Introduction

Because it's finally June, and there are about 18 days until my flight abroad, I've decided to get started on my blog. Before my structured posts, I wanted to write an introduction about myself, my background, and this class for the friends and family I'm sharing this journey with.

I'm Lauren, and I just finished my sophomore year at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I study Environmental Science and Policy with a concentration in Land Use. I love everything related to bikes, whether its commuting, racing, recreational riding, learning about mechanics, or learning about bike infrastructure. In my free time, I like to make fun music video parodies about biking/non-car transportation. In the future, I want to get my Master's Degree in Planning, and I hope to become a Transportation Planner. The photo above is of me (in my awesome War on Cars shirt) on the bike path that connects my school to Washington, DC, where the DC metro runs above the path. The photo on the home page of my blog is of me on my favorite bike/pedestrian bridge that leads to Lake K in Columbia, MD, but I'm excited to see how my view of the infrastructure here will change as I experience this course.

This bike abroad program is a course Called Designing Cities for People on Bikes, where I will get to spend time in Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands learning about the bike infrastructure in each of those places: how it is designed, how it is implemented, and how it is used by the people in each of the cities we visit. Specifically, we will be visiting Copenhagen, Malmö, Nijmegen, Amsterdam, and Utrecht (and I will be taking a trip to Paris afterwards to try to catch the final stage of the Tour de France, so I will make an extra post about the bike infrastructure there if I can!). The best part of this course is that we are able to see how all of the bike infrastructure works in person and actually take part in the bike culture of each city. If anybody knows anything about me, it's that I love biking, so I'm really excited to be able to bike in new places and make it a learning experience along the way. 

My blog is titled Brakeless Biking Adventures because I want to learn as much and have as much fun as possible with "no brakes," but it's also a play on words for my BBB friends reading this😁. On the home page, I've linked my Strava, so, if I'm able to set up everything correctly, it should show the general routes I take to bike around once the program starts. I love maps, so I think it would be cool to be able to map out some of the routes I take while I'm abroad.  

That's about it for my introduction, but look out for my next structured posts before the adventures begin on June 22!

- Lauren