Fortunately, if your bike lives in Contra Costa County, it probably didn’t have a winter quite this bad.
But if a family of spiders made their home between your handlebars, these four simple tips from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will get your ride ready for Bike to Work Day this Thursday.

Pump the tires

“Putting air in the tires is number one,” says Dan Thomases, the chief bike doctor at Box Dog Bikes. “Over the course of a year air escapes slowly and tires will go entirely flat; but that does not mean they won’t hold air – just re-inflate the tire before you check for leaks. If you don’t have a hand pump, I would recommend going to your local bike shop and ask them to help you inflate your tires.”
If you don’t have a hand pump and you’re heading for the gas station with your bike in the trunk, keep in mind that bicycle tires have one of two types of valve stems, either Schrader and Presta. Presta valves are thinner than Schrader valves and have a locking nut on the valve stem. If you have a bicycle with a Presta valve stem, you won’t be ready for the automobile tire air coupler: and may need an adapter.
Zack Stender, chief of the wheel-smith mechanics at Mike’s Bikes, adds that you can check the recommended pressure range, as it’s printed on the side of the tires, so you can make sure you pump in the right amount of air. A properly inflated tire is easier to ride on and more resilient to flats and other damage. “Gas station pumps only go up to about 40 PSI, and a mountain bike tire needs from 40 to 65 PSI, while a road bike needs up to 110 PSI. ”

Adjust the seat

It’s important for comfort. If you are riding into work the first time you want to adjust the seat height. Set your seat so that your leg is almost completely straight when you are sitting on the seat and then fine tune the height so that you still have a slight bend in your knee when you are at the bottom of your stroke.

Clean the chains

“It’s best to use a dry, clean rag to take off all the dust and dirt and cat hair. Do not use WD-40 on chains, it’s a de-greaser and will actually take off all your lubricant faster than burning man, “ says Dan. Zack says, “If your bike has been sitting for a couple of months, you’ll want to lube it with a bike oil like Tri-Flow. Any local bike shop will have a good brand of bike chain oil.”

Test the brakes

“You’ll also want to check your brakes by squeezing them hard and rocking the bike back and forth to ensure the brakes can stop the bicycle. Next, take a slow test ride around the block and if you can stop, you’re good to bike to work,” adds Zack. If you’re bike has been in storage for a while, the rubber may have hardened over time and the brake pads may need replacing.

And one tip from 511CC – Have Fun

Don’t get lost, take lots of pictures, and have fun out there!

Happy Bike Month, everyone!
To get us started right, let’s travel back in time to 1817, and see how far those two wheeled wonders have come.
The bicycle started as a “walking machine” to propel inventor Baron von Drais more quickly through royal gardens. They were about the same size as modern bikes, with wheels of the same size, but no pedal. Instead the rider straddled the frame and pushed himself along in a glide. Also called the “Draisienne,” the wooden machine wasn’t much good on anything but well manicured pathways.
In 1865, someone applied pedals to the front wheel, and the velocipede (“fast foot”) was born! The thing was still made of wood, so it earned the nickname “boneshaker” for its wobbly rides across mostly cobblestoned roads. Velocipedes were popular enough to lead to the creation of indoor riding clubs, offering people the chance for a smoother ride.
In 1870, advancements in metallurgy allowed for the creation of the first all metal bike. Rubber tires emerged around this time, too. These lighter bikes gained popularity, even though they still had no brakes and were effectively all fixies.
Someone figured out that larger front wheels offered a better return on your effort, and cartoonishly large front wheels came into vogue. One of these bikes cost an average of six month’s pay, but they were popular nonetheless. Riders purchased bikes with front wheels as large as their legs would allow.
Of course, this was incredibly hard to control, and these bikes were given to flipping forward. Hitting a larger than average rut or rock would send the rider head-first over the wheel.
Improvements continued. Soon, someone realized they could put the big wheel on the back of the bicycle to reduce that annoying “flipping head-first over the handlebars” problem. This revolutionary design became known as a “safety bicycles”, while the older style was referred to as “ordinary bicycles” or “ordinaries.”
A few years later, metallurgy advanced sufficiently to allow chains and the all important gear differentials. You could pedal once but propel the bicycle more than one turn of the wheel! With a few final improvements to the rubber tires in 1898 (by the father of a boy named Dunlop), the modern bicycle was born. Improved production technologies meant that working men could afford them, and bicycles were much cheaper than horse-drawn carriages.
Bicycles also played an important role in the course of women’s rights. In 1896, Susan B. Anthony said that “the bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world.” The bicycle craze effectively killed the corset while ushering “common sense dressing” and increased the mobility of women tremendously.
Bicycling was so popular in the late 1800’s that the League of American Wheelman formed to lobby for better roads. Soon, those roads began serving an even newer technology – cars.
Today’s bicycles are of course a refined version of their ancestors at the turn of the last century, but the basic concept is still the same. And the League of American Wheelman (now the League of American Bicyclists) is still lobbying for more bicycle-friendly roads.
The history of bicycles is far from complete.

Many people in the developing world still suffer from a lack of cost-effective and reliable transportation. What does a bicycle represent to a child who must walk eight miles to school, or a would-be entrepreneur who must carry their goods a similar distance to market? Non-profits like Bikes Not Bombs are working to bring sturdy and rugged bicycles to people that need them around the world.

In our own country, the comfort of “safety bikes” was supplanted long ago by air-conditioned, self-propelled automobiles. But as we strive to solve our public health and climate change problems, bicycles present a new set of opportunities here, too.

As we prepare for Bike to Work Day 2011, 511CC invites you to share your memorable biking to work stories. Post them in the comments.
I learned how to ride a bicycle in a quiet suburb when I was 9, but I never rode in traffic until I moved to Boston. Learning to ride in Boston traffic is like learning to add at MIT.
Kenmore Square is actually a five-road intersection, but because Commonwealth is divided, it acts like a seven-road intersection. There’s a train station, a lot of BU students, and usually a lot of baseball fans (Fenway Park is a few blocks away). When I was there, the intersection had been under construction for about as long as the Red Sox had gone without winning a World Series. It was a mess.
But I had to get to work, and the summers have beautiful weather, so I found myself biking through this monster of an intersection twice a day for a few months.
One time, I pulled up my bike to a red light alongside a characiture of a Harvard professor. He wore a tweed jacket with elbow patches. His bicycle looked like something out of the 1940s – it matched him perfectly. Clearly aware that I was staring, he asked me a question in a very professorly tone –
“Do you know the shortest perceivable length of time?”
No clue.
“The length of time between a green light and a Boston driver hitting their horn.”
Sure enough, the light changed and at least three drivers blared their horns. We were off.
Now, the construction at Kenmore Square is finished and it looks quite nice. Not only do they have bicycle lanes, but they even have left turn bike lanes.
Post your own story in the comments!

Looking for a little extra motivation to hop on your bike next month? Or do you already have plenty of motivation, and want a place to share your experiences? The second International 30 Days of Biking Challenge might just be the thing you need.
The concept is simple. Challenge yourself to ride your bike every day for the thirty days of April. Thirty miles to work. Thirty blocks to your friend’s house. Thirty seconds to the store. Just hop on it and pedal at least once a day. It’s that easy!
Register online to take the challenge. Follow them on Twitter or Facebook to see how the experience goes for your fellow challengers. Stay tuned with 30 Days of Biking for lots of tips on urban cycling, weather-proofing, majestic pictures, and all manner of things related to getting around on two wheels.

Have you had a chance to try out the electronic bike lockers?
Did you know that the electronic card system behind the lockers, BikeLink, offers users access to secure bike parking throughout the Bay Area, as well as San Diego and Portland?
Not sure how to get started?
It’s easy!
Start by going to the BikeLink website and ordering your card. A new card costs $20, but arrives in the mail with $22 stored on the card.
To order your card, you must provide the number of a government issued ID (like a drivers license). If you plan to use the Embarcadero or Berkeley bike station, you’ll have to verify your photo ID the first time you use the station.
Once you have your card, you’ll be able to use any public BikeLink locker, including the new ones coming soon at El Cerrito del Norte BART and Pittsburg Old Town.
BikeLink generally charges between three and five cents an hour for secure bike parking. That’s over 700 hours of parking with your new card! Like Clipper, you can connect your BikeLink card to automatically draw from a debit or credit card so you always have money for parking on your card.
The bike lockers are first come, first served. How do you get your bike into a locker?
Watch closely:

And out:

Got it? Watch the whole thing happen in 10 seconds!

Ready? Get your BikeLink card today! Already have one, share your experiences in the comments!

One gains a unique vantage point sitting on top of a bicycle. Without all the metal and extra seats of a car, riding a bike immerses us in our surroundings, but with more speed and maneuverability than traveling by foot. Sometimes, it can be scary (“that pothole is huge!”), but it can also be humanizing. Other folks on the road tend to treat you like a person, rather than how they personify your vehicle’s make and model (a Hummer versus a Prius, for example).
This week, we’re asking our readers, followers, and fans to share their favorite random acts of kindness from their bike seats. Post yours in the comments section of this post, tweet at us (don’t forget to include @511CC), or post them on our wall.
I’ll get us started.
It was the first beautiful day last May. This was the kind of day that makes people move to the Bay Area. I hadn’t ridden a bike in a while and got lost on my way to work. I wasn’t “no one will notice I’m late” lost. I was “why is there water over there?!” LOST. I was off the cushy bike boulevard and in some industrial part of town with much more traffic than I expected. I approached a stop sign at a busy street.
There was no way across this street. I could see my office building in the distance, but there were too many cars. To make matters worse, a huge truck pulled up beside me, with his right turn signal blinking, ready to squash me like a bug. The only witness of my impending demise – the haggard looking woman on the sidewalk next to me. She shouted at me. I became nervous.
But wait, the driver was trying to get my attention, too. When I looked over, he eased straight out into the road. The cars coming from the left slowed, and I made a break for it! He made a wide turn, and waved back at me as he continued on his way. Success!
I was really excited about my random act of kindness until I read about Timbuk2’s seat cover ad campaign. Covering people’s seats on a rainy day is good enough, but doing it with a waterproof coupon for 20% off more waterproof gear is just clever.
Do you have a random act of kindness to share? What act of kindness would you appreciate the most? What would you be willing to do for someone else? How did you pay your act forward?
Let us know! We’ll post our favorites next Monday.