ticket to ride

You need to push hard into the wind, [using] a big gear, for at least six minutes and no longer than 45 minutes [once or twice a week] to get the aerobic benefits of climbing big hills.

Cyclist and flatlander Christian Vande Velde, who trains outside Chicago, speaking to how it's possible to simulate altitude in this godforsaken terrain in today's New York Times.

Okay. I'll give it a try. (Doesn't mean I won't still long for my daily ride up Sunshine Canyon, just outside Boulder.)

And I'm guessing the descent won't be as much fun.

me & my shadow

disclaimer: not my bike. just my desire.

holga.

4 wheels good 2 wheels better

Michigan Avenue, mid-morning
Chicago, IL

ticket to ride

My brother's place.
The hardest part was saying good-bye.
Albuquerque, NM

and then suddenly

a found poem

we are wet
the woods thicken
it's getting darker

little muddy paths
lead off to the left
into the woods
until you can't see
them anymore

where to?
we climb.

this is never going to end.

and then suddenly
like a bolt of lightening
nothing happens

but then truly
absolutely nothing

everything

goes on doing
what
it's always done



Found in Tim Krabbe's The Rider

two wheels good

Unlike the horse-drawn carriage, the bicycle was almost silent. It did not crush people to death, nor did it foul the streets with excrement. There were exaggerated complaints about irresponsible velocipedists, but there was also official support for the ‘feedless horse’. Special roads for cyclists were built in France and the United States.

Herlihy mentions the bike path that ran from Prospect Park to Coney Island (‘about 10,000 cyclists participated in the inaugural parade’ in 1885), but not the more spectacular aerial cycle path, opened in 1900, that ran at roof-height for more than nine miles between Los Angeles and Pasadena. Cyclists could ride four abreast on a surface of oregon hardwood, lit by arc lamps every 200 feet. At the halfway point, a bicycle elevator joined the track to the a café, a restaurant and a cascino. Mechanics with pumps and spare parts were positioned all along the track.

From Graham Robb's review of David Herlihy's «Bicycle: The History» in the London Review of Books

Herlihy wasn't the only one who missed that one -- I lived in South Pas and worked in Pasadena for awhile and never heard a word or spotted a remnant of the path Robb writes about. Reminds me of when they outlawed bicycles in Beijing. Where have all the bicycles gone? They were asked to leave.