Some things simply don't make any sense.
On the other hand, there are many more things that make sense to somebody--but not to me. Maybe they make sense to you, or someone you know. Or perhaps not.
The category of things that make sense to somebody is comprised, in part, of ideas and inventions that make you scratch your head. They make sense to whoever came up with them, and they might work "on paper" or in some alternative universe.
One such idea/invention is a bicycle that's pedaled with both feet together. How or why anyone came up with it is beyond me.
For one thing, pedaling with both feet together means standing up, then sitting back down to propel one's self. Now, I realize there are people who ride that way normally, but they are almost always novices and, if they continue to ride, eventually shed the habit.
The creators of "Swingbike" refer to it as "The Athletic Perfection." The reason, as I understand it, is that in standing up and sitting down through the pedal stroke, the rider has to pump his or her arms. I guess that's somebody's idea of a "full body workout."
I don't know whether the "Swingbike" was ever produced. Perhaps it was made under another name: After all, there are many other machines with the same name; in some cases, they're called "Swing Bike" (two words). Or, perhaps, it was aborted by copyright laws!
Someone wasn't feeling the love in the City of Brotherly Love.
Around 2:30 yesterday morning, three Philadelphia police officers on bicycle arrived at the intersection of I Street and Erie Avenue to help with the arrest of a carjacker.
Suddenly, a black sedan--possibly a Nissan Altima--with tinted windows bore down, at high speed, a group of Philadelphia police officers on bicycle patrol.
Fortunately for the men in blue, they hopped off their bikes before the sedan tangled them into a mess of twisted spokes and sped off.
According to a Philly.com report, "Police said the driver's actions appeared to have been deliberate." No! Really? What I'd like to know is whether the driver of the sedan knew the carjacker, or simply had a grudge against cops--or cyclists.
Another beautiful early summer day means...a ride, of course. This one took me to Point Lookout. I pedaled against the wind most of the way out and with it most of the way back.
When I got back, I talked to my mother and told her I "looked like a tomato." She asked whether I'd used sunscreen; which, of course, I had. In fact, both of my stops were for the purpose of applying "beach grease".
What was most striking about the ride, though, was that the tide at the Point had receded further than I'd ever seen before. I can't recall the sandbars stretching as far and wide as the ones that were exposed yesterday.
Speaking of exposure: I could just barely see that couple on the sandbar. It didn't look like they were wearing a whole lot, though it looked like they were doing quite a bit. One of the things they were doing, of course, was leaving something to the imagnation!
What else might we lose if and when sea levels rise?
Yesterday, I wrote about two bike-share programs that went bust.
One of them, Pronto, was based in Seattle. Its demise came as a surprise to some, including yours truly, because Seattle has long had a reputation for all of the things one associates with cities that develop successful share programs. For one thing, it had an active, vibrant cycling community long before Portland or other cities developed their reputations as two-wheeled utopiae. For another, it also has a large population of young, educated and creative people: the very sorts of people who are most likely to be bike riders in urban areas.
In other words, it seemed to have a lot in common with other cities in Europe and North America where share programs have succeeded. Some blamed the failure of Pronto on Seattle's climate, which may have been somewhat of a factor, although other places where share programs are popular get as much rain (or as little sunshine, depending on your point of view) as the Emerald City.
When we think of the cities where bike share programs have succeeded, we think first of the US coastal cities and European capitals. But they have also worked well in "second" cities like Lyon, France (whose "Velo'v" is often cited as a model) and Hamilton, Ontario. Even a town like Chattanoga, Tennessee has managed to support a thriving program.
But most people, I think, wouldn't expect to find the ingredients of vibrant cycling communities or successful bike share programs--let alone attempts to develop other kinds of cycling infrastructure--in declining industrial cities like Reading, Pennsylvania (which I mentioned in an earlier post). Or nearby Lancaster.
I have to confess that when I think of Lancaster, I think of the Pennsylvania Amish Country or "Dutch Country". My family took a trip there every summer, where we would visit farms and the so-called "Dutch Wonderland". In those days mega-theme parks like Six Flags were either new or in development, the Dutch Wonderland and Hershey Park still could capture a kid's short attention span.
We would simply pass through the city itself which, even then, seemed to consist mainly of factories and old buildings that didn't seem to be used for anything but no one had gotten around to declaring as historic landmarks. I liked the train station--which served the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads, and now is an Amtrak stop--mainly because I liked trains and the Reading still had some of the old steam locomotives.
But Lancaster, like Reading, has witnessed the loss of its old industries and a population that has grown poorer, darker and older--though, to be fair, not to the same degree as Reading. Interestingly, Lancaster has earned a new nickname: The City of Refugees. It's believed that refugees make up a higher percentage of the population in Lancaster than in any other US city.
This is not what one normally associates with cycling: Indeed, even today, when I ride through blue-collar and immigrant neighborhoods and suburbs of New York, I see no other cyclists. But, when you think about it, such places--like Lancaster and Reading--are exactly where cycling should thrive. After all, generations of working-class people all over Europe, Asia and other parts of the world were, until recently, the vast majority of the world's cyclists.
So, in a way, we shouldn't be surprised that Lancaster is launching a bike share program. What surprised me, in reading about it, is the degree to which the city is trying to develop a cycling infrastructure. While I am not always enthusiastic about bike lanes, it seems that planners are at least trying to make them practical: They lead to places like the train station and there seems to be some notion that a bike lane isn't just a few lines painted on asphalt or concrete.
Almost nobody believes that Donald Trump can actually deliver on his pledges to revive moribund industries. After all, even if some company decided to build a steel mill or open a coal mine in Pennsylvania or West Virginia, it would be more automated than the ones that closed. Thus, fewer workers would be employed--and few, if any, of them would be those men in their 50s and 60s who got laid off during the last economic downturn. Instead, almost anybody who's not a direct adviser to Trump says that such workers should be retrained in the new technologies of the "green" or "greener" industries.
It's not as much of a stretch as one might think: People in industrial and rural areas tend to have more mechanical, and other practical, skills than MBAs or lawyers. If we think of bicycles as part of the "green" economy, it's not hard to imagine employing workers from a variety of other industries--or simply folks who don't have the aptitude or desire for university--in them.
One might say that nearby Reading--which I described in an earlier post--is attempting to do that, if on a small scale, with its efforts to make cycling more accessible for the working-class, poor and unemployed of that city. Such efforts almost inevitably involve employing, directly or indirectly, the very people such programs try to put on bikes. Perhaps something similar will happen in Lancaster. If nothing else, as in Reading, Lancaster's new bike share program and infrastructure could make cycling affordable and practical for people who could benefit from it.
