Photographer Russ Roca of Long Beach, Calif.,
figured out how to carry pounds of equipment
on his specially rigged bike.
"I've been car-free for five years," proclaims 28-year-old Russ Roca, a photojournalist who lives in Long Beach, California (some 30 miles down the coast from Los Angeles), no small feat given the near-mythic car culture of southern California. More amazing is that he depended on a car for work more than most Americans.
A freelance photographer, Roca travels to magazine photo shoots and reporting assignments, often many miles from where he lives, and lugs around many pounds of cameras, tripods, light stands, strobes, even a miniature dark room, to photo shoots. So giving up driving altogether seemed an unlikely option for him. But facing extensive, costly repairs to his truck several years ago, he vowed to kick the car habit once and for all. And he did.
Outfitting a bike to carry photo equipment provided car-freedom
Today, Roca gets around by bike — camera and lights and all — using an Xtracycle frame that attaches to his bike. "Saddle" packs on each side carry up to 200 pounds. He even stows chemicals in his tiny mobile darkroom for developing on the spot and can carry six framed photographs for gallery shows.
"I bike because it’s healthy and environmentally sustainable. I have a brother in Iraq and I feel guilty about using too much oil."
Roca recently did a record-breaking (for him) 70-mile roundtrip to a shoot for a food magazine in Laguna Hills, carrying some 30 pounds of equipment, for a total riding time of about five hours. "Going south it gets quite hilly so I was literally going about 5 mph up some hills," says Roca. "The toughest thing about the shoot was still having the energy to photograph for four hours after all the riding."Roca resisted even his family's pressure to be "normal" by California standards. "My mother freaked out when I said I was going car-free," he says. "It's hard for my parents to wrap their heads around a 'car-less' person; they think of homeless derelicts."Roca finds it ironic that some places, like Portland, where it rains a lot seem to be better set up for cyclists. "Here,"Roca notes wryly, "it is flat and sunny 95 percent of the time, but there is a tremendous car culture and lack of cycling education."
Roca tried telecommuting and in-line skating first
Trading the truck for saddlebags did not come easily. Roca went through a series of intermediate steps before he found the right mode of transportation that suited his work needs. At the time, he worked as a graphic artist for a San Francisco-based law from his Long Beach apartment, just blocks from the beach, via conference call and email. "I didn't have to drive to work everyday, so that was a big impetus." But for other assignments, he realized he needed wheels — some kind of wheels anyway. He tried in-line skating combined with public transportation, but it was too difficult to transport heavy equipment. He did research on the Internet and discovered the Xtracycle setup, allowing him to adapt his bicycle for work.
One challenge that remained, however, was figuring out to navigate while actually bicycling. "It gets tricky. I download Google maps onto my BlackBerry and look for alternate routes with less traffic — it beats carrying a real map."But sometimes Roca turns down jobs if they will be too hard to get to — for instance, too many hills. He shuns downtown Los Angeles as being too intense for cycling. And cycling through unfamiliar territory can be downright hazardous. Once Roca was pedaling to a new job and found himself in an industrial section of town choked with big 4-wheelers kicking up gravel and the air from their wake pushing him to the side. "It was pretty hairy — but good preparation for an upcoming bike tour."
Biking helped Roca lose weight and avoid traffic jams
Roca can’t quite believe his past car life. "I used to have a 40-mile commute to West L.A. I used to spend an hour and a half stuck in traffic nearly every day each way. Since I've been car-free, I have cut down on oil consumption and dropped three pants sizes in the first 3 months." Roca has other reasons, too. "I bike because it’s healthy and environmentally sustainable. I have a brother in Iraq and I feel guilty about using too much oil." There is still another, practical reason that he remains car-free: problematic parking in Long Beach. "If it's later than 6 p.m. and you need a parking spot on the street, you must circle around and around. Very few apartment buildings have parking lots or garages."
Roca laments what he sees as a larger stigma to bicycle usage in the U.S. "Bikes are seen as toys, as recreational, not utilitarian objects. On the other hand, in Europe and Japan they are viewed as a real means of transportation." But that non-utilitarian view of bikes is slowly changing. Bike transit centers, or park-and-lock facilities for bikes at major transit hubs, first became popular in Europe and Japan and are surging in numbers and popularity in the U.S. (More on bicycling's surging popularity.)
Long Beach a pioneer in bicycle transit hubs
The city of Long Beach is where the first such U.S. facility opened in 1996. Roca lives just a few blocks from the hub and frequents its bicycle repair shop. What is Roca's take on how bike-friendly Long Beach is? Pretty good, he says, despite the-car-is-king mentality that prevails. Long Beach has five major "Class I" bike or off-road lanes that shield bikes from cars. He often uses the Los Angeles River Bikeway, which runs along the L.A. River, or the pedestrian bikeway along the beach (but that path, he says, "can be a landmine for cyclists who share space with kids in strollers, kids on tricycles"). His biggest complaint about sharing the road with motorists is that "they tend to honk at you, and sometimes we cyclists ride too close to parked cars. Cycling is safest when you drive like you were driving a car and use your space on the road," says Roca, reiterating common safety tips. (Many accidents occur when cyclists crash into opened car doors — in bicycle lingo, 'Getting a door prize'). Yet Roca has noticed he shares the road with more cyclists lately and that motorists seem to be more tolerant. "I like to think the change is from gas prices going up."
Bringing a change of clothes is a necessity of life on a bike
How does Roca deal with what every bicycling commuter must: needing to look professional and properly attired after a long jaunt that may include being pelted with rain, working up a sweat beneath a sweltering sun or getting terribly wind-blown? He simply takes the Superman approach, darting into the restroom of a nearby a gas station or restaurant to change just before he arrives at a job. To protect his expensive equipment from the elements, he outfitted his bike with fenders to cover wheels and dry docks to seal film and cameras.
Sharing the benefits of cycling
Now that Roca has discovered that there can be a higher-quality life without a car, he is on a mission: "I will remain car-free for as long as my Xtra-bike allows me to." And he plans to spread the word and start a bicycle advocacy group in Long Beach. "The perception of bicycling is either Lance Armstrong or Sunday cruising, with little in between. Utilitarian cycling needs to go mainstream." Ever so slowly, Roca is helping to pioneer a new bike culture in Long Beach: that bikes can serve a useful purpose, and there is a life after cars. (Environmental Defense Fund- edf.org/article.).
