Jeremy Chase » bikes

Is Critical Mass bike advocacy?

Jeremy — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:10:43 +0000

I was thinking about bicycle advocacy, and how Critical Mass relates to it.. This is what I’ve come up with.

Critical Mass is bicycle advocacy if you make it so. Unfortunately, many riders are more interested in hating the cars than promoting their bikes.

In my mind advocacy is any activity that promotes, educates, or funds the cause. CM fits the description for education by showing people that many people do ride their bikes. However, if we don’t make an effort to actually educate them we are just rolling by. Personally, I always give a cogent answer to anyone who asks what we are doing. I think that should be the bare minimum.

Any CM’er lashing out at the public is hurting us all. This should be obvious, but group mentality takes over and CM turns to rubbish.

I like riding in CM, but right now, I don’t think it is anything more than people on bikes who annoy cars.

Jeremy

First Alleycat

Jeremy — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:44:19 +0000

I just did my first Alleycat, and I am tired as heck. An Alleycat is kinda like a scavenger hunt; basically you ride your bike all over the city stopping at checkpoints. It tests your knowledge of the city since the next checkpoint is just an address, and it tests your urban riding skills. I rode my fuji fixed gear, but many people had geared bikes for the ~20 mile adventure.

Since this was my first I wasn’t sure how I’d do, but I was confident in my ability to navigate the boston landscape. I don’t have the official results, but I ended up roughly 24th out of 62 riders.

Jer

Today’s commute home from Babson

Jeremy — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:58:37 +0000

Tonight I timed my trip back; 9.5 miles in 38 min 02 seconds, for an average of 15mph. Quite a bit slower than the 18.6mph average I did the other day. The zinger is that I drove my car today.

New commuting personal record

Jeremy — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:06:30 +0000

I rode Emily’s Langster to Babson today because I wanted to see how riding a freewheel bike would work out. I think the gearing is a little too tall (48×16), but all in all it was much easier. On my way back I covered the 10.1m in 32min30 seconds, averaging 18.6mph including stops at lights, etc.

I was riding with my messenger bag, boat shoes, and I even stopped to help someone at the bottom of a hill. She was unlocking her bike right as I was getting mine, and she had a really cool old 3 speed. She had gotten a head start on me because I had to run up to another building, but I saw her pushing her bike up a hill a mile or so from Babson. I stopped to see if I could help but her left pedal was just totally missing! Oh well..

Jeremy

One of the worst nights ever…

Jeremy — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:56:10 +0000

Last night Emily and I were going to volunteer at the Boston Bike Film Festival in Harvard Square. The following sucked big time.

Emily and I were riding over the BU bridge toward cambridge, and we were going to go left onto the bike path and ride to Harvard Sq. The traffic was really light fortunately, and she went to go left up onto
one of the island walkways. I called to her right as she was going up and she changed direction as a result. Unfortunately I was riding around the outside to go around the island she was riding up onto, and we grazed each other then she went over the handlebars.

I was totally fine(physically). She hit the ground first with the sides of both hands, then chin, upper lip, nose and front of her helmet. Her chin was bleeding pretty bad and she chipped 3 teeth. Her nose and lip were just lightly hit. We locked the bikes up and grabbed a cab to the MGH ER. They were worried about neck/brain injury mostly, but she was fine. They did x-rays and she was fine. So they just gave her 2 stitches to the bottom of her chin and bandaids for everything else. She will be totally fine, thank GOD!!!!

I literally just got home from picking the bikes back up, and her mom just picked her up to go back to CT to see her dentist for some new chompers.. it was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to experience. I love her so much!

Please wear your helmet! always!
Jeremy

Bike Commuting talk

Jeremy — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:05:22 +0000

Well.. I had a required course at for my MBA, a public speaking course. At the time I didn’t really feel motivated to do it so I put it off until the last semester… They video taped it and I thought it was funny so here you go

The volume is way down so you’ll have to crank it!!

Crazy Critical Mass!

Jeremy — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:35:27 +0000

Here you go! Bika-a-polooza in Hungary.

Amsterdam, I’m goin…

Jeremy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:29:29 +0000

I was just directed to this site about Amsterdam and specifically their use of bikes. I am FLOORED at how many people ride! I hope the US starts being more like this over time; except with helmets

Onguard Pitbull lock fun

Jeremy — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:08:55 +0000

A quick post.. I wanted a smaller bike lock but wasn’t happy with the locks available. After reading everything there is online about mini-locks I ended up getting one of the Onguard Pitbull mini locks. I never would have bought it because it is so bulky, but after seeing some pics of people breaking the plastic off I figured I’d give it a shot. REI had a 20% off promotion so I had it in my hands for $35 including tax; 30 minutes later the plastic covering was removed.

I’ve read that others had trouble getting that cover off, but I just grabbed both ends and twisted. They snapped off quite easily, no need for any tools. What I was left with was just black painted metal; which I sanded lightly, primed, and then painted with Rustomlium Professional something or other paint. Honestly the paint isn’t hardening very well and I think I’ll end up painting it again, but I still like how it came out.

Kryptonite lock recall information

Jeremy — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:20:28 +0000

For those of you with the older U-Lock from Kryptonite that uses a round key you should know that a standard Bic pen can open it. This was widely publicized back in 2004, less awareness was given to the fact that Kryptonite was replacing them. Even less information was given to the fact that the class action law-suit requires them to replace them. The FAQ on their website does reference the recall, but no link is actually given to it, just text. Somehow they have managed to keep their recall site out of the search results and I have a feeling this trickery is part of it. So, to try to bump the recall’s site here is a link to the Kryptonite lock recall information http://www.kryptonitesettlement.com