Silly Cyclist prompts action

The latest Silly Cyclist video, episode 38 had one cyclist that reminded me to do some maintenance on my bike. What I'm referring to is the #1, the cyclist without brakes. Another cyclist jumps the red light, "forcing" him to ride through pedestrians crossing the street as he can't stop his bike.

In the winter the friction between the tyre and the surface below it, usually ice, is pretty low, so I wasn't worried that my brakes were not very effective. Even if the brake pads or the rim wasn't covered in ice and snow, there wasn't much more braking power to be had. The tyre would  just lock and slide on the ice and wouldn't really stop me much earlier. Sort of ABS for bicycles. :-)

Now the bikeways are clean, and a lot of fair weather cyclists and pedestrians will be around, so maybe it'd make sense to tune the brakes.

A sure sign of spring

Although the snow has been melting, and I've seen some catkins, I haven't seen any new growth green (grass grown on plates for easter decorations do not count) to mark the beginning of the spring yet.

But today, despite the sleet and rain and a cloudy day, I saw them.

My video "contest" makes people lose sleep. Sorry.

I uploaded a few videos again and baited viewers with a question in one. Two sloshy videos from the bikeways, two videos from a cobblestone ride showing riding on the streets with not so good drivers and a video riddle. 

I'm just riding when I see something that I had forgotten about for several months. There has been a few good guesses, but no correct answers yet. Want to lose sleep while trying to guess it? ;-)

Good news: the parking garage is paid for!

Today the local newspaper told us the good news: the €70 million underground parking garage will be built without any money from the city, if we're willing to wait a few years. The whole thing will be built by an energy company, who will use it for a few years and then hand it over to the city.


The energy company is building a nuclear plant some 60km away and wants to use the underground garage to temporarily store the nuclear waste, until they can build their own facility somewhere. As searching for a good location, planning and building it will take a long time, it makes sense to use this shovel ready project as a temporary storage. After all, everybody's garage is full if junk stored there temporarily, so why not the underground garage too. And as the nuclear waste still produces a little bit of heat, it can be used to heat the buildings above.

The only problem is that the containers are quite big and bulky, and there would be big HGV's driving to the center of the city. The containers might be so wide they would not fit in the car lane. So on some narrow streets the whole street would have to be closed for other traffic and all parked cars removed. Trying to turn in to the garage will be a problem of it's own.


If this wasn't the first day of the fourth month, this would've been horrible news. The article did fool me for a moment, but they didn't get me come downtown to see the nuclear HGV testing the streets! :-D

I've gone Cycle Chic, too

A few days ago I was riding behind this cyclist who didn't want to get her leather(?) shoes wet. So she did the Cycle Chic Thing, lifted her feet up to avoid the splashes. Lifting the feet doubles the chic-ness! :-D

Pictures from week 12/2012

The first two are from a few days back. In the first pic, the slosh has been plowed to the sides on the bikeway, making it a good ride.

Not so on the streets.

These are from today. Now you can find benches to sit on the river side trail, they're not buried in snow any more. On the north side of the river, there's no shadow except a few trees, so the snow will melt here fast. Note the muddy patch ahead and how all tracks go around to avoid it. The ground is still frozen and will not let water through. So when the snow melts, the soil get sun too and will melt for a few inches. And water plus soil plus people moving on it means it'll be muddy.

The path is on the right side of the river on this photo. For some reason there's no ice on the right, maybe because the curve of the river causes faster or more turbulent currents. A few days ago there was an article in the newspaper telling people to not go on the ice here...

There's so much gritting sand in places it's almost like a sandy path. Now one has to be careful in curves and while turning, this time it's because of the sand instead of the ice.

This was on the south side of the river. Where the path was shadowed by high buildings there was ice, otherwise the path was rapidly losing the ice. Behind one of the trees was a speed display. I don't often ride this path (or drive the street), at least in this direction so I don't know if it's been there long. I think the street has 50km/h limit.

What's really fun is that it gives speeds for cyclists too. I'm not sure if it has loops on the ground or if it has laser or something, but it didn't give speed to a pedestrian walking by. Maybe she was too slow. It worked for the cyclists even though I was standing in front of it with a camera.

It's not a good spot to make speed records, as there's an intersection ahead and several paths from the park on the right merging with this one. But if you want to check your speedometer, this can be handy.

Holes on the bikeway

Now this is a rare sight on a bikeway: a traffic sign warning that there's a narrow point ahead due to work being done. In the first picture, you can see the headlights of a lorry parked in the underpass. That's quite unusual, too.

From the other side of the road you'll see they've put fences around these two huge holes in the ground. And in the hole is the district heating pipes, maybe 40cm in diameter. It looked like the the workers were replacing some of the pipes, because there was one man with a welder, and two looking at him work, as usual :-) It seemed they were pumping hot water into the sewers, so I guess there was a leak.

If I recall correctly, they had shut down one part of the district heating plant for maintenance that day, so fixing the pipes when there's no pressure on them makes sense.