The Soft Bigotry of Age Brackets
Age gives one a good, heavy rind. A durable crust that preserves the psyche and reduces the faint sting of left-handed compliments and micro-aggressions. Pride is still there, but it’s tempered by the knowledge that you do have limits. And failures. But still, repeated slights—no matter how subtle—get under the husk from time to time....
The Future of Biking is in the Netherlands
Young urban planners love bikes. They will shut down vehicle lanes, reroute busy streets, generally commit any abuse to car traffic that promotes the flow of bicycles–regardless of the size of the current cycling population. In other words, they are planning for a time when cities might be even denser but also more...
Your adventure went too far
Bicycling.com—an entertaining and informative web site—has an article about Al Newman, a hard-driving, semi-retired, 73-year-old entrepreneur who just rode his bike around Antarctica and thereby completed his quest to cycle on all seven continents. Reaction one: Whoa. Atta boy. Reaction two: I wish the article had been a little less evasive about how long he...
The Great American Rail Trail: a glass 52 percent full
Do you like maps and bike trails and visions of grandeur? Of course you do, and this is your website: the Great American Rail Trail is taking shape. For anyone with the time and ambition to ride across this continent, a smooth, safe and continuous bike trail would be an unalloyed godsend. No more risk...
Let’s not get too excited about e-bikes
E-bikes—already a big deal—are bound to get bigger. Analysts expect the global market to grow by 60 percent or more by 2025, with at least one major European bike maker projecting that it will soon sell more e-bikes than regular bikes. Giant, the world’s largest bike-maker, expects e-bike sales to increase by 30 percent this...
Biking might allay Parkinson’s symptoms
Human bodies age like a saddle: they get comfortable and develop character, but they also start to break down. The older they get, the more problems they have, one of which is Parkinson’s disease. An estimated one percent of people over 60 are affected by this degenerative nervous disorder. Those estimates vary because it’s...
Everyday life and death
You know how this goes. A bunch of olds get together and go on regular bike rides. Some are 90. Some are disabled. They click off 25 miles and adjourn to the bar, or have a nice salad over lunch. You don’t care and why should you. Except that the difference between doing this...
Bicycle crank
As people age, they seem to transition from passionate soul to old crank. At least the lucky ones, who have been blessed or cursed with something they love. Or are obsessed with. (The distinction gets hazy with some passions and some people.) Call it anything you like. We are in love with/obsessed by people...
AAA now assisting bikers (!?!)
The American Automobile Association—that venerable proponent of auto safety, auto insurance, auto touring maps and roads-roads-roads (sometimes at the expense of walking and biking trails)—is slowly changing. Over the past six years, a number of chapters have expanded their services to include roadside assistance for bikers. It wasn’t that many years ago when AAA...
Why does the South hate cyclists?
Walk Score has published its list of the Most Bikeable Large U.S. cities, based on a methodology that includes infrastructure, hills, connectivity and “mode share”—meaning how many fellow bikers are on the road. No surprises here. You know who wins this: Portland, San Francisco, Denver. But dig a little deeper into the site’s...
London doubles down on biking
Londoners have always had a genius for urban transportation: faced with a massive population and crowded streets, the city built the world’s first subways (inaugurated in 1863). They also improvised double-decker buses—first powered by horse, then by motor—as a way to get twice as many people moving along the same square footage of roadway. ...
Toward a safer bike
The bicyclist with a jacket tied loosely around her waist, a guy with a strap dangling from whatever is clamped into the mousetrap over his back fender. An errant shoe string or flapping pants leg. Suddenly, the fabric swings that extra inch and gets snagged. It’s pulled into the derailleur or wedged between the chain...
