Bike Jersey or Does This Make Me Look Weird

Summer is coming, which means I get to take out my summer sweats. Much like my winter sweats, my summer sweats are made up of the cheapest possible stuff I can beg, borrow or steal. I have a shirt that I got from the team building fun run back in '04 and some shorts that I really can't wear around town anymore.

Sometimes I think about getting a proper bike jersey, but I dunno... is it reasonable for a guy like me to wear something like this.

http://cyclo-core.com/2014/01/cycling-podcast-illness-injury-motivation/

That takes some serious confidence to wear that. I am a pretty confident but, I don't know. I worry that if I wore something like that, I think I look like this:

http://wundergroundmusic.com/cyclist-listening-to-electro-imagining-hes-in-the-movie-tron/

But in reality, I would like this:

http://pixgood.com/fat-man-on-bike.html

Nothing wrong with that guy either. I mean, look at the confidence. He's getting in shape and he doesn't care what anyone else thinks. I am not that sure of myself. However, I like looking at stuff on the internet and I found a website  that allows you to design your own jersey.

I took at a stab at it. Here's the front:

I made this

And here's the back

I made this, too.

What do you think. Pretty sweet, right? If that doesn't get my confidence up nothing will.

Just a short post today

I saw this and thought it was funny. The liberty village bike is spot on. What do you think?

http://imgur.com/26JYZSC

Things might be getting better

When I started cycling, my commute was about 18 kilometers each way. I biked through some pretty hectic traffic and many people thought I was crazy. I guess you need to be a little nuts to drive cycle in a town that has actually reduced the total kilometers dedicated to cycling infrastructure.

Add to that the fact that there is open hostility towards Bicyclist in Toronto. Mostly from guys like this

http://www.news1130.com/files/2013/05/mayor_ford_350-188x250.jpg

Here is an example of open hostility towards Toronto Cyclist during a council meeting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nySs1cEq5rs

And if you think it's just politicians, check out the video that shows just how little regard car drivers have for Bike Lanes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQTNhTFFKXA

Every so often though, I get a little optimistic about the state of cycling. For example, it would appear that despite the reduction of dedicated bicycling infrastructure there is a growing trend towards two wheels as a viable mode of transportation. Strange that more and more people are bicycling, yet the city of Toronto is doing less and less to support this mode of transport.

Or maybe not. Meet the new Manager of Cycling Infrastructure

Photo from the Toronto Star

Her name is Jacquelyn Hayward Gulati and if you bike in Toronto you should be excited about her being named to the position.  She has done some great work with the Mississauga cycling infrastructure that has resulted in the City of Mississauga winning a bunch of awards for cycling infrastructure and fostering smart commuting.

These two pieces of news are the things that make me think maybe cycling in the GTA will finally be taken seriously and be embraced by the city and its citizens. Of course, I've thought this before so we'll just have to wait and see.

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helmet vs no helmet

I was reading a post on a sub reddit I visit that discussed the new California Bicycle Helmet law. Apparently, there is a lot people in Cali who are not impressed with this law. Some people made comments about how this law was going to negatively impact bicycling and would deter people from taking up bicycling as a mode of transportation.

I am all for individual freedom, however, I just do not understand how someone can cycle in North America and NOT wear a helmet. Here's why:

Over the 8 years I have been commuting regularly I have been involved in a couple of vehicular collisions. That's "Police-Report" for I've been hit by cars. The last one happened last year in fact. I won't bore you with the details, but I will post some pictures.

Here's my arm

Pretty bad road rash, but nothing to serious. I still have a few scars on my arm and they look pretty bad ass. 

Here is my leg.

Once again, not a bad a little road rash. It made it difficult to wear pants for a few days, which I thought was awesome, but my wife didn't. 

But these are just road rashes. And not really bad ones at that. Why am I talking about this on a post about mandatory helmet laws. Well, here's my helmet.

The reason I have only minor road rashes is because I landed on my head. Below is what my head looked like even with the helmet. I ended up going to the emergency room for about 6 hours and had a bunch of tests and x-rays and cat scans and other stuff (Yea, Canadian health care!). I was diagnosed with a mild concussion and sent home.

Those black spots are actual pieces of asphalt that had to be picked out by a lovely  nurse named Amanda.

The big topper on this, the person who hit me didn't event stop. They just kept on going, If I hadn't been wearing my helmet, I am pretty sure my injury would have looked more like this:

Good luck combing that over. That helmet saved my life and I just do not understand why others would ever take that risk. Cause bad things happen sometimes and when they do, they happen fast.

Do you even bike, bro?

Not that long ago, the Torontoist.com had a great little article on where people run in Toronto. Two guys used data from a variety of a GPS based run and cycling tracking apps and made a sort of heat map for most common routes and courses. The result is a neat little map like the one you see below.

All photos: http://torontoist.com/2015/02/where-torontonians-bike-and-run/

You can zoom in and out as you needed and overall it is a pretty neat idea. You can read the full article here.

Not sure if the Torontoist meant to do this or not, but you can move that map to any other town in Ontario. For example, I moved the map to my town of Milton. You can see it below.

Pretty small and not near as bright when compared to Toronto, but I like it. You can even zoom in and see if your most common route is highlighted, like I did here.

Like I said neat. So I started playing around with it and I found that the map is pretty exhaustive. You can look at the most common routes for cities like:

London:
Looks like people like biking along the Thames and maybe picking up some fish and chips

Chicago:
Lets go by the Waterfront and pick up some deep dish pizza or something.

Baghdad:

Lets go find one of the two people in Baghdad who own a fitbit.

It's actually a lot of fun to check out some different cities and see what sort of activities have been capture. Go ahead and check it out.