Amazing Bike Furniture

An article over at Inhabitat, one of my favorite green-oriented blogs gives a great overview of Andy Gregg's fantastic furniture creations, built with repurposed bicycle parts. I think this is a really cool idea. It promotes cycling in a way, and links cycling to being green!

Here's one from the front page of BikeFurniture that really caught my eye. Awesome!

They have a ton of other really cool pieces, and some interesting details about where the idea behind all this came from. Check it out!

77% of Americans Drive Alone to Work

According to the 2005 census (click here for the press release) 77% of Americans still drive to work alone. On top of that, 87.7% of workers prefer driving to work over alternative modes of transportation.

Top ten cities, ranked by percentage of bicycling commuters:

City - Percentage

1. Portland - 3.5
2. Minneapolis - 2.4
3. Seattle - 2.3
4. Tucson - 2.2
5. San Francisco - 1.8
6. Sacramento - 1.8
7. Washington DC - 1.7
8. Oakland - 1.5
9. Honolulu - 1.4
10. Denver - 1.4

It will be interesting to see what the next census says. I'm going to guess that these percentages go up, by just a little. An interesting fact: The national average according to the census is 0.4%. The lowest ranking city is Kansas City, MO with 0.0%. Apparently there's a ripe market in KC for selling some bicycles!

Urban Commuter Cycling: Save the planet and get in shape!

Here in the icy lands of the north, known by many as Minneapolis, Minnesota, we are blessed with one of the highest cyclist-per-capita ratios in the United States. Every day, rain or shine or snow, I see people spinning to unknown destinations.

Put simply, it's a great thing. I'm becoming more and more of an advocate for the environment, and have been making efforts to curtail my own daily resource consumption. To my dismay, most days I still need to drive the 1 mile to work, because I need to transport myself between offices.

Recently, a massive walk bridge has been installed that completely alleviates the inconvenience of crossing the busiest intersection in the neighborhood. Now, trails permeate the entire suburb, and I look forward to seeing even more cycling going on.

This led me to thinking, "What is the main factor limiting people to cycling for fun, and not for a commute?" It's not for lack of bike trails and lanes. It's not crowding, either! I know for some people, planning the extra time in the morning and after work for a cycle commute seems like a major inconvenience. But, with all the additions to the trails, walk bridges and tunnels should reduce many people's commutes, as the only time you generally stop on your bicycle is at an intersection. So, if time really isn't that big of a difference, what is it? For some, it is most likely the effort needed to get the bike to move. But I would still say that it's mainly due to the huge amount of buildup around driving a car, and all the conveniences it can provide you with. Now, what they don't illuminate quite as well are the huge inconveniences that also accompanies owning a car.

Let's look at a few: (Commenters, please feel free to provide ideas to add to this list!)

-High maintenance cost (My average repair bill has stayed around $400 for my vehicle!)
-High insurance cost (You don't need insurance to ride your bicycle!)
-High infrastructure cost (This correlates with a high cost to the environment, and burdening every state's meager budget with yearly upkeep and employment costs)
-Environmental impact (Your car still kills the planet, even if it runs on batteries and sunlight. If not while operating, certainly while being constructed.)

I still forsee a large amount of growth in the USA for the cycling industry. As gas prices are still on the rise, environmental concerns are becoming a reality that can't be overlooked or refuted by shoddy journalism, and people are more concerned about maintaining their health with exercise, more and more people will turn to cycling, a fun and environmentally concious mode of transportation. Don't forget to wear your helmets!

Inching towards completion

Well, I've recently returned from my first visit to Las Vegas, NV, and Bikedex, our start-up price comparison site for cycling enthusiasts is ever closer to completion. The test site, http://www.bikedex.com/, has been in operation for over a year now (yay!) and appears to have a few repeat users, even though traffic is very small. We're exciting to release the new design and features, but we want to wait until everything is functional and fully tested so that our users will get a high quality experience.

Everything is moving along smoothly, albeit some issues with our affiliated merchants, some of which are great to work with, others.. not so much. Answer your email, people!

Sneak peek: www.bikedex.com/beta

Ramping it up

Well, it's been a long, mostly unproductive summer, but we're finally about ready to reveal a fully operational BikeDex site. Our prototype site has given us a few insights into some great enhancements, and we're confident that people will find our price comparison tools really useful.

We also just redesigned the coupon area - check it out!

http://www.bikedex.com/beta/coupons.php

BikeDex 2.0

We're working on a new interface for the BikeDex site. So far, I really like it. It's much more "Web 2.0" and allows us better formatting and flexibility. I'm alot better at the back-end stuff, so I've enlisted the help of an old friend and trustworthy partner, Eric Hanson. Our combined efforts should really help BikeDex come to fruition sooner!

Check out a sneak peek of the new layout: BikeDex 2.0

Also, we have a classifieds section up and running! I'm not sure exactly how we'll arrange things, but hopefully we can get some people to utilize it. It's free, and heavily monitored by BikeDex staffers (chuckle) to keep things kosher.

Drop me a line if you have any suggestions on the project!

Floyd Landis: Cheater!

Like I so sarcastically hinted at yesterday, it turns out that Floyd is highly suspect as the unknown doping culprit from this year's Tour De France. His A sample blood test came back positive for abnormally high levels of testosterone. He has stated that he's doubtful that the B sample will test differently from the A sample. "Hey, I'm a realist!"

Tour De France Doping

From Reuters: "PARIS (Reuters) - A rider on this year's Tour de France failed a dope test during the race, the International Cycling Union (UCI) announced on Wednesday.
"The UCI received today a report from the anti-doping laboratory in Paris stating (there was) an adverse analytical finding following an anti-doping test carried out at the Tour de France 2006," the sport's governing body said in a statement.
Details of the rider were not released and the UCI said their anti-doping rules did not allow them to make his name public at this time, although they added his team and national federation had been informed of the test result.
"The adverse analytical finding received this morning relates to the first analysis, and will have to be confirmed either by a counter-analysis required by the rider, or by the fact that the rider renounces (his right) to that counter-analysis," the statement read.
The test was conducted at a specialised anti-doping lab in Chatenay-Malabry, outside Paris, from a sample taken during the Tour.
Tour de France organisers were unavailable for immediate comment.
American Floyd Landis won the race in Paris on Sunday.
This year's Tour was hit by a doping scandal on the eve of the prologue when pre-race favourites Ivan Basso of Italy and German Jan Ullrich were forced to pull out and were suspended after being implicated in a doping investigation in Spain."

Doping up to win a race clearly doesn't work, fellas- just ask Floyd, this year's winner. Go USA!

New features at BikeDex

Well, things are going smoothly so far. BikeDex now has a Classifieds section, where users can post their own new/used goods for sale! It's a pretty slick setup. You can paypal the seller to make the purchase right off the bat, there's a built-in ebay like feedback system so users will get ratings from either good or poor performance after the sale is completed. I hope it interests people, because I know a lot of bike enthusiasts have a bunch of old spare parts lying around, that they probably could convert into some cash.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Announcing BikeDex.com

Well, after about 200 hours of coding and re-coding things, www.BikeDex.com is now live. Check it out and don't forget to click on ads so I can pay the bills!

That's just the way it is.

While listening to the musical selections constantly being played over the building's sound system, I pondered the concept of becoming desensitized to music. If you can become mentally conditioned to have little or no reaction towards images of violence, could you condition your musical tastes along the same lines? If you are forced to listen to selections of dull, uninventive and overplayed tunes for eight hours a day, seven days a week could it affect your judgement of what is good music, and what is bad music?

Enter services like Muzak - the Holy Grail of the corporate world - protecting our antisocial tendencies from uncomfortable silence, especially in cafeterias and restrooms! While being able to listen to 'music' while you work may seem like a benefit to some, it may actually be a burden. Does playing the same Phil Collins and Dave Matthews Band songs twice daily improve workflow and efficiency? Does it make you like your job more? It may improve your desk tapping and foot drumming skills, but that's about it.