Ride Boldly!

Winter is a good time to clean out the buckets of bike stuff and attend… swap meets!

• Twin Cities Bike Swap Meet – February 14, at the National Sports Center. $5 admission to a really giant event. Tables $40 to sell.

• TCBC Swap Meet – March 27, at the Hopkins VFW. Free entry, free to sell for TCBC members and sponsors.

I’m sure there are others upcoming, although few have the widespread allure that a Valentine’s Day swap meet in Blaine offers. Stop by the swap meet, then go to White Castle for dinner!

There are a few upcoming events of note to cyclists in Minnesota:

• January 21 – Design open house for the Highway 52/Lafayette Bridge replacement project, t the Wellstone Center in St. Paul. More info: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/projects/hwy52-stpaul/

• January 25 – Surface Transportation Reauthorization Outreach Meeting with Secretary Ray LaHood and Congressman Jim Oberstar in Minneapolis. More info: http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bikeadvocacy/minneapolis_mn_invite_01%2012%2010.pdf
• February 25 – Celebrate 25 years of the Neighborhood Energy Consortium at Summit Brewing. Tickets are $25 per person and may be purchased with VISA/MC by calling 651.221.4462 ext 136. More info: http://thenec.org/
• March 20 – First day of spring!

The National Bicycle Summit is also upcoming, taking place in Washington DC in March. I will be in attendance, and connectivity be kind, will provide complete blogging coverage of the proceedings.

Over on ze Twitter, Inside Minnesota Soccer made an excellent crack about the overlap between cyclists and soccer fans. However, the actual point of similarity isn’t in the activity (playing soccer/riding a bike) but in being a fan of the activity as done by professionals and semi-pros.

Seriously:

• In Europe, it’s mainstream. In the US, it’s fringe. Sure, soccer’s gotten a bit more play mainstream in the US due to Beckham playing in the MLS and the US team qualifying for the upcoming World Cup. The same could be said of bicycling in the Lance Armstrong era, along with a few other notable Americans (most of whom have been caught doping, oops). At the same time, racers and teams and players and sides are only easily named by a sliver of society.

• The best US athletes in both sports end up in Europe. MLS blah blah blah. Continental cycling squads blah blah blah. The best and most talented and fastest and etc. all sign with Euro sides. Who wouldn’t? There’s more money, more races, better fan support, and like it or not, a higher level of play/racing in Europe.
• Both are relegated to weird times/channels on the telly. Again, go to the UK, and the evening match featuring Chelsea is on a major channel in prime time. Here? Well, it gets back to the European thing. Soccer fans rely on TiVo and broad cable packages to pick up even MLS matches, let alone international contests. Cycling fans are stuck with the drooling stupid that is most cycling coverage on Versus. And if it’s not the Tour de France, expect to see week-long races condensed to 2 hours of coverage if you’re lucky, and one day classics squeezed into an hour with commercials.
  

• Fans of both soccer and cycling dress funny. Soccer jerseys are brightly colored and emblazoned with advertising logos. Cycling fans who also ride may wear team jerseys, which are brightly colored and emblazoned with advertising logos. Various sides and cycling teams could hold contests for most appalling color combos.
• Proximity. In Minnesota, the NSC Velodrome is next to the home of Minnesota’s only pro soccer side (name pending). Self-evident. Catch Thursday night racing one night, and a pro soccer match the next. Sleep in your car and you won’t need a new space!

From a participation viewpoint, bikes are seen as toys in the US, thereby driving a lot of the antipathy to cyclists on the roads. Soccer is seen as a sport for pee wees, and not a pro-class sport like baseball or football. Oddly, cycling is often part of the rehab for various soccer injuries among pro players, as it’s used in a lot of knee injury rehab regimens.

In summary: Soccer fans should not run over the cyclists at the NSC, and the cyclists should give a cheerful wave to the soccer hooligans. We’re all wanna-be Eurosport geeks.

MNDOT plans to resurface Hwy 96 from Hwy 61 in White Bear Lake to Hwy 95 in Stillwater in 2010. The project starts in June and the design plans will be finalized the end of January. The Bike/Walk Committee in White Bear Lake has been working with other agencies to influence MNDOT’s design.

The committee is urging the project to include provision to widen the shoulder to approximately 5ft (current is 2-3ft) and reduce the drive lane to 10.5ft (currently 12 ft).

MNDOT is scheduled to present their design plan on Monday, January 11, during a meeting at 7:00pm at White Bear Lake City Hall in downtown White Bear Lake.

MNDOT is a state agency, and thus highly influenced by a show of support for a plan or suggestion. The White Bear Lake Bike/Walk Committee is asking as many cyclists as are able show for the event. Once the design is final, the lane configuration on Highway 96 is unlikely to change for another 10 years!

The Associated Press reports a tale of helmet enforcement that to my mind misses a point.

A police officer in New Zealand nabbed a pair of cyclists out for a little night ride in the nude. The constable sent the duo home for helmets.

While nudity is a chargeable offense in the twon of Whangamata, the constable was cutting the men a break at the start of beach party season. Helmets, while well and good, are not going to prevent road rash and a not-so-fresh feeling if any balance issues or falls happen, however. OW.

There is a myth about the corporate ladder: Golf is critical to networking.

Here’s the thing. It’s not necessarily true. Sure, in some organizations, it’s not a bad way to get face time with leadership, if that leadership digs 9 holes + Miller Lite. And perhaps this was critical path back in the day where you joined a company, worked 40 years, retired from same. You needed to engage in the right activities in-house to make a go of things.

These days, people move between companies far more frequently and with greater velocity than back in the day. One of the side effects of this is that networking is as important outside of the office than within, if not even more so. For that, any social sport may offer benefits.

Cycling as a social sport must be included in this group. Cyclists, as a group, tend to be more educated and affluent than the general population. Education tends to correlate strongly with employment – as does affluence. This makes the people in your personal peloton potentially valuable contacts professionally, and not just when you catch a barb in your back tire and need a spare CO2 cartridge. There’s more to sharing the road than just riding right. Sharing the road is also about relationships, which can cross from spandex to pinstripes and back.