[Editor's note: Family obligations today and throughout the week. Here's a blast from the past that you might find helpful for an upcoming mass-participation bike tour. Good comments too.]
You have to take the bad with the good, and that certainly goes for large group, week-long, cross-state bicycle tours.
Whether there are 200 or 2,000 cyclists on these organized bicycling events, don't be surprised if a few things don't go to your liking. It takes years for the organizers to work out the kinks, and even then things crop up that nobody could expect. Plus, there are plenty of annoyances over which they have no control.
I'm warning you so you can prepare yourself. Don't let these adversities ruin your idyllic bike ride; remember, this is an adventure. Roll with it ….
You never know when or where inspiration will strike, especially in the bicycle industry.
Take Harry Montague, who died at 77 earlier this month, for example. A professional architect for 30 years, it is his folding bicycle design that will be his legacy.
The Washington Post writes that Montague liked to ride a bicycle around his neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s, but standard bicycles took up too much room at home. He said small, commuter bicycles were too wobbly for his big frame.
So what Montague did was start tinkering in his garage …
A bicycle industry group that encourages people to get out and ride awarded grants to five projects this winter.
Recipients of the $40,000 Bikes Belong grants include three trail projects, a ciclovia in Minneapolis and a pump track in Philadelphia.
The grants raised through donations by bike industry employees reflect the wide diversity of bicycling projects that are underway across the US.
For instance, as your basic roadie, I was unfamiliar with pump tracks until a couple of years ago. Essentially, they're a loop on rolling terrain and banked turns that can be ridden without pedaling …
It's crunch time for the Washington state Vulnerable Users bills that create greater penalties for motorists who kill or injure bicyclists, pedestrians or other vulnerable road users.
The Cascade Bicycle Club says House and Senate versions of the bills received favorable support in committee hearings in Olympia. Now they face deadlines for votes by the full House or Senate by the end of the month so they can move on to the other chamber.
This is where a Vulnerable Users bill bogged down last year. That's why advocates at Cascade are asking members to encourage their state representatives to press for the bills to go to floor votes.
Republicans in Congress are targeting the Razorback Greenway in Arkansas as the type of pork they want to trim from the budget.
They're putting a $15 million pledge from the US Department of Transportation on the chopping block along with $61 billion in cuts they're considering, reports a local newspaper, the Times Record.
The 36-mile-long bike trail in northwestern Arkansas would connect the towns of Fayetteville, Bentonville, Rogers, Lowell, Springdale, and Johnson. The project, with a total cost of $40 million raised from local sources, was expected to be completed in 2012 ….
Update: Feb. 15, 2011 — After proposing a one-year ban on cyclist Alberto Contador, the Spanish Cycling Federation has overturned that proposal and he is free to race again.
Contador appealed their findings that he had intentionally used clenbuteral, a performance-enhancing drug, during the Tour de France. Instead, they chose to believe his story that he accidentally ingested it in some clen-tainted steak.
Contador says he's ready to ride the Volta ao Algarve on Wednesday for his new team, Saxo Bank. The International Cycling Union says it's waiting to receive the full dossier on the investigation before offering its opinion on the Spanish board's flip-flop. ….
If you enjoy riding a bike, imagine the joy it must give someone whose mobility can be challenged.
I observed that several years ago when my special needs daughter and her fellow classmates got to ride adaptive bikes that were brought to the school for the day by the Seattle-area nonprofit Outdoors For All.
Many of these kids don't have the muscle tone, balance or coordination to handle the regular bikes they see other kids riding, but they laughed and squealed to roll around on adaptive trikes and two-seaters.
Recently, Seattle orthopedic surgeon Sean Adelman, wrote about “Biking and Independence” at his blog Raise Expectations. …..
A road rage incident between a motorist and a bicyclist dating back to October in Redmond, Wash., has led to a flaming torrent of anti-bicyclist commentary.
Reading through more than a hundred comments at the Seattle Times, I despair for a solution between the bicyclist-motorist animosity anytime soon.
According to published accounts, a Redmond man has been charged with first-degree malicious mischief after he allegedly threw his bicycle at a car whose driver had honked at him ….
A report issued by the US Department of Transportation compiles the “what,” “when,” “where” and “how” of 630 bicyclist fatalities in 2009 involving motor vehicles.
It's easier to read these numbers if you don't think about the “who.”
“Traffic Safety Facts of 2009” is a follow-up report to one issued last September trumpeting that overall traffic fatalities in the US dropped to their lowest level since 1950. Bicycling fatalities also dropped that year, by 12%.
I suppose it's no surprise that the state with the most bicyclists death was Florida ….
An historic auto road that goes deep into the Mount Rainier National Park will be permanently converted into a trail for bicyclists and hikers under a plan announced by the park service on Friday.
The Carbon River Road in the northwest end of the park has been closed to auto traffic since 2006 because of a series of damaging floods. It has remained open, when possible, as far as the Isput Creek Campground for hikers and bikers.
Under the new plan, an effort will be made to retain as much of the historic road as possible. Trails that connect those old road sections along the Carbon River will be upgraded for bicycle use.
That 5-mile-long road was originally built in 1921. It connected the park entrance ….
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[Editor's note: Family obligations today and throughout the week. Here's a blast from the past that you might find helpful for an upcoming mass-participation bike tour. Good comments too.]
If you enjoy riding a bike, imagine the joy it must give someone whose mobility can be challenged.
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