Car, Schmar

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[carschmar]

Ha. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority opened a gift shop, and despite an initial deluge of internet scoffing, it apparently took off.

I missed it by a week. My only souvenir from DC is a SmartTrip card to add to my collection (MetroCard, LA Metro, Oyster, several BART pocket-change bookmarks …).

[above photo by me, March 1, 2018]

[carschmar]

The first signs of spring around downtown Portland remind me of this photo I took a year ago. Walk Score licensed it for their home page a few months ago. I had just stopped during a bike ride and took some photos of the cherry blossoms with my point-and-shoot, and now this biker photo is being used to represent beautiful, walkable, bikeable Portland. (BTW, my current Walk Score is 98, up from 92 in Los Angeles.)

[carschmar]

NW Portland is a bit of a ghost town today. Instead of tumbleweeds, though, we have cyclists.

[carschmar]

Yes! The shortlist of names for the new car-free bridge in Portland has been released, being whittled down to four. The proposed names leave a little to be desired, but the Mercury has some better options, and you can vote (for me) (and Karens everywhere).

[carschmar]

Step by step, a way to health, happiness and friendship

All I'd wanted from the experience was relief from pain. What I got was friendship, community and a whole new experience of my city. Out of the car, on my feet and moving at pedestrian pace, I fell in love with Los Angeles for the first time.

Charles Fleming's story reminds me of my own "hey, I finally really like it here" moment, when I joined group bike rides around the city. I had no idea the secret stairs attracted a similar community.

[carschmar]

Investigation Exposes Bike Theft Epidemic

During an investigation into the rising trend of bicycle theft in Southern California, NBC4’s I-Team placed a bike with a cable lock at the bike rack at the North Hollywood Metro station.

This changes my longstanding opinion — further ingrained when I chose a career in print journalism — that local news is incapable of producing anything worthwhile. The investigative piece by the L.A.-area NBC4 team is an amazing collaborative effort to track down stolen bicycles in a city where biking is becoming more popular by the year. Great work, really.

[carschmar]

Money quote from the intro (which ludicrously wonders why anyone drives in Portland, though that's probably just comment bait): This is one of the few American cities where you can properly enjoy this perfect human-powered machine, and enjoy it you should.

[carschmar]

Bike ride raising money for Katrina, Joplin, Sandy victims

So far, 40 cyclists plan to bike 800 miles from Joplin, Mo., to New Orleans to raise money for people who lost their homes in recent natural disasters. There's still time to join the ride, and plenty of time to donate to the cause, which will aim to support people hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, the Joplin tornado and Hurricane Sandy.

Here are the event's goals:

Raise a net of $150,000 for the charities (St. Bernard Project, Rebuild Joplin, We Build New York, Friends of Rockaway and Tunnel to Towers Foundation)

Help to bring at least one family home from each of these impacted areas

Spread the word about the work that still needs to be done

Educate about the work that St. Bernard Project is doing to create a Disaster Recovery Lab model

If successful, have another ride next year!

[carschmar]

Saudi Arabia lifts bicycle ban for women

Saudi women can now ride bikes and motorcycles in public — but only for fun, not for transportation. It'll be just like Audrey Hepburn's wacky adventures in "Roman Holiday," but with a little more fabric. According to Al Jazeera, "women must wear a full-body abaya, be accompanied by a male relative, and stay within certain areas." (It is recommended that they not travel where young men gather, "to avoid harassment.") Let the adventures begin ...

[This excellent image is apparently by Mohammad Sharaf, posted on the Uprising of Women in the Arab World's Facebook page.]

[carschmar]

A Waterfront Park biker catches some cherry blossom action.

[linusshentu-blog]

bus benches are portals to floral dimensions

[carschmar]

A shop in Portland that I like plans to stock some of these reflective garments from Vespertine, and I can't wait to see them in person. Time to start saving up, though: Some of these pieces cost an arm and a well-toned leg.

[carschmar]

As part of his first exhibition at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, artist Ai Weiwei has installed 760 stacked bicycles in a sprawling installation on a raised stage within the gallery. It’s important to note that the bikes are not simply “stacked” but have been physically attached creating a single cohesive structure which can be explored from within, similar to his 2011 work Forever Bicycles. [via Colossal]

[carschmar]

From the press release:

Car sharing has grown to be a nearly $400 million business in the United States and is expanding rapidly in major cities around the world. Zipcar has led this industry, leading in innovation and world-class service. Zipcar now has more than 760,000 members, known as Zipsters, with a market-leading presence in 20 major metropolitan areas in the United States, Canada and Europe, and fleet positioned at over 300 college and university campuses.

[carschmar]

Huzzah for the Google Maps iPhone app

After hearing about Apple's map debacle all those months ago, I resisted upgrading my iPhone software for the longest time but finally succumbed in mid-November. It took me only a couple of days to get annoyed at the subpar search and zero transit maps from Apple Maps (it tries to make up for that by catapulting users off to a list of separate routing apps). Thankfully, though, Google Maps' new iPhone app saved me from the headache after only three weeks.

As a car-free city dweller, I use my stupid-expensive smartphone mostly as a map — to quickly figure out where to catch the next bus, usually in the rain/cold. PDX Bus is a good app, but the original Google-powered map on my phone was always a better option when I didn't want to look up an address first to paste into PDX Bus. (Sometimes I'm in a hurry, or my fingers don't work well when it's below 40º. First-world problems, I know.)

When the Google Maps app arrived last week, I pounced on it, and so far I've found it to be slick and extremely useful — even better than its previous iPhone incarnation. (Highlights are predictive search, 3D-style scrolling, saving a default type of directions: walking/driving/transit.)

I do have two complaints: First, when I was done running errands a couple of miles from home and looked up the next bus back to my place, Google didn't recognize my home address and placed the destination about 10 miles off course. It did find the random street number I typed in on the next attempt, though. Second, there are still no bike maps. That's not a major concern in Portland, where most bike commuters can learn the best routes pretty quickly, but I still consider it a flaw (though I still have no plans to switch to Android).

Another nice thing about the app, though? It's always sunny in Portland on Google Maps:

Update: Hey, morrispavilion. Yes, you can drop pins on the map. I hadn't done that yet, since I downloaded it only two days before. But also, it simply did not know where I was trying to go and guessed completely wrong, even though I am sure I didn't make any typos.

[carschmar]

Not that Hurricane Sandy was good for anything, but this story is refreshing to read. It also reminds me that I always thought I'd need a bike as a survival tool living in uber-populated, disaster-prone California.

Though it took slightly longer than the train, he said, he thought he would keep biking even after the subway started running again.

“It saves money, and it’s less of a headache,” he said. “It gives you time to think, meditate and get your exercise on." More

[carschmar]

I've been commuting in the rain for the past two weeks with little in the way of rain gear. That all changed today with a kismet-y outing to the SE Grand trifecta — Next Adventure, Andy & Bax, Bike 'n' Hike — that I've frequented with no luck in the past.

Biggest score: Used rainproof pannier for $40! (The long pannier hunt is over.)

Essentials: Eco-friendly chain cleaner/lube

Ugh: Rain pants. I used to scoff at rain pants, and then I got stuck in my first actual downpour.

Also: Yes, that is a homemade reflective vest. A couple weeks ago I bought a used "athletic" vest at a thrift store and sewed white reflective trim on the front and back.

The best part is that the stipend for bike maintenance/rain stuff I'll get from my company this winter will cover all of this. (Just another reason to ♥ Portland.)