Different Bikes for Different Hikes (plus more)

1. Collaborating with James Schwartz .
2. Growing a second bike culture.
3. Electric bike predictions. A big future for them.
4. Round the World E bike Rider,Guim Valls Teruel, is almost here
5. Sydney’s first all E bike shop is open and will host Guim
6. Bicycle NSW to host Guim also
6. The visit of Lord Tony Berkeley from GB..

I’ve made blog friends with James Schwartz who write a blog called The urban Country in Toronto.

We agreed to explore together the idea of people riding different bikes in different situations.

His movie, Bike it my Way, is responding to this one of mine, Bike it or Not, about Gill Charlton which you’ve probably already seen.

It’s great fun, collaborating like this! Anyone else want to try?

Here’s how James describes our, across-the-world movie making.

Mike Rubbo asked me if I would like to engage in international collaboration on two videos that highlight women cyclists who – in Mike’s words – choose different bikes for different hikes.

So, I set out to find a woman who would fit the profile – somebody who wears the lycra racing gear (and a helmet) on weekends, but rides a stylish sit-up bicycle during the week (sans helmet). Yvonne Bambrick – the Executive Director for the Toronto Cyclists Union – put me in touch with the passionate Toronto cyclist, Briana Illingworth.

Briana is a fascinating person and was a perfect match because her love for cycling extends not only on her commute to work – but in her job itself.

Briana is a Transportation Policy and Planning Advisor for Metrolinx – the provincial organization setup to “champion, develop and implement an integrated transportation system [in the Greater Toronto area] that enhances prosperity, sustainability and quality of life”.

Briana’s focus is on Active Transportation and her vision is a community where people have the option to get around on bicycles without any special clothing or equipment. I took footage of Briana on a weekend in her racing gear and on a weekday in her regular clothes without a helmet.

Me again. I feel that celebrating cross over riding is really important. Especially in Australia where the sports/leisure cycling culture is so dominant, so smothering, one could say.

How about, Cross biking? That’s when you use, different bikes for different hikes.

2. We need to grow up an alternative, namely utility cycling. And it’s best that this is happening, not in opposition, but in partnership with people like Gill and Briana showing that you can enjoy both .

Jim Forbes sent me this great photo from Queensland. What does it tell me? That in simpler times, 1939 in Bundaberg, Queensland, your bike was two things.

These blokes have clearly turned their handlebars up as they ride to work, if that’s where they’re going .

(Thanks to the State Library of Queensland)

Weekends, one imagines they turned them down and went faster.

3. I predict two things are going to happen as we grow utility cycling here.

A. Most of us will be sitting up straight as these blokes are doing. Probably not by turning up drops (Is that still possible?) but by riding proper made-to-order sit ups.

B, Now, this might surprise you, I predict that most bikes for getting around 5 years from now, will have an electrical assist, a small motor for a boost.

I think will happen because sitting up straight with a small helpful motor, you end up with the perfect utility bike. It will either be charge at home by solar or even as you ride.

Another reason this makes sense is the very same reason that some people now disparage sit-ups, namely lower performance.

The motor lifts performance so that as you sit-up right on an E bike like the fabulous gazelle which won bike of the year against all tyes no face no impediments

The motor helps with the greater wind resistance sitting up straight provokes, The motor helps with carrying loads, which you’ll want to do a lot if you bike is your main vehicle, as it will one day be.

More and more small deliveries will be made by E bike, not only of you, your kids, your dog, you shopping, but business deliveries

Maybe this happen more in high bike resistance countries like Australia and NZ, where even getting people to “think Bike” is very hard.

Now, in Bruges, Belgium where I took this delightful photo (a favourite ) a motor may never be necessary, the terrain being so flat and sheltered, and the people so bike-habituated

But here, where everything’s hard, both psychologically and physically, that extra oomph, and it’s a very small oomph, will allow you to control the trip in a way which makes all the difference. .

With that boost, you create the bike experience you want to have, not the terrain dictating your ride. Flat and windless, your motor’s off. Hilly and feeling a bit puffed, motor’s on.

They’ll also start breaking records when folks discover that E bikes are so much fun

That’s why I see an E bike future here, that is when you are biking about, not working out.

This is a great article by Vincent , which sums up the E bike situation globally right now, plus the arguments against such bikes.

Did you know there are now 120 million E bikes in China, up by 20 million since last year, that they are the fastest growing marker sngment in Europe, euro-wise?

I love author Vincent’s remark about E bikes and exercise. They do give plenty of exercise but not a work out, unless you switch the motor off.

He points out that If you are seriously working out on a bike, (and most Aust. cyclists are doing just that most of the time) having a motor makes about as much sense as electro-boosting all that shiny equipment at Fitness First, or the gym of your choice.

Here’s a movie I don’t think I’ve posted before which proves, inadvertently, that the the electro boosted sit-up bike performs superbly against flat bars, and on hilly terrain.

I say, “inadvertently” because the intention was to prove something else when I got roped in as a guinea pig.

All of this is very relevant as Guim Valls Teruel, the cheery Spaniard, on his electric Wisper, bears down on us.

4. Guim is on his way from Brisbane to Sydney as I write, and will stay with Katya and I, some night next week, before riding on to Sydney, perhaps with me beside him.

5. Now, it so happens that Sydney now has it’s first all electric bike shop

Glowworm Bicycles in Marrickville Maurice Wells, who’s started it, came to a talk I gave, and we’ve become friends.

I suggested to Maurice that it would make sense to host Guim’s visit, stage a get together at the new shop, and it seems that’s now on.

It looks possible that Bicycle NSW will also host a visit by Guim to their offices. That’d be great as well.

So, as you see, so much is happening here.

6. And if that was not enough, a Labor peer, the bloke who asks questions in the British Parliament for the CTC, the venerable British biking organization, Lord Tony Berkeley is coming to Sydney next week.

CTC has asked me to host him on a bike ride around town.

Flattered though I am, I’m not the right person and so I’ve brought in Fiona Campbell Transport Officer, Cycling, for the city of Sydney.

Fiona knows much more about the 70 kms. of new bike-ways they are building in Sydney, and thus is better placed to play host to the labor Peer. I’ll just do the filming.

I suspect that CTC’s interest in me doing a film about the visit is tied in with the British Elections. CTC has a Vote Bike campaign in full swing.

Oh, how we dream of having utility cycling become a Federal issue here, with questions in Parliament, indignant voices demanding answers as to why we lag so far behind.

Will it ever happen? How ironic it is that our leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott has been in the saddle for week in an impressive charity ride from Melb. to Sydne.

Yet it seems never to have occurred to him that his great ride was the perfect platform from which to announce a bold new policy for the Coalition, surely a huge vote winner.

Cheers, Mike