You said Party - So I wore my Party dress

One of many great things about mass rides is the growing awareness of bike culture and the diversity of riders. Stretchy pants or cycling chic they are all welcome at Party rides. All though San Jose is no Copenhagen (or Portland) as far as bike style is concerned this area is slowly coming around.

My favorite on this ride was a beautiful backless red cocktail dress with a superb pair of riding shoes, showing rather nicely that you dont have to have strectch pants and a loud jersey to sport the look. The only thing missing was a Copenhagen style skirt gaurd on the bike.

Light Rider Ride - San Jose Bike Party Ride

I am little groggy this morning as I write this post, after finishing my ride back to the house by about two only to wake up at 6:00. This is one of the biggest rides I've seen yet and it was confirmed by sjbikeparty.org ("Reflections on Ride #21-Light Rider!") ; there were over 1,500 riders on last nights ride, which started at Dick's Center and ended after 17.25 miles at the fountain at SJSU at around midnight. Read the post to find out more on the amazing growth of these rides.

The sheer numbers of riders show just how starved this area is for some type of organized ride where fun, socializing and some type of light physical activity happen while feeling connected to a larger group of riders. As you enter the street at the start of the ride and feel more confortable riding amongst cars; that on any given day treat you as just a road obstacle, it feels good to be with fellow riders enjoying the warm summer evening.

The diversity of riders is amazing; young, old, cruisers, lowriders, roadies, teenagers, families, boyfriends and girlfriends all come together just to "Bike Party". As we passed neighborhoods many cyclists shouted out to residents and families; "Grab your bike. Let's Go....BIKE PARTY!", encouraging them to join the travelling festival.

All in all ...Good Times...Good Fun....Lets's Go ...BIKE PARTY!

San Jose Bike Party - June at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail: Share and Plan your Trips

New iPhone App Review

Just recorded my second trip using the new REI "Bike Your Drive" app. Technically this app is nice from a couple of standpoints; the ability to take photos along the way using your iPhone and the ability to use your iPhone as a GPS bike computer.

The actuall operation is pretty straightforward. Open the app to the dashboard screen which displays speed, distance, etc., (see screenshot at left) hit the start button and your ready to go. There is a feature to lock the screen, (the button in the lower right portion of the screen) so if your like me and just stick it in your pocket you dont have to worry about the ride being aborted inadvertantly. I am not sure but I am looking to see if there are any iPhone bike mounts available but you can probably make one withuout any effort.

One of the best features of this app is the ability to take geo-locatable photos while your riding (button in the lower left portion of the screen). Very Cool.!

After your ride hit the stop button in the middle and it will prompt you if you want to save or resume the ride. If you decide to end the ride right there you can save the ride to a draft ride file or upload it.

If you save the file it will prompt you for a name (required) and a ride story if you would like to add comments. There is also a photo button to edit your photos (include:default, or keep and attach an caption).

Once your ready to upload just hit the upload button and you will be taken to a screen that shows you the upload progress. First the file will be converted to GSX a GPS type of XML, then the photos will loaded given you the progress of each photo such as "Photo #1 of #5". Obviously the more photos the more upload time so if you have more than 5 photos you may want to establish a WiFi connection first.

One other nice feature of the app itself (before moving to the next stage, everytrail.com) is the fact that you can describe the type of activity; road biking, nordic skiing, train, walking, etc. This app naturally defaults to the road biking activity.

EveryTrail.com

The other component to this app is the upload side of "Bike Your Drive". This app connects you to everytrail.com. You can view your trip via their site or embed the trip in your site or blog as I have done here. You can even get the same look and feel with routes and photo markers in Google Earth which is really nice. According to the sites blog recorded trips (using other types of GPS input of course) has reached over 100,000 publicly available trips.

Whats nice about the everytrail site is that you can browse trips by country, state and county. Currently there are 8,500 public trips for California. By clicking on the "World Map" Section of the top menu bar you can choose from over 25 different activities based on its world map location. Some of the more obscure are sightseeing, hangliding/paragliding, and skateboarding..

So in a nutshell here are the Goods and Not So Goods.

Goods

• Very simple and easy to use.


• Free App


• Taking Photos along the way is way cool.


• The abilitity to lock the app along the way.


• The ability to set the accuracy of the GPS to optimize battery life.

Not So Goods

• Screen is a shade of green with a white font which is very difficult to read in the bright California summer sun. It would be great if you had an option to change the screen background to black.


• Also the dashboard cold be a little more readable.


• I've used the app three times already and couldn't get the cummulative stats to work even though I have input my weight, cost of gasoline, and MPG.
  

All in all I thing this is a great app and its FREE and its use is not just limited to cycling, it would also be great as a photo log of tours, sightseing, hiking, etc.



Whole Foods Cupertino to Peets Saratoga at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail: Geotagging Community
Note: Author is an employee of REI

San Jose Bike Party Tonight

Tonight everyone's meeting at "Dick's place" near the Bascom Light Rail Station. The ride is scheduled to go thru the Rose Garden area to northeast San Jose and finish at SJSU. Last month's ride had over 800 riders , so please bring a light and obey all traffic signals. Represent cycling in a positive way.

-- Post From My iPhone

Get Paid Not to Drive

Whether you decide to go car-lite or car free you can get paid to park your car. Due to recent changes in IRS policy you have "pre-tax" benefits at your disposal.. Internal Revenue Code Section 132(a) provides for eight types of employee fringe benefits, including a transportation fringe. My employer uses Wageworks a benefits plan manager to administer the "back-office" portion of the plan,but it basically works like this:

I can choose any number of San Francisco Bay Area Transit systems, for example CalTrain or VTA. If I choose VTA; a one month Adult pass is $61.25 which is the amount deducted from my paycheck. At $735 for all twelve passes for the year that amount would be decucted from my wages saving some dollars at tax time. But thats not all. My employer reimburses me 50% of the VTA pass each month which means I am saving over 60% per month. When you also add the costs of gas, oil, maintence not incurred, your on your way to huge savings. For more information check 511.org - Commputer Tax Benefits page.

New Apple iPhone App for your bike

This app is called "Bike Your Drive" which is branded by REI allthough some else actually created the app.

It is actually very cool. Using the GPS and the camera in your iPhone it tracks your route, allows you to take pictures and upload the route to a website hosted by DeLorme. More on the app later. I just wanted you to see the results on a ride I took to take a look at the new Mary Ave. bridge connection Cupertino to Sunnyvale, California.

New Mary Ave. Bike Bridge at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail: Share GPS Tracks
Note: Author is employed by REI