Speaking of bicycles and not of the iPhone, I think I have found the bicycle I want and more importantly, a bicycle company I want to do business with. In this age of outsourcing, online shopping, and big box retail it may seem strangely intimate to speak of wanting to doing business with a company. But with Bike Friday, I quickly warmed to the products which appear excellent and their culture which appears knowledgeable, passionate and refreshingly quirky. Once I had found their very impressive Tikit, and browsed the web site for about 20 minutes, I was pretty certain this company had integrity, a great product, and a culture worth being a part of.

(more…)

Mayor Daley would like to make Chicago into the greenest city. But I’m afraid my experience today would indicate we have a long way to go. Green will be very hard to achieve if we abondon it when it becomes a little inconvenient. I’ve been using my bike on the Metra to go between Chicago and Libertyville.  Except for rush-hour, Metra accomodates 9 bicycles on each train. Well, I rode my bicycle today to the station in Libertyville to catch the 2:10 to Union Station. Train pulls up, doors open, and I walk to a car that takes bicycles. The conductor calls out, “You can’t take that bike on this train.” A little stunned, I asked, “Why not?” He replied, “Taste of Chicago this week. No bikes on the train.”

It seems that accommodating a few bikes into the city per train is inconvenient this week. Sure, the Taste is running and July 4th is coming up in a couple days, but the train was not at all crowded. On the one hand it seems perfectly normal to restrict bicycles on the train if there is a big event and it would get crowded. But then I started to think about it and began to see it differently…

(more…)