Biking Bis - Bicycle Touring

Bicycle quote: LA makes bicycles legit

Gene Bisbee — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:39:00 -0700

"Hold on to your hats, folks, we're actually removing a lane for a car — in favor of a bike lane — in Los Angeles. By doing so, we, as a city, are changing the way we see bicycles, as not only a recreational vehicle but as a legitimate form of public transportation."

-- City Councilman Ed Reyes, announcing the ...

Bicycle quote: "Sick and tired" of cyclists....

Gene Bisbee — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 07:07:00 -0800

"I'm sick and tired of you old guys from Boulder coming up here and acting like you own the road."

That's how a roadside argument started on a county road south of Loveland, Colorado, between a motorist and a group of three cyclists last July. Before it ended, the motorist had poked at a bicyclist with a baseball ...

Bicycle quote: Official discourages winter bicycling

Gene Bisbee — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:19:00 -0800

“Unfortunately it takes something bad like this to happen to learn that you can’t be doing this. It was just a very tragic accident, that’s the bottom-line.”

Madison County (NY) Undersheriff John Ball talking about the conditions Thursday evening when a bicyclist was struck from behind and killed by a motorist. Reported by Utica Observer-Dispatch, Jan. 14, 2011.

The bicyclist, Harold Closson, 50, was riding his bicycle down the road at about 5:40 p.m. Thursday when he was struck by a 22-year-old driving a truck ...

Quote: Wrongly accused man dreamed of going for a bike ride

Gene Bisbee — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:30:00 -0800

"He knew his name was cleared before he left. He wanted to be baptized again, and I thank God he got to do that. He wanted to ride a bicycle and he got to do that. He had been locked up for 32 years."

Jerry Dixon talking about his wrongly convicted brother to Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Miss.; "Cleared Mississippi man's freedom cut short."

Bobby Ray Dixon, 53, died this past Sunday of lung and brain cancer, not long after he had been cleared of the rape and murder of a Hattiesburg woman back in 1979. The Innocence Project New Orleans filed a motion to have DNA evidence in the case tested ...

Bicycle quote: Lance Armstrong's Tour de France

Gene Bisbee — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:04:00 -0700

"Lance lost this Tour for bad luck. Physically, there’s no reason to believe that he couldn’t have been competitive in this Tour. He came to this Tour in good shape with real ambitions to win. We knew it wouldn’t be easy for him to win this Tour, but we came here with that as a goal. Even today we saw Contador not as strong as he was last year. Today we simply didn’t have the luck.”

-- Johan Bruyneel, team manager for Radio Shack, talking about Lance Armstrong's crashes at the 2010 Tour de France in an interview with Andrew Hood at VeloNews .....

Quote: Bike traveler comes home

Gene Bisbee — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:00:00 -0700

"A lot of people ask me why I went east to west because the winds are predominantly west to east, and part of the reason was I that I like the idea of heading home. It's just kind of a goal that you aspire to get to, so that means a lot to me from a psychological standpoint, especially at times when you're feeling a little low."

--Cross-county bicycle traveler Mike Dillon, quoted at MercuryNews.com, June 14, 2010.

You might remember that I wrote a short piece in March about Dillon, the former general counsel for Sun Microsystems ...

Bicycle quote: Do-it-yourselfer builds unique, no-cost bikes

Gene Bisbee — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:44:00 -0700

“The most expensive bike I have cost me $3 because I had to buy some pieces for it. Everything else is just garbage that was given to me. I am brazen enough that if I am riding around and see some bikes with grass growing through them, I’ll knock on your door and ask if you want me to drag them off.”

-- Freelance bike builder Mack Carter of Iowa Park, Texas. TimesRecordNews, June 6, 2010: "Building a better bicycle; Iowa Park man turns garbage, spare parts into innovative rides."

Carter told the TimesRecordNews that he started building bike about 7 years ago when he was looking for a bike to buy and determined they were all too expensive. Since then, he's built 50 to 75 bicycles. ....

Mark Twain learns to ride a bicycle

Gene Bisbee — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:10:00 -0700

"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 ...

Bike quote: Naked cycling brings helmet lecture

Gene Bisbee — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 06:00:00 -0800

"They were more shocked than I was, trying to cover up their bits and pieces with their hands."

-- New Zealand policewoman describing the reactions of two naked men on bicycles she stopped in a coastal resort town one night.

She issued a stern warning for not wearing helmets and sent them home. She chose to ignore their public nudity, which can carry a charge of offensive behavior in New Zealand.

BBC News, "NZ policewoman allows naked cycling -- with helmet"

Pick your bike racer quote of the year

Gene Bisbee — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:25:00 -0800

Podium Cafe lists a couple of dozen quotes uttered by current and former pro cyclists during the past year and asks for our favorite.

The list has a few Lance Armstrong tweets about Alberto Contador being a "pistolero" and having "lots to learn." Jens Voigt and Bradley Wiggins also are well represented.

My favorite, though, comes from Bernard Hinault, the 5-time winner of the Tour de France who commented on the earpiece radios now worn by cyclists to communicate with the team manager:

"I am against them. It is just a 'Game Boy' that has a gigolo attached at the end telling the racer when to take a piss." .....