As of today, the first two sets of bike racks are here!  Here’s the view on North side of the 700 block:

Thanks to the Urban Enterprise Association and Whitewater Construction for making this a reality.  Thanks to Mark Stosberg at Summersault for driving the process forward and presenting such specific, compelling plans and rationale for the racks.  Thanks to everyone who voiced your support for the racks or offered to contribute financially.  And thanks to everyone who carefully considers their choice of transportation and its impact on quality of life in our community and beyond.

Now, get downtown and park your bike here!

Most other communities have recognized the benefits of having bike parking in a central retail and business district like Richmond’s.  They’re good for business (when cyclists feel invited to shop downtown, they tend to spend even more money in a given area than car drivers do), they help prevent damage to benches, trees and lamp posts, they make for a more orderly-looking streetscape, they prevent theft, and they’re relatively cheap to buy and install.

Unfortunately, in all of the time that I’ve worked in downtown Richmond, there hasn’t been any convenient and consistently available bike parking available here.

If Richmond wants to be able to say that it’s a city looking forward, a city that wants to attract and retain the modern worker, a city that cares about issues of sustainability and energy usage, it absolutely needs to have bike racks in its central business district.

Hopefully the current dearth of bike parking is about to change.

For the last few years, we at Summersault (as coordinated by my coworker and local bikes-as-transportation advocate Mark Stosberg) have been asking the City of Richmond and related entities, “What can we do to get bike racks here?“

We’ve pointed out how the City’s own comprehensive planning supports the installation of bike racks, we’ve offered to pay for them (they’re only $65 each), we’ve gotten price quotes and offered to manage relationships with vendors, we’ve presented specific plans and recommendations for where they can go (which have been approved), and we’ve even offered to install them ourselves – hey, I’ve got a wheelbarrow to mix some concrete in.

As you can imagine, sometimes the decision-making processes and bureaucracy in these matters make for slow progress, but we’ve found that people are very receptive to the idea and want to make it happen. Now, it looks like the Urban Enterprise Association (UEA), which has taken up the mantle of getting the racks installed, is approaching the final steps in completing an initial installation.

If bike parking, and having alternative transportation options in general, is important to you, please let the UEA know that you support the installation of bike racks in Richmond’s center city.  You can contact UEA program director Beth Fields at (765) 983-7396 or by e-mail at bfields@richmondindiana.gov.

Hopefully I’ll be updating this post soon with news about the first racks getting installed!

We ended up at Little Sheba’s, and as we were walking in, a couple asked Thomas and I, “Is this a good restaurant?  We saw the billboards on I-70 saying you had lots of great shops and restaurants.”  It was fun to put myself in the shoes of someone who had just come off the highway to explore the central parts of Richmond, and so we reviewed the local options with them excitedly; they ended up heading to Ghyslain (sorry Steve).  We enjoyed our food and the live music at Sheba’s, Ben loved his sandwhich (John Boy’s Stupid Idiot) and a taste of the pizza that Mark ordered.

We passed up Sheba’s legendary brownies for the even more legendary (sorry Steve) dessert at Ghyslain just down the street, where we got the thumbs up from the couple we’d directed there earlier – their dinner was great.  I had the Brazilian, Ben had the Royale, Aaron had the Charlemagne, Thomas had some gelato, and Mark had…what did you have, Mark?  It was nice to know we impressed a guy who can get some pretty amazing desserts in New York City: “Awesome by any standard.”  I don’t think he was just saying that.

Then we biked up E street to Glen Miller Park, talking about the conversions of old industrial buildings and Richmond’s place in history along the way.  (“We used to MAKE bikes here.”)  We arrived to a fairly packed Roosevelt Hill watching a Beatles cover band belt out familiar tunes while people danced and cheered under the big orange moon.  It was quite a scene, and it was a great wandering summer night.

There are lots of places in the world that provide “quite a scene,” but I thought that if I were coming off the highway or traveling cross country on a bike and unexpectedly got to see these little slices of life in Richmond, I’d probably remember the experience for at least a little while.  Hey, nice place we got here.

WarmShowers.org is a resource for facilitating just that for cyclists, and it’s a great way to find or offer lodging.  You can provide as much or as little information about your location and “amenities” as you want, and you’re under no obligation to host anyone at any particular time.  It’s similar to other resources like CouchSurfing.org or even Mennonite Your Way.

I was a little nervous about how the first hosting experience would go – what would they expect of me, would they stay up late into the night drinking my beer and watching old Weird Al Yankovich movies, etc.  But these folks were very quiet and low-key, and as you might expect from people who have been on the road for two months, they mostly just wanted to rest and take it easy.  I enjoyed doing a bit of cooking and doting to help make their time that much more pleasant.

If you’re a cyclist who might take a trip at some point, or if you have some space to spare for those passing through your area, consider checking out WarmShowers.org.

So that’s why I chose to walk to and from work today – a “walk to work day” if you will.  I represented one less bike on the road, and it felt good.

Think about all of the ways that bikes are harming our environment, our culture, our communities:

• The raw materials used to produce bikes is significant, and the refining/production process they undergo is full of waste and harmful emissions.  The tire manufacturing process is particularly egregious, and think of the oil required to keep those bike chains moving.  You won’t find anything like that with a trusty pair of sandals on your feet.
• Think about all of the asphalt poured every year to make special bike lanes – and the construction, the traffic hassles, and the destruction of green space that goes along with it.  We need to start organizing the layout of our communities around people, not their modes of transportation.
• As I said above, bike culture is getting out of hand.  Everyone’s obsessed with how sleek and shiny their bikes are, how well accessorized they can be, how much stuff they can haul around, and how fast they can go.  We’ve come to judge each others` success based solely on the model and styling of bikes we ride around, instead of really looking at what’s on the inside, or at our average walking pace – these are the things that really matter.
• When we bike everywhere, we really lose touch with our surroundings and our humanity.  If you’re zooming by your neighborhood park or the community grocery store at 12 miles an hour, how do you expect to stay connected to your fellow humans and what’s going on in their lives?  Walking is the way to really be a part of the community you live in.
• Bike racks are everywhere now, and they’re taking up land that could be used for green areas, community spaces, etc.  We really have paved paradise so that we can put up our precious bike parking lots.

Of course, these are just a few of the ways in which this dominating bike culture is taking over our lives.  We really do have to stand up against it, and find a more just and sustainable way of getting around.  Walking is less wasteful and more fun.

So, the next time someone starts trying to convince you to wrap up your identity and your freedom in some overpriced piece of carbon fiber, say no.  Say, “because of me, there will be one less bike on the road today.”  It’s the right thing to do.

Him: “Excuse me!”

Me, shouting after: “Could you ride your bike on the street instead of the sidewalk?”

Him, stopping and halfway turning around: “I would get hit by a car.”

Me: “Well, it’s actually not legal to ride on the sidewalk.”

Him: (Shrug, rides away)

I felt bad that I didn’t have any more to offer than “don’t do this” and “it’s illegal.” It was already hard enough to step outside my comfort zone to say something at all. So I can sympathize with people who prefer an official looking sign to point to, though, in the end, I prefer that we have to interact with each other on our own terms.

I worry that the young man will be more likely to reflect on how some stuffy older dude tried to tell him what to do than he will about cycling and pedestrian safety. But perhaps that’s not giving him enough credit – he did respond and immediately note that he was concerned for his own safety while riding in the street, which I can very much identify with in this town. Other kids with whom I’ve tried to talk to about not riding on the sidewalk on Main Street seem to take it as an affront to their independence.

In any case, I wonder what other folks experience or desire when it comes to exchanges amongst strangers about what’s proper and safe for cyclists, pedestrians, motorists, etc. Any advice for more positive ways to have that conversation when it happens?

If you’re interested in issues related to cycling in Richmond (with a focus more on transportation than leisure), you can join the Bike Richmond Google Group.

Not the most positive exchange, but at least the cyclist wasn’t actually hit and hurt or killed. Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the death of Earlham graduate Jessica Bullen after being struck by a driver in Madison, Wisconsin – her story and memorial fund are described here. Even more sadly, Jessica was a strong advocate (in a town that I consider quite biker-friendly already) for cyclists and worked to raise awareness for motorists that inattentive driving could result in a preventable injury or death. My life has been impacted in other ways by similar deaths – a good friend of my family started Fernside, a now internationally known center for grieving children, after her son was killed on his bike as a result of being struck by a car.

I’m not as much of a bike commuter as I want to be, but I ride around town enough to know that many Richmond drivers aren’t really tuned in to the right of way that cyclists have – pretty much the same that motorists have. Indiana Code 9-21-11-2 Section 2. says that “A person riding a bicycle upon a roadway has all the rights and duties under this article that are applicable to a person who drives a vehicle,” with a few small exceptions. Many folks think that because cars are so dominant in size and speed, they enjoy some special protection under law for use of the public streets. It even makes its way into the mindsets of would-be bikers – I can’t count how many people I’ve talked to who have said they would ride their bike to commute around town more if they weren’t so scared of being on the roads that would make that possible because of careless drivers.

Those fears and misconception carry into the unfortunate opinions that develop when a crash does happen. The attorney for Jessica’s killer is quoted as saying that “I don’t think these cases should be crimes,” but as Jessica’s friends and family have said, when a human being loses their life due to the carelessness of others, the issue of whether it was car versus bike doesn’t exempt either party from being held accountable for their actions.

Whether you drive or bike or both or neither, please be careful.

That’s the question, indeed.

How will we survive and get around when the price of gas is too high to afford? Or, perhaps more pressing, how will we survive when there is no more gas to buy? It is always surprising to me that people are so expectant of intervention by a third party (or higher power) for any sort of resolution about this issue. Yes, the government and gas companies have obligations and interests related to the availability of resources that literally fuel their existence and our culture, but they are not the only variable in the matter. And even if they were, simple math tells us that the demand for oil will (or already has) exceed the supply in ways that essentially mean the compulsory end of our oil-using existence.

Right now you pay USD$3 for the ability to transport your vehicle about 20 miles. When you have to push that hulk of metal up and down those hills and around those corners, I bet that’ll seem like a pretty good deal.

Whether we can create a new kind of existence in the place of the current one is up to us. “Us” in the long term means “the human species,” but “us” in the shorter term means the people in our community. There will be no sustainable government intervention to help the people of Richmond, Indiana buy gas at a lower price. There will be no goodwill gesture by the gas companies to help us pay our bills and buy as much gas as we always have at the same time. There is no charity auction or community fundraising campaign that can help bring gasoline to our local pumps more cheaply so we can stop worrying about it. It won’t happen.

And yet we largely continue to insist on external resolutions instead of internal ingenuity and innovation. One might say that it’s a symptom of an egregious kind of privilege and sense of entitlement that has us asking to have our cake and burn it for transport too. Or one might say that it’s a cultural conditioning, we’ve expected from childhood for gas to flow like water when we need it, at the price that seems reasonable to us; breaks from that norm that has been in place for generations are jarring and distressing. Or one might say that we’ve just forgotten how to take matters into our own hands, how to apply a sense of entrepreneurship to the challenges that face our community. Or one might say that perhaps in this day in age, we know what we need to do, we’re just scared.

It’s scary to think about changing how I live (I can hardly stand it when the parking space on my street isn’t available), but it’s more scary to think about a world in which gas is $200/barrel, and all of the implications that would have for our way of life. I’m glad that some are willing to change their habits and way of life now; isn’t gradual change always so much more tolerable than sudden drops in quality of life? But I also fear that even the changes being made aren’t enough. We talk about managing money better to pay for gas, but we should also be talking about using less gas, or no gas. We talk about the fun of buying new hybrid cars, when we should also talk about incorporating better public transportation, carpooling, bike paths and other significant fuel efficiency measures into our strategic planning. We talk about bringing more jobs to our community that are a part of the global economy when we should also be talking about how we as a community can better survive when the global economy stops caring about Richmond, Indiana. We talk about recycling aluminum cans, but we should also be talking about completely different ways of producing and distributing the food and drinks we consume. These are all challenges we can take head on at the local and regional levels; Uncle Sam can join us if he wants, but we don’t need him.

Not so long ago, we created the fragile fuel economy we live in through a series of incredible and admirable innovations and “advancements” in the way we thought out our world and what we could do with its resources. It seems to me that it will only be similar kinds of shifts in our perspective that take us to a place where humans can live sustainably on the Earth. Short of that, rearranging our errand routes and waiting for the government to step in is only prolonging the problem, and making the particulars of the eventual solution (voluntary or involuntary) that much more uncomfortable. As author Daniel Quinn wrote, old minds think: “How do we stop these bad things from happening?” New minds think: “How do we make things the way we want them to be?” We need new minds right here in Wayne County to ask and answer that question every day – it’s not about fear, it’s about creating something better for ourselves. Otherwise, we’ll just be old minds complaining…driving around, and then eventually running, in circles.