Six West Seattle students -- ages 10 - 18 -- were to begin a 22-day bicycle ride across the US today to deliver a message about global warming.

Their 5,400-mile route is charted to take the group through 65 cities that have signed on with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickel's Climate Action Now program. The noble endeavor is led by a Chief Sealth High School teacher who has organized similar rides in the past.

They're calling the bike tour "An Inconvenient Ride," borrowing from Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth campaign ...   more »

Photo by Vicki&Chuck Rogers

The Bicycle Alliance of Washington is launching a letter-writing campaign to prevent the Olympic National Park from banning bicycles on Hurricane Ridge Road for the next two years.

You can see from this photo why bicycle riders like to challenge themselves on the 17-mile ride from nearly sea level to the 5,420-foot elevation at the Hurricane Ridge parking lot.

Interim park superintendent Sue McGill has unilaterally decided to ban bicycles from using that road for two years while road repairs are being made to a section of the road. That ban even extends to weekends when road crews will not be working ...   more »

The first thing I learned to fix on my bicycle when I was growing up was the kickstand. The friggin' thing seemed like it was always coming loose and my crank arm struck it on each pedal stroke.

Ten years later, my Fuji Dynamic 10 came without a kickstand, which I thought at the time was an amazing innovation (omitting a part an innovation?). The heavy kickstand seems to be pretty much a thing of the past, although I secretly yearned for one when touring or on mass rides where I couldn't find any lean-room.

Tom Nostrant from Aberdeen, Washington, must have been thinking the same thing. I met him at the Seattle International Bike Expo recently where he was showing off his Click-Stand, a simple, lightweight, folding bike stand.

Depending on length, the thing weighs about 75 grams -- 2.6 ounces. It's made from aluminum, folds to 7 to 10 inches, and opens with a flick of the wrist...   more »

Border Raiders bike tour in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri

The Biking Bis blog is listing 95 multi-day bike tours in 47 states in 2008. That's 7 more states and 13 more tours than last year. You'll find them at "2008 Across State Bicycle Tours."

While I was digging around to update the annual rides and fill in some blanks, I was struck by the amazing artwork that some tours use to publicize their events. I'm particularly impressed by ones that keep the bicycle motif, but also lend a flavor from the state they represent.

Border Raiders, above, is probably the most unforgettable. John Brown is hoisting a wheel and a tire pump, looking a lot like an angry dude who has suffered his 5th blowout of the day. I also like the Legacy Annual Great Bike Ride Across Utah (right) because the red-rock arch completes the wheel.

I went back through the links and picked out my favorites. I hope you'll enjoy these too. But first, a few words about this list of state bike tours ...   more »

David Sylvester is setting off this week on a quest to bicycle to the trailhead of the highest peak in each of the 48 contiguous states and climb to the top of each and every one. He'll be accompanied by his faithful companion Chiva, a 2-year-old shepherd/husky mix.

If successful, they'll be the first dog-human team to accomplish the feat. And you thought all the Earth's frontiers had been conquered. Not with a dog, they haven't.

Sylvester, a 26-year-old from the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard, expects the trek to take 18 months and cover some 10,000 miles. Introducing the tour at his blog, Sylvester says:

"I strongly believe that jumping on my bicycle and riding into the wind with Chiva is the best way to combine and enjoy all my interests in life right now ...   more »

One of the longest-running week-long bicycle tours is seeking a new operator to breathe new life into the Cycle Across Maryland.

The statewide bicycle advocacy group One Less Car has been running CAM Tour for most of this decade, but has concluded that the event -- which celebrates its 20th year in 2008 -- is taking too much time away from its advocacy role.

After hearing that this was going to be the final year One Less Car would organize the event, I called executive director Richard Chambers to find out if another group was stepping in. Not yet.

"We don't want it to die," he said. "We want someone to take it on. It needs a couple of people who can put a lot of time and effort into it to make it a real success." ...   more »

This Sierra Club poll may not be new, but I've just stumbled across links to it in the past couple of days.

It's sort of a good-natured way to educate bicyclists that they may not be as "green" as they think, depending on some bicycling choices they make.

Take the poll at "How Green is My Bike Ride?" No cheating.

In the efforts of full disclosure, I scored a 91 out of 100. I got knicked for ...   more »

Packing list for long-distance touring bicyclist James Schauer: 300 pounds of stuff.

As you can see at left, this 60-year-old semi-retired computer programmer is pretty easy to identify as he hauls his rig across the rolling countryside of rural Maryland. He pedals a mountain bike loaded with stuff and tows a 14-foot canoe that shelters more stuff underneath.

He left the St. Louis area last September and has been tooling around the East Coast by bicycle and canoe ever since. With no house and no car, Schauer says he has no particular destination in mind except to visit relatives on his travels. ...   more »

Most of the snow-bike riders in the Human-Powered Iditarod have trickled into McGrath, the 350-mile checkpoint for those on the way to Nome and the end of the ride for about a dozen.

The latest cyclist to roll into the small town on the banks of the Kuskokwim River Saturday afternoon was Jill Homer, the author of the Up in Alaska blog. She completed the trip in 6 days, 2 hours and 20 minutes.

She recounted some of her experiences on the race message board on Friday. It's difficult to imagine the hardships and exhaustion she and the other cyclists experience. For instance, Jill said at one point she "kept literally falling asleep and falling off my bike." More ...   more »