Category: Bike Touring
You better start practicing your bicycle jousting skills, your two-wheeled balance and your good humor as the New Belgium Brewery's Urban Assault Rides are coming to 13 cities in 2010.
Essentially, a two-person team sets out to visit 11 checkpoints around town to complete a challenge at each location. There's no route. The team to complete all 11 obstacles in the shortest time wins.
Three cities have been added to the Urban Assault Ride tour in 2010. The 13 are:
Tucson — April 18
Berkeley — May 2
Seattle — May 16
Portland — May 23
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/19/new-cities-for-2010-urban-assault-rides/
That family of five that set off last summer from Kentucky on a five-seater bicycle has hit the Pacific Coast. Now they're heading north to their Alaskan destination.
The Harrison family had pedaled nearly 4,000 miles to San Diego. They still have 3,000 miles to go before reaching Fairbanks.
To recap, Bill Harrison and his wife Amarins are traveling with their three girls, Cheyenne, 6, Jasmine, 4, and Robin, 3. They're riding a five-person yellow tandem and carrying their gear in a trailer. You can follow their adventures at Pedouin.com.
Theirs is quite an inspiring story for anyone preparing for a long bike trip. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/17/famly-bicycle-5-riders-strong-rolls-north-along-pacific-coast/
When bicyclists are shooting the breeze about their bike touring exploits, each and every one will have a pretty good dog story.
Joe Kurmaskie won't stop there, though. He'll probably tell you about the time he was chased by an elephant.
Kurmaskie, aka The Metal Cowboy, is a Portland-based bike travel writer who recently posted a short video about being chased by an elephant while on a charity bike ride in Botswana.
The African elephant charged Kurmaskie and his companions briefly one afternoon….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/13/elephants-like-dogs-also-chase-bicycles/
Anytime I hear about foreign destinations for bicycle tours, I think of France, Italy, even Canada. But that's all a matter of perspective.
Now a Quebec-based non-profit bicycling association is sending its 2010 Grand Tour south into upstate New York for the first time.
The 2,000 cyclists on the bike tour are expected to pump $1.5 million into the area during the seven-day ride. It's just another reminder that recreatoinal bicycling is a big business that can contribute to the economic health (see “Recreational bicycling has big economic impact in Wisconsin”)
Vélo Québec Événements is producing the bike tour
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/11/upstate-new-york-is-destination-for-foreign-bike-tour/
The long wait for Sierra Cascades Bicycle Route is almost over. The Adventure Cycling Association says the full maps will be available in mid April.
An overview map is available online. It shows the general route of the 2,392-mile bike route that parallels the Pacific Crest on paved roads.
The bike route from the Canadian border at Sumas, Washington, to the Mexican border at Tecate, Mexico, is the newest of more than 38,000 miles of mapped bike routes offered by the non-profit.
The bicycle route will visit Northern Cascades National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Yosemite National Park ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/08/sierra-cascades-bicycle-route-maps-available-soon/
Recreational bicyclists looking forward to getting their Rocky Mountain high this summer should be warned that registration for all four big Colorado bike tours are now open.
The oldest of the bunch, the Denver Post Ride the Rockies celebrating its 25th anniversary, announced its route this morning and began taking registrations. Registration ends Feb. 25.
Starting with Ride the Rockies from June 13 – 19, the other fully supported, mass participation bike tours are Bicycle Tour of Colorado from June 20 – 26, Colorado Rocky Mountain Bike Tour from Aug. 1 – 7, and the Colorado Peace Ride from Aug. 8 – 11.
You can find more week-long, mass participation bike tours in other states at Across State Bicycle Rides..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/07/register-now-for-big-bicycle-tours-in-colorado/
See jump for larger viewProbably the single most important project for bicycle travel in the United States is the U.S. Bicycle Route System.
The proposed 50,000-mile national network links the lower 48 states with numbered corridors running north-south and east-west.
The Adventure Cycling Association and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials worked together to identify those 50-mile wide corridors nearly 2 years ago. But it's up to the individual states to work together to create the on-the-ground bike routes that meet up at state borders.
And that's the problem.
Some states are charging ahead to pick bicycle routes to implement the plan. Others are lagging far behind or show no interest at all……
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/05/uneven-support-for-u-s-bicycle-route-system/
One sure way to ensure that bicycling will get more respect is to calculate and prove its economic impact on a region.
Wisconsin, for instance, just learned on Tuesday that recreational bicycling annually generates more than $924 million in total economic impact to the state.
Adding the impact of bicycle manufacturing, sales and service industry raises the total to $1.5 billion annually.
Whoa. Suddenly bicyclists are no longer just people who dress funny and compete for a small piece of the road. They're cash cows who contribute mightily to Wisconsin's economic health.
It would be useful if bike advocates in all 50 states had this kind of information to draw upon when lobbying for better facilities for bicyclists. Similar surprising findings…
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/02/02/recreational-bicycling-has-big-economic-impact-in-wisconsin/
Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa organizers announced the host towns for its 38th annual bike ride — the third easiest route ever.
As many predicted, Sioux City got the honors as the starting town on the northern route that will cover 442 miles. The other towns and mileage:
Sioux City to Storm Lake — 68.5 miles;
Storm Lake to Algona — 79 miles;
Algona to Clear Lake — 51.3 miles;
Clear Lake to Charles City — 51.7 miles;
Charles City to Waterloo — 82.7 miles;
Waterloo to Manchester — 62 miles;
Manchester to Dubuque — 46.9 miles.
In identifying the route at RAGBRAI's first-ever announcement party ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/01/31/2010-ragbrai-rolls-out-from-sioux-city-to-dubuque/
Brett Tracy travels the western US by bicycle and uses his artist's trained eye to document the end of the industrial age.
While the end of the industrial age might not be an accepted fact, Brett sees evidence everywhere that humans are coming to the end of their industrial phase. He imagines that a more ecologically aware human-scale era will replace it.
His website is “The Illuminated Thread: a journey by bicycle into the murky unknown of the deindustrial age.” It's full of pictures, videos, audio and journal postings of his travels.
Brett is about to set out on a bike tour from Los Angeles to Houston. Along the way, he's planning to stop at desert water projects, failed alternative energy projects, utopian settlements, mines, dumps and aircraft storage yards. ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/01/27/traveling-by-bicycle-to-document-the-end-of-industrial-age/
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