bicyclefreedom.com

This is the coolest thing since I first removed my training wheels. You can go to Google Maps, select “Get Directions” and in the options down below you can ask for directions by bicycle. Yay!

This is still a new thing. Google warns there may be dangerous roads on the bike routes, not to mention unmapped bikeways. And of course, the most direct bike route isn’t always the most interesting bike route, even if it may be the safest.

The ailing BikeMetro offered more, at least for Los Angeles, because it let you factor in your tolerance for hills and traffic.

But if you’re looking for a basic bike ride from point A to point B, especially in an urban environment with a lot of traffic, this is a good way to start and you can do your own “research” and exploration on the pavement.

Thank you, Google!

I want to start chronicling the ways I avoid traffic when biking around Los Angeles. I’m not sure how to organize this, probably with a category and sub-cats so you can follow along and get my suggestions.

Does anyone with WordPress skills have tips on the best way to do this?

A few of the main routes I plan to post here:

• How to bike from PCH to Santa Monica without carrying your bicycle up a staircase
• Bicycling from downtown to each of the university campuses and back
• Bike rides around the terminal stops of all the metro lines
• Major east-west and north-south corridors

We’ll see how this goes.

Yesterday I made it from the Westside to downtown L.A. half an hour early. In rush hour traffic, the bike is faster than the bus. Faster than driving, too, in a lot of situations.

Not to mention an early morning cruise along the beach, then zipping past quiet homes with lush trees and interesting gardens.

It’s good to challenge yourself. It’s good to have these happy reminders of why we do it.

Some days I feel like a centaur. If I’m cut off too long from my better half (that’s the bicycle) I’m stuck–immobile and mutilated until I can get two wheels firmly underneath me again.

Last night we did some unusual exercises during a taijutsu class outdoors in exceptionally cold weather. I wrenched the muscles in my back, and the pain slowly creeped up on me as the evening wore on. By dinner I was in agony, by bedtime I was groaning in pain. I woke up several times at night, painfully heaving myself around to find a position that didn’t hurt.

This morning I could barely lift a coffee cup to my lips.

Excused from work, I spent a few hours this morning experimenting with yoga and tai chi to figure out how bad the damage really was, and what I could and couldn’t do.

By noon I could walk if I was careful not to lean too far in the wrong direction. I could lift a decent amount of weight if I paid attention to my posture.  It was time for a bike ride.

I think you can guess what happened next, especially if this has ever happened to you. I’m completely healed, free of pain, back to full mobility.

Chalk it up to circulation, the benefits of bike exercise, gently working the muscles of your lower back by pedaling. Maybe it’s the magic of just going out and doing what you really love and want.

The truth is we’re resilient creatures. I think a lot of suffering comes out of our own minds. The best thing you can do is break out of the rut you’re in, change your environment, assert your freedom to go where you want on your own power.

Get out on your bike and ride.

If you’re among the committed “inner circle” of bikers interested in bike touring through southern Italy, you’ve already heard the news.

Over the last few months a number of my business clients have been unable to pay me. These are good people, but they’re waiting to get paid by their clients, who in turn are not getting the cash flow they need from their customers.

It’s the same old story you’ve heard more than enough times over the last couple of years. “Shit rolls downhill,” is how one of my clients describes the phenomenon.

I’ll be okay, but I realized that I’m in no position to do the planned via Appia bike tour this spring. Alas!

Embrace the uphill struggle

The downhill metaphor has reminded me of the joy of an uphill climb. These are tough times, but it’s good to feel the resistance of the road, the strength of your quads in defiance of gravity, the heady confidence that you’re almost at the top. It’s good to be climbing.

Now that I’ve had to postpone my ambitious international bike ride, I’m taking time to explore more of the biking possibilities right here at home. There’s a strong biking community in LA, and lots of great places to ride. This spring I’ll be riding close to home, but I’ll still be touring and traveling, even if it’s just a trek to the next county.

Life has its hills and headwinds. Rejoice in it, for they make you stronger. I’ll see you in Italy next year, but in the meantime, enjoy whatever steep heights you’re climbing.

This morning I got stuck behind a bus during my bike commute. It felt like I was sucking air right out of the exhaust pipe. But this usually doesn’t happen, because I have tactics I use to keep my lungs safe most of the time. If you ride your bike in a polluted urban environment like Los Angeles, there’s really a lot you can do to minimize the smog you breathe in.

First, if you have the option, you can cut your exposure to pollution by 10-30% just by riding in off-peak hours. The best time is early in the morning, before rush hour. Next best would be midday, or late at night.

If you’re not commuting by bike, and you just like to ride for the fun of it, be a weekend warrior. Ride your bike on the days when there are fewer cars on the road.

If you commute to work, and have to ride your bike during rush hour, you can save your lungs by taking alternate routes.

Almost every busy street has other streets running parallel to it, and the traffic on these other streets can be a lot lower. If you can get just 50 feet away from the heaviest traffic, you can make a dramatic cut in the amount of pollution you breathe in.

In fact, a Danish study found that when you bike on streets with low traffic volume, you can reduce your exposure to pollution by 50% to 60% or even more.

And when you think about it, you’ll have a safer, more quiet ride. Also more scenic. You’re more likely to pass parks and gardens. You won’t have to worry as much about being hit.

If you commute by bike, there might be stretches where you have to be on the busiest roads, but probably not for the entire route. Anything you can do to reduce the time you spend riding in traffic will pay off.

There will be more stop signs, and you might add an extra 10 minutes onto your journey. But you could also add years to your life.

I plan to bike as many ancient Roman roads as possible in my lifetime. If you want to see some professional photos, video, or history of the via Appia and other ancient Roman roads, check this out:

http://roman-roads.blogspot.com/

If you ever ride a bike in L.A., you probably feel the pain of living in the classic car-dominated culture. So this might surprise you. It certainly blew me away.

Los Angeles could be a bicycle-friendly city

On his Human Transit blog, Jarret Walker listed the top 50 cities with the highest percentage of car-free households. East L.A. made the list, with 21% of households living without the automobile. Even Los Angeles itself was up there, albeit in 49th place, with a car-free density of 16.53%. We beat Seattle!

The reasons don’t have much to do with ecological awareness. It’s more a combination of poverty, age (Los Angeles was a big city before the riode pf the automobile), and urban density. Still, this just empasizes the opportunity here.

There’s always been a weird misconception that the bicycle is a luxury toy for the well-to-do, or a vehicle for the suburbs and the country. But given that poverty and density are compelling obstacles to owning a car for many people, biking just makes more sense. 

There could be a perfect storm brewing over this. Los Angeles has a strong bike culture already, and a bike plan (even if it has many shortcomings) is in place.

With our relatively flat streets and typically good weather (not counting this week), LA should be one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country. Now there’s some political will to make it happen, and statistics to show that it can be done.

Two items caught my eye today. One was Bike Man Dan’s blog post about a set of earrings made from recycled bike tubes. The other was an article about two bike-stealing operations that were foiled by the authorities.

The article made me think of horse thieves in the wild west. These criminals often paid with their lives, because a rider had a strong relationship with his or her horse.  Stealing it was like kidnapping a pet or a loved one.

Bikes are the same. They’re not truly alive, but the relationship between a person and their bike is a lot like the primal bonds that people have had with various animals since the dawn of time.

jewelry made from bicycle skin

The recycled bike tube earrings take this to another level. The same way the skin and bones of the buffalo provided clothing, tools, jewelry and probably much much more.

So be kind to that steel frame. It’s an archetype. Big Game. Steed. Companion. Man’s Best Friend.

Somewhere out there, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Urban Shamans communing with the Bicycle Spirit, thanking it for the day’s ride.

Once you get outside Benevento you hit some beautiful country right away. There was no way I could have predicted the amazing show that was waiting, but that’s the serendipity of bike tours.

It was going to be a major turning point in the tour, and after this night I would spend a lot more time talking to people, sharing stories and experiences, being social. But as I left Benevento, I didn’t know yet what was about to happen.

I rode my bike out of the city early in the evening. A traffic cop told me the way, and soon I was cruising along a winding, hilly country road in the failing light.

I didn’t have plans for where to stay that night, but here’s the great thing about touring southern Italy by bicycle. Your tent almost anywhere in the countryside.

In fact, when I met an old man walking along the side of the road and asked if he knew anywhere to camp, he smiled and gestured magnanimously across the forests and meadows around us.

“You are welcome to camp anywhere you want in my country,” he said.

This was just my second night of stealth camping on the tour of via Appia, but I’ve always had great luck when I leave things up to chance.

The land was deep green, with beautiful oak forests and grassy meadows. At one point I passed a sign leading to the Ponte Rotto, where I would one day fulfill my dream of camping out in ancient Roman ruins. But not this night.

I rode my bike down into a broad valley as the last glow of the sunset disappeared. The world was pitch black. The only light came from my flickering Cat’s Eye bike light and the silver points of stars up above.

I came to a farm at the top of a gentle hill covered with olive trees and grapevines. Nobody seemed to be home when I went to ask permission, so I found a level spot near a bunch of olive trees and set up my tent.

I was ready to crash when I saw a dim light gently bobbing near the spot where I had wheeled my bicycle off the road. It looked like someone walking with their cell phone, so I shouted a friendly “Buona sera!”

No answer, but the light kept coming closer, taking its time.

I didn’t want to startle anyone in the dark, so I turned on my flashlight, pointed it at my own face, and called out another greeting down the hill.

No reply, and this began to feel creepy.

“Listen,” I said in my best possible Italian, “I’m just passing through here on my bike and I stopped because it is dangerous to ride in the dark. I wanted to camp here for the night and leave early in the morning, but I don’t want to cause any problems. I’ll go now if you want me to.”

The mysterious light stopped, but continued to bob gently in the air, flickering on and off. I pointed my light at it, and saw nothing but the low branches of a young oak tree.

A ghost? This wasn’t the only time I’ve ran into ghosts in Italy (that’s another story) but something felt completely normal and natural about this. I walked down to the light and found a large insect on a tree branch. Its abdomen was glowing, and the branch bobbed up and down in the wind.

I laughed out loud as I walked back to my tent, and suddenly a flash of light in the sky caught my eye. A shooting star! A few minutes later I saw another one. The next hour or so was a treat of meteors, stars, and glowing insects.

What happened next is hard to describe, but I’ll try. Laying there in an olive grove in Italy, I felt like I was coming home. I had found a part of myself, something I had lost over the years.

Italy is famous for her natural and artistic beauty, but I’ve been guilty of neglecting the first of these. When I tour in Italy I tend to obsess on paintings and history, cold sculptures and crumbling chunks of marble. But those things get there romance and their magic from the natural world that shaped them and the people who made them.

The whole point of a bike tour in Italy is to breathe life and relevance into the textbook Italy we all think we know.

It took a natural light show in the olive groves of Benevento to show me the error of my ways.

Come to think of it, this is one of the most important reasons to go on a bike tour. It will get you out of your routing, your regular mindset, and show you what you’ve been missing out on.

I don’t spend as much time in cars as most people do, but even so I’m fixed in my ways, just like we all are.

And there’s nothing like a bike tour to take you out of yourself and show you the world in a new way.