There's a new bicycling film — “The Long Bike Back” — that tells the story of two brothers who fulfill a life-long dream to ride their bicycles cross-country after one survives a near-fatal hit and run crash.
As you can see from the trailer, at left, Pearson and Peter Constantino launched plans for their bicycle travels after Pearson was left for dead at the side of the road by a SUV driver in June 2006.
A little more than two years later, Pearson and Peter take off from Newport, Oregon, with a small film and support crew trailing in a van to record their experiences along US Route 20 to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Pearson's wife, filmmaker Julia Wrona, directed the film that tells about the brothers' adventures and Pearson's battle back from life-threatening injuries …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/06/04/from-hit-run-victim-to-cross-country-bicycle-traveler/
The other day I stumbled across a 1980 story in Time magazine about the dismal state of bicycling in New York City. A Reuters article filed today about New York cycling chic shows how things have changed.
The Time article, entitled “The Great Bicycle Wars,” starts with an anecdote about then-Mayor Edward Koch. He caught the bicycle-transportation religion during a visit to China and returned to install bike lanes along two avenues in Manhattan.
Three months later he orders those bike lanes torn out because they weren't being used, in spite of official reports to the contrary. He was probably getting hammered by complaints from the motoring public. The episode leaves New York City without bike lanes. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/06/03/30-years-of-bicycling-progress-in-new-york-city/
“She's a bicycle rider, I'm a bicycle rider. We talked a little bit about our favorite routes.”
— Democratic U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York tells reporters about his Capitol Hill meeting with Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayer. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/06/03/quote-supreme-court-nominee-rides-a-bicycle/
REI is recalling 260 bicycles produced four years ago after two reports of fork separations from steering tubes.
The malfunctions caused severe injuries, including broken collarbone and teeth, facial damage and head injuries, according to the recall notice put out by REI and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The bikes in the recall are Novara Trionfo bicycles with Aprebic carbon fiber forks. ….
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/06/02/rei-recalls-2005-model-novara-trionfo-bicycles/
Hmmm. Pie.
A gal in San Francisco who sells pies from her bicycle is just one of a number of folks who are putting their bikes to work these days.
The BikeBasketPies baker announces her schedule via Twitter. Apparently she launched her business on Monday in Delores Park at the western edge of the Mission District.
Her specialties are strawberry-rhubarb, blueberry-mango-coconut, and mixed berry mini pies. Other working bikes…
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/06/02/putting-your-bicycle-to-work/
A 47-year-old home builder who took a couple of years off to bicycle around the world is looking ahead to his final 3,500-4,000 miles in a trans-America tour.
Steve Dale of Yorkshire, England, is presently in Australia and set to fly to New Zealand where he'll bicycle before heading to the United States. He's already traveled across Europe and Asia by bicycle.
In preparation for his bike tour across the US, Steve contacted me at the BikingBis blog. He wants to know about “the best practical, but most direct bicycle route across America.”
He wants to start in San Francisco and finish up in New York. Anyone out there with ideas about the best route? …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/06/01/world-bicycle-tour-ends-with-cross-country-ride-in-the-uslooking-for-best-route/
Here's my reward on Thursday for a half-hour drive and nearly an hour of butt-busting climbing on my old Rockhopper mountain bike.
That's me checking out the view of Mount Rainier from the east summit of Tiger Mountain. It was such a wonderful day for Seattle — sunny and 70s — that I wanted to commemorate it with a new bicycle route.
Earlier in the week I had stopped by Half Price Books and stumbled across Mountain Bike Adventures in Washington's South Cascades and Puget Sound by Tom Kirkendall. What a great find and a great bargain, I thought, until I got home and realized the book was 14 years old.
With warm temperatures and blue skies, I was willing to see if these routes still exist. ..
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/05/28/difficult-bicycle-climbs-have-their-rewards/
Now there's an online resource where you can tell the world about problems you've encounted while bicycling.
The Cascade Bicycle Club has created www.bikewise.org to map the locations of bicycle crashes, road hazards and bicycle thefts.
Although it was created by the Seattle-based bicycle club, it's available for use anywhere in the world, and the developers are encouraging bicycle riders in other regions to use it.
BikeWise is more than just someplace to vent your anger about the location of a dangerous intersection or poorly maintained construction site. Check into the detailed reports of crashes, for instance, and you see a section on “lessons learned.” …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/05/28/cascade-launches-bikewise-com-to-track-crashes-hazards-thefts/
From the nation that brought us the Velib bicycle rental system comes another revolutionary idea: Remove convicts from prison and take them on a bicycle tour.
Beginning next month, 196 French prison inmates will begin a 1,400-mile bike tour of France. They'll be accompanied by 124 guards.
Reuters news agency reports that the peloton will start in Lille on June 4 and stop in 17 towns. Although each host town is home to a prison, the inmates will be sleeping in hotels. They'll conclude the trip in Paris.
A French prison official explained the trip …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/05/28/an-escape-on-this-bicycle-tour-could-bring-an-armed-chase-group/
What did you do for your summer vacations in college? Here's a bicycling adventure so amazingly unique that it will likely appear in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Graduating senior Phil Nagle plans to ride his bicycle to 48 states in 48 days this summer and has mapped out a route that does the deed in about 8,000 miles.
The University of Cincinnati senior isn't doing it for publicity, however. He's trying to raise $48,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to pay for research to fight blood cancer, the disease that took his uncle's life at age 16.
The grand loop begins and ends at his home in Tipp City, Ohio. As you can see from the map below, he'll ride his bicycle clean through some states, while others he just tags in passing …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2009/05/28/bicycling-48-states-in-48-days-to-battle-cancer/
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