Wednsday Night Bike Tours

Every Wednesday night (every other when school is on) dozens or hundreds of cyclists meet at 6:45 p.m. at the Welcome bike shop on Calle 92 and Carrera 11, in north Bogotá, and then head out for a good-natured Ciclopaseo de los Miercoles. The Ciclopaseos usually last several hours and pass through some obscure and even sketchy parts of the city.

The best thing about the rides is the celebration of cycling in mass, as well as a cycling demonstration of bicycle power! They are the nearest thing Bogotá has to its own Critical Mass.

This week, the Ciclopaseo visited Bogotá Bike Tours.

Forget About Carbon Fiber!

Dario, a Colombian native, has bicycle toured for about three years on his light, mean machine, complete with a four burner electric stove, a beer crate full of belongings and a bulletin board of newspaper articles tacked on the back. Each place he goes, he works in painting or repairing shoes to pay his way to the next place. 'It's the best way to see the country,' he said.

Dario's spent three years traveling and pedaled to Brazil and plans to go to Ecuador.

 

This blog by Mike Ceaser of Bogota Bike Tours

The Shortsighted National Bicycle Congress

It's time for the National Congress of Bicycles, when everybody working in the industry - or at least the manufacturers and retailers - get together to - market more bicicletas!

The bicycle industry appears to carry real economic weight in Bogota - go down Jimenez Ave. and you'll find the city's 'bicycle row' - many blocks crowded mostly with bike shops, and many businesses, including some big ones such as beer companies, use bikes or tricycles to do deliveries. Yet, bikes aren't very visible in advertising. Open the paper or turn on the TV, and it's all about cars, cars, cars (and tobacco and liquor).

However, the biggest failing of the industry, it seems to me, is the lack of notable efforts to promote a cycling culture. Related to this, I suspect, is Colombia's unequal distribution of wealth - a lot of people (over 40 %) are poor, and a small proportion are very, very rich. And Colombians are very class conscious!

Many low-income people ride bikes to work, or for work, just because it saves them money. But the bicycle industry takes them for granted. These people HAVE TO buy bikes. And, anyway, they use cheap or used bikes, which generate small profit margins, if any at all. Rather, it's the rich who buy the pricey, high-margin Treks, Cannondales and aluminum frame bikes. This is the expanding market and the one retailers chase after.

But these cyclists don't ride their bikes to work: Don't be silly! That makes you look like a poor person! These folks drive their cars to work and then load the bikes onto them on weekends for a pedal around the countryside.

So, what we really need here are more cars to load those bikes onto.

Call the bike industry's focus on selling short-term thinking. Perhaps someday Bogota could be like Portland, San Francisco or Amsterdam, with reams of yuppies pedaling to work on their Dahons. But that's a long way off. So, why bother to work toward it?

Looking at the Bicycle Congress's agenda, I see talks by economists, a bicycle race announcer, an expert in customer relations. I see nothing about transit or commuting - which is natural, if these bikes are never intended to touch an urban road.

Bamboo Bikes Come to Colombia!

The new wave in bike manufacture is one of the oldest building materials known to humanity - bamboo! 

Bike builders say that bamboo has great flexibility and strength characteristics, which mean bamboo can turn into all sorts of bikes, including even high-preformance racers. Now it turns out that someone in Medellin is building bicicletas de bambu. It'll be nice if someone finally starts building hi-performance bikes in Colombia, particularly if they're made from an environmentally-friendly material.

It'll be even better, however, if someone starts making practical cargo and basic transport bikes out of bamboo. It's being done in Africa. Why not here?

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogota Bike Tours

Steal my Bike!

The other day at Bogota Bike Tours we negligently left a bike outside, leaning against the wall. Predictably, someone came by and grabbed it and took off.

I rode around on my bike searching for the guy, but no luck. Where might a bike thief head? I rode down Jimenez Ave., which is one of Bogotá's 'bike shop rows.' Many stores there sell fancy new bikes - and a few sell nice used bikes at unreasonably low prices. Everybody knows that most of these bikes are stolen. (When I had first moved to Bogotá, I innocently went to one of these shops and bought a cheap bike. But when I took the bike to a nearby workshop to have it tuned up, the folks there informed me that it was most likely stolen. So I looked at the owner's card they'd given me and discoverd that the name on it was a (probably nonexistent) shop in Medellin. I took the bike back, and, by threatening them with troubles with the cops, got my money back. Then I bought a new bike, which got stolen soon after.)

So, I headed down to the stolen bike strip, where, lo and behold, one of the shopowners was standing in his doorway holding my bike, which he'd just purchased.

"This is my bike," I said, putting my hand on the handlebar.

"Well, I just bought it." He wasn't sympathetic.

"It was just stolen from me," I said, angry.

"If you want it, then pay me what I paid for it. 50,000 pesos (about $27.00)."

"You give it back to me," I insisted, "or you'll have trouble with the police. You shouldn't buy things which are stolen."

"Just take it," he relented with disgust.

A funny story, but also a pathetic one.  I read that in San Francisco, California, the police plan to do a sting operation, which will involve placing tracking devices in bikes to be used as lures. When those bikes get stolen, the cops will track them to find out who's fencing the stolen bikes.

Here in Bogotá we don't need a sting op with expensive tracking devices. I and lots of other people know exactly who is dealing in stolen bikes. Why don't the cops do anything?

The State of Bogotá's Ciclorutas

Bogotá has what is called the largest network of bicycle routes on the continent. But it's no secret that many of them are in lousy shape, as El Tiempo newspaper reports.
http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/bogota/alarma-por-estado-de-ciclorrutas_7753741-1

But, at least Bogotá does have a network of bike ways, even though a good number of them are barely usable, due to disrepair or because they're blocked by pedestrians and delivery vehicles.

Once again, more than repair potholes, Bogotá needs to make fundamental changes, such as taking away street space from cars and giving it to bikes. And reducing pollution and traffic chaos. And teaching motorists to respect other, non-motorized vehicles.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogota Bike Tours

License to Drive = License to Kill?

Ten years ago, Fabián Rolando Méndez ran over and killed a cyclist.

On April 10 of this year, driving his truck drunk, Mendéz crashed into a woman and three girls, injuring all of them, two of the girls severely.

Today, after two months in prison, Méndez, of the city of Bucaramanga, is back on the street. The lawyer representing the victims said: "Mr. Mendez didn't want to injure, or much less kill, these girls. It was an accident."

And Mendéz did apologize - so, we should feel sorry for him. After all, how many drivers have the bad luck to have four pedestrians and a cyclist get in their way in only a dead - especially when they are driving drunk, and so have limited control. The pedestrians should have known better. 

Sarcasm aside, a judge reduced Mendez's charges, so that he's now out of jail, even though at least two of his maimed victims are still in the hospital, having reconstructive surgery.

Ask yourself: If Mr. Mendez had been using a chainsaw, a gun, a hammer or a knife and gotten drunk and injured four people, after having killed one person the same way, would they have called it an accident? 

What about if Mendez had been a taxi driver or construction worker, instead of a member of a prominent family, and ex-director of the city's Sports and Recreation Institute?

What if Mendéz's victim had been driving an expensive truck himself?

But, when the weapon is a car or truck and the person wielding it is influential and the victims simple pedestrians or cyclists, then killing or maiming are evidently forgiveable mistakes in Colombia.

Méndez's crime moved local residents to march through Bucaramanga demanding justice for the injured woman and girls.  There's even a Facebook group demanding that Mendéz pay for what he did.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogota Bike Tours