Protecting Yourself--And Your Riding Buddies

If you use fenders, you know that the front and about half of your rear fender help to keep you and your bike clean and dry.

The rearmost part of your back fender--and its mudflap--serve mainly to keep the riders behind you from getting splattered or sprayed.

In other words, a long rear fender and flap is a courtesy to your fellow cyclists.   If that's the case, there may be no more considerate rider than this one:

The Signs In Delaware

You're riding down a street.  You see a swath of green--and white lines and--barricades!?  Really?  There's a bike lane here?

More than a few times, I've had bike paths appear seemingly out of nowhere--and end just as abruptly. Or someone tells me about a lane I somehow missed in an area I ride frequently.

Now, I can only imagine how often someone who's newer to cycling than I am--or who rides less frequently than I do--is totally oblivious to whatever bicycle infrastructure might be available to them.  Or they just don't know what might be a good route to pedal from their homes to work, school, the park or wherever they want or need to go.

The folks at Bike Delaware understand as much.  They were instrumental in getting the state to build bike lanes-- including the Wilmington-New Castle Greenway, a safe, direct, flat and nearly uninterrupted seven-mile motor-free trail linking the Wilmington riverfront with downtown New Castle.

That lane opened last September.  Three years earlier, in July of 2015, Bike Delaware began working with the Delaware Department of Transportation to to secure the necessary regulatory approval for "wayfinding" signage.  Transportation signs are highly regulated by the Federal government--more so than roadways or bike paths, which are mainly state or county projects.  

Best of all, the bike signs have their own unique color, so they can't be confused with other road signs.  

I haven't been to Delaware in a long time. But if I ever find myself there, at least I'll know which way to ride!

Make Sure You Invest In The Right Bicycle!

Not so long ago, nobody would have named a product "Brooklyn".  It was the declasse downmarket cousin of Manhattan.  And, in certain circles, one could be judged (as I was) for having grown up in it.  When I moved to the borough as an adult, I lived in a neighborhood where nobody would admit to being from Brooklyn.  Instead, they told people they lived in Park Slope.  I'll admit, I fell into that guise a few times.

Now, of course, "Brooklyn" is cool. At least, if you moved there from someplace else.  Brooklyn's cachet isn't found in  just any of the borough's neighborhoods:  The one in which I grew up is not the hipster haven that Williamsburg--at least, a section of it--has become, and isn't a maze of young women in $200 yoga pants pushing $1500 strollers along bar- and restaurant-lined avenues, as "The Slope" has become.  When marketers and entrepreneurs name their products or emporia after Brooklyn, they're not thinking about East New York or Brownsville--or even, for that matter, the parts of Williamsburg south of the eponymous bridge and east of Union Avenue, where Hasidim and Hispanics, respectively, live.

Lately, it seems that "bicycle" is starting to gain status, however slowly, in much the same way Brooklyn is.  For as long as I can remember, the only non-bicycle related product named for the two-wheeler has been playing cards.  And they were so named in the days when a bike cost about as much as the average worker made in a year.  

Of course, you aren't going to find breakfast cereals or cosmetics named for anything velocipedic. At least, not now. That could change, however, very soon.  Slowly but surely, our two-wheeled obsession is gaining status--in one industry, anyway.

Interestingly, that area is biotechnology.  Perhaps it's not surprising when you realize that at scientists have likened the motion of at least one kind of molecule to the way pedals rotate around a bottom bracket.  

So now there is a company called Bicycle Therapeutics.  Now pharmaceutical giant Merck (funny, how much that looks like the name of the greatest racer of all time) has announced that it acquired a biotech startup that was ready to announce an Initial Public Offering.  

The name of that company is Peloton Therapeutics.

Nicholas Janski of Barron's wondered whether would-be investors might mistake the biotech company--which actually is applying some of the recently-discovered knowledge about the "bicycle" molecules I've mentioned--for Peloton Interactive, the maker of at-home "spin" bikes.  He cited similar confusion last month, when investors piled money into Zoom Technologies, causing the price of its stock to more than double, after Zoom Video Communications, an entirely unrelated company, announced its IPO.

(Me, when I hear "Zoom," I think of handlebars, stems, seatposts and other bike parts, mainly for mountain bikes!) 

Hmm...I wonder whether Eddie bought stock in any of those companies.  Does he think "Brooklyn" is cool?