Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: bicycle

This crop may be technically better than the first, but I'm still not convinced it's ideal. Notice the bikes on the left are cropped too much at the bottom, maybe, while there appears to be too much space in the lower right.

Examining the initial bike photo, I found that it was less well composed in its original form than it would be if cropped. This was my first attempt, which has the car in the background, which could be a distraction, or part of the message (think of how many more bike riders can be accomodated in the same space, for example).

Outside Dresden Neustadt is this bike parking area, which appears well used. As I've said elsewhere, I've noticed that German bike riders often have no problem with placing their bike in a convenient location for commuting and such, even if it's remote from their house, and bikes generally are very popular for transport as much as fun. This is quite a contrast even to the Czech Republic, or much of Eastern Europe, which seems less advanced in terms of environmental protection and city planning (although it should be noted that Communism can't be an excuse, as Dresden is in the former Communist East as well).

This photo, taken with my cameraphone, was largely a matter of waking up at the right time and place. We took the CityNightLine service to Prague overnight, and I woke up when the train stopped in Freiburg. I took this photo mainly because I was interested in how people had no problem with leaving their bikes chained up overnight. The station management don't seem to have a problem with it either, but most of all it seems like an illogical place to keep your bike. Wouldn't you want it to go to the station? I eventually concluded that these bikes must be owned by people from out of town who commute to Freiburg by train and then take their bike to work.

I think I had read somewhere that DB rented out bikes, but I had never actually found one and photographed one before. This one wasn't too far from the Karlsplatz.

As I said earlier, the heavy use of bicycles in Germany is really striking in comparison with the Czech Republic (and of course the United States), and many of the bikes that I saw in Munich were either customised or were factory painted or designed to look custom. This bike particularly caught my eye, but there were plenty of others.

Here's a better view of Regensburg Hauptbahnhof. Again note the bikes.

Regensburg is an old Romanl city dating to about 90 A.D. Most of what's left is medieval in nature, although not so much in the vicinity of the station (that building behind the station on the right looks Baroque). These historic buildings were better preserved than most German buildings in World War II partly because Allied commanders spared it on purpose for its historic value. To me as a modern American living in Europe, though, I was impressed by the extensive use of bicycles in Regensburg, as you can see in the racks on the platform.

This isn't a special subject, but I liked the composition. The bike and the electric trains are sort of a nice eco-theme as well.

Here's one of several shots that I took to commemorate the fact that I made it to Karlovo Namesti with my bike.

This is a sign much like a road sign that's actually for cyclists, indicating which route goes where.

The most scenic part of the route to Branik is in Kunraticky Les, where the bike route goes parallel to the Metro between Chodov and Roztyly. This is one of the many information signs (in Czech only) giving you map and some information about the animals, not all of them wild or native to Bohemia. In spite of being in Prague, the picture of the goat is not actually an exaggeration.

At the time that I made this trip in mid-August, the leaves were already starting to change for Autumn, and they were even falling off already.

This was taken during a break on the July Cyklojizda, the short one rather than the long one, although in this case short still meant 4+ hours, with a few breaks fit into the schedule like this one. I came along this time, but I only stayed in it for maybe 3.5 hours, after we had ended up in Vysehrad and I was getting itchy about getting the metro in time to get my bike home (riding through Prague alone is much more dangerous than riding in a group like Cyklojizda, which is part of the political point they're trying to make).

Every month, usually the third Thursday of the month, an organization called Auto*Mat organises a mass bike ride called Cyklojizda. This is considered by many to be Prague's Critical Mass ride, although there are a number of differences from a conventional Critical Mass ride, most notably that it is organised more deliberately, and the relations between the riders and the police are invariably better, usually with the police providing some traffic control for the riders. Typically, the ride starts here, in Namesti Jiriho z Podebrad, but in the past it has also been started from other locations, most notably Staromestske Namesti.

Bicycles are a major mode of transport in Copenhagen, and the city was recently voted the world's third most bike friendly city by Virgin Vacations. You can read a blog about it here in WIRED: blog.wired.com/cars/2007/11/where-are-the-m.html

Of course, the trams aren't the only way to get around Warsaw. There's also the Metro, and in addition, there are buses and taxis, some of them....bike taxis. I took this in the Royal Square by the castle.