The other day, I decided I had a favorite bridge across I-94: the 3rd Ave bridge in Minneapolis. I love it! The cedar-inspired light installations, the wide sidewalks, the nice railings, the feeling of being welcomed into the city center. So, obviously, I have to have a least-favorite bridge, right? There are a good number […]
This article is the story of how I ended up recording the following activities on Strava, all in one day: But before we talk about my day of skiing for four-and-a-half hours in between two two-hour bike rides, we have to talk about why that seemed like a good idea at the time. The problem […]
Winter in Minnesota can be delightful, gorgeous, fragile, challenging, and sometimes far too gray. In January of 2018, Melissa Wenzel issued herself a challenge to a winter-weather version of April’s “30 Days of Biking.” Fellow winter bicyclists in Minnesota and around the world joined Melissa in her pledge to bike every day in January. In 2019, […]
In the depth of winter, as messy as it is, there are a lot of improvements to wish for on our streets. Despite the many merits of our current season, our hearts ( and calves and lungs) yearn for spring to come. One way to stay attached to the free-spirited feeling of warm-weather walking and […]
September 2, 2019 Downtown, Payne-Phalen, Railroad Island, Dayton’s Bluff 20.5 Miles In all my rides around Saint Paul, I’d never seen a dinosaur, nor had I ever expected to. That’s why the tyrannosaurus gazing out from a building on Pine Street on the edge of Payne-Phalen caused me to lock up the brakes on my […]
I have been known to harshly criticize St. Paul for its consistent—one could say unconscious, institutional—prioritization of car speed and convenience over the safety and comfort of people traveling sustainably. But this past fall St. Paul did something incredible, illuminating how different things could be with nothing more than a change in mindset. In October, […]
When people are asked how a busy street could be made safer, two suggestions always come up. For better or worse these are: put in a stoplight, or put in stop signs. For example, local business representatives recently called for a stoplight on every block of Lyndale Ave S after Ted Ferrara was killed by […]
In May of 2016, I wrote about Rethinking the Status Quo on Summit Avenue. I made some quick back-of-the-napkin sketches based on rough Google Map widths (e.g. I assume street curb-to-curb is 30′, it is actually 28′). It was meant as an overall test around the city’s vision for the future of our premier bike […]
This is the context, and we all know it: • Climate change is real and already causing devastating effects • Climate change is primarily caused by CO2 • Transportation accounts for the largest part of Minnesota’s CO2 increase • We need to act now Given that, let’s say you have a street (well, more […]
I started 2019 with what seemed a relatively simple goal: to ride my bike every day in January. I succeeded with that, and then kept going. I rode through February, March, and April, before finally deciding to keep it up as long as I could. I kept a log of my adventures on Twitter, and […]