Commute

I slapped the Flip video camera onto the bike for this morning’s ride. Here’s the 43 minute ride, compressed into 5 minutes of video.

I've been farting around with a Manfrotto Super Clamp to attach a camera to my bike to experiment with techniques to document the Ride to Conquer Cancer. I've got a bunch of stuff to try, but I'm getting closer to something that I'm happy with.

Here's the first half of my ride home from UCalgary campus through the streets of NW Calgary - sped up about 3x. I was averaging between 30-40km/h for this portion of the ride.

Inspired by this commute video I saw this morning, I was curious what it would look like if I recorded my full commute. I’ve tried it before with a helmet cam, but hadn’t tried it with a fixed quasi-steady camera.

I took my cheap little Flip Ultra video camera, stuck it on the rear rack of my bike, and fastened it in place with a pair of bungee cords. It wasn’t ideal, but should have been good enough, as long as I didn’t wipe out or hit anything big.

I picked up a Flip Ultra video camera this weekend, and one of the things I wanted to try was strapping it to my bike helmet to record my morning commute, just to see what it looked like. So, I dorked myself up a bit by attaching the Flip to my helmet via a handy dandy bungee cord, and recorded the morning ride. It’s a bit stomach-churning in spots, because of head motion swinging the camera all over the place, but it’s pretty close to being there…

That's like riding from Calgary to Vancouver and back. Or Calgary to Thunder Bay. Heck, I could have ridden from Calgary to San Francisco, with over 400km to spare. hmmm....

I've been riding my bike as primary transportation on my commute for a couple of years now (started really doing it again in 2006, after a few years of not riding very much). I ride just over 28km per day, every weekday, so have managed to rack up the kilometers pretty quickly. I had set a target for myself to ride 3,500km in 2008, trying to beat my 3,100km ridden in 2007. Looks like I'm on track to blow that away, and might hit 4,000km if I'm able to keep going. That'd be like riding from Calgary to Quebec City. Or to New York...

There's a big "Bike to Work Day" in Calgary on Friday, April 11. The University of Calgary is running a special event on campus as well. It's pretty safe to say I'll be biking to work that day (and every other day as well ;-) ) and am looking forward to seeing how many people get into it.

On campus, they're going to set up greeting/refreshment stations (with prizes!) on all major entrances, and there's a workshop being put on by the bike club at the Mac Hall loading dock to show basic bike maintenance.

I emailed a copy of the following to the Calgary Transit Customer Feedback email address.

I was riding my bike home from work today, and pulled up to a 3 way stop on Scurfield Drive and Scenic Acres Boulevard NW. As I was stopping, a bus pulled up behind/beside me (I was in the right lane traveling north on Scurfield Drive, the bus was in the left). I waited for my turn to enter the intersection, and the bus followed me through. I stayed in the right lane, and the bus remained in the left lane through the intersection.

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This evening, while riding home from work, I was involved in my first ever bike vs. car door incident. As I was approaching a red light, a driver decided it would be a great idea to open his door without looking. I had maybe 1 second to react, swerved left, and was thrown from my bike as it bounced off another car. If I hadn't been able to react quickly enough, I would have crashed square into his open door at about 20km/h. I pictured myself being thrown onto the trunk of the taxi cab in the next lane, and was trying to pick my spot on the trunk to minimize damage to me. Thankfully, I was somehow able to stop before hitting the cab (have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE disk brakes?) and wound up just being thrown to the ground as I hit the cab. Thankfully all traffic was stopped, because it was at a red light. Who opens their door at a red light?

I did it. I managed to ride my bike 3000km (so far) in 2007. Last year, I rode about 1500km. I estimated I might ride 2000-2500km this year. But this morning, after dropping Evan off at school, I pulled the bike out and rode along the Bow River Pathway. I've now ridden over 3000km this year, and hope to do even more in 2008.

I've been an on-again, off-again bicycle commuter for almost 2 decades. For the last couple of years, I've been riding my bike almost exclusively (as long as weather allows) from my house to work at the University. It's not a long ride - between 12-14 km, depending on my route - and much of it can be done off of streets, or on quiet residential streets. At the beginning of the riding season, I estimated that i might ride 2000km, or if I got lucky, maybe 2500km, before the end of the season. I'm about to cross the 2900km mark, and might be able to hit 3000km if the weather holds out. The bike ride is probably the calmest, most meditative time I get in a day. On days when I can't ride, I miss it, both physically and mentally.

I started riding again this morning. I'd been on my butt for far too long, and almost 2 weeks of constant eating and relaxing on tropical beaches didn't help by any means. I'm not going to be hardcore. There's some craptastic weather scheduled for tonight, and the next couple of days, so I'll likely wuss out and bus it if it's white out. But at least I started.

I picked up a bike computer on the weekend, so I don't have to track stuff manually (or through my blog). It turns out that the ride is actually farther than what Google Earth calculated. It's just a hair over 13km, as opposed to the 12.54km I'd thought it was.