Casual ease

[darkemeralds]

This picture of an attractive Dane on a bike was posted on BikePortland the other day.

I have since decided that I will signal no other way than the cool way that Mr Copenhagen there signals. (How else could you signal, you wonder? Well, I'm typically more emphatic and full-armed about it because Portland, though bike-aware, does not have Copenhagen-levels of bike-awareness. But screw that. I'm going to be cool Danish-signaling gal from here on.)

The extraordinary editor of BikePortland, Jonathan Maus, is currently posting dispatches from the two great world bike capitals, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. He has mentioned the amazing bike-riding skills of the citizens, and since we're not talking Tour de France racing, I'm assuming he means stuff like riding steadily in slow and crowded conditions, navigating safely around pedestrians, riding handlebar-to-handlebar with your friends while conducting a conversation, gauging traffic, or riding with two kids, a cigarette, a cellphone and no helmet.

No, I'm not being facetious about that last item. Americans think of cycling as a competitive sport requiring speed, power and endurance. (My daily commute is often made uncomfortable and even dangerous by cyclists of that sort.) We don't seem to place much emphasis on casual ease. And let's face it, casual ease requires skill.

I shall henceforth be all about the casual ease. (I'll probably keep the helmet, though.)

Crossposted from darkemeralds

Comments

[aedifica]

Casual ease does require skill! I was noticing recently how I have less of the casual ease than I used to (it'd been a few months since I was on a bike, for various reasons).

[darkemeralds]

It's amazing, isn't it? I'm not sure where you bike, but even here in Portland, I find myself getting into that "push" mindset, gotta get where I'm going, no time to waste, and it's silly because my commute is all of four miles.

So the last couple of days, since seeing the picture, I've been doing the "look, Ma! No hands!" thing (on quiet side streets only)--trying to loosen up while at the same time trying to stay on a very straight trajectory. It's surprising how well those two things go together!

[aedifica]

It's not that I find myself switched into "push" mentality, it's that I've lost the level of skill that lets me do "casual ease." I look forward to getting it back!

[darkemeralds]

Well, you know what they say...


(It's just like riding a bike)

*ducks*

[pebblerocker]

Texting while cycling is now specifically outlawed here, as a clarification to the no texting while driving rule. Since my watch broke I've been using my mobile phone to check the time while riding... I hope I don't get pulled over for it.

[darkemeralds]

That's probably not a terrible law (though really, texting while walking is also incredibly stupid in many instances and where do you draw the line?). I figure that within five years we'll all be on voice-recognition wearable devices anyway, and "texting" will be a moot point.

Seriously, I've been waiting for years now to be able to leave my phone in my pocket, say, "Google, navigate me to XYZ address," and have Navigation give me voice directions right in my ear--from the bike layer of Google maps. Because as of now, it can do most of that, but it still wants to put me on freeways.

So the next step is "Hey Google."

"Boop"

"Text Joe I'm on my way home."

Like, your own personal Jarvis. I can't wait.

[temve]

Oh yes. Also, amazing European bike-riding skills anywhere outside Copenhagen or Amsterdam require a large smile, to be turned on any time you want to Jedi-mind-trick a driver into doing exactly what you want him to do. For best effects, wear either a floppy brightly coloured skirt while riding a city bike, or a tight jersey on a roadbike *grin*

I still maintain that the portion of our epic five-hour roadbike ride last Thursday that required most bike-handling skills was neither the sill stoplight-infested ascent of 'Heartbreak Hill' nor the breathtaking descent from Bergen-Enkheim that always has me singing Carmina Burana at the top of my lungs to keep my nerves in check, but the bit coming back into the city: the options here are a two-lane bike trail that's full of cyclists on any given day (but especially on a public holiday in May because those seem to come with a subconscious imperative to Germans to get on their bikes, whether or not they do so the rest of the year), and the riverside path that's a great exercise in pedestrian slalom, identify-the-interesting-smelling-foodstuff, clipping in and out of your pedals on the fly, and saying 'ding!' rather melodiously while swearing that next time, you are getting a bell for that roadbike :D

[darkemeralds]

Would that be this area?

The smile and flippy skirt approach to bike safety works best on younger riders--though I've no doubt it works very well then! For me, dignified silver hair pretty much serves the same purpose, though I think it helps that I also dress more for fashion than for sport.

I think a lot of the macho sport-biking traffic around my area comes from long commutes. No five-hour tours, of course, but many of the hardcore bike commuters here have commutes of an hour or more each way, involving hills, river-crossings, and state highways. I'm sure it's difficult to adjust to city-bike speeds when they get into the urban core. And pedestrians probably do look like mere obstacles. These are the cyclists who rail against separated cycle paths, too--they are pure "vehicular cyclists" willing and able to ride right in traffic. They want no money spent in support of any other kind of cycling but the kind they do.

I fear their acceptance of shared-use, pedestrian-friendly, slow-bike urban ways will be slow and painful.