A 1952-vintage Schwinn bicycle that carried Donald Deer and his family all around Evansville for a half-century was stolen from outside a McDonald's recently.

While that Schwinn might be a museum piece for some, it was just a way to get around town for Deer, 64.

The local newspaper tells how Deer won the bicycle as a fourth grader by penning the winning fire safety slogan (Fire prevention week is OK, but let's make it a practice every day)...   more »

Could General Motors be going green?

BikeBiz.com reports early Tuesday morning UK-time that the world's biggest carmaker is buying California-based Specialized Bicycles.

Maybe GM sees the writing on the wall; one day there won't be any more oil to put in its cars. GM's Flora Lopi, VP for environment, energy and safety policy attributes it to GM being in the forefront of developing new transportation choices with limited impact on the environment.

See the San Jose Business Journal for the full story. Be sure to check out the "Related News" on the SJBJ website for the latest developments to this story of interest to all bicyclists; and definitely check out Quickrelease.tv. Seriously. Check it out ...   more »

All the obituaries for Richard Widmark, 93, talk about his roles as a villain in films, but I remember him mainly as Jim Bowie in "The Alamo" in 1960.

What I didn't know is that the Minnesota-born actor became interested in acting while giving lectures after a bicycle tour he made through Nazi Germany.

Apparently Widmark went on his bike tour of Deutschland in the early 1930s. He was unsuccessful in his attempts to visit a camp for political prisoners named Dachau, which later became one of Hitler's infamous extermination camps. However, he did sneak into a youth camp ...   more »

Some pretty famous sports figures have been celebrated as bobblehead dolls. I don't know of any cyclists who have been honored this way except for Italy's Fausto Coppi.

Now there's another.

The Wheeling Nailers hockey team is honoring "Moon Dog," a local character who's known for riding his flag-festooned bicycle around town and appearing in local parades.

The first 2,500 fans who go to see the "AA" Wheeling, West Virginia, affiliate of the Flyers and Penguins play on March 22 will get their very own Moon Dog Mini-Bobblehead. ...   more »

Better check the label on your bicycling trou before heading out for your next spin.

Police in Poland say a 55-year-old man suffered 2nd degree burns on his legs and stomach after his pants spontaneously caught fire.

"Witnesses said he was like a flaming human torch cycling along the road." ...   more »

Something you'll be hearing a lot soon is that something "is your new bicycle." It started with a website called "Barack Obama is your new bicycle" which caught fire and already has a slew of imitators.

The term will probably reach a peak in a few weeks, when advertisers will start using it in their "hip" commercials. That's when we'll quickly get sick of hearing it, and the once-clever term will die out of use.

Here's what Matthew Honan, a San Francisco based writer for Wired magazine, told Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune about the website and how it got started....   more »

Bicycling is almost always fun for me, but I get tired of rolling over the same old routes. It's fun to visit someplace new where every bike ride is a new adventure.

I spent much of the past week in Sacramento for some high school functions with my son, and I made the best of my free time with some decent bike rides.

I googled "bike rental Sacramento" before I left, so I already had a map of area bike rental shops when I got there. Although the weather was supposed to be "Seattle-like," my days for rides were sunny. Lucky me ...   more »

The 2008 Bicycle Film Festival is coming off its best year ever, entertaining some 100,000 people in 15 cities around the world.

As it enters its eighth year of celebrating all things bicycle, the festival organizer is seeking submissions for this year's festival. The deadline is Feb. 19. The 2-minute video at left splices together some trailers from last year's BFF films.

Founding director Brendt Barbur says they're looking for films representing a bicycle theme or character. "A fine thriller with one scene of a bicycle chase does not count...   more »

In the world of bicycling, one of the biggest mysteries to me is how someone can lose a bicycle.

I can understand a person losing track of a bicycle that is stolen and ditched, but apparently people will occasionally park a bike and then not retrieve it. Do they forget it? Did they die? Were they whisked away by aliens?

For instance, the Seattle Metro transit system reported that 863 people put their bicycles on bus racks in 2007 and forgot to remove them....   more »

A man suspected of robbing 11 mostly Atlanta area banks and making his getaways by bicycle has been arrested by police in Roswell, Georgia.

Police wouldn't say what led them to Carlos H. Arango-Mejia, 47, of Doraville. He was arrested at his home Wednesday night and immediately booked on two area bank robberies from last spring. ...   more »

A few years after moving to California, we shot a video of our house and family at Christmastime for our friends back in Maryland.

One stop on the tour was the Men's Crisis Center, the shed in the back yard where a new dad could get in some afterhours cranking on an old bike set up on a trainer.

I was returning to the shed with the camera running when I realized I had left my inquisitive son in there alone. He had totally greased his hands on the oily bike chain. It was too funny to get angry.

I had totally forgotten about this until I ran across the other day. Now, it seems like it happened yesterday.

By the way, this kid went on to ride the Cycle Across Maryland and Ride Around Washington on a tandem, and two more Ride Across Washington week-long tours on his  mountain bike.

Be aware that you're going to have a big ol' bare spot on your wall in a couple of weeks if you haven't bought a bicycling calendar to replace that 2007 model.

There are lots of bicycle calendars to choose from online. Some feature scenic road and mountain biking locales, while others feature professional and recreational women cyclists from around the world and across the Northwest.

As usual, the Cyclepassion 2008 wall calendar is undoubtedly the hottest one out there this year. Instead of relying on professional models, it features pro women cyclists. That's Norwegian mountain biker Gunn-Rita Dahle-Flesja on the cover ....   more »

I'm always amazed at athletes who compete in endurance sports, especially those ultra events that involve sleep deprivation from hours and days in the activity.

UltraRob's Adventures blog tells about two cyclists -- John "Blue Dog" Jurczynski and Mike "Mad Dog" Gallagher -- who each set an indoor spinning record of 113 hours at a sports club in Laconia, New Hampshire, last night.

If confirmed officially, the effort will put the two in the pages of the next Guinness Book of World Records, barring the unlikely prospect that someone can beat 112 hours. Actually, the previous record of 111 hours, 11 minutes and 11 seconds had been set by George Hood last summer ...   more »

President Bush is known for his love of mountain biking, so it's no surprise that many world leaders gave him gifts with a bicycling theme.

In the cycling apparel line, Bush received cycling jerseys from Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Verhofstadt also gave him cycling tights.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, one of Bush's closest friends on the world scene, gave the president an electric-power assisted bicycle...   more »

Authorities cleared a string of some 28 bank robberies in 16 states in September when Bruce David Voss, the so-called Bicycle Bandit, was arrested after a bank robbery in Tallahassee, Florida.

Caught red-handed with the cash and his getaway bicycle stuffed in the trunk of his car, the 57-year-old Voss confessed to a string of bank robberies. The next day, he hung himself in his jail cell before authorities could learn the details and locations of all the robberies.

But that hasn't been the end of bicycle bank robberies. There have been two other separate serial bank robbery sprees -- in Georgia and New Hampshire -- that have a similar modus operandi. The robber makes his getaway on a bicycle...   more »

Joe Kurmaskie isn't exactly the poet laureate of bicycle tourists; he's more like the comic laureate.

I caught Kurmaskie's very entertaining talk at the Seattle Bike Expo, and I'm happy to see he's returning for another Metal Cowboy Holiday Spectacular at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 11 at the downtown Seattle REI. (Cascade Bicycle Club members, 2 for $5; nonmembers $5.)

Kurmaskie's a funny guy. He spends many days every year bicycle touring, often with his family. If you're not familiar with the Portland bicyclist, here's an excerpt from a quiz he sent out earlier this year entitled: "Are You Addicted to Cycling?" ...   more »

I stopped attaching foreign objects in the vicinity of my bicycle wheels ever since I ruined a perfectly good Roy Campanella basball card a long time ago.

But let me pass along a couple of websites for wheel decorations suggested by a reader. Each sells circuit boards with LED lights attached that mount on the spokes of a bike wheel and display text or images as the wheel spins.

I've seen these before, but never really looked into it. If you have some time over the holidays ...   more »

Argue as he might, Steven Gravenites couldn't convince the federal judge in San Francisco earlier this month that he should be found innocent of possession of a bicycle in a wilderness area.

The 45-year-old mountain biker and well-known Marin County, California, wheel-builder was fined $60 but was able to reclaim his bike. Rangers had taken it as evidence for illegal trail riding in the Point Reyes National Seashore in June.

An account of the trial -- it actually made it to federal court -- in the Marin Independent reports that Gravenites tried to get the court to consider the bigger picture of the history of mountain biking. ...   more »

It's always nice when a favored contraption gets a little respect.

In its list of 101 gadgets that changed the world, IOL Technology credits the bicycle as a useful gadget for becoming a widespread form of transportation and a vehicle toward the emancipation of women.

Justifying its claim, the magazine explains:

"First devised as a gentleman's play thing in the 1820s, the push-powered hobby-horse quickly evolved to become the most classless form of transport, trundling by the millions along highways and byways all over the world. ...   more »

(Updated: Nov. 14, 2007 -- The Scotsman accused of having sex with his bicycle in a hotel room has been placed on three years probation.)

Bike porn I can explain, but sex with a bike is something I can't really picture.

So let's call on a police official who testified recently in a court proceeding regarding a man in the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr, Scotland ....   more »