Velofix in Silicon Valley: The Bike Shop That Comes to You

Vera Arais, working in a Velofix van 

Most of what I learned about bicycles is by taking apart old ones bolt by bolt - a practice I began in Stamford, Connecticut over ten years ago. I learned when I made my own mountain bike in 2011, a California Cargo Bike in 2016 and, most recently, a Back to the Future themed road bike in 2019. I've written about what I've gotten right (and wrong) here on this blog. 

But I hit a wall with my learning - and you never want to do that when you're passionate about something. I knew there was more to know but I just wasn't sure what any of it was. 

So I did something smart: I asked Velofix to come to my house and work on my Back to the Future bike.

Now you're probably thinking to yourself: "Isn't that Vera, the leader of Women's Night at Good Karma Bikes?" and I am thinking "Yes, it is Vera, and while she now works full time at Velofix she still runs Women's Night for Good Karma Bikes."

I had never heard of Velofix before she began working there - possibly because I don't watch Dragon's Tank or Shark's Den or one of those other reality-based funding shows on TV. The short story is: the Velofix people must have put on a good show, because they got some funding for their concept: a bike shop that comes to you. 

The premise does have a solid foundation. Driving - especially in the Bay Area - is annoying and outdated zoning rules put businesses far from homes. What if you don't want to lash your bike to your car, drive somewhere, park the car, wheel the bike inside, explain what's wrong, leave, and drive back again another day?

Velofix services range from about $65 to the neighborhood of a 'spa day' like treatment for your ride of about $500 - even more if you order a la mode* or your bike is laden with the latest gear and tech. Since my Back to the Future bike was cobbled together with mostly older parts I had picked up over the years, I knew I wouldn't max out my Visa card with a 'Silver' package purchase. 

The first thing, though, was I got to go inside the van that Vera parked in front of my house. It was a rare moment of pure workshop envy.

Velofix should charge money just to tour the van. Everything that should go in a shop six or seven times the size was found in this van - and it was put away in such a way that it just...worked. 

Magnets above the workbench, a Park Tool workstand mounted on one wall, led lights. And foam in the drawers so each was like a horizontal tool board made out of Nerf.

It was just an amazing place that radiated confidence and wrench skill. If Vera herself was a bike shop, this is the form she would take. 

She had read my post about building my Back to the Future bike and was familiar with a few of the, ahem, design quirks which include brake and derailleur cables that run the length of the frame so as to look more like the Delorean. She set the bike on the Park Tool workstand and went at it. 

Clients of Velofix can watch the mechanic work. Vera even offered me a cup of coffee because there is a coffee machine right there in the van. 

Yes. A coffee machine. I don't even have a coffee machine in my shop. Why had that not occurred to me? I was learning more already. 

There's also a well-curated supply of items for sale in the van - either just to buy or to add to your bike if a certain component was broken. 

I've been friends with Vera for a while and always knew she was a much better wrench than me but this was my first time being with her when she's in Work Mode - and I genuinely saw what an effective teacher she is. It made me glad she could not only allow clients to watch her while she worked - including, of course, little kids who will benefit from having bikes demystified right in front of their eyes - but also that she was still teaching Women's Night at Good Karma Bikes. 

It's also an important thing that separates bikes from cars - knowing the service you are getting and having it deconstructed right in front of you. After all, we have all been there with our motor vehicles: dropping it off for a service and getting the dreaded I-Have-Some-Bad-News/I-Am-Holding-Your-Car-Hostage phone calls in the middle of the day from the mechanic asking you to greenlight the installation and/or removal of a part you never heard of (I relayed a true story of trying to fix "The Noise" on my car a few years ago).

But back to the Velofix van: while Vera was finishing up tuning the rear derailleur, she asked if I had built the bike with all SRAM or all Shimano components. I admitted I was stumped, and it was then she casually imparted some wisdom that felt like a cartoon light bulb went on just over my head. 

When you build a bike, it is best to build with either all SRAM or all Shimano components. 

This was one of those it's-so-simple-it's-brilliant breakthroughs. I had been Wall-E-ing builds for years - taking anything out of metal recycling bins or other items I could scrounge and afford and it never occurred to me that there could be a difference in how everything works together. A shifter with the little clicky things** carries the derailleur cable only so far, and the gears on the cassette may be imperceptibly closer or further apart than others. 

I went into my shop and looked at my California Cargo Bike and the Bike Friday Tandem that I restored last year for a ride in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Both hadn't given me a lot of grief in terms of how well they shifted and I realized that might have something to do with the fact I just happened to cobble both together with all Shimano components. 

It's like when you make a list of all of your favorite X-files episodes and discover that they were all written by the same writer.*** I returned to the van to attempt to soak up some more wisdom.

Vera wrapped up her work and relinquished my Back to the Future bike. The next morning I rode it to Morgan Hill and back - managing just over 23 miles in an hour and a half - which is apparently pretty good for me.

Sorry: I'm still kinda new at this Strava thing. 

I've booked additional appointments with Velofix since - but the only thing I didn't like is there isn't a way to definitively ask for a Velofix mechanic by name. Right now, if you book Velofix in Silicon Valley, Vera will probably be the person who shows up even though someone from Velofix's corporate office assured me that every mechanic is equally talented.  That may be true but the thing is - and I'm relatively sure I'm not alone on this - relationships with good bike mechanics are like relationships with a good hairdresser or barber. 

Other than that, I have no quarrel. My Back to the Future themed road bike works better than ever and if you're ever stumped on a build or a fix, visit Velofix and have a bike shop come to you. If it's Vera who knocks on your door, be nice to her and listen - you'll definitely learn something. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

* I meant 'a la carte' but wanted to make sure you were paying attention. 

** I still have a dreadful cycling vocabulary. 

*** yeah, it's Vince Gilligan (who went on to create 'Breaking Bad'

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. 

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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

I Hate Your Electric Car

A new electric car is coming out today. Apparently it costs $35,000 - which is considered to be priced "for the masses."

I am not one of those masses. I remember when I bought my SUV in 2006 for about $21,000 I hoped technology would move forward to the point where it would be the last gas-powered car I'd own. But I've spent too many subsequent years sitting in traffic watching the light go from red to green and back again before I have a chance to move through. In that span I also began biking a lot more for day-to-day reasons. I also watched ride sharing apps like Lyft and the one by the sexual harassment guy take off. So I'm hoping this now eleven year old SUV is the last car I own, period. 

Yet California is shoving rebates (also known as tax dollars that would be better spent making streets safer for bikers and walkers) my way to convince me that I should have an electric car that I'd feel good about driving. There is even talk about the incentives getting even bigger because, well, they're not working fast enough.

I've said it so many times it doesn't even sound like words anymore: the goal isn't to get people to convert from gas to electric, but from car to not car. 

The rebates have only done two things: they give California an alibi for environmental protection when it really just encourages the state to stick with an unsustainable model of sprawl and spread-out living. Millennials, as I've written about before, aren't keen on this model and are one three-hour drive to work before packing it in and leaving the Bay Area. 

That doesn't help Silicon Valley. 

The other thing the rebates have done is simply subsidize cars mostly bought by people who don't need the subsidy. A study from UC Berkeley last year looked at over 98,000 rebate checks and found that 83% of the rebate checks were going to households that had $100,000 in income or more - and mostly to white households. 

A quick shout out to Democrats: Two years from now several of you are going to run for president. At least one of you will be from California* but all of you will talk about how it is bad when tax cut benefits mostly go to the rich. 

When you do that you might want to make sure you have a leg to stand on. 

Before some plug-in e-car fanchild reminds me that the new electric car out today costs ONLY $35,000 (before rebates) I need to add that the program looked at hybrids too, and the sticker prices of those start in the $20,000 range - which is still a lot of money for a lot of families. 

But today is still a big day for high-income households wanting to feel good about the "environmental footprint" - but talk of an environmental footprint must go further than the part of the car the exhaust pipe is normally found. 

A Tesla Model 3 takes up just as much space in a parking spot in Palo Alto as any other car. It can block the box at a Redwood City intersection just like a gas powered car. It can circle a parking lot for ten minutes looking for a space just like a gas powered car. The presence of one and tens of thousands of other electric cars (almost always with one passenger) slows down everyone, which makes commutes take longer - if not additionally making the 'better for the environment' argument a wash.

Now that electric car drivers have gotten used to life alone in the HOV lane, they will be reluctant to give that up. Too bad. They have to. It'll happen sooner or later and I'm hoping a California legislator reading this understands that - or at least takes a look at what happened in Jakarta. When they dumped their HOV lanes average speeds for the entire city dropped big time. 

The lesson from this study is that using HOV lanes as a "Good Dog!" biscuit for wealthy Californians who drive alone is a bad idea that needs to end. 24 hour carpool lanes need to begin. 

Now I'm sure if and when the HOV lane sticker nonsense does end, electric cars will still sell. They'll have to, because for now we're stuck in an environment that forces people to live in one place, have a job in another, and offer little other than using a car to get around. And this coercion is having some pretty terrible consequences since more Americans than ever are going into debt to buy cars. According to a recent study by Edmunds.com, the average length of a loan is 69.3 months. But guess what! The average size of a loan, as of last month, is $31,000 which means that the swell new electric car is finally in reach.

The person buying this car may end up in debt to get it, trapped by the payments and stuck in a system that is unsustainable and contributing to a poorer quality of life for everyone. But at least they can still feel good about buying that new electric car.

Thanks for reading and thanks for saying no to Car Culture 2.0



* Don't ask me who.

What If The Waterslide Kid Had Tied Up Traffic?

Most people are good. But sometimes you are just going to see a horrendous display of humanity made even worse by the everydayness of it. 

I see it several times a week, but it was absolutely turned up to 11 today. What happened was someone climbed up the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and threatened to jump. Here's what NBC Bay Area had to say in a tweet:

The video itself is 20 seconds of traffic moving at a crawl. Nothing you don't see everyday. 

I get it. I've seen traffic reports and traffic reporters work. If you're stuck in traffic for a long time for seemingly no reason you'll want to know why. But the traffic isn't the angle that should be front and center. The question should be who is this person and what can we do to help him? 

But the tragic thing is, we don't. If you are sitting in a car it seems that everything is about you and how best to move you forward. Someone's son/father/daughter/wife is up on a ledge threatening to jump? Dang it! I am late for my Crossfit class and don't have any more podcasts to listen to! Shove this loony over the side so I can get a move on!

If a UFO lands in the Bay Area I expect the headline to look something like this: 

Also an alien has crash-landed in Redwood City blocking the third and fourth lanes on 101. That's a real mess there. 

NBC Bay Area wasn't alone in this traffic-first angle. Man Sitting on Bay Bridge anchorage snarls westbound traffic was KTVU Fox 2's headline (that changed slightly but, as I said a couple weeks ago, they had the picture of the traffic and had the story filed under 'Traffic Stories').

Tomorrow morning we're going to wake up and some of us are going to watch television.  I'm asking everyone reading this to please watch how the context of a story is different when it has an impact on traffic. 

Traffic, which is ONLY caused by too many people driving, is explained away by, among other things, a motorcycle crash on 101, a tractor-trailer rollover on the 87, or construction on highway 85. Red lines on the map signify traffic problems and even though about 80% of Bay Area drivers travel alone and distracted driving is a serious problem NBC Bay Area wants you to join the Bay Area Wazers "to help viewers avoid traffic jams". (Laura Garcia-Cannon: you've said a couple of times after the traffic reports that people should not use their phones while driving and I am appreciative of that.)

So we have to ask ourselves some interesting questions about this car-centric world we live in. What if the waterslide kid had tied up traffic? What if that commuter train crash from years ago didn't have gory footage but instead tied up the commute? Would we be talking about safety issues, interviewing NTSB personnel? Asking why these things aren't better regulated? Car accidents outnumber waterslide issues by the tens of thousands and yet I don't see parents pulling their kids out of driver's ed. 

So please: for those in the media who are reading this please put car accidents on the same footing as the waterslide kid and let's try not to make everything about a more comfortable car commute. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

Missing the Point (Again) On Why Half of Millennials Want to Leave Silicon Valley

Yesterday the Bay Area Council released a troubling study that indicated about half of Millennials want to leave the Bay Area - and overall about 40% of Bay Area residents are thinking about leaving. 

I didn't know what the big deal was. My first year living in Silicon Valley (after leaving Connecticut) I probably thought of leaving nine times a day before breakfast. 

But here's what threw me: the top two reasons people want to leave are the cost of housing...and traffic. 

Wrong.

Those aren't two separate issues. They are the conjoined twins of millennial misery and unless we talk about them as the same thing we won't get anywhere as a people.

Back when Baby Boomers were actually babies, their parents and grandparents were building a world where cars were just awesome things and everybody loved buying them and driving them. Look at some of the ads in 1950s issues of Sunset Magazine and you'll see what I'm talking about. A house and a car weren't a living space and a means to get around. They were goals.

Then the population began growing and plots of land were divided and redivided to make more room. Zoning conspired to keep people living in one space and coercing them to drive to another place in order to work. But luckily the Interstate Highway System was born in the nick of time to give people the means to get to where they are going faster. A byproduct was the highways divided cities into pieces, and the land close to highways was deemed less than desirable to live in.

Seventeen years after crawling into the 21st century, we arrive at the situation we are in today: millennials are broke and are aggressively rejecting the Sunset Magazine advertisements of the 1950s. But right now there is nothing for millennials to really opt into. Because the infrastructure Boomers inherited decades and decades ago is keeping the Boomers wealthy (and Boomers still hold the majority of power in government) they're still trying to sell us on cars and driving - even though cracks are showing in their own enthusiasm for this construct. 

The sales pitch Boomers are using isn't always a slick ad - usually it is more subtle, more powerful, and more insidious. Zoning rules and parking minimums, taken as gospel, means that if you want to build something, it must have 'X' number of parking spots. The 9' x 18' spaces add up, forcing buildings even further apart and taking space that could be used to build housing into storing a car that isn't being used.

As I believe in market forces: a huge reason we have a lack of supply of housing is because the space that could be used for housing is given to cars that aren't in motion.

That's why traffic and housing cannot ever be discussed differently or put in separate radio buttons on a survey. People are driving for one reason only: they know there is a place to put their motor vehicle when they get there. Take away the parking and give other means of travel and people will use it. 

 As I've said before, if we enable car parking, we get car traffic - and when we build things they way they've been built for decades we perplex and annoy those who would like to ride a bike to get around.

This is a real sign not three miles from my home in San Jose. Taken at its word it means I can be penalized for riding my bike through the parking lot to get to the bike rack...that is on the sidewalk just feet from a parking area.

I expect city councils are going to talk about what to do about the issue of people wanting to leave the Bay Area but they have to understand how traffic and housing are symptoms of the same problem - not separate problems on their own. I thank Bay Area Council for doing this study but I hope nobody misreads the data and continues to try and coddle the dying car culture. 

And a quick reminder before I forget: Bay Area Bike to Work Day is coming up on May 11th; so that'll be a good time to think about new ways to get around and use space for better things. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

Cartoon of the Week:The Horrors of Making Cars A Few Pennies a Day More Expensive

Last fall I pointed out several ways California (specifically the Bay Area) could get out of the traffic jams it always seems to find itself in.

I woke up this morning to a story from the San Jose Mercury News that the Golden State was considering raising the gas tax, upping the charge of registration fees, and proposing a fee on electric cars. 

In the words of Jerry Seinfeld when he saw Kramer getting ready to go to work in his apartment one day: "How long have I been asleep? What year is this?"

I would personally like to thank Internet Commenters on SJMC Facebook Page for inspiring this cartoon - and I wish California luck into making this happen. 

10 Ways to Reduce Traffic Congestion in the Bay Area (No. 4 Will Surprise You)*

I need to thank the San Jose Mercury News for providing me with inspiration with the click-bait headline Bay Area’s 10 Most Congested Freeways (No. 3 is a Surprise) from yesterday.

I create content for a living so I’m in on the click-bait joke - and I’d like to issue this follow up on that story. 

So here we go.  

10. Leave the Car

Traffic isn’t caused by other people. It is caused by you and me when we choose to get in a car to go somewhere. 

That's worth reading again. Traffic isn't caused by other people. It is caused by you and me when we choose to get in a car to go somewhere. 

Millennials are a generation with many flaws but they are collectively smart enough to realize that owning a car is pointless and expensive. They bike. They walk. They rideshare. They take the train. Be like millennials. Leave the car.

9. Vote for Measure B

On the ballot next month in Santa Clara County there is a 1/2 cent, 30 year sales tax measure. In my opinion not enough of the money expected to be raised by this very small tax will go to bike and pedestrian infrastructure, but a lot will. The bulk is going to improving a ton of interchanges and expressways around the county, and also fund the completion of the BART extension to San Jose (means fewer motorists and more people taking the train). So read about it and vote for it. 

Oh: another reason to vote for it - I am told this is important for Santa Clara County residents - is that this measure will also pay for fixing potholes. 

I understand the hatred of potholes, but I lived in New Hampshire for 11 years. You may know a lot of things, Silicon Valley, but you don't know potholes. Go to the Granite State if you want to learn something about potholes. And in one winter new and unwieldy terms will become part of your vocabulary. Like frost heaves.

8. Raise the gas tax

The worst place in the world I have ever ridden a bike is Greenwich, Connecticut. A close second is Cherry Hill, New Jersey. A little New Jersey quirk: in addition to most of the car infrastructure looking like it was pulled from an erotic dream of Robert Moses you can’t pump your own gas. That’s right. Gas is pumped for you so you never, ever have to be uncomfortable.

But they just raised the gas tax. California can too. 

7. Focus on “Low Stress Bicycle Networks”

This was a theme of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition’s summit back in August. If you really want to get people to drive less and bike more we have to go beyond peppering the landscape with incomplete bike lanes and SHARE THE ROAD signs. Roads need to be designed for bikes and cars together and in such a way the cyclists are protected from cars. 

Even if you will never, in a million years, ride a bike to work or to the In-N-Out Burger others will. That means more space on the road for your electric or hybrid car. 

Except…however…

6. Kick Electric and Hybrid Cars OUT of the Diamond Lane

That’s right, I’m going there. 

After sixteen months of living here in California I am tired of the spectacle of protecting the environment. A hybrid car used to drive a mile or two from your house to pick up eggs or flour from the grocery store or a meal from In-N-Out is not good for the environment. An all-electric car charged from a coal fired power plant is not good for the environment. Perpetuating the use of cars is not good for the environment. Creating and maintaining a system that coerces people to use cars is not good for the environment. 

I used my homemade cargo bike made from mostly thrown away bike parts to pick up environmentally-friendly detergent. How did you pick up your detergent? Your Chevy Volt? How environmentally friendly of you!

Showering environmental praise and pouring weird benefits on hybrid and electric car owners (such as giving solo drivers of such cars access to the diamond lane) is also not good for the environment. 

And it slows everyone down. Peel off those damn ‘Access OK’ sticker/trophies and get in the middle lane where you belong or bring a passenger. 

In the interest of full disclosure: I own a ten year old gas-powered four wheel drive SUV. But I am better for the environment than some of the irate Smugmobile owners reading this post since I rarely use it for any trips within four miles of home. Let’s stop issuing merit badges to everyone who can afford to spend money on the newest hybrid or all-electric wonder and put that money towards bike, pedestrian and mass transit projects instead. 

5. Get rid of parking minimums

The San Jose Mercury News talked about the horror of parking minimums quite well in a recent story about Palo Alto. Also, the organization Strong Towns is bringing the conversation about parking minimums into the mainstream too. If we enable car parking, we get car traffic. 

So how do we enable bike parking? Glad you asked.

4. Tax breaks for businesses to provide bike parking/bike infrastructure

Like a fine wine, this is best paired with No. 5. We get traffic when we enable driving. If you want to reduce traffic, you need to enable other modes of transport. Providing safe, secure and convenient bike parking helps (if it isn't confusing all the better).

Every time I park here in San Jose I think that if I stare long enough a tear in the universe will appear. 

And if we need space for bike parking we must take it away from cars before we take it away from pedestrians. Before any diehard motorists are triggered at the thought of having to circle the block another time for parking, let me remind you that you spend an awful lot of time looking for a space to put a motor vehicle that you no longer need to use. It makes more sense - as the great coffee shop in Stamford Lorca is doing - to get rid of a parking space and get something better in its place.

3. Cut the Tax Break for Electric and Hybrid Cars

That’s right. I’m going there again. Car Culture 2.0 is officially on notice. 

One of the best recent books I read was The Worst Hard Time - which is about the Dust Bowl. It noted that the 1930s gave birth to agricultural subsidies that helped rescue small farms at the time but ended up being the wasteful subsidy for agribusiness it is today. 

What are we going to say about the hybrid and electric tax breaks five or six decades from now? The technology is proven and getting better all the time. It a lot of places it's easier to park a $100K Tesla than it is a $100 Roadmaster**.

A tax break on cars - if one should exist at all - needs to apply to low income people (especially, as the Mercury News recently reported, a place with a hollowing middle class) and maybe married couples who have only one car between them. Why my tax dollars need to go to the $100K Tesla sitting right next to a top-of-the-line GMC Yukon in the same driveway of a $3 million house hasn’t quite been explained to me. Thoughts, Mr. Musk? 

2. Take the train - and demand more service

As I’ve written about before (in Uncle Traveling Matt***-like dispatches when I first moved to California) the trains in California are superior to the trains in Connecticut. The VTA is fantastic and so is Caltrain - they both allow bicycles on board (and yes, I had VTA in mind when I designed my folding cargo bike). 

Where Connecticut beats California has to do with frequency. There are a lot more trains. So demand more service - and stop demanding for more car infrastructure at the same time. 

1. Take the Bicycle

I’m still culture-shocked after moving here 16 months ago. In some ways (particularly professionally) I’m still waiting for California to love me back. But I’m also surprised that so many people here would choose to drive when you have so much nice weather. Why so many choose to drive when there are so many great bike trails and parks? Why so many choose to drive when so much of the area is flat enough for a fixie?

Remember the thirteen words: If you have a bike and can ride it safely, please ride it. I you don’t have a bike go to Good Karma Bikes on 460 Lincoln Avenue or another local bike shop and pick one up. You save money, you actually help the environment instead of add to the spectacle of helping the environment, and you get fitter. You also get to meet nice people, don’t have to pay for parking, and you give a parking spot to someone who needs it more than you.

I’ll watch out for you on the roads. Watch out of me, too. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

* I actually have no idea if No. 4 will surprise you or not. To be honest, I wrote this so fast I don't even remember what No. 4 is.

** That is sadly true in a lot of places. Something’s wrong there. 

***The Internet doesn’t have that many Fraggle Rock references. Congratulations for reading one.

Danika

    Danika Tyler Garcia (photo credit: Danika's mom)

I see ghost bikes wherever I ride all across the country - and the world, for that matter. Part of why they are made is to memorialize a person who was killed while riding their bike.

One of those killed - here in San Jose - was a teenager named Danika. While I was volunteering for Good Karma Bikes (which I sadly haven’t been able to do for a few months since keeping my freelance writing hamster wheel spinning has become a full-time job in and of itself) I helped her mom locate an old bicycle that could be turned into a ghost bike. 

She contacted me again last week: twists and turns in life meant the ghost bike couldn’t be put up right away. She decided to put it up this past Friday, which was Danika’s 17th birthday. That means she was born on September 9th, 1999 - 9/9/99. 

As some of you know already, I am miffed at the collective way cyclist deaths are covered in the press. Not just because one can play a macabre Cyclist Death Bingo game and - in terms of the scant information conveyed - get five across every time, but because nobody follows up. 

Well, I did. 

In an email, I asked Danika’s mom how she was and asked her to tell me about her daughter. This is what she wrote me (and she gave me permission to reprint it here):

“Danika was a nerd. A big, gentle nerd.”

“She hated bullies, and stuck up for the outcasts. Her friends were the choir/drama kid, LGBTQ kids, anime kids, the kids that are considered "different". The day after the crash, the students at Del Mar had a memorial for her. It lasted until the next morning. Supervised by Danika's best friends Mom.”

“One boy came up to me, wearing a three piece suit that was 3 inches too small for him. He said, "Danika was the only one to talk to me on my first day at school”.” 

“She was kind. Babies loved her. We have a huge Nicaraguan family and lots of little ones. They all flocked to her. Like the Pied Piper of toddlers.”

“I remember how, when I was a teenager, I would tell my mom (I) hated her. All the time. The thing that comforts me now, is she never, not once, told me she hated me. I'll hold that in my heart until I see her again.”

                                 Danika's Ghost Bike (photo credit: Danika's mom)

I mentioned the last time I wrote about ghost bikes that when I pick one out I just look for the biggest one I can find so it can be seen easily. But all of Danika’s mom’s words? All her grief, all Danika’s friends, family and teachers’ grief? There isn’t enough space on the bike frame to write it. 

When someone takes a ride somewhere, they should get to where they are going without incident. Yes, cyclists need to take ownership over their safety and absolutely, drivers need to slow down (and, as Cyclelicious just showed in his coverage of yet another unnecessary road death, never pass cyclists unless you have plenty of room to do so). But street design is also a ‘person of interest’ when a cyclist or pedestrian is hurt or killed on the road. 

So that’s my plea to the media: not only do I want you to follow up on the grieving done by survivors but also follow up with the ‘person of interest’ in every one of these cases: the road itself. In the time that has passed since the death, has the road been redesigned to encourage slower speeds? Has a road diet been done or complete streets initiatives implemented? Are there adequate warning signs of dangers? When you observe people at the site, do you see them engaging in the same behavior that led to the death? What do elected officials have to say? 

                                 Danika's Ghost Bike (photo credit: Danika's mom)

I know journalists are overworked and underpaid but follow up stories like this are more important than stories about Donald Trump’s hair or any ‘daily tracking poll.’ The kind of stories I’m talking about might encourage safer driving, safer cycling and smarter road design - all things that can save lives and up the chances someone like Danika will live to see another birthday (and, from what her mom described, touch more lives). 

Thank you, Danika’s mom, for talking with me. I am thinking of you and of the empty space at a table in a school cafeteria your daughter should be sitting and the empty spot on the street where she should be biking. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for riding.