he rollers and berms on the pump track are in place, ready for the inaugural ride of Mayor George Heartwell during the Grand Rapids Bike Park grand opening Saturday, May 15. The mayor will lead his annual family-fun Mayor’s Bike Ride after a morning of park cleanup by Friends of Grand Rapids Parks volunteers.
The pump track, designed with mogul-like rollers, keeps a rider’s momentum going without pedaling. But more than that, the track teaches balance and turning skills mountain bikers need to know, says Nate Phelps, president of the Michigan Mountain Biking Association. Phelps approached the city of Grand Rapids four years ago with the idea to create the urban bike park.
The park, 580 Kirtland SW, is the only urban mountain bike park in the Midwest, Phelps says. Its design focuses on tracks and trails that help beginning mountain bikers learn basic skills and challenge experienced riders who want to build up speed and agility.
Two additional tracks, The Bob Loop named after bike park volunteer Bob Zeilman and a beginner loop, are under construction but will have sections done for the grand opening for visitors to experience.
“The Bob Loop is in the Plaster Creek riparian corridor, so we’re making use of the unique terrain next to the creek,” says Phelps. “The Bob Loop undulates with small climbs, but it’s mostly about flow with big wide turns and a great line of sight with nothing hidden.”
Future plans include adding challenges like a mock log pile and stair steps, re”cycling” the concrete from the park’s former baseball dugouts into raised tracks, and more riding loops.
The grand opening celebration begins at 9 a.m. with a two-hour park cleanup open to anyone who wants to help (bring gloves), followed by a ribbon cutting at 11 a.m., the Mayor’s Bike Ride and a ride down the Plaster Creek Trail.
Source: Nate Phelps, Grand Rapids Bike Park and Michigan Mountain Biking Association
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at deborah@rapidgrowthmedia.com. Development News tips can be sent to info@rapidgrowthmedia.com.
For all those who wished they could paddle their dinghies or kayaks to the grocery store, or pedal their bikes across a lake, river or bay, a Czech inventor named David Buchwaldek has just come up with a solution. He has designed an electric hybrid tricycle that can travel on water! Called the HEPAV (Human-Electric Powered Amphibious Vehicle), Buchwald envisions the trike/boat being used as an environmentally friendly way for people to travel between adjacent islands, and even dreams one day of his HEPAV being used to cross the English Channel.
The HEPAV is basically an electric assisted trike, encapsulated in a buoyant, waterproof, aerodynamic shell with a propeller, which allows the operator to power-pedal his or her way across a body of water. As you can see in the video, the HEPAV won’t win any speed records on the water, but as an occasional eco-boat that you can use for transportation on land, the design shows real promise. David Buchwaldek says he designed the bike/boat to be similar to a kayak, to perform well on the road, and to be easily transported by car. The idea being that it can be used as sustainable personal transportation in a variety of situations.
This isn’t the first design by Buchwaldek, as the somewhat eccentric Czech is already known for his human powered vehicles and human-electric hybrid designs – which seem to mix his love for sci-fi with his attraction to sustainable living. “I’m a romantic and environmentalist,” he says, “and I like the sea.” Unfortunately, due to the high cost of production, the HEPAV isn’t likely to be for sale at your local boat or bike store any time soon. But as a concept vehicle, there is little doubt that this admitted lover of Jules Verne’s novels is onto a hot – make that cool – idea.
If you have a tandem bike but no one to ride it with you, perhaps Joules could be your partner. The robot’s creator, Carl, devised Joules after being challenged to create a tandem electric bike based on actual pedal pumping, plus try to make it effective enough to manage the steep hills in Carl’s neighborhood. Turns out, Joules does all the pedaling! Check out the robot in action after the jump.
Engadget notes: “There’s “desperate for companionship,” and then there’s “just plain cool.” We’re going out on a limb here and suggesting that the scenario you see unfolding above is a case of the latter” and we completely agree.
It isn’t necessarily the most energy efficient of electric assist bikes, what with the PMG-132 motor required to make it pedal, but it is certainly cool! Plus, if it helps get Carl out there to exercise and get to the store in a greener way than a car, then we’re for it. Add a solar panel canopy as an energy source and now we’re talking! This is interesting enough to mingle with some of the crazy bikes we saw at Maker Faire earlier this year, like:
Because the bike is one of the most efficient forms of transportation ever devised by man, it is sometimes hard for us hard-riding bicycle proponents to remember that not everybody loves bicycles. In fact, escalating road rage shows just how much some people can’t abide bikes. What’s amazing is that so many places exist in the world where it is actually illegal to ride a bike. Perhaps the funniest example is Baldwin Park, California, where it is prohibited to ride a bike in a swimming pool, while the saddest is the injunction against Saudi Arabian women bikers. Read on for wild and crazy rules keeping bikers from their bikes.
1. On U.S. Roads and Interstates
That many interstate freeways have prohibited cycling (and other slower traffic) makes sense, when you first think about it. On the other hand, to take such huge swathes of road away from the most efficient riders is also, when you think about it a second time, absurd. Not that city cyclists would want to mix with swift-moving traffic. Just that maybe we should rethink the laws that make car centrism so predominant, and possibly leverage some of the area around those swathes for protected bikes paths, too.
In awful precedent, in Johnson County, Iowa, a petition is currently being circulated to ban all bikes from roads considered ‘farm to market,’ (state or country roads that connect rural or agricultural areas to market tows) because “shared roadways are no longer safe or practical in today’s society.” That would deny a significant portion of the less-trafficked roads cyclists and motorists now share to bicycles, and one imagines increase motor traffic. As a side note, while the article on this banning provision states 698 cyclists were killed on U.S. roads in 2007, it fails to mention that in 2008, 43,313 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents.
2. In North Korea (For Women)
Since the mid-1990s, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has declared it illegal for women to ride bicycles. Since 70% of households own a bike, there’s undoubtedly a lot of illegal riding, as bikes for transport and to aid the commerce at local markets is well-known. Enforcement of Kim Jong Il’s purported ruling banning females on bikes is said to be uneven, and involves a fine, rather than directly jail time. Bicycles were also banned up until the ’90s in the capital city of Pyongyang.
3. In Saudi Arabia, Women Can’t Drive or Bike
While it’s hard to fathom, Saudi Arabian women are forbidden from driving or cycling ‘on public roads.’ According to this Utne story, Saudi clerics considered bicycles ‘the Horse of Satan” back in the 1960s, and author Marwan Kraidy says a permit was required to ride one. Things have changed, of course, but gas is cheap and cars are king. The official injunction doesn’t mean women never drive or bike, simply that they aren’t sanctioned activties, though economic conditions may eventually allow these rules to be softened.
4. In Iran, Women’s Cycling Inconsistent
Women’s cycling has long been a contentious issue in Iran. Women are allowed to drive cars, but cycling is frowned upon – a bicycle has been designed, but not yet produced, to cover parts of a woman’s body with a cabin so that cycling would be more demure.
“The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced in 1999 that “women must avoid anything that attracts strangers, so riding bicycles or motorcycles by women in public places causes corruption and is thus forbidden.”
In some areas, women aren’t allowed to bike in the streets, in others they can cycle on special tracks while in Karaj they can’t bike in the parks at all. In this film from 2000, The Day I Became A Woman, women are seen cycling on the island of Kish in head-to-ankle chadors. Women do cycle here, but not freely.
The HEPAV is basically an electric assisted trike, encapsulated in a buoyant, waterproof, aerodynamic shell with a propeller, which allows the operator to power-pedal his or her way across a body of water. As you can see in the video, the HEPAV won’t win any speed records on the water, but as an occasional eco-boat that you can use for transportation on land, the design shows real promise. David Buchwaldek says he designed the bike/boat to be similar to a kayak, to perform well on the road, and to be easily transported by car. The idea being that it can be used as sustainable personal transportation in a variety of situations.
