Pumping His Pedals Into Plowshares

Do you love to ride your bike but hate to shovel snow?

If you answered "yes", meet Rob Wotzak of Milford, Connecticut.  He shares your passions and came up with a way to indulge one while making the other less onerous.




Although his pedaled tractor plow is new, the idea had been simmering in his mind for years.  "I had a rusty old tractor plow sitting behind my barn," he said.  Finally, two years ago, he "grabbed the plow and a pile of bike parts" and "started cutting and welding" his first prototype. 

As the saying goes, the third time is the charm:  The model he's using came after that first attempt and another.  One of his motivations to create such a machine, he said, is that "legs are stronger than arms" but that using it is still a "workout."

Still, it looks like a good example of Yankee ingenuity to me!

When We Have A Female President....

Three years ago, I wrote about how, late in the 19th Century, Presidents' Day was bicycle day.

Back then, it wasn't called Presidents' Day:  On 22 February, George Washington's birthday was commemorated.  (Abraham Lincoln's birthday was remembered on the 12th; in some states, such as New York, it's still a holiday.)  In the early 1970s, the US government decided to move certain holidays to Mondays.  Thus was Presidents' Day, observed on the third Monday of February, created. 

Today's the day.  A few shops and online retailers are running sales, as they do on other holidays.  But in the Bike Boom of the 1890s, new models were unveiled and bike shows, along with sales, were held on that day.

On this blog, I've also mentioned that during that first Bike Boom, Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle has done more than anything to liberate women.  

We haven't had a female President yet in the US. However, in Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt was the Prime Minister from 2011 to 2015.  Here she is, doing what many of her countrywomen do every day:

Follow The Money?

I suppose we should be grateful any time a town installs a bicycle parking rack.  And we should thank whoever donated the funds for it.

Still, this one left me wondering, "What were they thinking?"



A special bike parking rack was unveiled the other day, for Valentine's Day.  It's red, which is appropriate enough.  And I can understand the wish to use the unveiling to celebrate some aspect of the town's history.

But I think there's something a bit incongruous, to say the least, about putting an image of an oil rig on the bike.  

Maybe I shouldn't complain too loudly. After all, cycling, like the arts, have been used to glorify or sell all sorts of things that haven't been good for the planet, or the spirit.  The Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone?