Tour de Lafayette bicycle race photos

Watching bicycists racing is awesome. The Tour de Lafayette bicycle race was held tonight, about two miles away from my house. My wife and two daughters (9 and 11) rode our lighted bikes through the dark to watch parts two img_93341races. We brought our little consumer grade camera with us (the Canon SD1100SI) to see if we could squeeze a good photo out of fast bicycles racing through the still night. There was lighting at each of the corners of the 1 mile square course, so we parked ourselves under one of those lights. Most of our photos were total blurs, even when we tried panning with the bikes as they blew by us from left to right. I did manage the photo on the right, though. The winning photo of the night, however, belonged to my 11-year old daughter JuJu, who at first thought she had let the pack get too far in front when she snapped her photo (below). It's a neat effect: speed, darkness and well-tuned athletes. You'll have to imagine the cool night air and the gracious encouragement of the spectators. Image by JuJu Vieth Click on these photos for larger versions.

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Naked Bike Ride (St. Louis) 2009: to protest dependency on oil and to celebrate our bodies

Last year, I reported on the 2008 Naked Bike Ride in St. Louis, the first ever in my home town. The official purposes are twofold: to protest dependency on oil and to celebrate our bodies. It's also a blast riding through town without having to worry about motor vehicles and without having to wonder what one's fellow travelers look like naked (or almost naked). cool-waving-shot This year's St. Louis Naked Bike Ride occurred tonight, with perfect temperatures for not wearing much of anything or not wearing anything at all. I'd make a wild guess and say that there were about 1,000 bike riders tonight, 70% of them male. I'd also guess that about 20 of them were riding completely naked. I saw people from 16 to 70 years of age. Lots of camaraderie--the riders were warning each other of potholes and other road hazards. I only saw a few spills--luckily, those falls involved people with some clothing to protect them. total-nakedness The genius of this event's marketing is that every local media outlet was out there reporting on the event. Imagine having a clothed bike ride to protest oil dependency. You would probably only have the attention of a few eccentric bloggers like me. Speaking of which, I was there tonight (wearing boxers), riding a course that was modified (shortened to about 7 miles) at the last minute, apparently to avoid the outflow of a huge crowd from a Cardinal Baseball game downtown. We wouldn't want those people to be embarrassed were we to ride by and see them dropping exorbitant amounts to amuse themselves--$50 for tickets and $7 for hot dogs. Not while we--the naked and almost naked riders--were out there protesting oil and admiring and celebrating each others' nakedness, all for free. I would like to point out that the aim of this bicycle ride to celebrate our bodies is not a trivial issue. Refusing to celebrate the human body is closely related to our refusal to consider that humans are animals. These two dyfunctions are the cause of constant needless and useless human suffering. See this earlier post on terror management theory and this post on the dysfunction that stems from our failure to accept that humans are animals.

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Two Seater Synchronicity

This morning I found that I appeared in the lead paragraphs of a Suburban Journal article about someone else entirely. They even had a photo of us with our tandem behind the object of the subject (bike rack, artist). It was just an accident that we happened to ride to coffee at the time when the Journal photographer was looking to illustrate the art as bike rack. It's almost a pity that this journal is no longer delivered annoyingly and inevitably every Wednesday to form the bulk of our recycled paper. I should find a store that has the tree-based copy to show me mum. Anyway, yesterday I posted a video of my experience this weekend in another kind of un-motorized two seater. That's the synchronicity part.

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Bicycling and finding balance in the rules of the road

Via Daily Dish, here is a well written post from Steamboats are Ruining Everything regarding:

My principle became, roughly speaking, bike in such a way that even relatively inattentive drivers can be expected to see you and know what you’re going to do next. Also: don't be annoying to pedestrians. I began halting at red lights and stop signs. (Later I relaxed this somewhat, almost to Idaho rules.) I made sure to bike in the bike lane, if there was one (or on the outer edge of it, if biking inside it was going to put me within swinging distance of the opening doors of parked cars). I stayed off sidewalks. And I never, ever biked the wrong way down a one-way street.
Since having this epiphany, "Steamboats" has loosened up a bit, including his approval of the “stop as yield” law used in Idaho. I admit that I rarely stop at stopsigns such that my feet both come to the ground. At 1 am, I don't sit there waiting for the light to change. On a particularly dangerous overpass, I ride on a sidewalk for a quarter-mile. On the other hand, I am aggravated by the bicycle riding behavior of many riders because it is so often dangerous, not because it's a violation of a law. So often, when you see a cyclist violating a law, he or she is simultaneously breaking five laws. The person I have in mind is the wrong-way rider who violates a stoplight in the dark without any bicycle light, while not wearing a helmet, while failing to signal.

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