A City of Bikes

Liz and I only have one car, so the first thing to get sorted once I arrived here was transportation. I had always planned on just buying a bike once I landed and commuting that way. What I didn't count on was the culture here in town. This is the most bicycle-centric place I've ever been. For example, they have bike stop lights.

These do exist, I've been stuck at them before. They've also got bike cops and bike speed limits. You can get pulled over for speeding or a DUI on a bike, and people do. You can get a ticket for not having lights on your bike or parking it on campus without registering it. About the only thing the bike cops won't pull you over for is not wearing a helmet. Only about 10% of people here wear helmets. And besides that, I've seen people doing the following things on bikes since I've been here: smoking, eating, drinking, talking on the phone, texting, listening to music, and walking a dog. Speaking of dogs, check out this little pup I ran into today. His name is Bruiser.

They call him "Bru-Bru" and he just rides in that basket wrapped in his dog bed. Notice the sunglasses being used as a helmet.

And another thing. Everyone rides these beach cruiser bikes which I just don't understand. Bruiser's other owner had this bike that he put 29" unicycle wheels on which he lovingly named "The Beast Machine." I guess maybe they're comfortable or something but for me a good old fashioned road bike is where it's at. I picked up this Schwinn Varsity for a couple hundred bucks from Green Bicycle Depot. Nelson (the guy who owns the place) is in charge of that dog from the photo in my post.

My lady is the orange one. Cool enough, I was able to do a bit of trolling and figure out that it was born January 14, 1964 in Chicago, IL. On a related note, I wish some of you were out here to save me from myself and my bicycle nerdiness. So far she's been a workhorse. I've rode her to class (about 3.5 miles each way) every day this week and today I just spent most of my day cruising around town doing a bit of shopping and sight seeing. The only problem I've had so far is that she has a strong dislike for bungee cords, but we're working through that together and I feel like we've made real progress.

Because the bicycling culture runs so deep out here, people get pretty creative with how they use bikes. See if you can guess what this is.

Bike powered coffee roaster (with a bit of help from a huge electric fan and a couple giant tanks of propane). Whenever you're pedaling the roaster you've got to wear the captains hat over on the left of the frame...I assume. We don't really know how to get our hands on some of these beans but I'll keep you posted.

That's about it for bikes in Davis...for now. So far, I'm still in one piece, I've tried a few good beers, we've got 5 gallons of India-Rye-Brown Ale bubbling away in a shoe closet, and I'm about to read about polyphenol oxidation for you science nerds out there. All in all, life is good.