Last night I biked from work over to the lions side of the Vancouver Art Gallery and participated in my first Critical Mass. Billed as a decentralized large group bike ride with no pre-determined route featuring anybody with self-propelled commuting, Critical Mass enjoys a 15 year existence, starting in the streets of San Francisco. My bike, a few months old and newly tuned up, performed brilliantly, but I can't say the same for my girlfriend's. She lost a part somewhere along the way, and was unable to shift, making her fearless gearless, though thankfully with brakes. We biked down Robson, turning left on Jervis, making our way down Davie (I think), then crossing the Burrard Street Bridge, riding down much of Broadway, and finally turning onto Yukon where we got off at 11th, where we were jokingly called "splitters".
You know how people exaggerate the olden days by saying they had to walk to school uphill both ways? Well my biking commute is almost like that: on the way to work it's downhill most of the way save for an uphill climb at Lakewood Drive, where on the way back it's uphill approaching Commercial, then downhill after Renfrew and then back uphill, then, saving the worst for last, a steep uphill climb at Boundary and Union in Burnaby. Like Roland, I drew my bike route on Google Maps, but I drew both my to and from work routes. (To work is in red, from work is in blue.) According to Google Calculator, my commute to work is 10.8 KM, and 8.5 KM back home. (I typed in "6.71 miles in kilometers" and "5.31 miles in kilometers" and rounded off the answers.) Because there are more hills on the shorter route, both directions take about the same time, from 45 minutes to an hour each. Two Google maps after the break.
This morning, Roland, Karen and I went to the launch of Vancity Bike Share, to wait in line and eat pancakes served by Libby Davies, Gregor Robertson, and Shane Simpson, all BC MLA and pick up my shiny red, Vancity logo-emblazoned one-speed cruiser plus non-branded red bike lock and non-branded red helmet. And a Vancity logo-emblazoned red t-shirt. Pretty good score for writing a 98-word blog post. After three weeks of going who-knows-where with the bike, I'll be handing it off, likely to Karen. Photos forthcoming from me, but Roland already has a set on Flickr. This will be my first ever bike ride home from work, so I'll have to dig deep for my signals and etiquette, having lived in the Lower Mainland for 10 years but having ridden a bike two times at most in that timespan.
ICYCLE.CA and Moving Pictures Film Festival present a Bike Month screening of Vancouver-set documentary You Never Bike Alone. Q&A follows screening.
Tickets $8 ($6 for Moving Pictures members).
About the film
Drawing on footage filmed in the city over the course of the last decade and through interviews with people from all backgrounds, feature-length documentary You Never Bike Alone captures the fun, the road rage, the camaraderie, and the freakiness of riding a bike in Vancouver.
You Never Bike Alone charts the history of Vancouver's Critical Mass rides from the early “Tame the Lions” rides, that helped bring about better bike facilities on the Lions Gate Bridge, to the wild spectacle of Vancouver's freak bike collective and the World Naked Bike Ride in more recent times.
As well as a humourous and entertaining look at how cyclists are mobilizing, the documentary looks at the implications of transportation decisions by politicians at municipal and provincial levels and asks are we up to the challenge of making a truly liveable city.
For more info about the movie, screenings and to buy the DVD visit the You Never Bike Alone web site
