Biking in a Big City

Today there were two bike rides with similar themes: drawing attention to loops in the city that take advantage of the many off street bike and pedestrian paths that thread through the city, while at the same time are held back by significant gaps where t…

This month’s ride started at High Park.

And so ends another week of racing down Route 305 in Battle Mountain, the fastest road in the world for human powered vehicles.

The week of racing ends with the awards banquet.

The short version: no legal winds, and nobody bettered their speeds for the week.

Six heats from the 8 km and one 4 km run this morning.

It was assumed that the winds would be bad for this entire evening session, and sure enough, the wind meter looked like this, indicating a strong headwind.

The first heat started out with a bang, with Adam Hari going 73.41 mph in Dark Star.

Given the high winds forecast for tonight, we cancelled the 8 km runs, but we ran two heats of 4km to give Cal Poly the chance to qualify.

Winds were pretty high so the fast people elected not to run.

Wednesday marks the midpoint of the competition where all of the racers start feeling a bit of additional pressure to get good runs.

Heading out to the course in the predawn darkness to set up timing.

Tonight we had one heat from the 4 km, and two heats from the 8 km distance.

Tuesday afternoon is the traditional Show and Shine where local 3rd graders descend on us to take a look at the bikes and to meet the riders.

Another day with four heats of qualifying and two heats on the long course unfortunately did not yield more than two bikes through timing.

A few nice runs tonight.

Up at timing bright and early.

Lots of work at the Civic Centre as the other four vehicles work towards getting their bikes to pass technical inspection so that they can actually run on Monday.

Greetings from Battle Mountain this fine Sunday morning.

Always nice to take a quick look around to see who’s already here at the Battle Mountain Civic Centre.

Thursday before WHPSC is the usual time that the Toronto team hits the road.

A lazy Sunday running errands around town.

WHPSC is less than a week away, and both Toronto teams are busy with their final preparations.

September has rolled around again, and that means that it’s time to preview this year’s World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC).

A cyclist was killed Saturday August 22 around 11 pm in Hamilton He was cycling northbound on Upper Centennial Parkway (AKA Hwy 20) in the vicinity of Green Mountain Rd.

Tonight was a special edition of Critical Mass to push back against the fact that the sections of Bill 212 having to do with stripping out bike lanes in Toronto are once again the law of the land.

Tonight was an election town hall in Swansea sponsored by Cycle Toronto.

With less than three weeks to go for this year’s edition of the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, the UofT team is very busy putting final touches on their speedbikes.

I’m been concerned about the lack of a proper ramp for bicycles on the southern border of Kings College Circle for several years now, ever since the installation of the granite paving around the circle.

Just an image dump from tonight’s very pleasant social ride.