Car addiction’s so last century.

Are you a bike junkie yet? How could you tell? Montreal-based Opus Urbanista gives a neat rundown of situations that make you realise you’re hooked. [In French.]

[Paraphrasing:]

-The best part of your day is neither the time at work nor the time at home, but your journey between the two.

-Rather than take the shortest route home, you take interesting detours, “like a child who doesn’t want to go home”.

-You haven’t used your car for so long that you’ve lost the keys.

-If the weather is nice outside and you’re stuck at work, you get frustrated.

-You choose where you shop and eat out based on whether they have a safe place to lock the bike outside.

-Two days without riding to work feels like cold turkey.

I’m actually really glad someone beat me to this.

I’ve just come across an intelligent rundown of what cycling in Seoul is like, and I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly. 

Don’t read the [nay-saying] guidebooks, ignore the gloomy reports, instead look at what’s actually happening on the streets. 

[The 6-lane] boulevards have 3 metre wide sidewalks, they are not crowded and nobody minds cyclists weaving in and out of the pedestrians. On the road itself the traffic is calm, flowing in an unhurried way between the traffic-light controlled junctions on smooth tarmac. The big spaces between the main roads are a network of small streets and alleys where cyclists and pedestrians are safe and cars make slow progress on sufferance.

The city has started to develop a cycling infrastructure and what they have done is very promising, in a few years Seoul could be a perfect cycling city, even now it feels a lot easier than many places in Britain.

Read the rest at Seven League Boots.

Gliding along wide pavements

OK, a paradise for cyclists Seoul isn’t. Indeed my initial view of people who ride on the roads here was sheer terror for their safety. But that has changed. A lot.

My first 2 months here I rode 100% on the pavements [sidewalks]. Happily, these are all shared, officially or unofficially, with pedestrians. And the odd delivery motorbike.

However, I’ve now started riding increasingly on the roads. Dipping my toes in the supposedly shark-infested water as it were. I strongly believe the actual danger is vastly inflated. (Yes, I’ve read David Hembrow’s persuasive article on perceived safety vis-a-vis actual safety.)

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who’s realised.

Seoul cycle style

A few days ago I came across an old-ish Korean article on how dangerous it is to cycle in Seoul. It nicely encapsulates the average (non-cycling) Seoulite’s view of riding a bicycle here. Here’s the meat of the piece in translation:

 위험한 서울 거리, 왜 자전거 타야 할까? – 오마이뉴스

Seoul’s dangerous streets – Why should I bike?
I’ve never once cycled on the streets of Seoul. That’s not because I can’t ride a bike or don’t like it, it’s because I don’t have the nerve.

I’ve cycled a fair bit in other cities. When I was studying in Germany I always had a bike, though it was a cheap old one. Even during my 2 months in Marburg with all its mountains, I bought a secondhand bike for getting about on. …

However since coming back to Korea ten or so years ago, I’ve only thought about trying to ride here. … Indeed it’s obvious to me that riding a bike in Seoul is a highly dangerous thing to do.

A few years ago, a German architect friend found this out. After work he told me he fancied doing some sightseeing around the city and asked to borrow my bike. … Eventually he went out on the bike for a whole day. In the evening we met up and he was satisfied but admitted it had been a fairly perilous task. If he were staying for a long time in Korea, he probably wouldn’t carry on riding. Compared to Germany it’s too risky.

As he pointed out, a bicycle is perfect for seeing the sights of a city. Cars go too fast and it’s hard to stop where you like. Likewise, walking can be laborious. But on a bike you can go at your own speed and stop for as long as you like. If only it were safer, it would be ideal as a means of transport in this city too…

Original article on Oh My News

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, saves the day. On his bike.

at this year's London Freewheel/Skyride

Amazingly, even the vocally anti-bike Daily Mail (yes, I looked) ran a positive take on the story and the follow-up comments were complimentary to a one. Including:

It would be better if there were more policemen on bicycles. (247 thumbs up) 

The summer’s over. The lycra lads have largely gone into hibernation. Their gaudy toys put away until next year. And here in Seoul the cool autumn breezes are providing a loving tailwind to the more fashion-conscious cyclists.

Fashion returns to Seoul

It helps that the city government has been improving the quality of the hereto remarkably uneven pavements [sidewalks]. (Drivers regularly park their cars on the pavements here, ruining the surface quality remarkably efficiently.) Riding a regular bike in the city is becoming increasingly pleasant.

Walking home yesterday evening (rumbled – bikes aren’t my sole form of transport!) I passed the aftermath of a car crash.

A taxi was being lifted by crane off the largely destroyed concrete central partitio. The driver was crouched on the pavement [sidewalk], watching in wide-eyed silence the crane, the taxi and the tailbacks.

This got me to thinking about crashes in general. Why is it that bicycle crashes are often memorialised with a ghost bike which lasts for years after the event, whereas car crashes tend to spawn bouquets of flowers that disappear within a few weeks?

The first time I saw a photo of a ghost bike (I readily admit Yehuda Moon first introduced the concept to me), I was struck with a sense of… well, fear. It hammered home the fact that people can and do die while riding a bike. I love ghost bikes aesthetically, but they give me the willies. Seeing one in my town would probably go some way to persuading me take the bus more often.

How about hammering home the simple truth that people die in cars too? With ghost cars. Leaving a real stripped-down car at the roadside, painted white, where someone died in a car. Or in areas where space is at a premium, one side of the car. Would seeing one go some way to persuading people to drive more carefully or less often?

(rather amatur) ghost car mock-up

Another influencer rides to work.

I’ve suggested before that the most important people to get in the saddle are the influencers. The government workers with a hand in setting the transport and planning agenda. The doctors and nurses whose recommendations influence public health. The TV executives and presenters and newswriters who frame the subject.

The magazine editors.

Lucy Danziger, editor in chief of Condé Nast's Self magazine

A huge well done to her for contributing to a better-looking NYC.

I’m normally a humble, self-effacing sort (being British, it’s probably genetic).

My girlfriend however has spoken: weeks when I cycle a lot, I have more vitality, more energy and I look better. Can there be any better reason to get on my bike?

Therefore when I heard recently that some researchers (in the USA) have tried to link cycling to male infertility (with studies dating back a decade), my natural reaction was something akin to, “WTF??” (Wouldn’t that make about half the population of Denmark, Holland, Japan and China infertile?)

“This whole [cycling-impotence] thing is really out of proportion. In China 90 percent of the male population cycles, and they don’t seem to have a problem maintaining the population.” - Dr W. D. Steers, chairman of Urology Dept., University of Virginia School of Medicine

I have to admit a double interest in this issue. I’m a man. In a relationship. Who uses a bike pretty much every day. Also, my career has included a stint as a sexual health researcher and writer, and the topic naturally still fascinates me.

As such, I know full well how closely a healthy circulation is linked to healthy erections. Heck, Viagra was originally developed as a heart disease medicine – it gets blood flowing more easily.

Indeed, bicycling looks a kinda reliable way to reduce your risk of impotence. (On that note, isn’t it likely you suffer more wear and tear in a night of passion than in a month of normal cycling? I for one would like to see a comparative analysis.)

Here for your information (and self-appraisal? ) are perhaps the most common causes of impotence:
-circulation problems (heart-related)
-diabetes / obesity (weight-related)
-stress (psychological)
-age

OK, not wanting to trivialise a complex and sensitive topic, it should be kinda common sense that regularly getting around by bike keeps your heart and circulation in tip-top shape, your figure trim, and your energy levels high as someone 10 years younger. A no-brainer recipe for looking sexier, feeling sexier and enjoying a fabulous and fun love life.

So why do myths about cycling being somehow bad for you still make the rounds? This from the Independent in 2003 (suspiciously published on the eve of National Bike Week that year).

One man, Charles McCorkell, who looked into the data used in the research in this field, had this to say:

It wasn’t until a month ago, when I got a chance to see the abstracts on the studies and some of the data, that I realized that what I had believed for the last 3 years might be wrong, and what I believed for the 20 years before that might be right: Cycling is good for your sex life.

It turns out one study comparing swimmers with cyclists had picked cyclists on average 10 years older than their swimming counterparts. Adjusted for age, the results were ‘a tie’. Another study had asked men with impotence whether they felt their cycling had contributed. (Because as any doctor knows it’s so easy to self-diagnose.)

Over the last month I’ve spoken with a fairly large number of bicycle dealers, bicycle seat manufacturers and cyclists. Most of them wanted to make sure I told you about the health benefits of cycling, and how you… should be shouting from the roof tops… that everyone should be out riding bicycles because it’s good for them, good for theenvironment and it’s fun. I also heard over and over again denials about ED and stories from both riders and their partners about how cycling improves their sex life. [ibid]

This seems to be borne out by this less scaremongering article in the Guardian, via EcoVelo. Triathletes systematically cycling over 300km a week are, it reports, at risk of low sperm counts – be afraid! – but then points out that your average common-or-garden round-town bicyclists are at no risk at all. Indeed men may have been more fertile when they cycled more…

Viagra on two wheels indeed.

Sexify yourself.

I remember reading a while back – in some HR article I can’t find now – that people who take an extra 10 minutes over their appearance before work get higher wages and quicker promotons. So, if you’re going out by bike, before you step out of the door, please make sure you look… photographable.