Carmel-By-The-Tandem: How To Hack A Bike-Unfriendly California Town

I am pleased to report I have successfully hacked Carmel-By-The-Sea - the Greenwich, Connecticut of California towns. By that I mean there are a lot of BMWs and salmon-colored pants to be found - and little in the way of either bike infrastructure or bike acceptance.

Seriously: I have been here since Friday and haven't seen a single, solitary bike rack - even a sharrow would be welcome at this point. Streets are wide and made for cars. 

I walked around this morning in completely empty streets, noticing how much more peaceful the town is without motor vehicles.

I also went to the beach to hurl my umbrella at the coming rain clouds in anger.

For those of you who don't know, the very word 'Carmel' is derived from the English word 'Car' which is defined as 'Thing that pollutes and destroys all it touches' and 'Mel' which is derived from the Gaelic Maol, used to refer to the word 'servant.'* 

When a town goes out of its way to make everything about cars and nothing about any other mode of transport, it ends up with an environment that welcomes, helps and serves no one but the motor vehicle. 

I knew this on the drive down to meet my wife at the Carmel Art Festival. She was staying at The Pine Inn for a couple of days prior to my arrival and sent me a very long text message that told me I wouldn't find a place to temporarily store my motor vehicle. Spaces around town were two hour unless after 7:00pm, at which time you can have your motor vehicle stored without worry until 10:00 the next morning. The parking lot/car storage center belonging to the hotel would be full, and one couldn't store a motor vehicle on the residential streets without it being towed. 

But on Ocean Avenue, the spaces that are perpendicular to the curb are unlimited. So if you can find a place to store your motor vehicle there, you're solid...until you have to go somewhere. 

In an attempt to find out if there was anything to do in Carmel-by-the-sea other than trying to find a place to store a car safely, I stumbled across workaround to the problem: I stored the car in a perpendicular space at dawn Saturday morning. And, in the back, I had this:

This is a 10+ year old Bike Friday Family Tandem that I bought a few months ago in one of the most Epic Tag Sale Finds ever. I had to replace the entire drivetrain and upgrade the seats but it doesn't change the fact the bike takes 20" tires and has an overall length so short I can put it in the back of my car just by taking the front wheel off. The bike can also be dismantled and put into two suitcases like my New World Tourist but I haven't tried that yet. 

So that's the answer: bring a bike to Carmel-By-The-Sea. And early in the morning, you should go to Carmel Valley Coffee Roasting Company on Ocean Avenue, which - and this should come as good news to fellow early risers - opens at 6:00am on Saturdays and Sundays. The photos on the walls there right now are by artist Robert Christopher Nichols.

After storing your motor vehicle in the perpendicular space on Ocean Avenue and walking up to get your coffee and breakfast, you walk back to your motor vehicle and retrieve your tandem. 

Ocean Avenue is a little steep, so you can simply walk the bike a couple of blocks down and pedal along a road called 'Scenic Road' - which, after a short while, becomes a one-way street with a oh-god-bless-them speed limit of 15 miles per hour. 

The direction of the road - which does live up to its name -  puts the ocean on your right, and the pace allows one to gawk at some of the impossibly pretty gardens on your left and  listen and see the waves on your right. 

It's a little over a mile and a half to get to Carmel River State Beach. There's no bike rack to be found there, so bring a cable lock to lash the bike to the wooden sign. When that's done, you've got...well, you've got the beach, which I was thankful to be able to visit before the rare-for-this-time-of-year rain started.

Yesterday the beach featured a teepee made out of driftwood. I can't guarantee it'll still be there when you visit, but if it's there be sure to step inside and stay awhile.

Because this is the weekend of the Carmel Art Festival, there were some plein air painters afoot - including Gretha Lindwood, seen here painting.

We pedaled back via Carmelo Street which gave us more houses to admire. On getting back to the car, I removed the front wheel and put the tandem away - only to take it out again so we could ride ten minutes to Crossroads Shopping Center - which we also managed to do before the rain started.

Did I mention that Carmel needs bike lanes and bike parking?

My wife bought a frame for one of her works and we had lunch before heading back to Carmel-By-The-Sea in the rain. From there, we put the bike away and walked with our umbrellas to the Carmel Art Festival.

The Carmel Art Festival ends today (Sunday, May 19th) at 3:00pm. In Carmel, you can hack the rain with a umbrella and hack the parking with a tandem, so come to the Carmel Art Festival today and bring more art into your life - and you don't want to miss your chance to own a work of art by Suma CM. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

* This is true. 

When Cyclists Don't Matter

I don't want to write what I am about to write. I want to tell you about a short mountain bike ride I just did near Lake Tahoe. I want to tell you to follow Cranksgiving San Jose on Facebook and to take part with Cranksgiving on November 17th. I want to write 10,000 words about how important it is to donate to help my yoga studio - the nonprofit Be the Change Yoga & Wellness - move to their new location. 

Instead, I'm writing about how important it is for you to vote and defeat Proposition 6. Again. I know, I know - I've been railing against Prop 6 since before it was even a number back in June.

What I did (and I urge you to do this too) was listen to Carl Guardino of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group debate Carl DeMaio on Proposition 6 on KQED Forum. Guardino kept his cool  going over why it is important that Prop 6 fail, while DeMaio spewed a lot of anger - and he gave some to cyclists at least twice when he said the gas tax shouldn't fund bike lanes - and both times he sneered "bike lanes" as though it was a slur. 

Later I took a listen to Carl Guardino debate Proposition 6 with Harmeet Dhillon - this time on KALW San Francisco and she dismissively said creating bike infrastructure amounts to 'social engineering.'

That left me baffled. The only 'social engineering' that is taking place is the work done over a period of generations to create a 'cars only' world where streets are unsafe and hard to cross on foot or by bike by design. It's as though California is that hot club everyone wants to get into but you're kept behind the velvet rope if you don't have a 3,000 pound, wallet-draining, air-polluting motor vehicle as your ticket.

But her words are a symptom to a disease of blindness - and selfishness - inherent in the Golden State. There is infrastructure in California that is seen as normal here but is odd to me since I've lived in other parts of the country.  Expressways - those three-lane mini-highways through neighborhoods? That's a California thing. Flyovers for what would be garden-variety intersections in other states? That's a California thing. Metering lights that regulate the flow of automotive cholesterol onto a highway? A California thing. The fact the highway is five or six lanes wide and still crowded? Also a California thing. 

----------------------

It's as though California is that hot club everyone wants to get into, but if you don't have a 3,000 pound motor vehicle, you're kept behind the velvet rope.

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The final straw was a Yes on Prop 6 Rally that featured California State Senator Pat Bates, who was talking about how awful a world with slightly fewer drivers would be and had this to say: "We will be forced to walk, ride our bikes or take a once in a while bus that comes our way." 


I considered Carl DeMaio, Harmeet Dhillon, and Pat Bates together. This isn't the normal kind of random yell you get from a motorist or an 'angry pass' you may get from a car that had been waiting to overtake you. This is something...else. This is a group of bullies picking on the weaker kid not just for their own enjoyment but as their way to bond as a group. 

We are the weaker kid in this scenario. 

And it's actually worse than that. To them, we don't exist and nothing we do matters. Our jobs, our families, our friends, how we partake in commerce - none of it matters. If you leave your car at home, you are an unperson. 

They don't notice the extra parking spot they get when they drive to work and we ride. They don't see us winning a successful battle with our weight, they don't see us as happier citizens, they don't think it's important for streets to be safe for anyone except drivers of motor vehicles. They literally go crazy when someone suggests that car taxes should only go to car things even though the geometry of both the cities, the streets and the suburbs shows that we don't have room for everyone to have a car. Not only that, but the last time California spent a ton of money on car-only stuff, traffic got worse (Google "405" and "$1 billion" or just click this link).

Today's Republicans are great at exactly two things: making ordinary people feel swell about getting pennies to rub together while being relieved of their dollars - and building an infrastructure that outlasts their time in office. Prop 13 in 1978 did that. Last year's deficit-exploding tax cuts did that. Confirming Brett Kavanaugh did that. And Prop 6 gives them a chance to do it again. 

And if Prop 6 passes - if cars are really kept on a pedestal and untouchable with any new taxes going forward - don't think they'll ever invite cyclists into this club. No, no, no: it won't be enough that cities will have to use tweezers to find funding for bike lanes - they won't hesitate to push a tax on bicycles, bike shops, or both. They won't answer your cries of hypocrisy.

They'll just go on ignoring us. Because to them we don't matter. 

This is a serious time for the state of California. Other states look to this state to set an example. What kind of example do we want to set? 

To do this we have to fight and we have to win. To do that we need to do a couple of things. First off: donate to the No on Prop 6 campaign even if it just a few dollars.

Also, you have a voice and it needs to be heard by people other than other cyclists. We need to get through to people that don't ride. We need them to know how important it is this measure does not pass. One way to do that is to write a Letter to the Editor of your local paper. I wrote one the other day for the San Jose Mercury News. You can read it here. 

One of the things I noticed when I first moved to California is how fragmented the cycling culture is out here. We kinda follow one another, have some kind of vague awareness, but you don't often find us in the same room. This is a time we need recumbent riders with the Felt carbon fiber set. The Strava and the Non-Strava. The custom lowriders with the off-the-shelf mountain bikers.

Stand together but spread out and speak. 

Your words have weight and the outcome of this election is important. We are nonpersons to the people who are backing Prop 6. Let's show them who we are and educate 39 million Californians on why Prop 6 has to fail and while bicycle commuting in this state has to succeed. Get involved but leave the Twitter trolls alone and write a letter to the editor (links for some CA papers are below). Thanks for reading and thanks for voting. 

Links to write Letters to the Editor against Prop 6:


San Jose Mercury News
https://www.mercurynews.com/letters-to-the-editor/

Sacramento Bee
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/submit-letter/

San Diego Union Tribune
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/

East Bay Times
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/letters-to-the-editor/

Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-letter-to-the-editor-htmlstory.html

The House, The Car, The Vote...and California

The 800 pound hammer in Healdsburg was stolen. Police are relying on unconventional means to find the culprit.

Before I begin I need to remind readers of two things: if they live in the state of California they must Vote No on Proposition Six...and that the 800-pound hammer that was part of an art exhibition in Healdsburg, California is still missing.

Anyway I was looking through old copies of Sunset Magazine I had bought at Recycle Bookstore in San Jose. Specifically the February 1955 issue. 

The pages of these old magazines are kind of the original blueprints for the 1955 American Dream - the kind that today looks like every house you see on the first few minutes of Flip or Flop. 

The advertisements in old magazines are always entertaining to look at - usually more so than 63+ year old articles, and especially the ones that sell us a product that no longer exists.  

The ad that sticks out the most for me is the one with two huge 1950s cars. Dad and son are happily washing one while mom is pulling up in another, and two dogs are just looking on. I can just picture Don Draper responding positively to being shown this image at an ad agency meeting. 

This ad is telling readers that two cars are becoming a "must" so you should buy two cars - and why not make them both Fords!

Ads like these aren't just selling a product, they're selling a lifestyle. House, lawn, and at the center of it all: cars the size of small public libraries. And oh yeah: you need two of them. 

That part makes me smirk. I've been married for 13 years and my wife and I have had only one car between us the whole time. Between bikes, VTA (even though I'm still sour they killed the express train), Caltrain, ride share, bike share, scooter share we make our world work - by the skin of our teeth. We'd like living in California more if we didn't need a car at all.

But California was designed for a world like the one in the Ford ad - one where two adults would own two big, lead gasoline cars that you would drive guilt free and not think twice about it. The trouble is the infrastructure for 1955 California (which had about a third as many people in it back then) is mostly still with us today - save for the occasional $1 billion spent on highway upgrades that just make traffic worse. 

An unfortunate contingent of Californians are fighting tooth and nail to keep the romanticized, normalized world of driving and suburban life intact. They want to keep selling us on the house and the car and all that comes with it. California 1955: cheap gas, heavily subsidized roads you never quite see the bill for, and distance between your home and all the things you love that can only be covered by a car.* 

But like "The Surprise Car of the Year" California 1955 is a product that no longer exists. 

This November, we can decide if we want to vote for the California preserved in a specimen jar or a new one that recognizes that a new one can be made.  Please do not vote for Proposition 6, which keeps gas cheap and auto infrastructure baked in California's DNA - and please do vote for Proposition 1 and Proposition 2 - which makes housing less expensive.*

Also if you're in San Jose, please vote Yes on Measure V - it's an affordable housing bond measure that'll bring $450 million to help build more affordable homes and that has the potential of making a lot of people's commutes shorter - short enough to potentially bring additional cyclists into our ranks. 

The election is in 27 days and it's not enough just to promise to vote - you have to promise to convince others to do the same. Do that with me and let's not let the NIMBY contingency win this time. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding.

P.S. - if you're in San Jose and have a bike, a lock, about $20 to spend on groceries and want to spend Nov. 17th taking part in fun bike-based food drive, follow Cranksgiving San Jose on Facebook!

*I'm stuck by the fact that some prominent people are in favor of Prop 6 but against building more affordable housing. "Yes, let's keep gas cheap so poor people can get to the jobs we give them from the neighborhoods we assign them to that are far away from ours!"

Why The Effort to Repeal The Gas Tax Must Die

California Republicans, after years of shrinking numbers, have looked at state demographics and decided to grow their ranks by publicly backing ambitious bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects.

(long silence)

I'm just kidding. They want to repeal the gas tax (you know the one that is paying for repairing streets and bringing train infrastructure into the 21st century, and so on) and they managed to put a measure on the November ballot to do just that. 

For the record: when you ask people to pay taxes, they usually say no.  Samantha Bee put it best on her show when she talked about the wretched financial mess that is Colorado. Here's the clip: 

California has actually been down a Colorado-like road before, and it wasn't until I read up on Proposition 13 - the anti-tax initiative of 1978 - that The Golden State made more sense to me in its own backwards way. 

One of the things Proposition 13 did was make it impossible to raise property taxes very much - again. So forty years after Proposition 13, we have boomers and silents living in houses for decades and paying a pittance in property taxes - and the tax bill goes up when they sell the house (which, around here, appreciates in value). 

I took this photo on a bike waiting to make a left turn. Anyone who looks over a sea of automobiles and thinks they need to make driving cheaper has officially run out of ways to move the world forward.

That is a great deal if you are an older homeowner but it stinks if you're a young one. 

Put another way: in 1978 California homeowners put an infrastructure in place that would give them benefits that would last decades and preserve their world at the expense of others. In 2018 California motorists want to put an infrastructure in place to shield them from road maintenance and preserve their ability to drive cheaply and guilt-free. 

If they're successful like they were in 1978 their jubilation (here I am thinking of the smug face of Howard Jarvis on the cover of Time) will mask a horror that awaits every generation that follows theirs - and given the news of Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring from the Supreme Court those horrors are on a lot of people's minds today. 

If you drive a car and don't ride a bike that's okay. But the lack of bike infrastructure and acceptance affects you too by creating more drivers you have to compete with on the roads. Cyclists give you space. Give them some too.

But we can't change Kennedy's retirement, can't (immediately) undo the travel ban or the decision to bleed unions. What we can do - California cyclists, walkers, transit activists, people who understand the significance of switching from Level of Service to Vehicle Miles Traveled and even self-driving efficionados - is make sure the gas tax repeal and any Republican backing it loses this fall.

That's not as easy a sentance to write as you might think. As you may have guessed with my Cycling with Candidates series, I don't want Democrats or Republicans to carry the cycling issue. I have no interest in it being partisan. I want leaders to argue with one another over what kind of bike/ped infrastructure should be built, argue about ways to pay for it, and debate about how best to create laws and infrastructure that work.

This should already be happening. Conservatives should wake up tomorrow and think: "You know, we have tens of millions of young people out there with a paper-thin loyalty to the Democratic Party and no money or desire to own a car, and few places to live. Let's eliminate the burdensome regulations like parking minimums and live within our means by only building bike and pedestrian infrastructure." 

Deep down, liberal cyclists: you want this too. I know I wish Connecticut Republicans would stand up up and say: "The Merritt Parkway Trail is a stupid idea. It costs too much, won't be plowed, goes nowhere, cuts across too many roads to be of interest to professionals and is too hilly for amateurs and it doesn't go anywhere! Instead we'll make a bike boulevard that runs the lenght of Rt. 1 - it'll be cheaper, better, and will benefit the businesses that are clustered on the coast.*"

Because Connecticut Republicans never say the part in italics - at least not yet - Democrats coalesce around a mishmash of priorities and don't get very far on any of them.

But back to the gas tax: Republicans are playing the 1978 playbook that gave them a generational victory but today I think they have chosen the wrong hill to die on. A lot of Gen Xers and even more Millennials don't like driving and don't want to or can't afford a car. They don't feel as strongly about paying a mere twenty cents a day more to do something they know they shouldn't be doing as angry white homeowners felt about rising property taxes in the 1970s. 

Please, cycling brothers and sisters: prove me right. 

California Republicans need to lose the effort to repeal the gas tax. Actually, they need to lose in the most humiliating and one-sided way imaginable. They have to look like a punchline for the joke they insist on telling even though we're saying "we've heard this one before." The gas tax repeal has has to be knocked out with a closed fist, spin around twice like Biff Tannen, and then slump, unconscious, beside Dr. Emmett Brown's Packard.**

We live with the legacy of Proposition 13 every day in California. NIMBYism, a lack of affordable housiing and, as I mentioned a few months back, a knack for denying a change that is coming. Cyclists: do you want to live in a world where motorists get to keep driving around cost-free and stick you and your unborn 1.5 children with the bill in perpetuity? If your answer is yes don't visit my site again. 

If the answer is no, please join me in voting against anything the GOP ever puts in front of you having to do with reducing, eliminating, scaling back, or dumping the gas tax or bridge tolls. Let's put California Republicans into the grave they are intent on digging - and perhaps someday they will rise and we'll have a bike infrastructure arms race between the left and the right. Meaningful debate, forward-thinking plans. Sounds good to me. Thanks for reading and thanks for VOTING. 

*I'm not sorry to write that, People Friendly Stamford: The Merritt Parkway Trail is a dead horse you've been flogging or  too long. Focus on downtown, let young people lead, and stop carrying water for the trail alliance people. The people I know in Stamford don't want to ride from Maine to Florida. They want to ride from their house to the library.

**Did you understand that reference? No? Then you are who I am talking to! And if you did understand it, I am talking to you too.

What Is It this Time, California? An Earth Day Post

What is it this time, California? 

It's the plastic straws, isn't it? Or is it the woodburning fireplaces? Let me guess: it is something - anything - but your own personal motor vehicle. 

Yes, I am disgusted that SB827 - a measure designed to build more housing near transit in CA - died in committee last week. But I shouldn't be surprised. California puts on a good show but it is really a red state disguised as a blue one in that it preserves the suburbs as though they were an endangered owl or a giant redwood. The fact that this state, which does so many things well (up to and including allowing bikes on trains) is so far behind the curve when it comes to building a car-lite world is really disheartening. 

So in the lead up to Earth Day 2018 I tried to think to myself - what would it take Californians to see just how absurd the car culture is? 

I went to work with my miniatures - first showing a place where unused motor vehicles are stored (it's important because around 25% or more of a city's land is used for storage of an unused motor vehicle and it should be easier to house a human being than it is to store a machine).

Eagle-eyes followers will note I have upped my game: yesterday I rode a cargo bike to Staples to buy black poster board and a white paint pen (as a habit I take a photo of my bike, no matter what I'm riding or where I'm riding it to, so that if it is stolen I have a most recent shot).

That is the rack I used.  I should point out that when this photo was taken I was returning a Rug Doctor I had rented from the nearby grocery store. I picked it up and returned it by bike because you don't have to make the air dirty if you want your carpets clean. Both ways I was transporting it I wanted to catch up with a Stanley Steemer van at a red light and pull the Robert DeNiro "I-am-watching-you-move" from Meet the Parents but no such luck. 

But back to the minatures. With the garage door open I made my streetscapes completely to scale in the hopes that California motorists (and street designers, government officials - Hi, Jerry Brown! - pretend environmentalists, etc.) would actually see their world - which causes about 1/3 of pollution in this state - for the first time. 

"A car rack? I think if you go around the corner of the building you'll find one on the sidewalk next to a sign that says 'Cars Not Allowed on Sidewalk'. You're brave to be driving a car here! Be careful!"

"Dammit! There's always a bike parked in the car lane!"

"Officers he just came out of nowhere. I don't know what he was doing driving at night. He and his car should have been painted a brighter color!"

"Don't worry, sir. He's dead but it's totally not your fault. No charges will be filed. You're free to go."

"Dang. I keep forgetting what side of the bike the gas cap is on."

"I have bad news. The little plastic wire tie that holds the brake cables together has come loose. It'll cost $1,200 to fix it but you can pick it up Friday. Next Thursday at the latest."

"Officer it was so horrible! He just accelerated his bicycle and plowed right through the crowd! All I could hear was screaming! Why would anyone do anything like this?"

"Terrorists use bicycles as weapons all the time, ma'am. But the cyclist was elderly and I think he just got the brake lever mixed up with the pedals. It happens all the time.*"

"Yes, I'll have a Double Double with fries and a Diet Coke. And extra onions."

The last one was a bonus to anyone following me on Twitter - I posted several of these yesterday under the hashtag #IfCarsWereBikes since that was when the mood struck.

So anyway, California: please let me know if I am getting through to you at all because this whole thing of keeping people living in one place and making them drive to another place for work is quite tiresome. Acknowledge that the young people living in crummy rented rooms and trapped in a car-centric system are going to want this state when you draw your last breath (and thanks to the fact the Bay Area now has the sixth worst air in the country every breath you take between now and then may feel a bit more labored than usual). 

Hope everyone had a good Earth Day. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding.

*This is actually a point that has to be talked about more. When people age in a car-centric system they age out of being able to care for and transport themselves. We owe it to ourselves and to every generation (even the Boomers) to endure some short-term disruption of the world - like what SB827 would have done - to get some long-term benefits.

Box Bike Collective Review - Part II: Reassuring California Motorists

Note: a special shout-out to all who volunteer, and to Garvin Thomas of NBC Bay Area who came out this past Saturday to cover the Great Bike Migration of 2015/Good Karma Bikes moving to 460 Lincoln Avenue. You can watch his Bay Area Proud story here and follow Garvin on Twitter. Thanks again for coming, Garvin!

So as I mentioned earlier this week I borrowed the signature cargo bike from Box Bike Collective (and wondered: how do we want our children to see the world?). It’s the first time I’ve ever ridden a long cargo bike with the linkage steering so I was excited to try it. 

I’ve long ago been sold on the concept of using a bike instead of a second car (or even a first).  Honestly, car traffic in Silicon Valley is so bad I don’t understand why I don’t run into dozens of Box Bikes on the 11-mile ride to Good Karma Bikes at 460 Lincoln Avenue. 

But a review coming through the lens of someone who already loves to bike isn't going to carry a lot of weight with the intended target of this product: motorists. To that end, I’m going to write this review based on questions I think California drivers might have since I'm sure they want to know if they can do all the things they are used to doing in a car with a Box Bike.

Here are the questions:

Can I go to a home improvement stores and buy what I want?

I’ve already explained with the Bikeducken that yes, a cargo bike can carry lumber. I didn’t need to buy an entire sheet of plywood to build a workbench, but I did need molding for an interior door in my garage. So I went to Lowe's, locked the bike up, and bought four seven-foot pieces of wood. 

And I deployed a genius feature of the Box Bike:

The removable aluminum racks - known to carry large stepladders and surfboards - fit and lock in spaces on either side of the bike, and I pedaled home with confidence. As you’d expect, a bike this long doesn’t turn on a dime but the steering is surprisingly sensitive: After the first few miles of riding the Box Bike I found the handlebars would cooperate perfectly well with a gentle nudge. Lumber will get home with ease - and no straining to tie it to the roof of your car.

Can I go to the grocery store to buy bottled water? 

The short answer is, of course, yes. But having a cargo bike does change your shopping habits. At Nob Hill Foods, while paying for my groceries, I had an unexpected impulse to rent the Rug Doctor. My living room carpet hasn’t been cleaned since I moved here from Connecticut and I knew I had the cargo space. Spontaneously renting a carpet cleaning device just isn’t an urge I have when I go buy eggs on the fixie. 

Can I still race up to a red light even though I have to slam on my brakes and wait for it to change when I get there?

A bit of background here: I’ve found California drivers are mostly much more polite than drivers in Connecticut or New York. The biggest downside is there are a lot of them and many - more than any other drivers I’ve encountered in my life - tend to race up to a traffic light as though the cars are children and the red light is the teacher about to tell a story. 

This is where the electric assist of the Box Bike comes in. It has three modes (low, medium and high) and you can reach the control without taking your hands off the handlebar. This means if you’re approaching a red light, you can hit the control button with you thumb, put the electric assist on high, and zip up to a traffic control technology over 100 years old.

(In case you’re wondering, this bike does have a ‘throttle only’ button but it only moves the bike at about walking speed so it’s meant for helping you get up to speed from a dead stop or help you move a loaded bike while walking it). 

But back to the red light: when you get there, you can hit the disc brakes by gripping the handles. The brakes on the Box Bike are great but I did wish for regenerative braking that would charge the battery while slowing down (as some electric assist systems have). 

Now if this is the first electric assist bike you’ve ever ridden you may complain about the wildly inaccurate battery gauge. This is normal. Both the complaining and the wildly inaccurate battery gauge that seems to come with every e-bike I've ever reviewed. Total range and battery consumption will vary - I got to Good Karma Bikes at 460 Lincoln Avenue in San Jose and back again (about 22 miles round trip) being sensible with the battery, so chances are it’ll handle your commute. Not only that, but on this morning’s trip w/a 38 pound load I had the electric assist system off for five miles and didn’t mind at all. 

Can I pick up a pizza?

Mountain Mike’s largest pizza is 20” in diameter and the box couldn’t fit better in the cargo hold. The pizza is protected, doesn’t move much, and will get home quickly. It’s also kinda shielded from the wind, so it’ll still be a good hot temperature. The depth of the cargo box means you can carry a lot of pizzas and even wings. It's also almost impossible to reach the food and snag a slice while you're waiting at a red light.

That's a good thing. You know, don't drive distracted. 

Can I carry my child in comfort?

I covered how much better it is that a child has a nice view of the world instead of a view of a tablet/backrest of your Kia combo in my first post on the Box Bike. But I've also never seen an unhappy child riding in this style of bike. 

Since I didn’t have a child available I gave the sculpture I welded from a single vintage typewriter (called ‘Making a Friend at the Rowayton Arts Center show last year) a ride to the local school and back. The helmet rattled a bit over the bumps, but the 20” Schwalbe Big Apple tires handled the uneven pavement with ease and every weld held. If my sculpture holds together, so too should your child. 

Can I take it through the drive through window at the In-N-Out Burger?

Being from New England, I only knew In-N-Out Burger existed because of the film Fletch Lives - the sequel to the major motion picture, Fletch. 

Then, the day after I got here, I began noticing them scattered around Silicon Valley. When biking by an In-N-Out I’d see mostly the ‘In’ part: namely, cars lined up at the drive through window. 

Wow, I thought. I guess this is a real thing. 

It made me assume that if one were riding a Box Bike and were turned away at the drive through of an In-N-Out that would be a deal breaker for a motorist reluctant to give up their car. So I decided to give it a try. 

Arriving at the closest In-N-Out around 12:20 yesterday afternoon, I was awestruck at the line of motor vehicles.

The line - at least 15 cars long -  was in the shape of the letter ‘P’: it started in the Kohl’s parking lot, turned right, led to the order window and turned sharply left to go to the exit. I positioned myself behind a white Toyota Camry and waited long enough to memorize the tag number. 

I have to tell you that you don’t really grasp how ridiculous drive through windows are until you’re waiting at one on a bike. Maybe inside a car you fiddle with your smartphone, listen to the radio, text the person in the seat next to you - and so on, but when you’re on a bike all you see is what’s going on outside the car. I caught glances of people in their cars - who of course can't speak to one another because they are in cars - oblivious to how plain bizarre it is that their strictly emissions-regulated vehicles were pushing exhaust into the air for over 20 minutes waiting for a burger. 

Because the line of cars stretched into the Kohl’s parking lot, I heard an occasional honk by a flustered shopper trying to get out of his or her parking space. Meanwhile the bike rack next to In-N-Out was nearly empty. 

In addition to wondering if I should have brought sunscreen, I began to wonder how special these burgers are. Were they formed by the hands of Nigella Lawson and served by Jennifer Beals? Seriously, what was the draw? I had to stay to find out. 

I wondered if I’d be turned away at the order window, but as it turned out a young man with a tablet was outside, walking to each car, taking the order. He greeted me professionally and I made my order: a cheeseburger and fries. 

After what felt like two seasons of ‘House of Cards’ later, a nice woman at the window took my money, and a few minutes after that I was served my food by yet another nice and professional In-N-Out burger employee who wasn’t a celebrity.

I put my food in the cargo box, pivoted the bike around to the right, and parked in an open space. In full view of the crawl of cars and trucks slouching through the line - and still hearing the occasional car horn of a Kohl’s shopper trying to leave - I ate the most overrated hamburger I have ever eaten. And the fries reminded me why I no longer eat fries regularly, so I only ate a few. I fought an urge to scatter some fries in the cargo box and leave them there to give the bike a more authentic, car-like feel. 

But the point is…I did it and so can you, California. You can use Box Bike for just about everything you use a car for. And $3,400 for a vehicle that can fit through a normal sized door, easily carried by two adults, and makes a better environmental statement than any Access OK bumper sticker, it is a fair price - I especially feel that way since I’ve spent almost one-third of that amount this year repairing my car before my Nine Morning trip from Connecticut to California, another one-third in the months since my arrival, and another third between the cost of gassing it up and the achingly expensive set of tires I bought last week. 

California drivers, if you’re still skeptical, if you still think you need to own a car, that’s fine. I own one too, but I’m sure that with a Box Bike you’ll do what this site has been calling for: using our cars less and riding our bikes more. Your car will last longer and, even more importantly, you’ll have more fun. 

This morning I strapped my Dahon Matrix in the cargo box and easily pedaled to downtown San Jose to meet the bike’s next user: Cowgirl Bike Courier. Look for it anywhere in their service area and check out Box Bike Collective so you can buy your own. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

Follow me on Twitter: @michaelknorris