Portraits from Panama by photographer José Castrellón.


From the photographer’s website:

The term priti baiks is an evident parody of ‘pretty bikes.’ However priti – widely used among young urban Panamanians – does not exactly mean ‘pretty.’ Something is priti when it possesses an ingenious and striking grace.

José Castrellón’s website. Found via Street Use.

Congratulations to Rwandan cyclist Adrien Niyonshuti, who this past weekend qualified for the summer 2012 Olympics in London. He is the first Rwandan mountain biker ever to qualify for the Olympics.

Adrien, who lost six brothers in the Rwandan genocide, was introduced to bicycle racing through the efforts of Team Rwanda, which first brought mountain bike racing to Rwanda in 2005. He currently rides for South African UCI Continental team MTN Energade.

You can learn more about Team Rwanda in this article or in the forthcoming documentary Rising From The Ashes.

Rising From Ashes from T.C. Johnstone on Vimeo.

Congratulations Adrien!

If you read about bikes online (and you probably do, because you’re reading this) then you know that when the topic is car-bike accidents, the comments often turn toxic. No matter how fresh the accident, how serious the injuries, or how clear-cut the fault, anonymous commenters all too frequently take the opportunity to get truly vicious. I was recently talking about the vitriol of anonymous comments with a friend who is a longtime reporter for the Seattle Times. She rolled her eyes and said “The paper thinks the comments create dialog with readers.”

CC-licensed photo by Flickr user Doviende

On September 12, a cyclist was killed in St Petersburg, Florida. Neil Alan Smith was riding home from his job, as he had done every night for years, when he was killed in a hit-and-run. The driver has not been found. Sadly, this would have merited just an inch or two of space in his local paper, if the comments had not turned immediately, and viciously, toxic. At which point, the paper decided to go a little deeper.

ST. PETERSBURG — About 11 p.m. Sept. 12, a car struck Neil Alan Smith and threw him off his bicycle on Fourth Street N. The car didn’t stop.

Mr. Smith, who was pedaling home from his job as a dishwasher at the Crab Shack, struck his head on a light post.

He was taken to Bayfront Medical Center. He died there six days later. He was 48.

Police have not located the hit-and-run driver.

Shortly after the St. Petersburg Times announced Mr. Smith’s death on its website, a reader posted a comment stating the following: A man who is working as a dishwasher at the Crab Shack at the age of 48 is surely better off dead.

Web editors removed the comment, deeming it an offensive and insensitive insult to a dead man’s friends and family. Though hardly unusual — check out the comments beneath stories about any recent tragedy — this one spurred the Times to make Mr. Smith the subject of this story, as a reminder that every life matters.

This much is certain about Mr. Smith: A number of people miss him.

He had a small but loyal network of co-workers and friends who are planning soon to celebrate his life.

They all describe Mr. Smith as steady and dependable. He rode his bicycle nearly 4 miles each way from the Hollywood Trailer Park on Fourth Street N to the Crab Shack on Gandy Boulevard, where he had worked for the past 10 years. In a business known for turnover, that is considered a long time.

“I’ll probably go through another 10 people to find somebody like him,” said Tyrone Dayhoff, 53, the Crab Shack’s manager.

He started out busing tables and was very fast, but preferred the shelter of his dishwashing station in the back of the kitchen. He could listen to sports talk radio there.

(Read the full obituary here)

And the comments on this longer obituary? They stayed pretty darned civil.

More stories about everyday cyclists on Bikejuju.

I was looking through some old posts and I was struck by this image, so I’m re-posting it. Here is the original post, part of my series about bicycles in Mozambique.

While visiting Pretoria, South Africa recently, I got to know Aaron Todd, the guard who patrols the beautiful jacaranda tree-lined street where my American colleagues are living for a few years.

Aaron, who is from Ghana, works doing bicycle security patrol on a thee-block stretch of Murray Street, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He told me he came to South Africa two years ago in search of economic opportunity, and landed this job.

Aaron is riding a beat up old Maxwheel brand bike provided by the company, and I wouldn’t want to spend 12 hours a day in that saddle. Still, here’s a hack you don’t see every day, he has attached his rubber club to the seat tube with a bungee cord for quick access. (Conveniently there is no longer a front derailleur to get int he way!).

“This is pepper spray,” Aaron tells me. “I only used it one time – there was a thief trying to get into someone’s home and he would not leave. His eyes hurt very badly when I sprayed him.”

On the parallel street one block over, another bicycle patrol man is riding the same three-block stretch, and so on, through the neighborhood. Thanks to South Africa’s insanely high crime rate, this kind of 24-hour security presence is ubiquitous. I borrowed a bicycle and went for a ride around Pretoria, and snapped a small taxonomy of the local security company signs. (Then I got freaked out and went back to my hotel!)

My friends told me that Aaron will only respond if a burglary or incident is occurring at a house that subscribes to the security service Aaron works for, K-9 Security. The houses on the street that are under his protection carry a distinctive sign. This one is also protected by some fierce ankle-nippers.

Aaron is the world’s nicest, gentlest-seeming fellow, and it’s kind of hard to imagine him taking down a hardened criminal, but I enjoyed spending some time with him, riding his three-block circuit together, and taking his photograph. Thanks, Aaron! Stay safe!

There’s a major, month-long international sporting event starting on Friday, one that I’ll be following closely. No, not the World Cup, the Tour Divide, an “ultra-cycling challenge to race self-supported along all 2,745 miles of Adventure Cycling Association’s Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.”

At 9 AM Friday, the racers will roll out of Banff, Alberta, headed for Antelope Wells, New Mexico, on the Mexican border.

This year’s tour is of particular interest to us Seattle cyclists because our friend, fellow bike blogger, and general man-about-town-and-country-on-his-29er-single-speed, Kent “Mountain Turtle” Peterson, is riding his second-ever Tour Divide. Kent first rode in 2005, and held the course record for a single speed mountain bike (22 days) until last year, when the new record of 19 days was set by Chris Plesko. 51-year-old Kent hopes to best that this year, relying on a carefully selected kit of gear for 26 self-supported days and nights on his Monocog bike on the continental divide.

Why twenty six days? Well, because there’s one more detail that’s classic Kent: he rode from Issaquah to the starting line in Banff as a “prologue.” So he’s already been on the road since last Thursday, and reports today from Banff to his wife Christine that that “he feels very good about his fitness, the bike, his pack and camping gear and he’s ready to roll.”

Kent rolls out of Issaquah, accompanied by well-wishers, on his "prologue" ride to Banff.

There are multiple ways to follow Kent and the other Tour Divide riders as they make southward progress, riding a century or more a day for the next three weeks. Several other Seattle riders are also listed on the 2010 start list, and we’ll be tracking and rooting for them too. Each is wearing a beacon that puts them on the online map in real time, and Kent is updating by Twitter and other means whenever possible. Details about how to track Kent are here.

And really, there are only three words that seem appropriate to end with, the three that Kent always uses to close posts on his own poetic cycling blog.

Keep ‘em rolling!

All photos of Kent and his gear borrowed from his blog.

With my penchant for cyclist profiles, especially in Africa, it will come as no surprise that I’m a supporter of the Bicycle Portraits project being undertaken by South African cyclist/photographers Stan Engelbrecht (Cape Town) and Nic Grobler (Johannesburg).

The Bicycle Portraits project was initiated by Stan Engelbrecht (Cape Town, South Africa) and Nic Grobler (Johannesburg, South Africa) early in 2010. Whenever they can, together or separately, they’re on the lookout for fellow commuters, and people who use bicycles as part of their everyday work, to meet and photograph. They’re finding out who rides bicycles, why they ride bicycles, if and why they love their bicycles, and of course why so few South Africans choose bicycles as a transport option. There is no specific range of questions asked, they’d rather just establish a conversation around the rider’s life and where his or her bicycle fits into it.

Velo Vogue has a guest post from Stan about the project. They are raising funds through Kickstarter to publish a book, and time is running out – Kickstarter is a strange model where they won’t get a penny unless they meet their pledge goal of $15,000.

I love these images – the diversity of riders, the natural style in which they are shot, the window into South Africa through bicycles, and the thoughts they capture from each rider alongside the image. They also have a nice little short film on their site on Vimeo, which makes me kind of wish they were making a little documentary along with the book. Clearly they are very handy with a DSLR and an ND filter. Maybe there’s hope for more video? Bicycles are motion.

A little Googling reveals some great images of photographer Stan Engelbrecht riding, a blog-format page at Kickstarter with more information on their other projects, and a hint that Stan might be sticking around.

I encourage you to support the project; it’s got bikjuju in spades.

(PS I head to South Africa later this summer, so email me if you’re in the Joburg area and want to ride, and watch this space for more South Africa content in the coming months. The deep reservoir of Mozambique posts from my March trip has only a few more posts left to share, so it must be time to head back to Africa!)

(PPS post updated to include the video embedded above)

In America, May is Bike Month, and this week is Bike to Work Week. More than half of Americans live within five miles of their workplace, and this annual May focus on cycling is intended to be a spring motivator to get more cyclists riding.

I ride to work. I ride despite the fact that my route is filled with car traffic (and construction to prepare roads to carry more traffic), and despite the four storey parking garage at work having space for just six bicycles, and my workplace, on top of a large hill, having no showers or changing room. Still, I ride to work, and if you can, you should too. Even just sometimes.

On the way home, there’s a beaver pond tucked in behind the low income housing projects. It’s pretty, though I have never seen the beaver. Maybe he does not like the fact that I always call out “Hey, Mister Beaver! Where are you?” as I ride past. Still, as long as I keep riding, I know I’ll see him some day.

But this Bike to Work Week, while pondering what to blog about, riding through the traffic, and down the trail by the pond, it was the charcoal sellers of Mozambique that I kept coming back to.

If you’ve ever driven in rural Africa, this is probably a sight you have seen. Men (and they usually are men) headed into a town or a market to try to sell charcoal (or firewood or sugar cane or poles or other things, but very often charcoal.)

Cooking with charcoal is a widespread practice in many poor countries because, although it de-forests the countryside, fouls the air, and leads to a high rate of pediatric burn accidents, it’s also a cheap and readily available fuel that provides slow, even heat to cook on.

Bringing heavy awkward goods like a bag or two of charcoal to market is the kind of small-scale economic activity that is suddenly made possible when you have a bicycle.

In Nampula, Mozambique where these photos were taken, a bag of charcoal sells for about four US dollars.

In March I met Antonio (right, in grey) and his friends, who had ridden into the middle of Nampula by the main Sunday market. It was late in the day and they still had not sold all their charcoal. Antonio was doing better than his friend, he had sold one of two bags he brought in from the countryside. He showed me how he had added two struts to his locally-built rack to help support the load on his Neelam bike.

So what’s the connection here? Why post about Antonio during Bike to Work week? I guess because I’ve been thinking a lot about how the whole cycling movement in America is a transition out of cars. We’ve over-committed to cars, and we’re trying to dial it back. It will be hard, but we’re making slow progress.

Meanwhile, in many places, maybe in most of the world, people like Antonio are just barely getting by. For many, a bicycle is a big step up. It opens a world of opportunity – to move goods to market, to get to the clinic, to go to school. That’s powerful, and getting bicycles to people who need them is a movement I’m excited to be a part of.

But at the same time, I wonder–beyond just getting bikes in the hands of riders–can we help those emerging economies learn from our mistakes? Will Antonio’s children grow up in a Nampula, Mozambique that is gradually filling with cars, as the middle class emerges? Or is a different vision possible, and evolved vision, where bikes don’t get crowded out by “progress?”

Charcoal as a primary cooking fuel – by all means let’s move beyond that. And I hope Antonio’s children will have more than he has. In no way do I mean to romanticize his life, which is doubtless very difficult and lacks what we would consider basic necessities. But Antonio’s Mozambique is changing. Today it’s filled with bicycles, as I have documented in other posts. And tomorrow? What will progress look like? As the economy matures, and standards of living rise, will there still be space for bicycles?

I hope there will always be space for bicycles.

•  •  •

(This is part of a series of Bikejuju posts about bicycles in Mozambique. Find all the Mozambique posts here. Or more broadly, all the Bikejuju African bike posts are here.)

I have always loved this image, and have posted it before in other contexts. I recently got a few more details from Michael Linke at Bicycle Empowerment Network Namibia about the young woman, Patricia. It’s a great story.

Michael writes,

The young woman pictured, Patricia !Auxas (the exclamation mark is there for correct pronunciation in the Damara language) was a mechanic with the JOY Centre Bicycle Shop in Otjiwarongo, and is now studying at the University of Namibia through a bursary paid for through profits from the bike shop. The JOY Centre supports former street kids in the town, and has used bike shop profits to purchase a pick-up truck, build more accommodation and support food and educational costs for its programmes. The bike shop is part of a network of 22 shops established with community based partners by BEN Namibia in partnership with Bicycles for Humanity.

I think Bicycle Empowerment Network (BEN) Namibia is a great organization, and I encourage you to learn more about them.

This Mothers Day weekend, a salute to the mothers who tote their kids around town in and on various kinds of mutant, youngster-friendly cycles. And a special tip of the hat to those of you who blog about it, inspiring others through your words, images, example.

Anne from Car Free Days.

The boys from the Hands Full blog.

Jasper in his Most Civilized Conveyance.

There are lots of wonderful blogs being kept by cycling families – I’ll start with this fine list from Julian’s blog TotCycle, which is a great resource. Give these blogs a click, and feel free to post any I missed in the comments.

• A Most Civilized Conveyance
• Bakfiets.co.uk
• CafeMama
• Car Free Days
• Car Free with Kids
• Carfree Families Column
• Full Hands
• Four on a Quarter
• Humans 4,Cars 0
• JP Bike Research
• Roanoke Carfree With Kids
• Kids. Bikes. Dads.
• Tacoma Bike Ranch
• The Bakfiets Cargobike
• The Wheel American Family
• Totally Smitten Mama
• The Family Adventure Project
• Towsey French

But mostly, Mothers Day gives me an excuse to feature this excellent video recently posted by Seattle bike-blogging compatriots Car Free Days and borrowed shamelessly for your viewing pleasure. They write:

Now that our kids are getting older, they don’t always ride on the back of the Xtracycles. They are both confident road riders and are quite capable of riding their own bikes. But, sometimes they take a ride on the Snapdeck. Usually because it’s night or we’re traveling farther than they think they can ride or our destination requires pedaling on busy roads or they just feel like chilling on the back of the bike with a book.

When they choose to be a Snapdeck passenger, I usually tell them to wear running shoes. Cause even the most seasoned Snapdeck rider needs to get off, stretch his/her legs and take a little run from time to time:

Happy Mothers Day!