Good drivers, bad cyclists and a new kind of traffic

Published in the November/December 2009 issue of Momentum: the magazine for self-propelled people.

Do bicycles change the way we communicate?

With no windshields to mute it, this traffic talks to itself.

I was really looking forward to my dental appointment – the adjustment to my night-guard would be pain-free; but more importantly, I would enjoy a long ride across town on one of Vancouver’s traffic-calmed commuter bike routes to get there. I hadn’t done a good spin on it since before I’d left to live and cycle in India a year ago. When I returned I worked from home and – you’ll only hear this from a cyclist – I no longer commuted as much as I wished. I was curious: had traffic changed while I was away?

I set out in golden autumn air that shimmered off storefronts selling felt hats and pumpkin spice lattes.  One foot on the road, one foot on my pedal, I waited for a green light at a busy intersection. A coal-gray Pathfinder pulled up along side me at the white line.

“Hey, hello,” called the burly driver across his girlfriend in the passenger seat. I peered into the open window of the SUV, not quite sure what to expect.

Willie Weir: confessions of an adventure cyclist

[Published in the September/October 2009 issue of Momentum: the magazine for self-propelled people.]

Bicycle traveler’s new book describes experiences, not logistics

Writer, radio commentator and advocate Willie Weir has cycled over 60,000 miles around the globe

“I am not an avid cyclist,” admits Willie Weir in his new book Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist, “I am an avid traveler who has discovered that cycling is the best way to see the world.”

Weir is an award-winning writer, radio commentator and advocate in Seattle who has cycled over 60,000 miles around the globe. He writes a column about living and traveling by bicycle for Adventure Cyclist, a colorful magazine mailed to members of the nonprofit, Montana-based Adventure Cycling Association.

True to the association’s mission to “inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle for fitness, fun, and self-discovery,” Weir’s writing describes the experience of riding a bicycle rather than the logistics. His new book is a collection of his columns, and nowhere in the paperback’s pages does this seasoned bicycle traveler even mention mileage, equipment, routes or the type of bike he rides.

Instead, Weir describes facing fear and finding adventure; guardian angels and going the wrong way; the kindness of strangers; communicating without a word; and the privilege of travel.

Cycle Goa, India with Hostelling International

[Published in the August 2009 issue of Goa Today Magazine]

Backroads “Slow Goa” tour targets cyclists and activists

YHAI cycle expedition takes an early start out of Assolna, Goa (click to view photo gallery)

Visitors have toured Goa by car, motorbike, bus, boat and train; but now – thanks to the Goa Branch of Youth Hostels Association of India (YHAI) and Sports Authority of Goa – adventurers and activists can learn about the state’s natural beauty and social issues from the seat of a bicycle.

Says Panjim-based Program Director Manoj Joshi, who added a series of seven-day, 360-kilometre bike expeditions to YHAI’s popular trekking programmes last year, “We wanted to create a tour with the activist in mind. Cycling is a sport for people who have an awareness of environmental and development issues. This expedition shows beaches, nature, and water falls but it also shows how Goa is being deforested; how the greed of the few is displacing families, and the rape of the nature.”

To that end, Joshi and his team volunteered months of their time researching equipment, attractions and routes. In 2008, they provided five groups of twenty cyclists with knapsacks and 24-speed mountain bikes for a circular route that reached as far east as the Karnataka border. Starting from Panjim (Goa’s capital city), youngsters and grandfathers alike pedaled south along the Arabian Sea on Colva-area beaches, east through Balli’s terraced paddy fields and Cavrem’s mining villages; up into the ecologically significant Western Ghat mountains; and then west along the freighter-trafficked Mandovi River past Old Goa (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and back into Panjim.

Along the way, cyclists stayed in rooms in Assolna’s sports complex, lodges in Netravali’s Tanshikar Spice Farm, tents near Dudsaghar Falls in Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary, and dorms in Bondla Wildlife Sanctuary. Extra side trips included Budbudyanchi Talli (Bubbling Lake) at Gopinath Temple; a forest trek and swim at Savari Falls; a zoo tour of cobras, guars and leopards in Bondla Wildlife Sanctuary; and a visit to the Bom Jesus Cathedral in Old Goa.

The YHAI Goa Biking Expedition runs December/January of each year and is open to anyone who is a member of Hostelling International or Youth Hostels Association of India (YHAI). Joshi estimates the 2009/2010 fees will be Rs 3000 ($61 USD) for Indians and Rs 5000 ($102 USD) for foreign visitors. Bicycles, rucksacks, safety equipment, accommodation, and meals are all included in the price of the trip. For more information contact Manoj Joshi, Sports Authority of Goa,
or visit YHAI’s web site at www.yhaindia.org.

• Photos: 2008 YHAI bike tour in Goa, India
• Stories: 2008 YHAI bike  tour in Goa, India
• Girl Gone Goa – tales of travel, sex, magic and cycling

Social media sprout a social cycle club

How an average cyclist became an accidental activist in India

[Published in the July/August 2009 issue of Momentum Magazine.]

An early ride of the Goa Cycle Club

Here in Vancouver, Canada, I consider myself just another person in the city who rides a bike. I keep a pretty low profile compared to the cycling artists and advocates I admire. But something radical happened when I bought an Atlas bicycle, rode it, and wrote about riding it in Goa, India for six months. I became an accidental activist.

“Hi Ulrike,” wrote a reader in response to one of my Girl Gone Goa blog stories, “We’ve recently returned from the UK, to resettle here. I’ve brought back a bike, but as it needs some basic work, I’ve not begun pedalling here. Everyone here tells me I’d be crazy to try, so it’s good to hear of your experiences.”

“We” was Luis Dias and his wife Chryselle. They were Goan and keen to ride, though eight-month-pregnant Chyselle admitted she’d need to have the baby first. Luis and I headed to the Panjim ferry jetty and cycled and chatted along the Mandovi River. He said he was looking for a community project to dig his teeth into.

Cycling Culture in Vancouver

Published in the Spring 2009 issue of Vancouver Review, a nationally distributed quarterly magazine that focuses on ideas, culture and arts from Canada’s West Coast.  A collaboration with Museum of Vancouver’s June – September 2009 exhibit Velo-City: Vancouver and the Bicycle Revolution.

• Listen to Ulrike Rodrigues and JJ Lee discuss cycling style and fashion on CBC  Radio One’s Fashion Mondays (YouTube audio, 6:30 minutes).
• Read what The Business of Fashion editor Imran Amed has to say on Vancouver’s new Fashion Cycle
  

It’s the New Normal

By Ulrike Rodrigues

Three things happened in Vancouver’s bike scene  in 1991: Lance Armstrong won the Gastown Grand Prix, Richard Campbell founded Better Environmentally Sound Transportation, and an elderly gentlemen on Bidwell Street sold me his silver Nishiki bike for $300.

I didn’t know anything about Lance, BEST, or Vancouver, but I did know the quickest way to acquaint myself with my new city was to touch it – metre by metre – with the treads of a bicycle. Starting from my new home on Guelph Street (the same name as the Ontario city I’d just departed) and armed with a vague BC Transit map, I surveyed my Mount Pleasant neighbourhood on two wheels.

In the following months, my circles widened and I became familiar with the alleys, warehouses, dirt lots and secret gardens that radiated out from Main and Broadway. I ventured across each of the three False Creek bridges and joined segments of paths that followed the water’s edge. They led me to even more cycling adventures: soft, wooded paths in Stanley Park; goldenrod-lined dykes near Science World; breezy, crunchy gravel on Locarno Beach; and a maze of hard-packed forest dirt in the UBC endowment lands.

“It’s like hiking through the forest!” I marveled as each pedal stroke revealed a new turn of trees, “Only faster! And funner!” I was ten again – on my Supercycle, a lettuce-and-mayonnaise sandwich in my blue plastic basket, shoe laces coming untied, hands wrapped around white plastic grips with blue-and-white striped streamers.

I was free, flying, laughing out loud, grinning at dogs. I was in a new city – Vancouver! – and in a familiar place – on a bicycle! It was so simple. Could it get any better than this?

Bike-Friendly Guelph Initiative on Earth Day

Bicycling in Guelph something to celebrate

Published in the April 21, 2009 feature section of Canada’s Guelph Tribune, a Metroland Media Group Ltd. publication.

"What traffic?!" I wondered.

Guelph, Ontario — I blame it all on Guelph. Long before I cycled for adventure in Western Canada, the United States, Mexico, Belize, Cuba, Thailand, Laos, New Zealand, England and Goa, India, I cycled in Guelph.

My family moved to Guelph in August of 1975 and I quickly discovered that though the high school I attended was less than five kilometres away, it took most of an hour to reach it by public bus. I suffered this for a few years, but one Sunday curiosity and stubbornness led me and my bicycle onto a dirt road, past a quarry, under a highway and behind the football field of Centennial Collegiate. It was fun, easy and took less than 30 minutes. I was hooked.

“Slow Food” bike tour in Pemberton, B.C.

Sample locally-grown produce and West Coast scenery by bicycle

Slow Food Cycle Sunday is a free one-day tour organized by the community of Pemberton (north of Whistler, Canada) to increase awareness and appreciation of their growers and suppliers. This year more than 2100 cyclists cycled the 50 kilometers of country roadway that linked 12 participating farms.

View photos of Slow Food Cycle Sunday 2008

From the Slow Food Cycle Sunday web site:

“The World Watch Institute reports that the average food item eaten in North America has traveled 2500-4000 km from farm table. The distance between good food and your table is as short as a 26km bike ride.

Sea to Sky’s signature agritourism event, Slow Food Cycle Sunday Pemberton blows the fast-food drive-through away. A pedal-powered trip through the natural buffet that is Pemberton Meadows farmland, to meet local growers and sample produce fresh from the field.

Next year’s event is scheduled for August 16, 2009.

Alberta’s Trans Canada Trail and Iron Horse Trail

Western province showcases its TCT urban paths and rail trails

The province of Alberta is the largest per capita donator to Canada’s nation-wide, multi-use Trans Canada Trail, and perhaps as a result it boasts not one but four Alberta TCT routes. I was invited to explore two sections of the trail by very different means: by bicycle on Edmonton’s River Valley Parks, and by all-terrain vehicle (ATV) on northeastern Alberta’s Iron Horse rail trail.

Edmonton’s River Valley Parks

With 460 parks, the city of Edmonton boasts the largest expanse of urban parkland in North America. Twenty-two parks comprise the “ribbon of green” that lines the North Saskatchewan river, and the Trans Canada Trail joins over 150 kilometres of total urban bike trails.

Accordingly, Edmonton’s bike community is active and ardent. Visit Alberta’s capital city for their annual Bikeology festival every June; drop by the Edmonton Bicycle Commuter Society’s non-profit Bike Works shop; or join a “Show N Go” ride with the friendly members of the Edmonton Bicycling and Touring Club.

View photos of Edmonton City Cycling: River Valley Trail, North Saskatchewan bridges, Bike Works, Earth’s General Store, and Bikeology’s “mocktails on the bridge” event (20 images).

Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail

It’s taken 10 municipalities more than 3 decades to transform almost 300 kilometers of abandoned rail bed into a visitor-friendly section of the Trans Canada Trail, but they did it.

Thanks to the grassroots efforts of individuals (Riverland Recreational Trail Society) and communities (Muni-Corr), Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail (AIHT) now passes through boreal forest, farmland, and wild animal habitat to connect 15 historic towns in the province’s northeastern “Lakeland” region.

Still in progress and partly a wilderness trail, the Iron Horse caters primarily towards equestrians, snowmobilers and ATV’rs at the moment. That may go against the Trans Canada Trail’s non-motorized use philosophy, but bear in mind that it’s these community users who have maintained the trails over the years and worked so passionately to preserve it. In conversation with the townspeople along the route (in Heinsburg, Elk Point, St. Paul, Bonnyville, Fort Kent and Cold Lake) I was convinced that they are very excited about welcoming hikers and bikers as the trail moves towards completion.

All the trail’s staging areas provide water and toilets for example; and food and accommodations are not far away. I was particularly impressed by the tiny town of Elk Point which has blue prints for an off-the-grid “green” visitor and community centre.

View photos

At this point organizers suggest that though it is considered an unsupervised backcountry, the trail nevertheless demonstrates a community-supported legacy experience along Alberta’s oldest and longest continuous trail.

View photos of Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail: Heinsburg, Elk Point, St. Paul, Bonnyville, Glendon, Fort Kent, Cold Lake.

Klunkerz: Billy Savage’s MTB flick goes DVD

Now on film: the bikes, parties and people that made mountain bike history

It’s not something you should watch by yourself, Klunkerz. The independently written and produced DVD by fat-tire aficionado Billy Savage recounts mountain biking’s California days in the ’70’s and takes you there so vividly — with tons of footage, still photos, and interviews with a bunch of guys (and a couple of girls) who drank beer, smoked pot and then got on their damned bikes — that you and your friends will want to join in.

Wendell, Karen, Ian, Paul, Andrew and I didn’t light up, but we did crack a few beers in my living room one Friday night as we gathered to watch Savage’s flick. Finally on disk, Klunkerz has sold out theatres, won awards, and no doubt brought tears to a few MTBer’s eyes as it screened in the film, bike and sport circuits.

Filmmaker Savage demonstrates a genuine knowledge of the bikes, and rapport with the people who first dragged their heavy ’40’s and ’50’s-era Schwinns up a San Francisco-area mountain for kicks. Not only do many of the Mount Tamalpais riders — Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher, Tom Ritchey et al. — do screen time, but they share their stories and video footage with him in a way that feels trusted and intimate.

Not just talking heads, the film lingers on the stuff us riders love: the bikes, the parties and the trails that made Marin County famous. You actually see the 1.8 miles of fire road that the riders ate up (or ate them up, as injuries were frequent), the grease smoke coming off the hubs, and the keg-parties that fuelled the whole thing.

The editing is so sharp that the riders practically finish each others’ sentences. You get a real sense of their excitement and you’re reminded that at mountain biking’s heart, the message is universal: riding a bike is super fun, and you ought to try it.

Our gang really picked up on that. In discussion afterwards, Ian was stoked to see how how fun — rather than equipment — created the scene. Wendell liked seeing the riders’ passion turn into something huge, and Paul (an MTB Hall-of-Famer himself) was impressed by the amount of history that the film dug up that he hadn’t heard before. And I felt affirmed by how writers and photographers like Wende Cragg, Jacquie Phelan and Dogtown’s Ray Flores can play an important part in recording a movement and spreading the word.

Visit the Klunkerz web site at www.klunkerz.com to chat with Savage and order your own copy. For more on the history, I recommend the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame web site.

Published in the May/June 2008 Momentum Magazine.

A “gonzo” rail and bike trip around Western Canada

Being on a train is like riding a bicycle: it’s slow, social, historic, and rebellious

What is it about trains? And what was it about a train journey into western Canada that yanked on my heart hard enough to make my eyes water? That wasn’t the idea. When we first batted the idea around, Momentum editor Amy Walker and I played with a “gonzo car-free road trip” that would see me, a buddy, and a couple of bikes onto a few trains and into a few communities for laffs and blog stories.

To select a route I pored over road atlases and train brochures and happily found that, not only can you circle the region by train (as opposed to just going across), but that two rail providers ~ Rocky Mountaineer Vacations and VIA Rail Canada ~ are wowing the tourists doing just that.

Now, I’ve travelled by bike and train in Thailand, New Zealand and the U.S.; but it wasn’t until California-based Dahon put a couple of tour-ready folding bikes into my hands that I even considered doing it at home.

Folding bikes lead to greener pastures

Published in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Momentum Magazine

Dahon’s Speed TR and MU XL fold in 15 seconds for bus and rail travel

The Speed TR's 24 speeds get you to the summit (click to view photos of this trip).

“Hey!” bellowed a voice across the Jasper train platform, “Is that one of those collapsible bikes?” Michelle and I had just gotten off VIA Rail’s westbound line and while she and her Dahon MU XL lounged at Freewheel Cycle, I was left to unfold my Dahon Speed TR surrounded by panniers, helmets and curious tourists in the shadow of the station.

“Yes, it is,” I said patiently over my shoulder. We were halfway through our four-week rail-and-bike exploration of western Canada, and our pair of tour-ready folding bikes never ceased to draw stares and questions.

“What’s something like that cost?” the American asked, stepping closer.
“Folding bikes range in price from $200 to $2000,” I replied. “Do you want to see me fold it?”
“Oh yeah!” he gushed.
“Great!” I straightened up, “That’ll be ten bucks!”

Gary Fisher: down from the mountain

Mountain biking scenester sees fun and profit in city cycling trend

It’s not unusual for a few of us at Momentum to gather around a table at Gastown’s Irish Heather, order some meat pies and Kilkennies, and brainstorm on cures for the common car. What made it unusual one rainy night last November was that the most fervent ideas came from Gary Fisher.

Fisher was in town for the weekend to help Cap’s Bicycle Shop celebrate their 75th birthday (they were the first shop in Canada to carry Gary Fisher’s fledgling line of mountain bikes back in 1980) and as he put it, “I picked up a copy of Momentum at a bike shop, read it, and went “wow!”

“It felt really good,” relates the bike industry veteran on why he requested a meet-up, “It was people who had the right attitude ~ and I thought I’d just try to investigate.” Being “investigated” by Gary Fisher is kind of like being offered a drink by a Sony Music A&R rep. The man’s talking your language and you’re charmed by the attention, but you kind of wonder where his hands have been.

Same place as yours, it turns out: wrapped around bicycle grips and bullhorns. Only, he’s Gary Fisher and he literally invented the term “mountain bike”. He’s very successfully sold the mountain bike lifestyle to the world-at-large, and now he says he’s wants to do the same for urban cycling.

“Okay,” you say as the waiter slides a fresh pint in front of you, “I’m listening.”

New Zealand photo gallery

“Why cycle North Island?” asks an incredulous Auckland bike mechanic

True: it’s expensive, hilly, and the cars drive really fast. But I cycled a few areas of the North Island independently for a month and discovered that from a bicycle seat it’s the little details and moments that make it worthwhile.

Mamaku, North Island, New Zealand

New Zealand North Island travelogues (photos with commentary)

Coromandel Peninsula including: Miranda Road, Pipiroa, Thames, Tararu, Pauanui, Tairua, Whitianga, Kuaotunu, Coromandel Town and the Kawau Kat ferry into Auckland (50 photos).

Central region including: Auckland, Papakura, Pukehohe, Tuakau, Pukekawa, Huntly, Waingaro Hot Springs, Raglan, Hamilton, Cambridge, Lake Karapiro, Tirau, Mamaku, Rotorua, Murupara, Galatea, Taupo, Tarawera, Te Pohue, Eskdale, Napier, Wellington, and a Tranz Scenic train to Auckland (200 photos).

Tarawera

Raglan

Rotorua

Lake Taupo

Joe Breeze: on naked bikes and self-propelling prophecies

MTB pioneer admits trail biking was a “diversion” from his real passion

It’s not even lunch time yet and Joe Breeze has already blown my mind. Breeze ~ who with Gary Fisher, Tom Ritchey, and other Mountain Bike Hall-of-Famers basically invented the sport ~ has just admitted over the phone that if he hadn’t been so distracted by that whole fat-tire repack thing, he might have gotten down to what he really wanted to do a whole lot sooner: design commuter bicycles.

“The off-road thing was a diversion from my plan,” admits the creator of Breezer Bikes from his Marin County work space, “It wasn’t part of the script. It just happened…like life.”

“My interest in city bikes came long before mountain bikes,” he explains. “My father commuted to his job in the 1950’s by bike, so I grew up aware of that aspect of bikes.” Breeze rode to school and around his neighbourhood as a kid, but it wasn’t until the 17-year-old bike-toured in Europe that his eyes opened to bike transportation culture.

Says Breeze, “Nowhere was this so pronounced as in Holland with their extensive bicycle thoroughfares, cloverleaf interchanges and bicycle traffic signals….I thought, ‘We’ve got to do this in America!’”

Joe returned home inspired, and got involved in the beginnings of the region’s bicycling infrastructure. Perhaps more significant to the history of cycling, he also paid five bucks for a beat-up 1941 Schwinn Excelsior and turned it into what would eventually be called a “mountain bike“.

Cycling Belize’s temple-to-temple tour

Tour d’Afrique founder takes bike travelers on a 7-day, 750-km race through the jungle

Sunrise at Caracol in the Mayan Mountains

Caracol, Belize — Eight cyclists scrambled up the moonlit stone steps of Caana, Caracol’s tallest temple, to assemble under its curved ceiling of night sky, contemplate its 1,300-year-old ghosts, and practise the Downward Facing Dog.

Yellow, our group’s bike mechanic, sits a few steps above us with four headlamps strapped to his head. He illuminates Taj’s movements as she patiently guides our wisecracking group from one yoga pose to another.

At the beginning of the eighth century, about 150,000 people, 30,000 structures and 88 square kilometres of bustling Mayan civilization would have surrounded us. Now, only howler monkeys and the dark, tropical jungle of Belize bear witness to our awkward attempts to raise our tail bones. It’s taken five days and almost 500 kilometres of pedalling to get to this remote mountain plateau and we’re goofy and giddy, but not untouched by the sacredness of this place. The ghosts will make sure of that.

“Did any of you sleep up there?” asks a groundskeeper the next morning, sternly motioning up at the pyramid’s site. This is a touchy topic for Michael de Jong, the Toronto-based organizer of this Temple To Temple bike event. He negotiated for six months with the archeology department of Belize’s National Institute of Culture and History to gain permission for our group of 30 cyclists and support staff to camp here.

Two riders, Anthony and Stephanie, pause in their packing, and the groundskeeper shakes his head. “If you sleep up there,” he warns, “your parts will fall off!”
Everyone cracks up, though Anthony looks as if he’s not sure if this joke might apply to his bike or his body.

Belize photo gallery

Paved roads join Mayan temples to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east

Belize is a small country in Central America, just south of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula (“Mayan Riviera”). I traveled by bicycle in Belize for three weeks in January 2006 to sightsee as well as participate in an adventure race called “Temple To Temple”.

Caye Caulker, Belize, Central America (Click to view photo gallery)

Belize travelogues (photo galleries with commentary):

Independent bike travel in: Belize City, Caye Caulker, Belize Zoo, the Coastal Highway, Gales Point, Dangriga, Hopkins village and the Placencia Peninsula.

Temple to Temple bike race including: Placencia village, The Placencia hotel (race start), the Toledo district (Conejo, Bella Vista, Lubaantun temple), Hopkins village, the Coastal Highway, Jaguar Paw, Mountain Pine Ridge, Caracol temple, San Ignacio, Western Highway, Caves Branch, Hummingbird Highway, and the race finish.

Western highway	Caye Caulker	Barrier reef
Lubantuun temple	Unitedville	Humingbird Highway

All images © 2008 Ulrike Rodrigues.

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Nootka Sound aboard the cargo ship M.V. Uchuck

Cycle across Vancouver Island, then soak up the history on a working vessel

When people ask why I go where I go, I tell them it’s “part curiosity and part stubbornness”. The curiosity part is usually prompted by a map. My Vancouver Island Backroads Mapbook, for example, shows an east-west Highway 28 between Campbell River and Gold River that ~ by following a river valley ~ allows a shorter and more level crossing of the mountainous island than Tofino’s trafficked Highway further south.

More intriguing still, when the solid line of highway ends at Gold River’s pier, a dashed line takes up the roadway’s westerly route and continues into the water! It heads west towards the village of Yuquot, then curls around Nootka Island to head northwards into long, fingerly inlets with names like Tahsis, Esperanza and Zeballos.

Central Valley Greenway for cycling

Vancouver area multi-use trail offers a bushwhack to bikers willing to explore

The name “Still Creek” may not quicken the pulse of southern B.C.’s white water paddlers; but the blackberry thorns that line the tributary’s urban bike trail are sure to draw blood from a Lower Mainland peddler or two.

Greenway looks like a country lane between Gilmore and Willingdon

Not only is Still Creek one of Vancouver’s original city streams, but it actually flows away from the ocean and toward the Fraser River. While municipal planners pore over a 50 year plan to rehabilitate the historic watershed; a Vancouver-based collection of cycling advocates have ~ with the support of VanCity, Translink, Transport Canada, and other private and public organizations ~ scratched up enough funding, support and publicity in six years to slam a multi-use trail down along its course.

When it’s signed, sealed and landscaped in March of 2007, the 22-kilometre Central Valley Greenway will span Vancouver, Burnaby, and New Westminster and offer those cities’ residents an chance to travel to workplaces, shopping centres, schools, and transit stations without their cars; more Greenway, less Kingsway.

Until then, adventurous local cyclists have discovered that ~ as Richard Campbell of Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (B.E.S.T.) puts it ~ there’s “a functional interim route” just begging for a good urban bushwhack.

Cuba photo gallery

Cycle from Varadero to Vinales along the Circuito Norte

Got two weeks for a holiday? Sit on a bike instead of a barstool! I discovered fourteen days is plenty of time to explore Cuba’s Circuito Norte by bike. From resort-town Varadero, through Havana, to the peaceful Vinales valley, it’s a perfect, paved, almost-flat view of the island’s less known northwestern coast.

Matanzas (east of Havana), Cuba (click to open gallery)

Cuba travelogue (photo gallery with commentary):

Independent bike travel in: Varadero, Matanzas, Playa Jibacoa, Guanabo, Cojimar, La Habana (Havana), Vinales, Puerto Esperanza, Cayo Levisa, Play La Altura, Playa San Pedro, and Playa Baracoa.

I Recommend…

MAP:
The Rough Guide Map: Cuba – excellent 1:850,000 scale with contours & distance markers
READ:
Lonely Planet “Cycling Cuba” – a bit out of date (2002) and the routes are a bit picky, but good overall touring info and maps
Georgia Straight writer Andrew Scott’s experiences with casa particulars

WEBSITES:
- Cuba’s version of inexpensive B&B’s: www.casaparticular.info
- Hotels in a variety of price ranges: www.particularcuba.com
- Bike-friendly Skyquest flies economic direct flights from Vancouver to Cuba with no charge for bikes, and no need to box them (they provide a $5.00 plastic bag) www.sunquest.net
- Bicycles Crossing Borders: a Toronto-based organization that ships used bikes and parts to Cuba. www.bikestocuba.org

Cojimar

Havana

Vinales

Practical Dances for Travelers

When you travel with someone, you learn how to share a trip’s rhythm

"Take a moment to enjoy the simple pleasures that surround you every day"

The Canadian customs line was moving slowly. Most of the passengers coming up from Seattle on the Greyhound waited sleepily in line, but I was curious about the unusual baggage of a couple of travellers in front of me.

Gurney-style, they’d carried a couple of beaten-up and duct-taped cardboard boxes out of the bus’s luggage compartment. They also unloaded two old canvas backpacks, a milk crate with a wire basket bungyed inside it, and a plastic Chinatown-style shopping bag. The tip of a bike’s front fork peeked out of one torn-up corner of one of the cardboard boxes.

Standing behind them in the line, I helped push their considerable pile of gear forward each time a passenger stepped forward to be questioned by a customs officer. I turned to one of them and asked if they were in the middle of journey. Her eyes shone as she explained that they’d just biked down the Baja Peninsula and would be finishing their trip in Coquitlam.