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Dignified Older People On Bicycles 3

Dignified Older People On Bicycles
Older people on bicycles in Amsterdam –  Photo by Marc van Woudenberg / Amsterdamize In the midst of Toronto Mayor Ford’s crack scandal was a revelation about how Canadian society views adults who ride bicycles for transport. A 45-year-old man who is in the middle of the scandal was recently approached at a TD Bank ...

House Moves By Bicycle 5

House Moves By Bicycle
Transporting cargo by bike in Portland, Oregon – Photo by Ryan Good  On a visit to Shanghai in 2010, I snapped dozens of photos of people transporting large objects by bicycle – including a bathtub and a full sized refrigerator – among other large household items. Here in Canada or the United States, it would ...

Urban Bicycling Is For Lazy People 76

Here in Canada, as in the United States, people tend to generally view bicycles primarily for recreation or sport. Thus, when someone asks me how I arrived somewhere and I tell them I rode my bicycle, they naturally assume that I am athletic, brave, unusual, always late, and I probably need to take a shower. ...

Copenhagen Bike & Breakfast 1

Copenhagen Bike & Breakfast
Cargo bike sofa – Photo by Mikael Colville-Andersen for Airbnb listing  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to travel to your favourite cities around the world and to stay in a reasonably-priced flat in the heart of the city and have bicycles readily available to tour around town? Add to that, a friendly and passionate host who ...

Using Google Search To Reveal Public Perception 2

Using Google Search To Reveal Public Perception
Google Bicycle – Photo courtesy of Leon Hoffman  One useful and amusing way to identify current trends and to gauge public perception on a topic is to use Google Search Auto-Complete. To do this, simply start typing in a phrase on a topic of your choosing, and watch Google complete the sentence using data from ...

Home Depot Trip By Bicycle 6

Home Depot Trip By Bicycle
Cargo bike with hockey equipment – Photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country A couple Wednesdays ago I needed to make a run to Home Depot to pick up some plywood and hardware for some small renovations I am doing in my loft. The same evening I was planning to meet my brother at ...

Sitting Side Saddle on Batavus Fryslan 8

Sitting Side Saddle on Batavus Fryslan
Photo courtesy of Peter Bojanczyk for The Urban Country  On Sunday I bought a used 2011 Batavus Fryslan bicycle that I spotted on Craigslist to replace my 2010 Fryslan that was stolen in March. Last night we tested the rear rack while my 210-pound colleague Al sat side saddle while we transported ourselves from one ...

Rachel McAdams Gets Around Toronto By Bike 25

Rachel McAdams Gets Around Toronto By Bike
Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen bicycling at Queens Park in Toronto – Photo credit Sean O’Neill After starring in The Notebook in 2004, Rachel McAdams launched herself onto Hollywood’s A-list. It would hardly be surprising if Rachel had soaked up the Hollywood lifestyle by buying a large mansion with 6 cars in the driveway and ...

Top 20 Bicycle Friendly Cities in the World

Top 20 Bicycle Friendly Cities in the World
Our friends at Copenhagenize Design Co. have launched their 2013 Copenhagenize Index, where they painstakingly combed through data for 150 cities to come up with their 2013 index of top bicycle friendly cities in the world. Amsterdam tops the list once again, with Copenhagen trailing behind at a close second, while Canada’s only city, Montreal, ...

You Are Wasting Your Life Away Sitting In Traffic… 9

You Are Wasting Your Life Away Sitting In Traffic…
… But at least you aren’t on a bicycle. Or so that’s the message being portrayed by the local newspaper’s automobile section. Every year we see more and more bicycles on the streets here in Toronto. Instead of acknowledging that more people on bicycles means less traffic congestion for car drivers, many drivers seem to ...