I’ve always wanted to do this, but never quite got deep enough into Clark Griswold mode to get it done. But this is the year I decorate my bike with Christmas lights. This is mostly for fun, but being more visible on the roads during the dark winter months isn’t a bad thing! Check out …
Read more “Add lights to your bike for the Christmas season”
As the days get darker, it’s important to be well lit on your bike commute. So I’m testing three lights to see which ones stack up the best. The new Biolight PowerLight Mini. The Beryl Laserlight, my favourite light from last season. And a $15 wraparound handlebar light. Which one is best? Thanks to both …
The cry went out as soon as the news hit Twitter: “No! Now I’m going to have to buy a second car!” That was the response from a co-worker when the news broke recently that Calgary, where I live, was among the handful of North American cities being abandoned by car-sharing company Car2go. When the …
Read more “Urban transportation is being disrupted, but it isn’t big tech that’s doing it”
It’s an urban challenge we’ll all run into at some point: You need to get across the city quickly. What’s the best way? To answer that, I decided to test three transportation options. My own bike. A dockless shared e-bike from Lime. A dockless shared e-scooter from Lime. This isn’t only about speed. I’m also …
Read more “Testing the best ways to get around a city: Bike, e-bike and e-scooter”
It’s the forgotten step-child of the bike-commuting world, overlooked in favour of flashier models loaded with extras, like, you know, gears and shifters. But there’s something magical about the simplicity of a single-speed bike. Lacking derailleurs and all the associated mechanics that come with them, single-speeds are the kind of bike you never have to …
Read more “A single-speed bike may be the key to your ultimate bike commute”
Is going as fast as possible the best way to commute to work on a bike? That’s the question we’re testing in this video, thanks to a guest appearance by former pro cyclocross racer, current coach and all-around amazing guy Mark McConnell, aka Hot Sauce (go check out his website here.) Here’s how we tested …
Read more “Bike racer or city cruiser: Who has the best bike commute?”
More than a decade ago, the City of Calgary commissioned artists to paint utility boxes. You’ve seen these nondescript grey things that electricity runs through, even if you’ve never consciously noticed them before. I hadn’t. They are part of the overlooked underpinnings of city infrastructure, like telephone poles or storm drains. But dozens of artists …
Read more “My summer mission: Photographing utility-box art in my city”
Why would a person on a bike choose a road over a pathway designed specifically for cycling? After being yelled at by a motorist for riding my bike on a road adjacent to a shared multiuse pathway, I decided to bicycle commute home using only pathways to show the good, the bad and the ugly …
Read more “Why multiuse pathways sometimes suck for cyclists”
What’s the best bike for commuting? This is the second video in which I test different types of bikes on my commute. This time, instead of a mountain, road or city bike, like I did last time, I tested these bikes: A slow, comfortable city bike, a light and fast road bike and a pedelec …
Read more “City bike, road bike or e-bike? What’s best for bicycle commuting?”
Two thing caught my eye recently and led to the question: do painted bike lanes suck? In fact, the question might go even farther: is a painted bike lane more dangerous than nothing at all? You know what I’m talking about. It’s those bike lanes that are created just with a strip of paint and …
Read more “Why it’s time to stop building painted bike lanes”