Category: Other cycling
Bicycle City sounds like a mythical Valhalla where bicycling enthusiasts go when they pass away.
In reality, a group of environmentally friendly developers are creating a Bicycle City in the countryside south of Columbia, South Carolina, where cars will be verboten and residents will ride their bikes or walk to get around.
The community is the idea of Joe Mellett, a Internet marketer who sold Education.org to Monster.com about four years ago to get the seed money for the project. But the project is far past the idea phase. Mellett and his co-developers are presenting their plans to the Lexington County Council this week and hope to get started in the fall.
The Bicycle City group already has bought 150 acres near the town of Gaston …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/05/25/bicycle-only-community-underway-in-south-carolina/
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 other night I stumbled across a quirky reality TV show on the History Channel that vintage bicycle collectors might enjoy.
The show is called American Pickers, and it follows the exploits of Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz as they rummage through old barns, attics and junk piles in search of treasures that they can resell for a profit.
Each has his specialty, and one of Wolfe's is vintage bicycles and motorbikes. Occasionally, they'll stumble across one of these gems in their travels around the country. In one episode he explains:
“My passion runs deep for bicycles because it was my first form of independence when I was a kid.”….
These guys don't sit at home buying this stuff off of eBay, they're cruising around backroads in their Antique Archeology van and stopping at homes where they dig into dirt, dust and debris for metal signs, ceramic jars and anything else they think can be sold. It's time-consuming, but it's a way to find the good deals …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/09/american-pickers-find-vintage-bicycles-among-the-junk/
Toronto police pulled four large transport trucks into a community center parking lot on Monday and began unloading 1,000 bicycles that will be fixed up and distributed to youth in the area.
But that's not even half of the stolen-bike haul made by police who in 2008 began investigating Igor Kenk, dubbed the most prolific bicycle thief in Canada's history.
In all, police confiscated 2,200 to 2,900 bicycles that Kenk had squirreled away around the city. About 1,000 of those bikes were returned to their owners.
Among those showing up at the center for the unloading — Igor Kenk …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/06/does-toronto-bike-giveaway-end-bike-theft-saga/
A 45-year-old British bicyclist and bar owner set off from Thailand last week in an attempt to smash the around-the-world bicycling record by shaving more than two months off the current best time.
Alan Bate proposes to accomplish the 18,000-mile journey in 99 days, eclipsing the fastest time of 165 days set by Julian Sayarer, 23, just last year.
The feat requires that Bate ride his bicycle an average 180 miles a day, compared to the 109 miles a day ridden by Sayarer last year.
The past couple of years have seen many attacks on the bicycling record to circumnavigate the globe — all by British bicyclists.
The standing Guinness World Record holder is still Scotland's Mark Beaumont …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/05/british-bicyclist-on-a-quest-to-circle-the-globe-in-99-days/
Bicycles will rule the road along a 2 1/2-mile stretch of Lake Washington Boulevard in Seattle just about every Sunday between May 2 and Sept. 26 this year.
Bicycle Sundays is back in 2010, which means all motorized traffic will be prohibited along the scenic lake-front road between Mount Baker Beach and Seward Park.
It's good to hear, but not at all surprisingly, that the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department is continuing the event that's been a Seattle tradition for some four decades. Seattle's new mayor, Michael McGinn, rides a bicycle.
Bicycle Sundays is Seattle's own version of ciclovia …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/04/seattles-bicycle-sundays-return-to-lake-washington-in-2010/
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A group dedicated to the preservation and continuance of New York City's bicycle culture is remembering the life and times of track racing in an exhibit entitled “Strong Backs, Weak Minds: The Saga of the Coney Island Velodrome.”
The exhibit put together by NY Bike Jumble features actual track bicycles from the period, as well as programs, tickets and photos, like the one at left autographed by a cyclist named Tom Duffin Jr.
The velodrome was the last commercial bike racing venue in New York City, opening in 1930. The 1/8th-mile track wooden track with 45-degree banked corners had seating for 10,000 people.
Says NY Bike Jumble founder and curator Harry Schwartzman ..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/02/coney-island-velodrome-remembered-at-museum-exhibit/
A doctor is studying whether regular exercise can slow the spread of Parkinson's disease in people after he observed a severely afflicted man who could not walk, but had the ability to ride a bicycle.
Dr. Bastiaan R. Bloem told the New York Times about a 58-year-old man he met who was suffering from an advanced case of the neurological disorder. He could not walk without falling down, but could ride a bicycle for as far as 6 miles as long as someone helped him on and off.
That brings to mind the story that appeared last year (“A tandem bike ride leads to a treatment for Parkinson's”) that riding the back of a tandem bicycle at a relatively high cadence of 80 to 90 rpms temporarily relieved the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in patients. (video at left)
The two observations are somewhat different, but they do point to a special relationship between bicycling and Parkinson's disease …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/02/parkinsons-amazing-response-to-bicycling/
Did you buy a bicycle off Seattle's Craiglist recently from a guy who advertised “Road Bikes Galore!”?
You shouldn't be surprised that there's a very good chance the bike was stolen.
The latest stolen bicycle caper comes from a 10-by-10-foot storage unit in Seattle's Lake City neighborhood filled “floor to ceiling” with bikes and bike parts. Two suspects in the case apparently lived in the storage unit.
It doesn't rival the Toronto crime spree that scored nearly 3,000 bikes, but it's amazing by local standards ……
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/23/suspected-chop-shop-bicycles-sold-on-craigslist/
As someone who is challenged by a track stand at a stoplight or a bunny hop over a stick in the road, I was astounded by the wonderful performances of the artistic bicyclists from Germany at Saturday's Seattle Bicycle Expo.
If synchronized swimming can be an Olympic sport, so should this. In fact, artistic cycling is a popular UCI-licensed sport in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
The Cascade Bicycle Club brought the reigning World Champion in single artistic women, Corrina Hein, to Seattle for the expo, along with leading men's pair competitors Stefan Musu and Lukas Matla.
The UCI competitions …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/14/balance-grace-and-skill-on-a-bicycle-artistic-cycling/
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