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Seeking Seattle-area volunteers on Saturday
The possibility of sending bikes to Africa or building bikes in Africa is on a lot of people's minds this weekend.
The Village Bicycle Project, for instance, is looking for volunteers from the Seattle area to help pack its 100th shipping container full of recycled bicycles on Saturday.
The group based in the Pacific Northwest has sent 45,000 bicycles and 7,000 tools to Ghana over the past 10 years. It also provides the training to teach mechanics how to fix the bikes.
Working through the Peace Corps, the Project has distributed bicycles to 60 communities …..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/23/loading-the-100th-shipping-container-of-bikes-headed-to-africa/
The mile-high city celebrates Earth Day by launching its Denver B-cycle bike sharing program on Thursday.
The system will be the largest in the US, sporting 500 bicycles available at 50 bike-share kiosks located across the city when fully operational. It starts with 360 to 400 sturdy red bikes.
This is the first bike-share roll-out in the US this year, to be followed in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Boston this summer. Washington DC is currently the only other bike-share system in the US, although much larger systems are up and running in Montreal and Mexico City.
The annual subscription is $65. Access for shorter periods ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/22/denver-rolls-out-nations-biggest-bike-sharing-program/
“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live.”
— Mark Twain, “Taming the Bicycle” 1917
This is one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes and most apt for this blog. I mention it now because today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Samuel Clemens.
I've been reading the entertaining biography “Mark Twain: A Life” by Ron Powers. He tells about Clemens learning to ride a high-wheeled bicycle as he waited for his book “Huckleberry Finn” to be published in 1884.
In letters, Powers found that Clemens' riding instructor wrote that his pupil had discovered more ways to fall off a bicycle than the man who invented it. Clemens himself claimed that he had invented all the bicycle profanity that had since come into common use.
The famous quote about bicycling comes …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/21/mark-twain-learns-to-ride-a-bicycle/
Lance Armstrong helped shine an international spotlight on the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico last year when he showed up to compete in the five-day race with two compadres from the Astana team.
He's returning to the bike race again this year from April 28 through May 2 with defending champ Levi Leipheimer and Jason McCartney from the RadioShack pro cycling team. They'll be joined among the elite cyclists with three from Garmin-Transitions — David Zabriskie, Danny Pate and Tom Danielson.
The arrival of the pros will definitely spark more interest in the race located in southwestern New Mexico near the Gila National Forest …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/21/lance-armstrong-returns-to-tour-of-the-gila-next-week/
A draft law that essentially would have put a “Not Welcome” mat out for bicyclists at the bridges to Mercer Island has been struck down by the City Council.
The proposed ordinance addressed bicyclists riding in groups of two or more on the populous island in Lake Washington between Seattle and Bellevue. It was aimed at the scenic, winding, 15-mile training loop around the island that occasionally becomes a flashpoint between motorists and bicyclists.
The law would have required those groups to ride single file as far to the right as possible, and to actually pull off the road to allow a car to pass along stretches of road that are too tight for safe passing.
In other words, it would have made bicyclists second-class road users by law…
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/20/proposed-bicycling-restrictions-rejected-by-mercer-island-officials/
RAGBRAI. BRAN. RAW. GABRAKY. BAK. GOBA. XOBA.
This isn't a command that Klatuu gives his robot in the movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” or the agency listings in an acronym-crazy state government phone book.
Dyed in the wool bicyclists will recognize these as just a few of the shortened names among the dozens of mass participation, across-state bicycle tours that are held every summer in the US.
The recession economy doesn't seem to be hurting the popularity of these outings. In fact, David Harrenstein, head of the National Bicycle Tour Directors Association, says:..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/20/overnight-mass-bike-tours-are-going-strong/
An elderly woman has died after she was struck this past weekend by a passing bicyclist on the Cedar River Trail in Renton.
News sources report that the 83-year-old woman was walking on the path about 4:45 p.m. Sunday about a 1/4-mile from the Interstate 405 overpass when she stepped out in front of the bicyclist, 57, who was passing her on the left.
Both were knocked to the ground and lost consciousness. The cyclist came to and was treated for minor injuries by EMTs; the woman was rushed to the hospital where she died Monday morning …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/20/elderly-walker-dies-after-stepping-in-front-of-bicyclist/
When I first stumbled across King County's Historic and Scenic Corridors Project online, I made up my mind to ride my bicycle along all 12 routes this year.
Researching a ride I did late last week along the Old Sunset Highway toward Snoqualmie Pass, I'm discovering that I frequently ride my bike along parts of a historic automobile route that date back nearly 100 years.
The Sunset Highway was the evocative name given to a road that connected Seattle with the Idaho border via Snoqualmie Pass in 1915. The Sunset road name survives in some sections of streets and highways that I've been riding for years in Renton and Issaquah without knowing the route's early history. …..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/19/bicycling-the-historic-sunset-highway-through-king-county/
A Benton County (WA) Superior Court judge sentenced a man to 5 years and 3 months in prison for vehicular assault after he struck a woman on a charity bike ride last year.
The 32-year-old man apologized to the victim, who was not in court, then told the judge that he believed the crash “was an accident” and “I feel bad about this whole situation.”
Although the judge agreed with the word “accident” in terms that the man didn't intend to run into the cyclist, he pointed out on Friday that the driver was under the influence of a stimulant and the crash shouldn't have happened ……
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/18/5-years-for-hitting-bicyclist-on-charity-ride/
Seattle might be a gold level bicycle friendly city on one list and ranked 4th best in the nation on another, but bicyclists and the city are having a devil of a time getting a major bike trail completed.
Bicyclists using the 27-mile-long Burke-Gilman Trail to commute to work or college or to run errands must deal with a 1 1/2-mile gap in the trail known as the “missing link.”
… On Friday, a judge ruled on the latest tactic to delay the trail completion — a lawsuit filed by area businesses. The superior court judge ruled against the businesses on all but one count, the need for an environmental report….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/17/another-burke-gilman-trail-delay-judge-orders-a-study/
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