ride a bicycle in a skirt, you put a pair of shorts underneath. Big deal. But last time I checked, 4,690 people have looked at it.

The Geek and I figure it must be because I used the word 'modestly' in the title. People either don't know what that means, or they think it means something opposite to what it really does.
And who can blame them? There are a great many immodest people in the news these days. Young Hollywood...um...socialites who dress inappropriately and, while getting out of cars, give cause to change the old rhyme to "I see England/I see France/ I see, YIKES!/No underpants."

No Fig Leaf Required

An oft mentioned item on many of the blogs I read is the joy and difficulty in riding in a skirt. Dottie and Trisha have offered some suggestions to keep one properly covered, as well as making reference to Sigrid's fig leaf concept.

During the winter, I made a pair of pantalettes out of rayon lining fabric to wear between my wool tights and trousers on the days I would walk to work. The layers would keep me warm, and would resist the friction that would occur between the tights and pants.

This spring, I started to wear the pantalettes under skirts, as they are much better in my windy city than a petticoat (as my dad calls it) or slip. And since I will be a tomboy to my dying day, I find I can still climb trees, fences and lately, ladders into the nose of antique aircraft without worrying that I may be shocking someone.

The transition to bicycle was easy and now I don't worry about what my skirt might be doing as I watch for traffic around me.

I made a second pair for my lighter coloured summer skirts, and decided they should be called cyclettes. Just because.

A Sleek Wooden Bike

Ruzter sent me a link to a website on Renovo wood bicycles. I wonder how a Dutch bike would look?