13th and 14th of June 2015, Martins Voyage of Discovery Begins

 Seeing the World

from a Different Perspective...



Martin Writes:

Martin puts his
bike to the test

I totally enjoyed the Safe Cycle Training on Saturday; I'm not great with names but both instructors were excellent. It’s amazing how, when the basics are explained and demonstrated, it makes you feel more confident.

Chris, Marcia,Martin and Kathleen
learn the rudiment of Road Safety
on a bike from Miro and Darren

Afterwards, I cycled home via Fitzgerald Park. The park was a hype of activity with people walking, jogging, families on a day out, people reading. I intend to take more of Fitzgerald Park in, as part of another cycling day out.

 

From: taichicork.blogspot.com





From:
http://www.pedersenfocus.ie/#/mardyke-gardens-fitzgeralds-park-cork

 

 

 

 

 

 Sunday 14th June:

 

Houses on the road between Blarney and Clogheen
http://www.murraybrowne.ie/cork-residential/blarney-road-clogheen-cork-/1038/39.aspx

I headed off towards Clogheen and managed to get safely through a busy junction. This is a route I have travelled many times by car before, but it’s amazing how much more you see when cycling. I saw beautiful houses, views and landmarks that I never knew were there.

  

 

I am trying to plan a few new routes to take over the next few days and just checked the weather, all looks good up to Friday.

 

June 13th, 2015; A rememberance of Bikes Past in Grace's Toronto Adventures.

Pining for Pierre

Grace Writes:

When I was asked to do this blog post for operation transportation I thought I should give some back ground on how I became a bicycle commuter:
 I was never a bicycle commuter until I moved to Canada. Given the size of the city I thought it prudent to start commuting by bike and save the 100 dollars plus on a subway pass. When I met my bike it was love at first sight. I first spotted him on a Facebook site dedicated to the Irish in Toronto. I messaged the owner and told him I would come to pick up the bike that evening.

Pierre, as I christened him, was an old French racer, the kind you might expect Jean Paul Sarte would whizz around Paris on. Sartre put it succinctly himself in his book 'On Being and Nothingness' when he noted:


PIERRE

 "To possess a bicycle is to be able first to look at it, then to touch it. But touching is revealing as insufficient; what is necessary is to be able to get on the bicycle and take a ride. But this gratuitous ride is likewise insufficient; it would be necessary to use the bicycle to go on some errands. And this refers us to longer uses … But these trips themselves disintegrate into a thousand appropriative behavior patterns, each one of which refers to others. Finally, as one could foresee, handing over a bank note is enough to make a bicycle belong to me, but my entire life is needed to realize this possession."

On the back of this sentiment, Pierre was not merely a monetary transaction between two people he was the start of my exploration between my body in movement and the spatial urban environment that I had chosen to live in.He was Yoshi to my Mario.

Mario and Yoshi from :
 http://geosworld.wikia.com/wiki/File:Mario_and_Yoshi_SMW.png

Toad from:
http://www.mariowiki.com/toad_(species)

So the next step was to buy a helmet. Toronto is the most dangerous Canadian city to ride a bike and in 2010 there were 1,145 accidents and incidences involving cyclists. I generally hate helmets because I feel I have a weird shaped head but I reasoned it was better to look like a dork than to have it redesigned by the road surface or a car. I found a small bike shop through yelp run by a Ecuadorian man near Kensington market. He was so helpful in servicing my bike and gave me a lot of extras for free I felt obliged to buy a helmet even though in a hipster capital such as Toronto I could have easily found a "cool helmet" elsewhere. Instead of looking like Mario or Yoshi, I now resembled Toad or for those who did not waste their childhood playing Gameboy, the guy who looks like a cross between Aladdin and a mushroom.

 It really amused my sister and her boyfriend to see me flying around Toronto with my big mushroom helmet. Pierre spent the winter living on my sisters balcony when the snow forced us to live underground for a couple of months. My winter commute consisted of a 5 min walk to street car stop, which then brought me to a subway station after I got on a bus and after one hour I arrived at work. I was relived when spring arrived and Pierre was awakened from his winter hibernation, I could feel the wind on my face again.




Pierre wintering
in Toronto

Spring presented its own challenges with spring rains that would give Ireland a run for its money. On one particular bad day, I carried Pierre down the steps into the subway station. It was too soft a day for even me to attempt to cycle home. The security guard turned us back at the barrier.

No bikes on the subway during rush hour! Like a mother with a buggy, I carried him back up the steps and to the nearest bus stop. They had room for Pierre with a specialised bike rack in the front.

Working in a yoga studio, I had the early morning shift so Pierre and I were usually quite alone on the city streets at 5.30 in the morning. There were few cars and the people we met were usually the street cleaners and garbage collectors. It was a wonderful way to see the city just before it was to awake.



Deserted Streets and Golden Skies:
The Toronto morning commute!

Things changed after the accident.

One early morning we were flying down Spadina to make our way on to the waterfront where the studio was located. Being overly cautious not to get doored and mindful of cars on the road, I had overlooked the silent enemy of cyclists...the streetcar track.

 A thick mountain bike wheel might be able to manage this but Pierre had super slim wheels and in a split second where time seemed to stand still, that wheel was wedged in that track and was not going to move and as physics would have it given the momentum, the only thing left to move was me. I knew the minute it happened I was in trouble but I was powerless to stop it. I sailed over the handlebars in a silent reverie, only to be broken by the sound of bone on concrete. I hit my head hard off the road surface and as I was wearing glasses, they got rammed into my face.



Post accident Helmet :(

Pierre landed on top of me, pinning my hand to the ground. I was dazed and sore but I could move and I knew I had to get off the road. I pulled Pierre with me.

 My now white helmet had blood all over it. I did an examination of my head and ran my hands through my hair to see where the blood was coming from but I could find nothing to signify that my helmet had failed. However, when Pierre had fallen on top of my hand he had split my baby finger and it gushed blood that had managed to make me look worse than what I actually was.

I managed to walk the rest of the way to work and was cleaned up by the first yoga teacher on the scene who got a fright upon seeing my blood-stained helmet. I was lucky, and my dorky helmet saved me. 

That was the start of the breakup between Pierre and I.

The accident had damaged him beyond what I could afford to pay for and I was too shook to get back on the bike for a while after that. I decided to move to Vancouver for the summer and I handed the keys to my sisters boyfriend. The last sight I had of Pierre was tied up outside an apartment block in High Park. His stylish exterior hiding the extent of the injuries sustained in the accident. I still feel bad for leaving him behind.

Bike art:
one way to commemorate a cycling affair..

 I bring up Pierre because I cycled my dads old battered black mountain bike to lunch in the Kingsley today. It was an uneventful journey and I found myself missing Pierre. This bike was black and clunky whereas Pierre cut through the space like a knife through butter and he looked good doing it.

I now have a fancy Giant avail racer but don't use it to commute or for running errands due to the fear of theft, which I will explain in another blog post. It is a great bike and we are getting to know each other, but there was something about Pierre. He was like a trusty steed by my side into what felt like a new life in the wild west; there will always be new steeds but you never forget your first one!


Toronto
- a home of high-speed highways
and Pierre:
ignitor of passions
for pedal-cycling commutes....

June 13th, 2015 Cycling: TheTug and Recoil for Chris and Marcia

Fear and Longing in Passage

Marcia Writes:

So, this is National Bike Week ( www.bikeweek.ie ). Thanks to the goodwill of my sporty friend, I have a bike. She gave it to me last year when she upgraded. 

The only Irish made bike: http://www.highnelly.ie/

Her old bike was a massive upgrade for me too. Before that, I used to puddle along the Passage West - Blackrock line occasionally during the summer on my aunt's 100-year old High Nelly, small dog in Wiser bottle box on the backer and bigger dog on a lead running alongside. Several of the kids usually in tow on various sizes of bikes, generally rescued from the civic amenity site in Raffeen. Travelling Wilburys!

But my bike has been growing rustier and rustier as I spend more and more time rushing between work, being mom's taxi, cooking dinners and preparing tomorrow's school lunches. To the extent that I am now positively scared to get up on it. Even worse is the ghastly hill up to our house that seems to go on forever. Embarrassingly, I always have to get off and walk.

Marcia is not alone
in her uphill struggles
as this blogger in Austin acknowledges:
 http://www.treegrowsinaustin.com/2010/04/

On the other hand, Chris is 13. He can cycle anything. Nothing can kill him, stop him or slow him. He wants to road cycle from Passage West to Crosshaven. Thinking of my lovely son negotiating the narrow roads around Raffeen and the fast cars clipping hedges, I baulk.

So Chris and I have both taken on a challenge. Cork City Council is running Operation Transportation for the week. We've signed up to cycle at least 10 minutes every day, keeping a diary of what we do, where we go and how we feel. He's champing at the bit. I'm dreading it. He will need to try road cycling. I will just need to try!

We started this morning with 3 hours of an "introduction" to our bikes outside the main gates of UCC:

• How they work, 
• How to recognise when they need attention and 
• The basics of road cycling safety.

I felt like a total cheat for driving with the bikes to the UCC car park! I had visions of my two-wheeled rust bucket being pitted against Lycra and carbon wheels. Thankfully, no. My chariot was perfectly adequate. And I even had company in walking rather than cycling up Donovan's Road. A thoroughly enjoyable session and a very gentle confidence builder for both Chris and for me, albeit in different ways.

So how I'm going to fit 10 minutes of cycling in to my already overstretched daily routine, I don't know. It'll take me 10 minutes alone to make it back up the estate home! But I've got to start somewhere, so here goes ... 

http://www.inspireux.com/2014/06/21/methods-to-achieve-user-delight/

15th June, Maurice Danaher Gets Checked and Trained up

Maurice Must Be More Assertive?

According to Maurice:

Today I did a fitness assessment in LeisureWorld near CIT at 9.30 am. This was easy enough, but I was told my blood pressure was a bit high so I will need to get that checked out.

 After coffee, I went for cycle training with Darren MacAdam O'Connell and Miro Wartena.

Some of the cycle training seemed basic enough to me but still I learned how to be more assertive on the road and especially how to avoid cars turning off to the left cutting across me and also how to keep clear of car doors opening.

Learning about the Five Points of Contact to engage when breaking. 
2 hands on the handlebars + 2 feet on pedals + 1 area on your seat = Maximum Brake Power

 For more such tips see:
http://www.patrickjohnmccrann.com/blog/bike/how-to-ride-your-bike-like-a-veteran-part-1)

Did not do the bit on going all the way around the Wilton Road roundabout as I had to leave for lunch. I was quite tired by the time I got back home around 1 pm for lunch.

The weather was OK as we managed to avoid any heavy rain with just light showers.

Editor's Note:

Mr. Danaher can be seen and heard onthe Youtube channel linked to this Diary. See him kick off an interesting discussion on Junctions here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLe_HNPxMPM&feature=youtu.be