In Utrecht, the network of bike paths was incredible, comprehensive, seemingly unending and…pretty. By pretty, I don’t just mean scenic. I mean that the paving material used was aesthetically pleasing. It was brick and/or some sort of cobblestone, something that adds personality to a city while making the riding/walking experience enjoyable and interesting. Function AND… [Read more…]
October 19, 2010
A few months ago, I blogged about electric vehicles. I wrote that they promise to help move us in a more sustainable direction but that ultimately, biking is where it’s at. Little did I know that just a few months later I would be riding an electric bike around Rotterdam as a part of a… [Read more…]
October 10, 2010
In the US, garages are akin to storage units, providing a safe haven for holiday decorations, photo albums, camping gear and that bike you manage to ride very infrequently. In Amsterdam, garages are used to park cars. How does this happen? In Amsterdam the Dutch do not allow people to buy a parking… [Read more…]
September 5, 2010
New IPO foreign correspondent Shiloh Ballard gives us an update to her cycling mission in the Netherlands. On the way to Utrecht from Amsterdam, the first thing I noticed about bikes was the bike parking. I saw a double decker parking structure and was shocked. That was just the beginning. There were full blown parking… [Read more…]
August 23, 2010
by Shiloh Ballard Tuesday night I pulled into my garage, got out of “my” car and plugged it in to the wall. This sounds like a seemingly mundane action but I found it to be more special than I had anticipated. I felt a new kind of freedom, and had I exclaimed anything, it would… [Read more…]
November 28, 2010
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