bikecarrboro.comSPRING 2012

building a network of cyclists in the greater Carrboro region

S i l ve r Le ve l

The Carrboro Bicycle Coalition (CBC) is an advoca-cy group that seeks to create a bicycle friendly com-munity through cycling awareness, education, safety advocacy and promotion of bicycling for transporta-tion, recreation, fitness, and a livable future.

April Sunday, April 1Bike Swap 10 am –2 pm at the ReCY-CLEry. Fully repaired bikes, project bikes, frames and premium parts will be available to the general public at fair prices. Items could range from $1 to $300, depending on item and condition. Money raised will go towards promoting ReCYCLEry and Spoke N Revolutions Youth Cycling Team programs. Early birds can browse and pre-purchase items from 9am to 10am.

Back Alley Bikes 5th Birthday celebra-tion. Starting around noon at Lucky Star, the celebration will include food, cruiser rides, and more. See their website for more info.

Friday, April 13Carrboro Bicycle Coalition Celebration And Fundraiser. Looking Glass Café from 5:30 to 9:30 pm. Come help us help you, while enjoying an evening of fun. Music, food trucks, lots of great raffle prizes, and more. Check our website or your emails for more info!

Monday, April 162nd ever in NC Kidical Mass Ride. Town Hall in Carrboro, 5 to 7 pm, ride starts at 5:30. Put on by the ReCYCLEry and Spoke N Revolutions, with the Town of Carrboro and CBC. Great fun for the whole family; kids on bikes, kids in trailers, lots of par-ents, everyone. If you missed the first one, do yourself a favor and come to this one!

This is definitely the time to be on a bicycle. There is SO much happening around here, bicycling events for young, old, and everyone in between. Do you know of an event coming up? Please post it on our website: bikecarrboro.com. Hope to see you at one or several of these events:

Saturday April 214th annual BikeAbility Workshop. 9am–noon at the Bowles Parking lot. For youth and adults with special needs, their fam-ily, friends, and staff. for more info con-tact Marian at 968-2813 or mkaslovsky@townofchapelhill.org

Monday, April 23 & Monday, April 30Adult Cycling Classes. 6–8 p.m. Nervous about riding on the road? There will be a two classes taught through Carrboro Rec-reation and Parks dept. April 23rd is about Bicycle Safety and April 30th is on the Ba-sic of Bicycle Commuting. Taught by Dale McKeel and Ken Kay (Certified LAB In-structors). $10/per/class. Register online at http://www.carrbororec.org/. Contact Eric (370.7427 or ecallman@hotmail.com) for more information.

MaySunday, May 6Carrboro Day at Town Hall.

Wednesday, May 9International Bike to School Day

Saturday, May 12Bike on Bus Demo at the Farmers’ Market. (Ever wonder how to put your bike on the bus? Here’s your chance to find out!)

Tuesday, May 15Bike to Work Breakfast. 7:30–10:00 a.m. at the parking lot by the Libba Cotten Bike-way. With coffee from Open Eye and bis-cuits from Neal’s Deli, it’s the perfect way to start your day! Yum!

Thursday, May 17All Bike shops No-Fee Bike Inspection Day! Thank you, bike shops!

Friday, May 18Spring Roll Cruiser Ride for all ages. Wallace Parking Deck Chapel Hill. Top off your Friday with the Annual Bike to Work Day Cruiser ride from Chapel Hill to Carr-boro and back. We’ll take to the streets en masse with police escorts. Prizes! Food! Bicycling! What more do you need?

JuneJune 23Tour de Fat. American Tobacco Campus in Durham. Not here in the heart of Carrboro, but it’s a great ride over there, and full of events that celebrate the bicycle. CBC will have some volunteers there.

June 25–June 28Mountain biking camp for 11–16 year olds. 9–11 each day. Put on by Carrboro Recreation & Parks, and led by the awe-some Tamara Sanders from the Clean Ma-chine, you will learn some basic mechanics and mtn. biking techniques while exploring the trails in Carolina North Forest.

OctoberMark your calendars now.North Carolina will be having its first ever bike summit in Raleigh October12 and 13. More details to come.

SPRING EVENTS, SO MUCH TO DO!

In the spotlight CC

Please show your thanks to our advertisers and our sponsors by supporting their businesses! If your business would like to place an ad in our next newsletter (Fall 2012), contact us through our website at bikecarrboro.com and let us know of your interest.

Cycling Projects in Carrboro(from Carrboro’s Transportation Advisory Board chairperson, Seth LaJeunesse)

Carrboro’ cyclist: I’ve enjoyed participat-ing in several cycling events in Town like the Bike Breakfast and a Bike Rodeo at Carrboro Elementary, but what about on-the-ground cycling facilities?

Seth: Let’s start with what’s happened re-cently. The Weaver Street reconstruction now features shared lane markings (known as “sharrows”) smack in the middle of its east end, as well as midblock crossings and decent bike lanes on its west end. These facilities are thanks to the Town, the Carr- boro Bicycle Coalition and dedicated com-munity members, who in short order, en-sured cyclists wouldn’t be relegated to “grate gliding.” Also, when out for a ride, keep an eye open for new bike racks and wayfinding signs scattered throughout downtown. Funding from the Physical Activity and Built Environment Projectis allowing the Town to install these needed facilities. Looking ahead, we’ll be seeing Smith Level Road change a lot with the addition of bike lanes and sidewalks on the section within the town limits, and 2-foot shoulders between Woodcrest Dr. and 15-501.There will also be resurfacing of several key cor-ridors. NCDOT will resurface N. Greens-boro St, with new pavement markings and bike lanes, and Dairyland Rd (between Old NC 86 and Rocky Ridge Rd) where we’ll see more 2-foot shoulders (Maple View Ice Cream, anyone?). Not too long from now, we’ll also come across a high visibil-ity crosswalk spanning the Hillsborough-James-Quail Roost intersection—the hope is that motorists will finally join us cyclists in yielding to crossing pedestrians; espe-cially young ones on their way to school and elsewhere. Finally, if we look a bit further down the line, those of us wishing to avoid the ire of agitated motorists along that infamous stretch of Estes Drive (between N Greens-boro St and Village Dr), can bypass the chaos via the Wilson Park Multi-use Path, which is slated for completion in Novem-ber 2013. All told, Carrboro’s cycling future is looking bright! —Seth

Jennifer De La Rosa used to drive her car for transportation without a thought. After she moved into an apartment in downtown Carrboro, she noticed numerous pedestrians and cyclists. She began walk-ing to destinations, but found it sometimes cumbersome with two daughters and one stroller. “Hey,” she thought, “maybe bik-ing is a better option.” She began exploring ways to transport her family via bike.

Jennifer decided to save up for an Xtra-cycle, a bike with an extended frame that can carry heavy loads, including passen-gers. While shopping around, she visited Back Alley Bikes and learned that the owner, Jason Merril, had an Xtracycle of his own for sale. He loaned it to her for a week, a helpful offer since it her daughters

needed to test it, too. The trial soon became permanent!

Bicycle transportation required some adjustment for the family. Jennifer started riding to work gradually. The girls liked to ride on the back and easily balanced on the bench (they always wear helmets!). Cold weather took some getting used to and they still use a car for occasional errands. But Jennifer loves getting the fresh air and the exercise while commuting, and the ex-tended saddle bags provide ample space for other necessities, even with her two kids on board.

Now Jennifer, Alondra (9), and Kailani (6) ride bikes most days of the week. Alon-dra often rides her own bike to school, but can easily hop on the Xtracycle if needed. Kailani says she likes it because, “I get to sit on it and go for a bike ride. I hold Mom-ma’s shirt and pretend I’m riding a horse.”

Jennifer loves her transition to a more active lifestyle though she admits that the bicycle takes a little longer than the car and requires more coordination. The ease of the automobile is tempting when she’s strug-gling to get everyone out the door. But she is committed to driving less and finding so-lutions when obstacles arise. Jennifer’s ad-vice for potential bike commuters is to “set a realistic goal and have a reason to meet it.” She concludes, ”Once you get used to it and overcome the initial challenges, bi-cycle transportation is superior!” —Ginger

carrboro bicycle coalition

CelebrationA N D F U N D R A I S E R

FRIDAY, APRIL 13Join us at the newly-expanded Looking Glass Café at 601 W. Main St. on Fri-day, April 13, from 5:30 to 9:30. Ride your bike if you can! We’ll have food trucks and activities (including the bike blender for you to make your own smoothie), and we’ll once again be raffling off many great prizes from local merchants! We’ll have T-shirts to sell, and there’ll be music, too. The funds we raise will go toward several projects—see our “year in review” article to see what we’ve been up to so far, and what we hope to accomplish. We may have a cruiser ride after the fundraiser ends, so come prepared. Hope to see you there!

Expert service.

Fast turnaround.

carrboro’s new bike repair shop

truebluewrenchworks.com

Re-opening soon in a new location!

Check the website or like us on FB!

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Bikes of all sorts decorated the Holiday Parade in December. Photos courtesy of tarheelcoxn.

The Year in ReviewWow, what a terrific year! The CBC has been working hard this year, and I just want to share with you some of the things we have been up to. Last year, in February of 2011, we celebrated Car-rboro’s award as a Silver Level Bicycle Friendly Community.

In April, we held a fundraiser at Johnny’s complete with music, a bake sale, a bike blender for making smoothies, and a raffle, gen-erously supported by local businesses. We also conducted a bike survey to determine where, why, and how often people in this area ride, and we shared our findings with the town.

In May and June, we started out with a terrific Bike-to-Work Breakfast at the parking lot near the Libba Cotton Bikeway. We had coffee from the outstanding Open Eye Café and biscuits from the nationally noted Neal’s Deli. If you missed this last year, you are in luck, as both of these great businesses have agreed to sup-ply these items again. In addition, we will have juice, bananas, yogurts, bagels, etc. Also in May, we assisted the Town staff, the Carrboro Police, the ReCYCLEry, and Carrboro Elementary in putting on a children’s bike rodeo, set up a booth at Carrboro Day, and many of us also participated in the Bike-to-Work Town-Wide Cruiser Ride! In June, several of us volunteered at the Tour de Fat bike festival in Durham. While volunteering in Durham may seem a bit outside the norm, remember that we are a young group, and a lot of cyclists (and others) still do not know we exist. So, when we have a chance to toot our horn, we do! In the fall months, we held a booth at Shakori Hills, presented a video (along with the Carrboro Transportation Advisory Board) of Enrique Peñalosa (former mayor of Bogotá and an early imple-menter of ciclovías and open streets), with guest speakers from Bogotá and UNC’s city planning department leading a discussion afterwards. We collaborated with SpokeNRevolutions, the ReCY-CLEry, Carrboro Elementary, the Town of Carrboro, and Carrboro Police to put on NC’s first Kidical Mass ride. We surveyed local candidates for the November elections. And, to end the year, we participated in the Holiday Parade along with all of the other local cycling groups. It was a good way to let the towns see there are many cycling advocates out here. For the year ahead, we have many ideas on the horizon. We are working to get some grants so we can partner with the local bike shops and the police department to have a bike light give-away/education program. We also hope to start offering bike mentor-ing, promoting and assisting with bicycle safety courses through Carrboro’s Recreation and Parks Dept., implementing a Bicycle Friendly Business program, offering an adult “learn to ride” course, and much more. If there is something you think we should be looking at, please let us know.

Tamara demonstrates proper hand signals before heading out on the Kidical Mass ride. Photo from chapelboro.com.

“Why are you telling everybody?!” More than one cyclist asked to me to shut up and keep a good thing going. But more people would be happy to ride, so here is a short primer on Triangle Transit and bikes.

Chapel Hill Transit is second only to Charlotte in terms of daily number of rid-ers. If you live and work within its boundar-ies, count yourself lucky. But if you work in Durham, Raleigh or RTP, you may need some convincing to hop on a bus.

First some global reasons: We’re in some weird period of national denial of science, but climate change is real, and so is our contribu-tion: we’re pumping out more carbon per per-son than just about any country in the world. And what region in the US racks up more miles per person in their cars? Not Hous-ton or LA. This time Charlotte is number two, and incredibly the booby prize goes to Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill!

There are local, personal reasons too. Once you figure out how to make the TTA buses work for you, it can be free of stress,

inexpensive, healthy, even profitable and ad-dictive. In my typical work day, I hop on my bike at 7:39 and catch the bus at 7:52. I pop open my laptop and use the free Wi-Fi, barely noticing any traffic. By 8:25 I’m at the transit center, and at work by 8:30. If I’m forced to drive, it feels like wasted, inactive time.

Riding your bike to the bus stop can make everything easier on both ends, and all bus-es have bike racks. But with only two bike spaces per bus, you must prepare to lock your bike and pick it up later, or wait for the next bus if the bus’s rack is full. Cable locks are often cut at UNC, so if you have a nice bike, get a good lock.

Of the three primary destinations, Dur-ham, RTP and Raleigh., the trip to the Bull City is the most popular. The Durham 405 is more direct than the 400. To RTP, the 800 route through Southpoint is faster than that the 805 through Woodcroft. The Raleigh Express (CRX) can be faster than a car when you consider time to park downtown. Most trips cost 2 bucks, and $2.50 for the express.

I buy the 10-ride ticket, bringing it down to $1.60 one way. Some employees will cover the cost of a TTA bus pass. The routes tend to be more direct and frequent from 6 to 9am, and 3:30 to 7pm. Visit gotriangle.org for more information.

Riding the bus instead of driving does take some transition. When it rains, I some-times leave my bike at UNC (Greenlaw Hall, across from Undergraduate Library, has cov-ered bike parking). Good bike equipment makes a big difference. You may need to find a shower or dressing room, but you can look professional once you change out of your bike clothes. TTA even has a special “Emergency Ride Home” program, in case your child is sick or something comes up.

Bike Month is coming up in May. If you need a mentor, let us know! It won’t be hard once you start! —Charlie

Editor’s Note: stop by the Farmers’ Mar-ket on Saturday, May 12, and check out the Bike on Bus demonstration.

Bike on the bus!

THE EMERGENCY STOP On the face of it, braking seems fairly straightforward. Pull the le-vers and your bike slows; pull long enough, and it stops. And most of the time, that’s more or less the case. But sometimes you need to slow your bike as quickly as possible; getting it right can prevent you from having a really bad day. To do that, you’ll need to master the Emergency Stop.

Your bike only has a front brake.

Of course, that’s not really true, but it’s more true than it seems—during the Emergency Stop, when it really matters. Many of us were taught early to fear our front brakes, and that misinformation has stayed with us ever since. We live in fear of the dreaded “pitchover” accident. In reality, your front brake is your primary brake, and it’s confident use is crucial to your safety.

The manner in which your brakes function seems obvious, but the critical part isn’t. When you engage your brakes, they grab your rims; more importantly, when you use your brakes the road grabs your tires. When this happens, all of the mass of the bike and rider begins to rotate over these points. The front wheel of your bike be-comes heavier, and heavier—and the rear becomes lighter. As the downward force of the front wheel increases, traction increases. The opposite is true for the rear. The harder you apply the brakes, the less effective the rear brake becomes. Eventually it will become weight-less outright, and leave the pavement. Typically, it will skid before that occurs, and your bike will become difficult to control. And a skidding bike stops more slowly, which is to say, it travels farther before it stops. Thankfully, you get to decide how the whole thing plays out.

How it’s done.Move your weight back, and low; this will help keep your rear wheel in the game as long as possible. Engage both brakes equally at first, and firmly—this is an emergency, after all. This part is criti-cal: as you increase the lever force for your front brake, reduce the

lever force for the rear. On clean pavement, in a straight line, it will be extremely difficult to cause a front tire skid. Learn to trust your bike.

What’s the secret to mastering the emergency stop? Practice. Find a spot with plenty of space, clean, unbroken pavement, and minimal traffic. Empty parking lots often work well for this. Then practice your new skill, increasing your speed and braking force as your confidence and ability grow.

If you’re lucky, you’ll never need your new skill. Most folks are not that lucky. Master the emergency stop, and enjoy the confidence that being prepared brings to every ride. —Tod