Hanoi has traded most of its bicycles for scooters, paying a steep price in smog and traffic. But there are still bicycles, serving as platforms for the sale of an unbelievable variety of goods.

I have been in Hanoi three times in the last year for work. The last time (just after New Years) I got sort of obsessed with documenting the variety of goods being sold from bicycles – everything from toilet paper to china to socks to fruit to chains and locks.

In a city of 2.6 million people, there’s the necessary population density and street culture to put a viable small business onto a bicycle. Here are a few of the images from three trips:

The Tet or new years holiday was celebrated this week in Vietnam, a time when people use peach blossoms as a traditional decoration. I was there in early January and loved these bicycles peddling and pedaling large branches in full bloom.

The complete set of these images (55 of them) is on the Bikejuju Facebook page. These days I post to the Bikejuju Facebook page a little more frequently than the blog, so you might want to “like” Bikejuju while you are there.

Welcome to the year of the dragon!

PS these images are also on Flickr, and Creative Commons licensed. Help yourself.

Lyanda and I posted a 2012 Gift Guide over on her blog The Tangled Nest. As she writes,

One of the most lamentable things about the corporate takeover of the winter holidays is the co-optation of gift-giving. Presents under the tree have become synonymous with obscene mobs at Walgreens and Best Buy. In an effort to separate ourselves from that scene, many of us seeking a simple, authentic season have declared “no gift” holidays. But here at the Tangled Nest we believe in a middle way. For hundreds of years before Christmas was on the calendar, Europeans celebrated the return of light at the Solstice by sharing gifts–an expression of the beautifully human realization that simple gifts freely given can lift the spirit, and that in the long dark of winter, a little spirit-lifting is essential. We want to re-claim the “sanctity of giving,” and follow our natural heart’s impulse this season by sharing gifts that are simple, beautiful, useful. Here are some of our favorites.

You can read the whole gift guide on her blog, or you can just help fill my innertube fund by buying her book Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom From The Urban Wilderness. (“A completely charming and informative book on the pleasures of keeping one’s eyes open.” – David Sedaris)

(If you buy one of Lyanda’s books as a gift, send her an email with a snail mail address before December 19 and she is happy to send out a personalized, signed bookmark).

A bicycle mechanic strokes his dog inside a storage box on his tricycle as he waits for his customer in Beijing November 24, 2011. (REUTERS/Soo Hoo Zheyang via BoingBoing)

(That’s the caption it came with, but those look like scooter tires to me!)

Recently, a post on the West Seattle Blog described how a cyclist encountered a truck coming towards him in his lane with no intention of stopping, and he was forced to toss his bike and himself over a jersey barrier to avoid being hit. There was some skepticism in the comments, but I knew the exact spot – it’s on my bike commute.

At that particular stretch of road, trucks turning into the port are just a few hundred yards from their destination, when sometimes they get caught in a line of train-stopped traffic that is trying to turn the other way. And they are often overcome by the temptation to cut out of the line, into the oncoming traffic lane, to get to the port entrance, instead of waiting for the train to pass and traffic to move. The problem is, aside from that being illegal, it’s also VERY dangerous – that oncoming traffic lane is hemmed in by Jersey barriers and is the main bike thoroughfare from downtown to West Seattle.

This WILL result in a bad accident if it doesn’t change. So I made a short video that explains the situation visually.

Continuing on the theme of traffic dangers… as you may know, Seattle cyclist Mike Wang was killed this summer while riding in a bike lane on Seattle’s busiest bike commute route on Dexter.  Mike was riding his bike home to his family and was struck by a driver who was turning left onto Thomas, and who fled the scene.  The search is still on for the driver of the vehicle.

On Tuesday, October 18th at the Palace Ballroom, friends, coworkers, community members, and fellow cyclists will come together to remember Mike Wang and the photographic and artistic legacy that he leaves behind.  The evening will feature delicious food from Tom Douglas Restaurants, beverages from local wineries and breweries, and a silent auction of pieces from Mike’s exceptional work as a photographer. Guest speakers include WA State Representative Eric Pettigrew and PATH Vice President, Jackie Sherris.  Radio’s Cathy Sorbo will emcee the evening.  The event will serve as a place to remember, donate, and keep important conversations going by celebrating the work and life of a truly gifted artist.

More information can be found here:  http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/204102

I plan to attend and I hope to see you there.

I’m just back from my second year at the Burning Man festival, where once again I spent a week riding my tallbike across the playa and logging dozens of daily miles exploring what is, for a few days, America’s only no-cars-allowed, perfectly flat, bicycle paradise of a city – 50,000 people this year, almost all of them riding bikes, trikes, and people-powered oddities!

Attending Burning Man last year was the fulfillment of a longstanding dream, and as I wrote a year ago, the experience was an overwhelming cornucopia of sights and sounds and new friendships that passed in a heady blur. This year, I went back again with my tallbike and stayed for two days longer than last year, in order to help build our camp and to see the Temple burn on Sunday. Once again I fell under the magic spell emanating from the glowing ember in the heart of the city, and the hearts of its citizens. But the experience was tempered this year by a little more perspective and introspection. The riding surface was just as flat as ever, but the territory held more ups and downs.

The magic of the playa comes from leaving the world of commerce and connectivity far behind, and plunging with wild abandon and a certain level of anonymity into new experiences, friendships, enchantments, and delights. In Black Rock City you are almost totally free to burn how you want to burn, and for me that involves lots of bike riding, enjoying a comfortable camp of great people, beginning or rekindling a few friendships that will endure in the “default world,” being challenged and awed by some amazing art, being open to surprises and new experiences, staying true to myself in the madness, and dancing and dancing and dancing.

One of my favorite parts of each Burning Man day is a ride at sunset far out onto the playa – the mile-wide circular open space that surrounds The Man and is dotted with artworks large and small. At dusk (like every other time of day) cyclists are everywhere, roaming on all manner of person-powered vehicles, and as the heat subsides, the real beauty and magic of the Black Rock Desert and surrounding mountains briefly eclipses even the most magnificent human creations in the temporary city. A cheer goes up across the playa each evening as the sun sets behind the Granite Mountains to the west.

This year, though, the Temple of Transition gave the natural beauty of the desert a run for its money. A stunningly graceful six-towered temple designed to capture and amplify the city’s emotions, before burning in a silent ceremony on the final night of the festival, this year’s temple shimmered and beckoned on the horizon all week as an open plywood canvas for offerings, memorials, and embellishments of all kinds. I heard more than one arriving burner exclaim “the temple is so close this year!” before they realized that the enormous scale was tricking their perspective, and the temple was once again far behind the man. The temple space was grand, but tiny moments inside the structure’s towers were equally powerful – exploring in respectful silence the lovingly placed little shrines to friends and relatives lost this year, reading wishes and affirmations written in sharpie and paint on the walls and arches, pondering mementos left to be burned, or joining a thousand other burners doing yoga under the cello-like sounds of the enormous Earth Harp strung above the temple entrance.

While there were plenty of amazing bicycles roaming the playa, this year I felt even less like taking their picture. Black Rock City is a participatory place, and for me, waving a camera around feels more like tourism and less like participation. It’s a funny tension, being in such a visual place and not feeling motivated to take many pictures. (And then regretting it later when I want to recall the experience!) Even on the sunset tallbike rides when I did have my camera, I certainly got plenty of opportunities to put the camera aside for a minute and say “you want to try riding it?!”

I won’t try to pretend Black Rock City is perfect, or utopian, or the solution to the world’s problems. What magic it possesses comes in large measure from its ephemeral nature, from stringing together a glowing necklace of seven or eight desert days and nights with fifty thousand other people, and collaboratively building a city from scratch that is specifically designed as a glorious, improvised, temporary, unsustainable blazing flame of connection and shared escape. A brief euphoric eruption of gifting and dancing and playing and making art for each other, to be burned while we dance round the flames before heading back to jobs and news and politics and responsibilities and the simmering crisis that is 21st century life on earth.

This year even as I thrilled at being on the playa, I also found it harder to see past all the waste, the pollution, the generators and the air-conditioned RVs, the disposable plastic Chinese-made blinky lights and glow sticks. The posturing and preening, the fetishization of slim young bodies, the awkward pressures to conform in your non-conformity. There were moments every day when Black Rock City disappointed me, annoyed me, offended me, frustrated me, or made me want to shrug and ride away from the whole affair.

But then I would round a bend and something truly extraordinary would cross my path. An unexpected gift from a stranger expecting nothing in return. A long lost friend emerging from the dust. A public talk by one famous genius or another, with space to engage in real discussion. A thirty foot flaming octopus. A camp giving away snow cones in the heat of the day. A great DJ or musician. A sailing ship complete with masts and rigging.

I spent hours dancing ecstatically to amazing sets of music, surrounded by the grooving energy of thousands, with giant bursts of flame punctuating the beat, and lasers illuminating the sky. I had deep fireside conversations with friends and strangers alike, and came away with new ideas and new connections. I rode across the playa at top speed under the noontime sun with a posse of whooping camp-mates, and I rode alone through the empty star-lit spaces of the deep playa in the dark of a moonless night. The week held a long string of magical and powerful moments and experiences that kept washing my doubts away with joy.

And most powerful of all, perhaps, was the overwhelming sense that no matter the hour, no matter where I was in the city, I was safe, and free, and could turn to almost anyone, in any direction, and expect kindness and engagement in return. That’s a remarkable feeling, and a glow that I hope will continue to spread beyond our wonderful, magical, maddening, flawed, beautiful, ephemeral, annual moment together in the desert.

See you next year!

PS: Sending much loving thanks and gratitude to my awesome camp-mates, and a big shout-out to Giggles who provided the trike, temple dome, and octopus photos.

Other Burning Man posts on Bikejuju.

I was working on adding some bling to the tallbike for Burning Man and I looked down and noticed something interesting.

I’d never really registered before that my old Crescent Wrench was an actual, made-in-the-USA wrench by Crescent Tool of Jamestown, NY.

It’s pretty different from the Chinese knockoff I’ve been using and calling a “Crescent Wrench” since forever. I think I must have inherited this real Crescent Wrench from my grandfather – I got a bunch of tools from him when he passed away. I love the patina and the history of this tool, which has to be one of the most versatile hand tools to have been designed in the 20th century. So I dug up a little more history.

The Crescent Tool Company, was officially incorporated in 1907 by Swedish emigrant Karl Peterson in Jamestown, NY. Although several companies marketed similar tools, the Crescent wrench was very popular and held significant market share.

There’s a whole history of the Crescent Tool Company here.

Because Crescent was acquired by the Crestaloy Company in 1930, my wrench may in fact be a pre-1930 original!

Several people have pointed me to this bamboo trike that has the general look of a 1970s basket weaving class gone awry.

Sez Inhabitat.com:

Designed by Monash University student Alexander Vittouris, the Ajiro utilizes a production process that removes emissions instead of releasing them into the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s because the bamboo structure of this vehicle is grown straight out of the ground into a preformed mold. Vittouris envisions fields of bamboo gardens growing these human powered bicycles, which need only small modifications once mature to hit the streets.

I’m skeptical. For starters the thing steers with the back wheels using those levers that seem to pop up between the rider’s thighs, and pedals like a bigwheel. This eco-bigwheel seems designed for viral blog posts, not for riding. Sure it won a design contest, but I’m gonna remain a skeptic until we see some photos or a video of it actually being ridden and steered. (Or until he comes out with a smaller version that acknowledges its fundamental bigwheel-ness and calls it a children’s toy!)

My friend Josh recently posted build details to his blog about how he’s attached his grain mill to an exercise bike.

Josh blogs:

The whole assembly is made of angle iron with pre-cut holes, held together with 1″ bolts, nuts and split washers. It’s like having a huge erector set to play with, one which requires power tools and has sharp edges.

Claire and I had seen a very similar set-up at the Finn River Farm booth at the Seattle Tilth Harvest Fair last fall.

But Josh used a much classier bike!

With a hat tip to Root Simple for starting the whole “Let’s watch Hungarian videos on YouTube” meme.

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.