Just a running log.  Wondering if looking back on my days in more detail is going to give me any insight into how I can get more done in shorter time frames.  Or it's just because I feel like it. Read at your own risk.  Might even update it over the course of the day or something.  Every time that I've tried doing that it hasn't really worked, but that was kind of hardware, I think.  If I had decent mobile internet, might be a different story.

Somehow the next one didn't go as I was expecting it to.  So here's a few shots of where I'm at with the theme.  It's really pretty cool.  Almost done with it.

I'm sure most of this post is going to annoy people, so it's all going after the fold.  Next part is going to more positive.  Things are going good, I'm just trying something a little more, um, like writing rather than blogging. Kind of fiction, kind of truth, kind of whatever. Don't read too much into it, okay?

At least, I think that I did.  Summerinside seems to think that I'm good as one, so I guess I'll keep posting, but really, I don't have the time or the energy to put into properly blogging.  Really, we should have a couple updates a day.  At least.  I've just been so busy actually emailing back and forth and coordinating, and then to sit down and want to type more...  And type where I don't necessarily have an agenda or a particular audience?  It's not the best for me.

Not so sure that I agree with him on that.  He must only be remembering the high points of the last blog that I had, and I kind of had to kill that one once people actually started reading it.  That's kind of the problem with these things - when I write, I write for me, I don't write for an audience.  I'm not going to try to win people over, or polish or sugar coat things. 

Eventually, we're going to get some more people in and hopefully we can have someone else that has better updates on how everything is progressing.  I see a real need for an official site blogger similar to what they've got going on in Portland, or an easier way for people to submit their own content.

So, yeah, blogging.  It's not my strong suit.

What do you expect?  Should I be talking about just the amazing stuff that we're doing with forming the League of Evil?  Or how the color is changing in that cup of hot water on the coffee table as my cup of tea on the coffee table is currently pulling about as much attention as the stream of words that are just coming off the ends of my fingers as some random streaming netflix documentary on Harry S. Truman for really no reason at all, other than the fact that for some reason my recommendations are all filled up with stories of the terminally ill and mentally disabled, oddly also picking people with Turrets syndrome and OCD...

Hrm. 

Yeah, that kind of stuff I'm going to leave for my own _personal_ blog, which I should be getting at some point this month.  I mean, I could make one now, it's just a couple of clicks, but one of the things that we're doing first is the user import, and when that happens, there will be an option to publish a blog of your own if you'd like.  We'll have more on that in a little bit once the actual road map is a little clearer, we're still working on stuff like deciding what version control system and bug tracker combination we're going to use, and where the code is going to be held, who will be working on which portions, which portions get rolled out at which times.

Thinking of Netflix, Michael Rubin, Netflix's Director of Product Management who I think was behind that eerily prescient rating algorithm is using it in a new wiki system that kind of looks like what I want to do for our business listings map.  It's one of the things we went over this morning.  It's possible that we could work on implementing some of their api functions, but really, we're not even quite going for the same market.  We don't necessarily want to map everything everywhere for everyone - we want to keep track of things pretty specifically for bicycles, and maybe a bit for peds since what's good for them is usually good for us. 

The views and the models are very, very similar to what we want to do, though.  As of yet, we don't really want to get into the contextual recommendation type market.  We already know what kinds of things we need to keep track of with the system, and really, what we want to do is enable a little bit more functionality on what we have, not really totally change the whole thing.

It sounds like we have a pretty solid map going forward on the code base, but I'm probably going to wait a little bit before posting it.  I want the approval of the League before saying too much.

It's maybe a little weird to say that, but really one of the main things that I've been wanting is to actually get all of this off of me and onto a few more shoulders, and I don't think that I should be the president or the leader or anything like that.  I do have a very good idea what the group is and what I want them to do, I have a very good idea of who the people are in this town that have wheels that I can trust to follow when I'm bonked and don't have much steam left. 

See, if I was a better, more literary writer, I would take that idea and flesh it out a bit, but really, I just feel like I need a bit of a pull, you know?  Selling my Masi and a couple of other things gave me a bit of a feeling that I'm downhill and have a bit of a tailwind...

Meh, this blog isn't supposed to be about me, it's supposed to be about the site. I'd like to be able to post an update of where we are at with getting formed as a non-profit corporation, but honestly, I don't really know.  And that's a good thing.  I have another meeting later this week with Summerinside to get the rest of the details on what happened in that meeting.  So, really, this is the first time that I'm feeling that we're really starting to move where I'm not the one that's pushing everything.  Because I shouldn't be.

Dear Bess, The mine has gone by the board. I have lost out on it entirely. There was never one of our name who had sense enough to make money. I am no exception. ... You would do better perhaps if you pitch me into the ash heap and pick someone with more sense and ability and not such a soft head. ~Harry S Truman

Sounds about right.  That's why I'm getting out of the way. 

I'm pretty sure that what we are forming and about to do could turn out to be a really, really profitable non-profit.  It's going to be awesome all the money that we're going to generate and pump back into the community.  I don't really trust any company to do some of the connections we're talking about doing with the overall network and data, and we're going to have to be very careful about what we are doing as far as people's information and what is viewable by whom.  The questions like that, I don't know the answers to, either, I really need people that are smarter than me, people that have had more experience.

Man, that's a bummer.  My bread has mold.  I was going to make a grilled cheese.  Usually Sundays are my new bread day, but I wasn't able to make it over to the New French for the bread sale today.  It took too long getting back down to my neighborhood, and they close at like three.  Oops.  There were only a couple slices left, but still.  I wish I had a two dollar and fifty cent loaf of fresh sourdough right now that was cooking on the stove.... 

And Harry's not doing that great.  He keeps trying to come up with these crazy get rich quick schemes in business and going further and further in debt.  At least I'm not really in debt.  I managed to pay like an extra 1500 on my student loans over the summer, so I'm almost done there.  I guess the IRS is the only thing that I really owe, and I have no idea what that is.  I don't even know ballpark how much money I made last year.  Wait, this is totally not keeping stuff separate.  But Harry's doing better now that he's finally found a career.  I tried a few careers.  County commissioner, eh?  Sounds crazy.  I hate managing people.  I want a career where I have nice little code projects to do.  Maybe where I go from city to city building websites to help communities improve cycling...

Mmmm....  Ramen.

So, yeah, I don't remember exactly where I was...

We're on track.  Things are good.  The League, man I've got some great feelings from them.

I've got my own shit that's hanging over my head, I'm trying to get out of that and make sure that I get Bike Love kind of moved away from me sooner rather than later, so that I don't make it crash and burn.  I'm good at crashing an burning.  Well, maybe not crashing and burning.  I'm not good at crashing.  My shoulder clicks to prove this and my front teeth bear the chip marks as a reminder of another crash.  I'm good at bailing.  At jumping away before going down.

That doesn't sound right.  I'm good at knowing what to toss when.  The stuff I'm tossing right now?  It's just stuff.  I don't really mind doing it.  In a lot of ways, it's good for me.  I know that i"m going to be hit pretty quickly with the IRS stuff, and fwiw, that's kind of one of the reasons I'm not too keen to spend a lot of time looking for a low-level job, really.  I know a lot of people think that's kind of weird, but honestly, I think it's best.  I don't think that I'd be able to function very well if I ended up having most of an 8 dollar an hour paycheck going directly to them to pay off the debt from my web design wages over the summer last year.

And hey, if I sell stuff _before_ I'm totally bankrupt...

I've mentioned I'm a pessimist, right?  And honestly, trying to type about it makes things worse.  Like when I listed the Masi and didn't really hear anything right away, and it's at the same time as I'm seeing that we are really going to need some sort of liquid funds for even doing the incorporation and stuff, it kind of started getting me down.  I listed more stuff, because there's kind of a threshold of funds that I'm really trying to not dip below, and that's basically just my next month's rent right now.  I'm trying not to make it sound too much like I'm freaking out when I post updates or stuff for sale, but there is kind of some urgency.  And I know that it's just me freaking out, but it's kind of hard to really step away from it...  And really, I was fine until it's like 'oh, get a job, oh get a job, oh get a job'

Yeah, I know.  At this particular point, I don't think that will do a _whole_ lot of good.  In a month or two, probably.  But with what we need to have done, I can't give up the flexibility.  And I've got some health issues that I need to get figured out, I'm not going to go into it, but as I said, I'm also kind of hypochondriac so I don't know what's me just being worried and more stressed than I've ever been before, I've gone through bouts before where mental stress and fatigue were causing physical issues, and most likely it's that.  I think that's what I would hear from a doctor, anyway.  Meh.

Man, poor Truman.  Totally unprepared for being president.  Doesn't sound familiar at all.  He's got nuclear bombs to worry about, too.  All I've got is this forum and probably a few grand in back taxes.  Why am I so stressed again?

I'm trying to figure out why I'm so pissed off today, I think mostly it had to do with the fact that even though I have to sell my favorite bicycle ever in order to survive, I wasn't getting any hits at all.  I'm selling her not even just because I have to, now I'm selling her dirt cheap.

The donations widget and the hours and hours spent trying to get the site supporters pages up and accurate didn't really have the impact that I was hoping for.

The League of Evil meeting on Sunday went well, we're still trying on that, but in a lot of ways, it's just showing me how poorly I work with other people.  How much I don't have ready, how much harder everything is going to be than what I thought that it would be, and honestly.

I still want to give up.

If the Masi sells tomorrow, then I should be good for food and bills through Feb.  I was able to pay rent, credit card payment and my student loan payment, but I still have a few months of power and gas built up that need to be paid. 

And I don't want to work anywhere.  I don't want to do anything.

When I was growing up my parents always told us "you can do anything that you put your mind to."  I always believed them, because it always seemed like every task that was put in front of me was something that I could easily disect, attack and complete.  I always thought that it was just that I didn't really have any goals of my own that I really wanted to do.

But now I do want to do something.

And It's the first time I'm finding myself not able to do something that I try to do.

Fuck it.  It's 5:21 in the morning.  I can't sleep. 

I thnk really, the problem is, I can't think rationally eough to figure out how to get the idea into a format where I can actually assign tasks and plan the thing while I'm struggling trying to figure out where my next meals are coming from. 

I'm sick of that.

So sick of it.

I know I've said it before, but I'm ready to throw mplsbikelove.com up on ebay. 

Seriously.

I finally got my scanner working, so until I get all of this digitized, here are the scans of my notes from the outreach meeting on Monday.

All in all, I was really pretty surprised at how much they were talking about active transportation and transit.

At the core of everything

Is a move to, well, a different core.  What I would like to start using for the site is a new-ish content management system called Concrete 5.  It's actually a pretty amazing platform, when you really start to get into it and poke around under the hood. 

The thing is, this system is very new.  It's very, very powerful, but compared to other systems that have been around for a longer time and have a larger extension development community, it's not quite as polished.

It's also by that same token, not as 'locked in' to assumptions, and it's not nearly as hard to work with as some of the larger systems are.  If you check out the actual developer documentation and start reading through some of the code, you'll see potentially the best overall framework for creating highly functional websites quickly and easily.  There is even support for a shared, common code base across multiple different websites.  The theme framework is extremely flexible, too.

So, what exactly is your perfect vision of the website?"

This question was asked of me today as I interviewed for a warehouse position at Twin Six today down at One on One.  I've been over this a whole bunch of times with a whole bunch of different people, and honestly, there's so much to it, that it's a little hard to know where to begin describing it.

In some ways, you could almost think of it sort of like "facebook for bikes but merged with craigslist and wikipedia and some really sweet GIS information stuff all wrapped up so that you can message everyone the exact location where the alleycat is starting from your smartphone."

But there's a little bit more to it than that.  I also want to tie it in with incentive programs people's places of work and the municipalities that they live in, creating a seamless network for feedback with hard numbers on actual commuting trends and miles, and exactly which streets those trips were taken on.  I want to be able to report where the bike thefts are happening, with detailed alerts and photos.  Information about substandard facilities or upkeep, basically anything related to trail and road conditions. 

Mapping Pages

I would also like to be able to keep detailed pages like the ones that we have on the current wiki for the major 'known' routes in town, like Cyclopath but more detailed information about larger 'macro segments.' These segments could be grouped by class and used to create overlays on an overview map, which we don't have working on the site quite yet but I did kind of get working over on a test site a couple months ago.  I'm almost thinking that these segments could almost function as advocacy pages, if presented properly with maybe a detailed overview page of the street / trail, and then a forum with a few key topic areas, maybe a page for news and updates, maybe another plan with the actual planning documents from the Department of Public works on what the facilities there are and what is planned, with pre-generated form fields for feedback on the specific documents or planned projects, as a way of gauging public support.

The beauty of it is, really, it could be the city that's starting one of those pages, or it could be an advocacy group, or it could be an individual. We'd probably want to make sure that the individuals had kind of been 'vetted' by the community somehow before giving them access to being able to add an 'infrastructure detail' page or something, but I see no reason we can't set this system up so that if JoeOrJane Rider wants to add in a street with a detailed description, photos, comments section, etc, that they shouldn't be able to do this.  And it should be just as easy for a city planner to add in a quick page about a street or trail and get quick, immediate feedback from the riders in their city.  I'm hoping that we can get bonus points by also having the riders leaving comments tagged with at least some demographic information, if they can see voter trends in certain areas, it might influence overall decisions and campaign platforms in a few years.

Bike Friendly Businesses

I also want to collect other detailed information on the city from the eyes of the cyclists who live and ride in the city.  True, I do want to charge businesses if they are customizing their own listing, or using the forum as an advertising conduit, but I also think that this should be done on a city by city basis and the funds used to promote the site in the town, by whatever advocacy program or non-profit or whatever it was that actually started the website in that city in the first place.  But it would be really awesome if there was kind of a simple form for people to add in a new business and rate it as a consumer or customer, and then after for other people to rate it on things like the bike parking, if they have water, stuff like that.

The League of American Bicyclists and the City of Minneapolis are both doing programs which work to partner with businesses and offer them a much more detailed snapshot of what a 'Bike Friendly Business' is, taking into account the types of amenities it offers to it's employees, incentives for commuting, commitments to transit alternatives or locating manufacturing facilities in places that are also accessible by bicycle, etc. I'm hoping that many of the features of the site as I'm wanting to build it will fit in nicely with these programs, and maybe turn it into something that can easily be deployed at businesses with a few few clicks to get started through bikelove.org...

Personally, I think that this might be the biggest impact that we can personally make as cyclists.  Really, as humans in general.  It's all about changing our habits and what we do.  But small picture, just related to cycling, if we get local business owners to start seeing us as a large and viable block of their income, they are going to go down to City Hall and start demanding stuff _for_ us.

Calendars and Event Planning

I would also like to create some fairly specific and kind of complicated calendar functionality, specifically allowing nearly the same RSVP functionality as facebook, but also working with race events to allow people to pre-register and get race numbers, access to hidden planning sections of the website with route details, etc.  I would also like the events to be tied in with the map system as well, so not only could you RSVP to the event and have it added to your personal calendar on your home page, but when it shows up as happening in an hour, you could have Cyclopath generate you route directions based on your current location and unique preferences, and possibly even estimate the time it will take you to get there.

What I think will be interesting is to see what happens with the Calendars once we've built the system.  It shouldn't take much at all to build onto that functionality once it has been created.  A few possible uses that have been proposed

1. Commuter Bike-Buses
   Create a string of locations across a route with timed stops for groups of commuters through partnerships with cities, transit and businesses.  It might even be possible to get these
2. Riding Clubs and Teams
   There are a ton of different groups in the Twin Cities alone, of all different shapes and sizes, ranging from fully sponsored teams, to shop rides, to weekly drunken mayhem
3. Ad-Hoc Messenger Service
   Maybe a long shot, but you could conceivably put up something where people could post a pick + time and drop + time and vetted 'messengers' could do the delivery
4. Trail Watch Program
   Buddy systems have been proposed, and scheduling is one difficult thing.  Being able to say 'hey, I'm going to be leaving downtown at 8pm and need an escort through Uptown to make sure I don't get jumped" in a secure area of the forum where only trusted trail users could access the information could be beneficial

Really, the sky is kind of the limit to what we could do with this, if we get a deep enough tie in with the time/location data from the forum members, we might even be able to create real time traffic density maps for our bicycle infrastructure.

Keep reading to take a look at what the website is from the eyes of all the people involved at the 'city unit level' of this global empire of bicycling internet nerdery...

This might sound a little bit weird, but I have the feeling like there is just as much need for creating an infrastructure online for people who are advocating for cycling.  Regardless of how people feel about physical amenities such as bike centers and on-street lanes, it seems like one of the best things that we can do is to try and create a more cohesive communications and knowledge network.

So what, exactly does that mean?

Well, to begin with, it means a move to BikeLove.org instead of mplsbikelove.com.

After that, I'm a little more up in the air.  I'm having this meeting next Sunday in order to try and get the input of some people who are smarter than me to figure out exactly how the nuts and bolts will fit together, and what can be done by who.

Overall, the goal is to create a communications network that can be easily deployed on a city-by-city basis to connect the people who live in that city to their elected and appointed officials, and to the businesses in their local community.

It is kind of the culmination of several ideas that I have had over the years, working with mplsbikelove and also in all the different events and races that I've seen scheduled and coordinated over the last what?  Five years? Six?

If you would like to see what I think of as the perfect, best case senario for taking the energy that we have as a local scene and turning it into something that can create a larger, more meaningful change in the world around us, please continue reading.

Some shots of our ride around town the other day, full post with text and everything coming later.

(There's a slideshow if you click the title)

BikeLove.org

An organization, dedicated to providing an online infrastructure of standardized web tools to cyclists, advocacy organizations, businesses & municipalities, in an effort to improve the quality of life for people.

We aim to foster communications between all aspects of communities in the belief that creating a stronger, more measurable dialogue, we can reverse some of the damages caused by the last 100 years of automobiles.

"Communication Across Communities"

Sunday January 24th 2010

12:00 PM | Brunch Will Be Served*

Skills Desired in Evil Geniuses:

• Web Developers / Programmers / Sysadmins
• Graphic Design / Brand Identity
• Book Keeping / Accounting
• Non-Profit Administration

This is the first official organizational meeting to try and take the energy of mplsbikelove.com. If you have talked to Jeremy Werst in the last few months about this, you are invited. I'm hoping for a light, nimble team to do a lot of work in a few short months, and have no actual budget. But if you want in on something awesome...

RSVP:

jeremy.werst@gmail.com
Please Include "Evil Genius Org Meeting" In Subject Line

* I will have some stuff, I'm thinking like quiche, potatoes, maybe some vegan biscuits and gravy, that kind of stuff.  I'm not really that great of a cook, and I'm not sure how much I will have, so people that want to bring more are welcome, just say what you're bringing.  I don't have a coffee maker, but I'll have juice, and I have a ton of beans if I can find a coffee maker within the next week.  It's also probably going to be a pretty long meeting, so if people want to bring snacks or more to eat later on, too, that could be sweet.

So, it's been a few days since I posted, here's what I've been doing.  After the meeting, I kind of messed up my timing through the rest of the weekend.  I had meant to head out on Friday night for the Stuporbowl benefit ride thing whatever, but I was more looking forward to the ride / bar hop part of it, I have kind of a hard time talking to people around bands, and from what I hear there was smoking inside, I would have been going nuts, so I guess it was a good thing that I missed it.

Instead, I actually splurged and bought myself a sixer of some fake beer and some pizza luce (garlic mashed potato, mmm) and just diagrammed out how the databases look for the PHPBB forum versus the Concrete 5 forum.  I did a bit of playing around with a stub of code found on the Concrete 5 Forums  and modified it so that it connected with the phpbb database and imports the groups and the users.  I don't have it assigning the correct groups yet, and I found some funkiness trying to figure out how to map the custom fields over to user attributes on the C5 end of things, I guess I didn't know that there was some weird bitfield translation thing going on in PHPBB.  It kind of confused me, I gave up for the night.

Saturday, PeeDubya called me up from some party at Thirteen of Clubs where they were drinking tea and eating pie.  It sounded like fun, but I had just pulled some re-heated pizza out of the oven and was watching Dollhouse, and already late for the party.  I kind of forgot that I was also supposed to be going to a meeting of the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition a little while after that.  Anyway, I then I moved on to trying to figure out how the forums are actually grouped and map them, realized I'm looking at a lot of building on either end.

Later on that night I was watching something else and did some more researching on phpbb, then saw some twitter posts that reminded me that there was an art opening winding down at One On One, and I had missed out on it as well.

Oops.

Sunday, I went over to Target and picked up some stuff with the gift card that my little sister sent me from Chicago, then got kind of into cleaning my house.  I'm really pretty happy with the new layout, I think that it's going to work actually pretty well for presentations and possibly group brainstorming on how to set up the site, more on that later...  I'll post more pics once it's daylight and a little neater, but here's what hopefully is soon going to be my photoshop workroom:

It also works really well from the desk chair, and I can actually even get a good view of the TV while I'm cooking in the kitchen...

Anyway, on Monday, I headed downtown to meet up with mmason and summerinside outside of Capella - I was giving mmason some socks and a spoke card in thanks for a donation, and I was selling summerinside my tesionmeter since I'd already sold my truing stand to another Capella employee :)  Kind of funny how that kind of thing works, you know?  Summerinside sounded interested in maybe working on some of the stuff for bikelove.org when I get that rolling.

After that, I rode over onto 1st ave and took some photos to send in to Don Pflaum and Jon Wjertes from the Dept of Public Works, we'd talked in the meeting last week and we hadn't really said much about the snow.  But I saw that Second and Marquette were totally 100% clear of snow, and the ones on First?

I guess I'll put that after the fold...

It was really pretty uneventful.  I never really do much to celebrate the passing of another year, I've been known to call in sick to my own parties before.  It doesn't help that it's typically pretty cold out in Jan, it's pretty easy to be sitting on my couch and decide 'You know what?  Maybe I don't want to ride today...'

Anyway, I was up late again last night, sent off a few emails looking for jobs.  There is one guy who had posted on the Concrete 5 message boards looking for a conversion script for a phpbb forum to the new concrete 5 system, which I've kind of been trying to figure out how to fund sitting down and figuring out how to do.  The last several months, I've spent a whole lot of time working on primarily front end stuff, but I haven't actually sat down and tried to figure out OK, step by step, how do I convert the database and re-import it into the new forum system, and then how to transfer users and manage the proper permissions for everyone. 

I woke up this morning, and had just hit the power button on my computer and was about to start grinding my coffee beans for my morning espresso when there was a phone call from the guy I'd emailed last night. It sounds pretty promising that he and maybe a few other people could use the script if I could get it down to something that they could run as the administrator or whatever.  I think I could probably figure that out, so I'm going to do a bunch of diagraming of how each system works and where to move the data.  Shouldn't be too hard.  I hope.  I'm not sure how much it will be $$ wise, but it should be something, and I really needed that.

One thing that's kind of cool is that over the summer I helped by doing some theme work for the MN Opera through Hutman, Inc (they're the guys that give us the server space and bandwidth) and mentioned that to him, heard this back in reply:

I actually found and checked out your site a while back to see how you managed the forum crossover.  I happen to be bicycle fan (I ride an original Principia SC 650c, fully restored with Campy everything; and have recently got into recumbents); I have family in Minnesota, not to mention I know some singers in the MN opera, naturally.

Sweet!

After that, I brewed some espresso and did some processing to update a few members on the new recognition pages, kind of poked around on the internet for a bit.  Got a lot of nice birthday wishes from people.  Chatted on the IRC channel with a few of the other C5 developers for a bit, then renewed the Ghost Bike Minneapolis website and mplsbike.com domain.

I was running a little late, actually, and ended up actually going out to eat instead of cooking, I've been trying not to do that, but it was only 7 bucks including tip down at the Wienery.  Pat's the man, and I'd called ahead and my breakfast was waiting once I'd made it down the icy no-mans-land of misleading lanes formerly known as Riverside.

The meeting seemed to go really well. Don Pflaum actally commented on how he thought that it was pretty impressive that we actually had some proposed solutions for First and Hennepin, I think he was expecting more ranting. He had some maps showing how much they've done in the last 10 years, they were left over from the Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting yesterday.  I can never make those ones.  10:30am isn't really in my vocabulary.  Hokan was there, if I can't get a high-res copy I'll scan his copy, I have it on my coffee table right now. There is a lot that they've done, and there is a lot more that is planned, but...

I still think that we have to be really careful to make sure that we're doing the right things with our money.  One thing that stood out to me is when Don was talking about how they're putting in the however millions of dollars for a single mile of bike path along the stadium.  And how many millions did we spend on the Sabo bridge?  I didn't really think much of it at the time, but the main thing that I want to make sure of is that the resources that we all have are being utilized properly and towards the right things, and even on top of that, at the right times.   Our new lanes on Riverside are a good example of this.  It's great intentions, it is amazingly awesome that we are getting these accomodations, but we're now actually a step backwards there.  For the moment.

I'm not saying that I'm opposed to spending money on bicycle infrastructure.  Far from it.  But I don't want to see us spending huge amounts of money on flashy things and forgetting the little things that we really need.  And really, to that end, I just want to make sure that as many of you have the opportunity to know as much of what is going on as possible, and be as vocal as possible in letting them know what it is that we want done.

It sounds like the city is very receptive to working with us overall. Not much, if anything is going to happen until spring. But we already knew that.

Things were going a little too well, I think, we were caught a little off guard by that and forgot to really push on the snow removal thing. I think it was kind of a 'we're stuck, we can't get that stuff up without sending out people with pickaxes or it thaws' kind of thing in one statement kind of lead to a statement about spring, and from maintaining the paths to what is actually there for signage and markings, where the lanes are, etc.

Back when Hennepin and 1st went in, someone posted this up on the forums, and it was also in the printed materials that Lisa brought with her tonight.

When I saw that on the forum I thought "Why can't we do that on Park and Portland?"  and then I asked Shaun Murphy about it back at the information gathering ride on Bryant Ave a few months ago.  I mentioned my idea again in this meeting.  It turned out they had actually considered it, and had answers as to what would need to be done, but it didn't sound out of the realm of something they thought would work.  It's just that the surface where the parking is now, which is where you would want to put the bike lane, is really torn up, so it would require resurfacing.  But only right there, not the whole street...

 Yeah, not exactly two north / south cycle tracks for my birthday, but I didn't tell anyone what I actually wanted, so I guess it will have to do.  And I kind of like that an offhand idea like that can actually have an impact.  I know that it's not actual paint and asphalt, but still, they had discussed it and thought about it, and that kind of is something, isn't it?

hokan thought it might be a bad design, and, I agree that we would have to be very careful about how the intersections were handled, especially considering what happened to Dennis Dumm last year.  I still think having a buffer of parked cars between you and the 50mph cars would be a good thing, maybe that's just me.

We will most likely be meeting at least on a quarterly basis with them, possibly more. There is an awareness that there needs to be more of a structured review of the bike plan,

At the end of the meeting, Don asked about how we were targeting neighborhoods for new bike racks, and we mentioned how it was simply logistics, not a comment on any larger need in those areas versus others or anything, it's just where our organizers live. They mentioned how they had been trying to figure out a way to rate businesses as bike friendly, and racks was one of the criteria, and they wanted to think in terms of parking logistics, but also to create a way to recognize businesses that were indeed bike friendly... It was as we were wrapping up and the meeting had already gone longer than planned (in a good way, seemed like we were making progress so nobody wanted to go 'hey, 5:30, let's bail) so I didn't have time to do much more than mention the work that I'd been doing, but I now have a name on who was working on this in the city, so I'll probably be getting in touch with her next week.

I rode home with hokan, the roads were a little dicey but we mostly just took the lane and didn't have any issues.  I stopped by Skol and treated myself to a sixer of my favorite fake beer, and then found a birthday card from my dad and the movie Coraline, which I didn't get to see in the theater.  There were quite a few more emails still to reply to, pms, forum threads, I kind of wrapped that up, watched the movie, um, snacked on some yummy bread, um, watched some Colbert and Daily Show, typed this...

It was a pretty good birthday, as birthdays go.

Update, I kind of forgot this part, added in from a comment thread about this post of Facebook:

I feel like I've miscalculated, and I'm not sure what, if anything I can really do about it.  My timing is just off, I, I think I was more optimistic that everything would just kind of 'work out' in the end.

If the situation I'm finding myself in was a bike ride, I was hauling ass with a good tailwind on one of the first spring rides, trying to catch a light with a flashing don't walk.  Sure I could hit it.  Positive.  Dropping teeth on the back cassette, accelerating, and then -

The light isn't as long as I thought that it was going to be.  I'm coming up to the intersection and it's changed to yellow, I can tell the car coming up on the right side can't see me from where they're at, and they're just going to get a clear green as I run into the intersection. 

There's still kind of time for me to keep from getting creamed, but I'm making some pretty major changes in what I think I can do and how quickly I can do it.

Trying to get more in the swing of updating, it's not really something I'm in the habit of anymore.  I only really got into blogging for awhile when I was working the third shift back at Cenveo - there was a lot of time without interupption.  If you had the machines humming, it was kind of a 'walk around and unload paper every 15 min' - that would only take a couple minutes, then it was back to surf the net for a few min.  Walk around again in another 15.

I loved those days.  It was simple.  5 black and white printers, hard numbers at the end of each shift.  How productive were you? Just count the clicks, you know down to the sheet of paper what was done by each operator.  Even with the blogging and hanging out on BikeForums.net, our shift was typically the largest producer.

This stuff that I'm doing now, it's so much harder to read what's getting done, where I'm at.  A lot of the time, it almost feels like I'm getting nowhere.  But for this weekend, I do think I got real work done.

And since even Erik from Peacock was giving me the advice that 'no matter what, you have to blog at least every couple days' last night, I guess I should sit down and actually write something.

I'll do a full review once I've had a few days to try it out, but for now, here's a few photos.  I'm pretty happy :)

I've started in on a couple pages that show how the site is going to work for groups that work to promote cycling on the website.  The first of these two groups is the new Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition, a group that is being formed to work specifically to work on the state of cycling in Minneapolis.  The second is the Midtown Greenway Coalition.

The goals for these two different groups are fairly different, but the pages that we are creating for them both bear a lot of similarities. They are also similar to the Bike Friendly Business listings, at least on the main page.  They both offer far more features than the business listings do.

There's not much more that is going to be added at this point in time - a couple of smaller features and tweaks, but overall, it's probably going to stay a lot like it is.

So, what exactly, is it?

Well, it's a really slick web page that you can edit when you become a Business Member on the website.  You have complete control over the page content, and can add tons of text, images, and even flash movies quickly and easily.  This gets you in front of the members on the site, and should help with your search engine rankings as well.

Let's check out some of the features in depth.

So, trying to figure out what to start posting on this here blog thingy, you know?

It's not really going all that great.  I haven't even been able to pick the person that's used for referring to the site.  Should it say "I'm going to be..." or "We are going to be..." when I'm talking about the new features and direction for the site.  That really comes down to the heart of what I'm trying to decide as I create the upgrade.

I guess, you know there is a red star as an icon...

I spent two days avoiding this post.

Seriously.  I have done the whole blog thing before.  It didn't end well.  And even then, that was years and years ago.  I'm a different person now, but the internet is a different place, too. 

I'm not really sure where to start with what I'm doing with the new version of bikelove.  I do know this.

I need to find a way to make it pay the bills. 

A lot of people don't seem to like that.  It seems like anything that I might do to charge for using the site is taken sort of as taxation without representation.  I get that, I really do.

But I want to make something really really cool here for people. I think that I can turn Bikelove into a VERY functional REALLY awesome tool for everyone that rides.  I don't want to do this out of a real desire to make a buck, I want to do it because I want the website to exist so that I can use it myself.

Let's take a walk through how I want the site to work for us: