Racking up Points
The good news is a lot of places have started adding bicycle racks to accommodate people who arrive by bike. The bad news is, these racks don’t actually accommodate people who arrive by bike.
Putting a rack in some dark corner does not make a place bike friendly.
I’d no more want to leave my bike there as a parent would want to leave their child here:
Even when the bike rack is placed in plain daylight out front, it doesn’t necessarily mean we can actually lock up to it.
Also, the bike rack you bought may have been designed to fit your budget but not actually designed to fit real bikes.
These bike-friendly gestures are basically empty gestures. None of us will bother to lock up to these racks since we want to keep our bikes (and all it’s pieces) intact. It’s our ride home after all.
Instead, we will lock up to something, anything, more secure.
So, when buying and installing a bike rack please consult someone who rides a bike.
My work has these metal things sticking out of the concrete wall, which are too skinny for anything fatter than a road bike (many people ride mountain bikes up here). So I end up being that jerk who parks parallel to the rack. But I don’t really have any other choice.
I am lucky at work to have secure parking and wall mounted rack/hooks but I run into the “kid bike rack’ syndrome at many places around town, obviously the adults who approve the purchase and set up of those racks do not ride bikes ….
✧ As a kid I probably would have gone for those swings by the sheer cliff. Probably would’ve greeted the pirates, if timidly. But even then I knew those toaster bike racks were a problem.
I walked my bike through the lobbies at the Hotel Gloria and Copacabana Hotel in Gloria and Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, towards the elevator to return it to my room. The desk clerk hollered at me that I have to lock it up outside, cannot have it in my room, no bikes allowed in the hotel. I complied with the request, but it was particularly troubling rules for me for several reasons:
1. I am a traveler, and have few resources in a foreign country for figuring out new ways of doing things, especially on day one. I need someplace that is like my home, a safe place for me and a few things.
2. That us why I chose the Hotel Gloria, one of the finest hotels.
3. Airplanes have extremely limited space. It seems like a reasonable rule that whatever is allowed on the airplane should be allowed in a hotel room, unpacked of course.
4. They allow my shoes. Bike tires are clean from road riding, not mud riding. Seems like just a bias against bike riders. It is acceptable to hail a taxi on each trip, because that makes them money.
5. Park it outside? A busy theatre next door, very dense pedestrian and taxi traffic, high crime area, particularly theft, huge income gaps. With no bike racks, I do not know the parking rules, or which objects are safe. With a million pedestrians passing my bike it will be bumped and scavenged. i will need to deinstall most add-ons, and I may not have transportation when I come down.