OK, the fairy tale didn’t work out perfectly but 2nd place in the 2010 World Cup isn’t bad for little Netherlands. As an American I was only a little disappointed while the rest of the country takes matters of football much more seriously.

Why football (“soccer” for my countrymen) on bakfiets en meer? Because practically everything here has something to do with bikes. I snapped these photos an hour or so before the final match with Spain. Bicycle traffic jams, folks, all over the city! Everybody was cycling or walking somewhere to watch the game with friends and party; at somebody’s house, on one of the squares with giant TV’s, at a cafe… Central Amsterdam was one wound up, vuvuzela tooting, orange wearing, Dutch flag waving, case of beer on the rear carrier near riot.

Why do most people ride bikes? The usual answers: It’s the most convenient, fun, social, cheapest way to get around. And on such an evening half the city would be riding home considerably less sober. Regardless of what the laws say (drunk cycling is technically not legal of course) I’d much rather be amongst lots of drunk cyclists than drunk motorists. Besides, what’s the fun of wearing silly clothes and wrapping yourself in a flag if you’re just going to sit inside a car?

In News & Events on the Dutch Volvo website:

Bij Volvo staat veiligheid voorop. Niet alleen van de mensen in een Volvo, maar ook van iedereen eromheen. Daarom introduceren we nu de POCito: de Volvo onder de kinderfietshelmen.

Translation: At Volvo safety comes first. Not only for the people in a Volvo, but also of everyone around it. Therefore we now introduce the POCito: the Volvo amongst the children’s bike helmets.

Am I being simplistic in seeing this as essentially the same as Smith & Wesson introducing and promoting children’s bulletproof vests to protect them from the guns they make?

Volvo continues in their press release to explain that each year in the Netherlands 35 children under 12 die “in traffic”. They don’t qualify whether this gruesome statistic has anything to do with bicycles, but actually that’s fairly irrelevant: Deaths and serious injuries amongst children while cycling are almost entirely inflicted by automobiles. As Mikael Colville Andersen frequently comments: They’re conveniently “ignoring the bull in the china shop.”

Later in the same press release Volvo explains their promotion of mandatory helmet laws in the Netherlands. From a business perspective it’s the obvious choice. The Dutch city planners widely recognize the danger that automobiles present to other street users and have been working hard for decades to minimize it. The primary safety tactics include excluding and slowing automobiles, and separating autos from bicyclists and other road users. This has very successfully led to both the safest roads in the world and the highest cycling rates. Promoting or enforcing helmet use, on the other hand, has shown to reduce cycling rates while safety gains are debatable at best.

Though we should always strive for improvement cycling is already mighty safe here in the Netherlands. Let’s just briefly look at Amsterdam, the capitol city in rough numbers:

Thus…

As noted in an earlier post…

Heck, we can even go further and note that universal helmet use would indeed probably prevent death in a couple of those six yearly incidents, but certainly not all of them. And then there’s that other pesky problem: It’s been demonstrated that helmet laws and promotion decrease cycling rates and reduced numbers of cyclists increase the danger of cycling. So aside from deflecting some blame what does Volvo expect to accomplish through widespread helmet use?

Cartoon by Wulff Morgenthaler via Copenhagenize.

My excuses for the lack of precise numbers and supporting statistics; There’s an impatient toddler tugging on me and it’s time to head to the office. But I can assure you I didn’t pull the above facts out of a hat or sleeve. If you want to investigate further there are plenty of numbers to be found elsewhere in this blog and far more on David Hembrow’s excellent blog.

Most WorkCycles bikes are used daily for such mundane purposes as riding to work, carrying the kids to school, carrying tools around an oil refinery or delivering the post. But some of our bikes have far stranger goals in life. Case in point: exhibit and communications design firm Atelier Markgraph in Frankfurt am Main, Germany bought three WorkCycles Cargobikes and two Fr8’s with Massive Racks and we were quite curious about how they were to be used. Their description sums it up:

Bremen and Bremerhaven take their ’Knowledge Worlds’ on tour for the fourth time.

Frankfurt am Main, 26 September 2009 – Surprising experiments, unique exhibits, exciting excursions – the travelling exhibition ’Knowledge Worlds’ shows just how much the two cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven have to offer.

After a highly successful debut tour in 2006, the exhibition is now bringing ’knowledge worlds’ from seven museums in Bremen and Bremerhaven out to the public for the fourth time. Bremen is represented by the Botanika, the Universum and the Ethnological Museum; Bremerhaven by the coastal zoo, the Maritime Museum, the Emigration Museum and the recently-opened Climate House. Once again, the exhibition was conceived and designed by Frankfurt’s Atelier Markgraph, which was also responsible for implementation.

The mobile experimental lab consists of five bicycles and one car. The exhibition stops off at events, pedestrian precincts and school playgrounds, where it invites children and teenagers to explore and discover the secrets of the sciences.

The exhibition’s architectural concept is as freewheeling as the vehicles themselves. In moments, luggage racks and bike trailers can be converted into experimental stations. The car interior doubles as a ’knowledge worlds foyer’ that explains the experimental stations interactively. Museums run films on a screen that appears when the car boot opens; stools are arranged in front to create an impromptu open-air cinema.

A new corporate design and logo were designed specially for the fourth tour. They build on human perceptions, with five colours to represent the five senses – vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

Two cities, seven museums, one car, five bicycles: ’Knowledge Worlds’ is a simple, freewheeling exhibition that promotes the successful concept of Knowledge Worlds.

Nope, I’m entirely unclear on what Ryan Doyle’s creation, dubbed the “Hell-a-Copter” is and does. I see something that looks like a giant, donut shaped, glazed balloon with lights, a frame suspended below, a hipster Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker and his legs spinning what seems to be a sort of horizontal propeller. It’s got pedals and art so it earns a mention on B.E.M. It’s intriguing though doesn’t seem nearly as hellish as another Doyle creation called “The Regurgitator”. Wanna get spun around faster than the feet of a Goldsprint competitor? Then you’d better hook up with Doyle and his cronies. Have a look below. Just thinking about it makes me wanna toss my cookies.

In any case you can go check all of this out… and RIDE them too during Doyle’s three part exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach, December 3-6 2009. The details:

Squishy Universe Gallery
150 NW 24th Street
Miami, FL 33127

ps: I think I might have seen Doyle in Amsterdam years ago when they did the “Tall Bike Jousting World Championships” here. Here are a couple pics, somewhat more interesting than the event actually was.

Sorry for the lack of new posts in the last two weeks. I’ve been traveling in Japan with my family. We’re visiting family and friends and talking about cycling wherever possible. I’ve also been taking lots and lots of photos. Check them out here in my Flickr Japan set

I’ve got lots to show and write about but frankly, being in a place is more interesting and productive than writing about it. So the blog posts about Japan will come in due time.

In the meanwhile here’s a little tidbit about WorkCycles happenings in Amsterdam: Once again Sinterklaas (the skinnier, less politically correct, Dutch version of Santa Claus) rode into Amsterdam from Spain accompanied by a bevy of Zwarte Pieten on WorkCycles bikes. It’s become their preferred mode of transportation, probably for their reliability, classic looks and ability to carry tons of sweets for both the kids and horses.

Tom Resink, WorkCycles mechanic and damn good photographer took the pics that you can check out in Tom’s Flickr photo set

I can’t describe this event any better than the description on the New Amsterdam Bike Slam website:

Four hundred years after Henry Hudson’s arrival in Manhattan, two teams of Dutch and American planners & designers face off in a battle for the future of New York City transportation. Their challenge: find ways to bring NYC cycling up to the level of the Netherlands, the only country with more bikes than people.

Spread over four days, the New Amsterdam Bike Slam is a live design battle, a dance party, a world-class transportation summit, a bridge across the Atlantic, and a path forward.

New Amsterdam Bike Slam is an initiative of Amsterdam Cycling to Sustainability, produced by Vélo Mondial and Transportation Alternatives, with funding from Transumo and the City of Amsterdam.

Party favors provided by New Amsterdam Records.

And some more text blatantly copied from the NABS site:

Inspired by poetry slams, reality television competitions, and celebrity death matches, the New Amsterdam Bike Slam is a unique battle for the future of New York City transportation.

On the evening of Saturday, September 12th, after three days of intense preparation, two teams of accomplished Dutch and American planners & designers will face off in a live competition, part performance art and part debate. Combining insights from marketing, urban planning, and design, each team will present its most creative, compelling vision to increase bicycling in lower Manhattan and the New York Harbor District.

Over three challenging rounds, each team will defend its proposals in front of a panel of expert judges and a live audience. At the end of the evening, the judges will declare a winner, with the most innovative and practical plan for making New York, and New Yorkers, more bicycle-friendly.

The next morning at Battery Park, Mr. Job Cohen, Mayor of Amsterdam – one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world – will convey the prize to the winning team: free Dutch bicycles, courtesy of WORKCYCLES.

I’ll add that, though not noted on the NABS website, those WORKCYCLES bike prizes are being donated in part by Dutch Bike Co, who’ll be opening their Dutch Bike New York City shop in early 2010.

The activities and festivities begin on Friday, 11 September and continue through Sunday 13 september. Check it out at New Amsterdam Bike Slam.

This past week Richard and I made our annual mandatory pilgrimage to zeppelin land Friedrichshafen, Germany for the gargantuan European bicycle industry orgy known as Eurobike. It’s probably the thousandth such bike expo I’ve attended thus my lack of enthusiasm and low expectations. I’ve simply come to learn that it’s pretty much all been done before and for the most part all that changes are the fashion materials (titanium is out, boron is nowhere to be found and carbon nanotubes are in) and attempts to cash in on current trends and themes. More about these later. In any case 99.9999999% of the displays focus on racing bikes, mountain bikes BMX bikes and other sporting goods which, while fun to look at, are irrelevant to this blog and to WorkCycles. As expected I’ll show you some stuff you won’t find in the glossy rags.

Upon arriving at the fairground shuttle bus stop we were greeted by a motley pack of WOOF bikes from Amsterdam via China. These one-trick dogs were introduced with massive press attention a few months ago and have already become the scourge of Amsterdam. You can hardly throw a rock with hitting a fashion victim riding one. Sorry but I just fail to see the attraction to this cheaply made bike missing most of what makes a Dutch bike great, and the feeble output of the built-in LED lights doesn’t do much to sweeten the deal.

Cheaply made you say? How’s this for attention to detail?… Coaster brake only combined with forward entry fork ends, no axle/chain tensioners and not even hard serrated washers to hold the axle in place: Good luck keeping that rear wheel in place and better luck stopping when your wheel slips forward dropping the chain. At least you won’t break the headlamp when you crash.

But that wasn’t the last we saw of WOOF. Again and again they reared their ugly headlamps.

And just when we thought it was safe sailing we found that the WOOF had won (or perhaps purchased) a Eurobike award. The nature of the award I didn’t see nor care. We did note though that the bike displayed on the award stand was completely different from the nasty production models.

If you’re going to make something pointless, please at least do it with a sense of humor such as these grips from OGK in Japan. For those unfamiliar with (or too young to remember) OGK, they’ve been around forever. Back in the day when yours truly rode a BMX bike, OGK made lots of BMX grips as well as helmets and other molded plastic goods.

We’ve got Sumo wrestlers, geisha girls, bacteria and German flags.

Of course OGK didn’t only bring grips to Eurobike. They also displayed the basket type child seats found on Japanese “Mama Chari” bikes. These fully enveloping seats for kids up to about three years old sit within a special handlebar, above a small front wheel. The mass of the child is thus low and roughly centered over the steering axis, making these bikes very easy to handle.

OK, they’re not especially sexy but such child seats offer a lot of advantages:

This concept of “moment of inertia” is one that the designers of the latest crop of fashion “townie” and “porteur” bikes with long, fork mounted front carriers would do well to learn; A load that steers with the handlebar and front wheel influences the steering quite seriously and the further the mass gets from the steering axis the worse the effect. With that simple fact of physics in mind let’s have a look at some bikes I saw at Eurobike:

Nice colors. Bad carriers.

Yes, you faithfully copied what you saw at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show last year. Too bad it’ll ride like crap and won’t stand upright with even a moderate load in there. Bike will fall over many times, damaging pretty paint.

I guess this one doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s sort of a mongrel BMX / folding / delivery bike and it’s been said a million times that mongrels make the best dogs. The handlebar integrated basket appeared at numerous stands but this iteration certainly deserves some style points.

Here’s another handlebar / carrier, smaller than granny’s little wicker basket. Even this fake little houseplant feels claustrophobic in there.

In any case carrying stuff on bicycles was generally a 2009 Eurobike theme, even if it was often executed in a somewhat clumsy or clueless manner. Note that actually riding bicycles for transportation and knowing other people who also do so is very helpful for conceiving and designing utility bicycles and accessories. I realize it sounds crazy but it’s true.

This teeeny, one-rollerblade-wheeled trailer actually folded out of a rear carrier with no less than three hinges. I suppose it probably does what it’s supposed to but that still begs the question: Why bother? Isn’t it simpler to just carry that occasional load, as demonstrated in Holland every day:

This great photo by Flickr user “Kraskland” Thanks!

But wait, there’s more… Such as this special mountain bike specifically developed to haul half pies of frozen pizza:

At least the pizza box is carbon fiber to make it easy to clean if the pizza defrosts before it’s delivered. It wasn’t specified whether there were any carbon nanotube molecules used in the construction.

Considerably less conceptual and more stylish were these lovely matched sets of leather saddles, grips and bags from Selle Monte Grappa in Italy.

Only in Italy.

Not your color theme? How about this chromed Italian city bike outfitted with white everything including tires and probably the most adorable panniers I’ve ever seen. Check out the handlebar stem mounted newspaper holder. Rumor has it that the guy who put the grey kiddie seat on there has already been excommunicated from the Roman Cathocyclic Church.

Only in Italy can one ride such a bike without looking like a pretentious wanker.

Speaking of bicycle child seats, there were lots of new ones to be seen at Eurobike. Those familiar with the exciting world of bike child seats knows that the current options can basically be divided into four categories:

But now Dutch child seat giant Bobike is going where no man has gone before with specially themed seats. This first series is apparently the Star Wars series, featuring the Imperial Storm Trooper and the Darth Vader.

The Storm Trooper model has a particularly ingenious built in ash-tray, perhaps in keeping with the recent Dutch obsession with smoking and the “Asbakfiets”

Just outside was the perfect vehicle for Darth Vader, whom I really can’t picture on any regular bike:

This beast has LED lighting in the handlebar ends, a hubless front wheel to avoid catching long robes (fenders are still in the works), and electric drive to avoid undignified pedaling motions. A perfect way to glide around the Death Star.

It even folds compactly to fit into Lord Vader’s X-Wing fighter.

This is apparently the Storm Trooper version which also offers a pedal mode. Speaking of Vader I hope you’ve seen this Lego animation.

I’ll be back with more great Eurobike finds ASAP.

Pascal, sweetheart Billie Divine and a bunch of other kids participate in one of Kyoko Inatome’s performance art pieces. Transportation arranged with the WorkCycles KDV bicycle kiddy bus.

Check out the slideshow:

Paul Steely White has had a long day

New York celebrity speaker and bike transport advocate Paul Steel White of Transportation Alternatives stood from dawn till dusk on “Drive Your Bike to Work Day” commending bike commuters for their good behavior and imploring them not to join the spawning bike salmon this spring.

Eventually even tireless White couldn’t take it anymore but his WorkCycles Opafiets wasn’t fazed. (Why would it- It’s just a bike!) But rumor has it the Opafiets even continued on for a rendezvous met a certain desirable Omafiets in his neighborhood, saying something about wanting a Brooks saddle.

On Wednesday, May 13th (2009), hoist that bike onto the roof of your car and drive it to work! Celebrate the joys of bike-driving with your fellow road warriors! Put some miles on that under-used eco-transport! Plus, raise awareness about the hazard that affects bike-lovers everywhere. Low clearance garages.