Albany Bicycle Coalition

Luckily up in Albany we don’t have the problem of lacking parking for our two wheeled forms of conveyance. What if we did though? Would you pay 20 to 50 dollars a month to park your bike? In NYC parking garages have started “bike parking” where you can leave your bike with them and then go around town.

We have something like that here. If you visit the Albany Medical Center, hopefully on good terms, you can park your bike in their garage which has a special section for bike parking. The employees are given a special space to park theirs behind a fence, but for the rest of us there are a few racks where we can lock up. Honestly I like the idea, but every time I park there I always wonder to my self why there are no conveniently place bike racks on the street, and don’t get me started on the bike racks they decided to go with. They are the long ones with the slots that are too small to put your bike in which are the same ones in front of the Price Chopper on Madison. But I digress.

I think I would rather pay for a good lock then pay someone to watch my bike for me. The ease of parking on the street and the shorter walk to the door is well worth it because who needs to walk an extra 50 feet to the door when you just rode 5 miles to get there.

I love being an American.

Written by Chris Belsole

As the weather gets warmer and we start seeing less snow you have to wonder, “Where is all that precipitation going to go?” Horrible rhyming aside what are you going to do when it rains? I came across this very video that is actually part of a larger documentary called Mind the Gap. Enjoy.

Written by Chris Belsole

You encounter this, or at least I do, all the time. Whenever I ride through a blizzard or the rain and people see me they always say, “You rode through that!?” Even more generally when I tell people that I ride through the road they tell me how brave I am and that they can never do what I do. I used to try and refute them, but now that it happens constantly I just reply,  “Yes I am awesome aren’t I.” So what causes them to have this fear of cycling? In an article by Dave Horton a sociologist from the UK, froward to my by Bert, he discusses this very topic. Now I have to admit that I did not read the whole thing because it is very long and my brain does not like to focus on things for more then five minutes, but here is a nice quote that sums it all up:

“Fear of cycling constitutes a significant emotional barrier to cycling. Ironically, this fear is partly produced through attempts to make cycling safer. For as long as cycling remains something to fear, it remains a marginal and marginalised practice. The constant cultural construction of cycling as dangerous justifies the continued spatial marginalisation of cycling practice, which then enables the continued construction of the cyclist as other, a stranger pedalling on the margins. The ideological, spatial and cultural marginality of cycling are continuously reproduced, together.”

Article: Fear of Cycling

Written by Chris Belsole