Cycle Home

I was able to keep up my goal of cycling once a month to work over the winter. My goal for the summer is to bicyle to work at least once a week. (That was my goal last summer and I easily exceeded it by bicycling 60% of my work days during July and August).

I have been meaning to keep up with this blog. However, as usual I never got around to it. Nor did I get around to doing much on the website. I hope to change that and get back into keeping the website up to date.

I haven't written much lately, but I also haven ridden much lately. I was travelling around Northern BC for work and I had a cold so the last few weeks have been a write-off when it comes to cycling.

On Tuesday, I had wished I rode as I sat on the bus for close to 2 hours for a bus ride that is usually 35minutes (1h bike ride) due to an accident on the bridge. Did I ever wish I was riding that day.

So today I decided to ride. I thought I dressed pretty well, but going down hill from Lynn Valley to second narrows is a very cold ride.

Whenever I think of riding in the cold, it reminds me of an article that I first read in rec.cycling when I was in university. I guess I must have read it when it was first posted, or around that time anyways. I was thinking of it this morning and decided to see if I could find it on the internet. It was surprisingly easy to find I just did a search for "winter cycling popsicle ottawa" and came up with about 15 copies of the article. I will reprint it myself as well (I'm assuming there is no problem with that, as many others have also done it):

CBCUnlocked.com has an article about a proposal to slap a 30% tariff on imported (from Asia) bicycles that is being reconsidered.

This apparently is being proposed to protect two Canadian Manufacturers Raleigh and Procycle from the low-end imports of cheap bicycles. As such the tarrif is designed to only apply to the cheaper (less than $400) bicycles.

Last Tuesday I attended the North Vancouver Cycling Open house.

While there I asked why Orwell Street was not included on the plan. I noted that it makes a nice alternative to Mountain Highway and that only a little bit of work is needed to make it a nice path. It only needs the bush cleared up and a couple of concrete barriers moved around. It would also be nice if it was widned and a few curb cuts put in.

The next day I rode my bike through there and they had all cleared it out. Probably a coincidence, but nice nonetheless.

Over the last couple of days I've noticed my ring finger on my right hand be a little numb. Because I do a lot of working at computers, I've been concerned about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS). However, I'm usually pretty careful about my wrists when I type and the last week I've actually been using computers less than usual.

After doing some research I've come to the conclusion that it is actually "Handlebar Palsy", which is similar to CTS, but caused by compression of the "Ulnar nerve" in the hand, rather than the median nerve in the wrist as CTS.

One of the things about living in the District of North Vancouver is that you have to deal with some real killer hills.

My normal bicycle route for my commute from work home is across the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge and then up to Lynn Valley. The official signed (sort-of, if you don't look at a map it can be hard to follow) is from Main Street to Mountain Highway/Keith and then on Mountain Highway overpass over highway 1 and then along Arbourlynn road to 20th Street to Viewlynn.

This route involves two really bad hills. The first hill is up Mountain Highway and over the overpass. According to the Contour Map, this involves an elevation gain of 50m. This hill is made significantly worse by the fact that the road is narrow for most of the ride and then near the top of the hill the on-ramp from the highway is merging on the right hand side and high speed cars passing you on the left. It is very ugly and no-fun at all.

You may be wondering what the status of this website is.

Right now I'm just putting the website in existence and seeing the truth of: "If you build it they will come".

I would like to get it more developed over the fall and winter and probably start a real publicity campaign in the spring. However, I'm hoping that it will sort of take off on its own before that time. One thing I will be trying to do this fall is to provide some coverage of the various municipal elections. I hope to send questionairs to all the council to find out their position on cycling issues and post it on this website.

I figure that this blog is where I will discuss a little more about this website and probably also rant about cycling in North Vancouver/Vancouver.

The thought for this website first occured when looking at some of the websites of the many organizations that do cycling advocacy. One thing I noted is that especially the volunteer websites, are very out of date. I felt a website that is maintained and is very interactive would be quite useful.

My first planned thing to have on this website is a Point A to Point B section. This will be a area where you can enter your starting point and destination and then ask for suggestions as to what the best route to take would be. People can then respond and give suggested routes. I plan on using the Googlemap API so that I can show the locations on the map. This will take some programming, but I think it will make it better, so I will be working on that.