After a group of cyclists (and someone on public transit and a rollerblader) beat a jetblue plane from burbank to long beach this past weekend during carmageddon, Nadia Korovina did a little analysis on Bike Commute News and came up with a simple equation to find the maximum distance at which traveling by bike is faster than traveling by plane:
(Nadia, is that LaTeX? I’m impressed)
In the blog post, Nadia and Jordan found that the maximum distance where a bike is faster than a plane, assuming a 2.5 hour delay (including time standing in line, security, waiting, transport to and from the airport), 25mph average cyclist speed (those @wolfpackhustle guys can hustle), and an airplane speed of 500mph.
Some commenters wondered how things would work out for someone who rides a bit slower, and someone else asked about graphs.
so, here you go:
A bike traveling at 20mph would travel 52.1 miles before being passed by the jet. At 15mph, this distance is 36.7 miles, at 12.5mph, this distance is 32.1 miles, and at 10mph, this distance is 25.5 miles. The jetblue thing was definitely a bit of a stunt – I don’t think many people would expect a plane to be too efficient for a 40-mile commute, but this whole #flightvsbike thing goes a long way in showing the viability of using a bike for an everyday trip. good work, all.
July 19th, 2011
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: 1 Comment
I put a michelin speedium 2 tire onto my rear wheel last summer. I found out after a few miles that these guys look like they wear out quickly. They feel soft and tacky, though, which is kind of nice. I don’t recall getting a lot of flats on this tire throughout its lifespan. here’s what the tire looked like after about 2500 miles (and after AIDS LifeCycle):
2500 miles doesn’t seem like a lot for a tire, but I didn’t have high expectations – I purchased a pair on sale for $12 each.
I still had the other new tire, so out of curiosity, I weighed the two:
left: new tire. right: old tire.
I know there can be manufacturing variations in tire weight, but it’s pretty neat to quantitatively measure about 20 grams in tire wear. I liked the tires. I’ll probably purchase another pair of michelins next.
July 7th, 2011
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: No Comments
I saw this bike the other day outside of bloomie’s flowers in rockridge. The sticker says “Resist” “Eta Wrobel fought against the Nazis as a Jewish Partisan in Poland”. Sticker by the Jewish Partisans Education Foundation.
June 1st, 2011
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: No Comments
A few weeks ago, I decided to ride from the East Bay to Mountain View to meet up for a Grand Cru ride. I checked out the maps and decided that I could start a ride from Union City BART and ride a manageable distance (with ALC training in mind) including the round trip from Union City to Mountain View and the Grand Cru ride itself.
The Learning Tree, a preschool located on Paseo Padre Parkway at Fremont Blvd
I used Map my Ride to do the route. It’s a little ad-heavy but has been generally improving. I think I prefer bikemap but for some reason Map my Ride worked better this time.
Riding on the overpass over Thornton Ave
It was around this point that I ran into some bike trouble. My pannier, though built very nicely, doesn’t have a hook at the bottom to keep the base in place. And it’s a rather long (tall) pannier. As I was standing and swaying around a bit to get up the incline of one of these overpasses, the pannier got caught on a spoke and made a pretty horrible-sounding crunching sound. I stopped and discovered that the wheel reflector had broken off (no big deal), a few spokes were bent (sorta big deal) and a fairly large hole had been ripped in the bag (a sorta big deal). Luckily I had one of those delta cargo nets and a spoke wrench. I put the cargo net on the outside of the pannier and then trued the wheel enough so that it was ride-able and finally set off again. It didn’t seem like a good start to the ride, though.
Marshlands Rd
By this point, it looked like the wheel and pannier were holding up, so I continued. This photo is from Marshlands Rd, which travels along the marshes and leads to the Dumbarton bridge. The road kind of sucks for cycling – the asphalt is super bumpy.. but at least it’s isolated from most vehicular traffic.
pannier
the pannier with the netting was not very pretty.
dumbarton bridge bike lane
I’m glad that the Dumbarton bridge has a separate bike lane. But it’s not very much fun to ride over. Traffic is fairly loud as the cars are traveling highway speeds and it’s quite dusty. The lane is decently wide though and I appreciate that there’s a large barrier between bikes and vehicular traffic. On the east side of the bridge on the south side of the bay, there looks to be remnants of a pedestrian walkway that is no longer in use.
I rode through East Palo Alto en route to Mountain View.
A bridge to Ravenswood open space preserve
Here’s where the map (based on google maps) got a little sketchy.
The bike trail from Bay rd to Weeks St
Google maps has this trail marked as dark green. It was okay for me to ride over since I have 27 and 32-sized tires but it was a bit uncomfortable and I was a worried that the rest of the ride along the shore would turn out to be like this. It’d be fine for a mountain bike though.
pumping station
The bumpy trail eventually led to a paved trail and all was good again.
I think this is from Palo Alto Baylands Park.
It’s a super flat area but a bit windy and doesn’t have too much variety. Some of the riding was along the San Francisco Bay Trail.
After a short ride on the Stevens Creek Trail, which was pretty nice, I arrived at the meeting point for the start of the grand cru ride: The Tied House Brewery & Cafe.
we rode up moody rd, which was a bit of a climb. I’ll post more pictures from that portion of the ride on the grand cru website.
after the ride and a burger and beer, I headed back for Union City.
I had just turned off of Stevens Creek Trail at this point.
google bike
I decided to take a tour through the Googleplex. These little bikes were everywhere. They’re apparently free to borrow for getting around the campus.
a google chrome bike
more google bikes near the main lobby
marshmallow and spaghetti pyramids! I was a little excited to see this.
at the end of Marhlands Rd, a bit before sundown
The rest of the ride wasn’t that interesting. I was feeling a bit uncomfortable from riding such a long distance on my commuter, and between back fatigue, leg fatigue and the headwinds, I was ready to be home. I put my head down and pushed through the rest of the ride. I made it back to Union City BART before the sun went down and all in all did about 80 miles. It was definitely an interesting ride but not one of my best.
May 16th, 2011
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: No Comments
bike to work day 2011 was fun – here are some photos:
volunteers at one of the many east bay energizer stations. This one was in berkeley, staffed by grizzly peak cyclists(?) The woman is holding up little colorful bike pins. They had snacks and coffee and information about the east bay bike coalition. According to streetsblog SF, about 10,000 people biked to work in Alameda county, up 12.3% from last year. I definitely saw a lot more cyclists out on the streets.
bike love
this photo was taken from the energizer station outside of actual cafe
people were out from Spokeland - a north oakland bike co-op.
after work, we headed to bike away from work party, where there were tons of neat bikes to check out:
a rusty paint job
leathery cowboy bike
this bamboo bike was really well done
the crucible was showing off some bikes modified by teenagers
the popcycle
actual cafe’s parklet
this bike was handcuffed to a speaker
a danish pedersen bike. wood fenders, rims. hammock seat. stumey archer 3-speed internal rear hub. coaster brake.
bike, shoes, jeans, shirt, hat
and cyclecide was there with their deadly-looking-but-fun looking bikes and rides
It looked a little smaller than last year’s but was still a fun time.
May 13th, 2011
Category: Uncategorized • Author: phil • Comments: No Comments
