I think I need to buy sunglasses just for riding my bike. I got 2 bugs in the eyes today. One just bounced off the lower eyelid, but the other went straight into my right eye. I watched it fly directly into my eyeball, and then everything went dark. I had to jump off my bike and scramble through my pannier for water to wash it out with. Even then it stung for a long time and took 2 hours before I blinked most of the bug guts out.

For those of you who bike in Vancouver, here are 2 cool bike maps I came across recently:
1) Vancouver Cycling Route Planner – a Google Maps cycling option created by people at Translink, UBC, and UVic. It’s still in Beta, but it looks pretty cool already. They mash in data about hills, vegetation, and pollution levels to create some interesting mapping criteria. Hopefully it gets rolled into the official Google Maps page eventually.
2) Map of Bike Routes to Ultimate Fields in Vancouver – indispensable map for finding the best bike route to Ultimate Frisbee games.

In wider biking news, I totally missed Montreal’s announcement of a Public Bike System while I was in Scandinavia. The specs looks really impressive. There will be 2400 bikes stationed at 300 locations. They’re using solar power and wireless communication at the docking stations. Interestingly, the system is being run by a Montreal-based company. Up until now, most bike sharing systems have been run by either JCDecaux or Clear Channel, but this Montreal company seems to be a new player. It’s also interesting to note that Quebec has no bike helmet law, which definitely makes setting up a bike sharing system easier. No details yet on the release date and pricing.