A while back I remember pummeling myself for not hitting my monthly goal of 333 miles to reach this year's target of 4,000 miles. But when my doctor recommended surgery for prostate cancer, I thought my riding days were over for a long time.
Would I have to buy a recumbent? Would I be able to ride at all in 1 month, 2 months, 3 months?
It wasn't as long as I thought it would be; about five weeks. Some guys at the prostate support group were surprised I was back at it that soon. Well, I took it real easy... more»
A professor of Chicano studies is taking a bicycle tour around the United States to study the nation's "Latino-ization."
Louis Mendoza, chairman of the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota, left Santa Cruz on his touring bike in July headed to New York and is returning via the Sun Belt. He recently left El Paso.
At his very insightful A Journey Across Our America blog, Mendoza writes about the increasing presence of Hispanics in large and small cities all across the country. He told an El Paso newspaper that he chose to travel by bicycle because "I'd be more likely to have unpredictable experiences along the road." ... more»
Pity poor George Hincapie. His teams can't seem to keep their sponsors.
First, the Discovery Channel announced that it would not renew its sponsorship for the Tailwind Sports team of which he had been a member since the late '90s. Then Tailwind finally gave up looking for a sponsor and disbanded.
Hincapie jumped over to the team that Deutsche Telekom and affiliate T-Mobile had sponsored since 1991. T-Mobile announced today that it was pulling the plug ..... 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»
Marilyn Price was riding her mountain bicycle through redwood forests north San Francisco one day when she wondered how she could share the experience with disadvantaged kids from the city.
Scoring 10 donated bikes, she started Trips for Kids. Nineteen years later, that dream has turned into an organization with 57 chapters across the US that seek to steer kids away from trouble by getting them outside and away from bad influences ... more»
One day as a newspaper reporter in an earlier life, I was stuck on a small boat in the Chesapeake Bay with a US Fish & Wildlife Service biologist. To avoid justifying the environmental policies of the current adminstration (Reagan), he swung the conversation around to books.
His favorite was "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. I had never heard of this conservationist (he died in 1948), so I bought that book a few days later. It later found a place on the bookshelf with John Muir, Edward Abbey, Colin Fletcher and John McPhee.
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»
Floyd Landis has begun filing appeals with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the last stage in his attempt to regain the 2006 Tour de France championship and overturn a 2-year ban from pro cycling.
The 90-page "brief," as reported at CNN, states that Landis is committed to removing dope from the sport of cycling.
"However, to wrongly strip a champion of his victory due to a flawed test is much worse than to have an athlete cheat his way to victory .... more»
The San Jose Mercury News recently ran the story about a guy who rode his bicycle cross-country more than 40 years before the first bicyclist took to the Bikecentennial route.
Charlie Klotz was a 20-year-old working in a pharmacy in Hollister, California, when he took off on his bicycle for a cross-country tour to New York City in 1935.
He pedaled between 100 and 130 miles a day, covering the 3,100 miles in 30 days. He still has the Speed King bicycle that he rode ... more»
A bicycle relay is slowly making its way cross-country to draw attention to the connections between fuel dependency, war and global climate instability.
Called the Peace Transit, the ride started in Louisville, Kentucky, on Nov. 3 with cyclists carrying a baton, a petition and a rock to cyclists in Bardstown. Passed along five more times, the items arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday.
No single person is making this tour. This is a very effective way to get hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved in publicizing the problems of being too dependent on oil. ... more»
Here it is not even Thanksgiving, and organizers of 53 "across-state" bicycle tours already have dates and routes for week-long bicycle tours in 2008.
It's never too early to start planning for next summer's bicycling adventure. If you're interested in putting your seat in the saddle for one of these RAGBRAI-like bike rides, check my list at 2008 Across State Bicycle Tours.
Listed are the standbys like BRAG, RAGBRAI, GRABAAWR, Ride the Rockies, but new ones like Indiana's RAINSTORM (this acronym is really a reach). Here are 28 states with updated bike rides and links to those pages ... more»
A 31-year-old Hermosillo cyclist set a record in the 25th annual El Tour de Tucson on Saturday.
Carlos Hernandez bicycled the 109-mile course in 4:10:51, finishing just ahead of Michael Grabinger, 30, of Flagstaff and David Solomon, 27, also of Hermosillo.
While the bike ride is a race for the leaders, it's simply a pleasant recreational bike ride most of the nearly 10,000 cyclists who participate in the fund-raiser for local charities. There are also bike routes of 80, 66 and 35 miles this year ... 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»
Many of the long bicycle trails in the Eastern US don't fade away at the state line, they just change names and keep on truckin'.
I'd been digging into some cool, long-distance suggestions for bicycle tours on "non-motorized trails" when I discovered that many well-known bike trails meet at the state borders.
Such is the case on the Georgia-Alabama border where Silver Comet joins the Chief Ladiga. It happens twice between Maryland and Pennsylvania, where the C&O Canal and Northern Central meet the Great Allegheny Passage and York County Heritage Trail... more»
South Carolina authorities charged the driver of an SUV with reckless homicide in the deaths of two bicyclists on the last leg of a cross-country, charity bicycle tour.
The 35-year-old Greensboro, North Carolina, woman turned herself in and was released on $10,000 bond, reports the Associated Press.
One of the bicyclists, Lee Anne Barry, 43, was finishing a cross-country bicycle ride called the Brain Injury Greatest Journey (B.I.G. Ride), when she was joined for the last day by Thomas Hoskins. ... more»
When I lived in Austin about 10 years ago, a nonprofit started a yellow bike program that allowed folks to use a bike and leave for the next person -- all for free -- in the downtown area.
Now I see that Lexington, Kentucky, became one of the latest cities to adopt a yellow bicycle program earlier this year when Lexington Yellow Bikes set out 80 free rides for residents.
Being up north, the group is collecting the bikes for storage over the winter and looking back at the success of the program. In spite of the program being a total success, there were a few problems. ... 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»
The 2008 Amgen Tour of California is about three months from now, and organizers are announcing the stage details for the eight-day bicycle race that blasts along 650 miles of road from February 17-24.
This is the third year for the event, which drew an estimated 1.6 million roadside spectators in 2007. For those not lucky enough to travel to California in February, it looks like the Versus cable network will offer coverage and Adobe TourTracker will return for online live video and commentary.
It's too early for pro cycling teams to announce, but top-notch teams like Discovery, CSC, and Predictor Lotto -- to name but a few -- competed in 2007. Discovery has disbanded, but let's hope international cycling teams with strong contingents of American cyclists return in 2008 ... more»
Those of you following the case of West Seattle cyclist Peter McKay, who is carrying around a couple of BBs fired by someone in a passing car, might be interested in this story from Maryland.
A 17-year-old student from Bowie, Maryland, faces serious charges in connection with the BB-gun shooting of a bicyclist on a bike trail.
The teen was charged Oct. 25 with first degree assault, second degree assault and possession of a dangerous weapon with intent to injure, according to the Maryland Gazette. ... more»
Pat yourself on the back if you're one of the 5,100 bicycle riders who participated in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge this year.
The two-day charity bike ride raised $33 million for cancer research and care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
How does $33 million for the two-day event compare to other charity bike rides? The Lance Armstrong Foundation reported that its LiveStrong Challenge rides raised about $10 million in 2006, and all 100 MS bike tours combined raised $67 million last year ... more»
A travel website has come up with the 11 most bike-friendly cities in the world. I'm pleased, and somewhat surprised, to discover that four of them are in the US.
The highest ranked US city at No. 2 overall is Portland, Oregon. Boulder, Colorado, follows at No. 4; Davis, California at No. 5; and San Francisco at No. 6.
The ranking is based on criteria used by the League of American Bicyclists to name cities to its Bicycle Friendly Communties list. The results here are interesting because Davis leads the LAB's bike friendly list as the only Platinum level city ... more»
Two new UCI-level bicycle races are on tap in the US for 2008, joining three regulars -- Tour of California, Tour de Georgia and Tour of Missouri.
The new bicycle races are planned for Colorado and Pennsylvania, both deserving locales considering their history in domestic cycling.
The Colorado Stage International Cycle Classic is a three-stage bicycle race that incorporates the Vail Pass Time Trial course from the old Coors Classic. The other two stages comprise a road race from Breckenridge to Beaver Creek and a circuit race between East Vail and West Vail... more»
Some of you who follow the Biking Bis blog know that I underwent prostate surgery for cancer at the end of September.
Being attached to a catheter for a week and plainly having soreness where I sat limited my exercise to daily walks to the store and beyond for several weeks.
Then a week ago Thursday, five weeks to the day after my surgery, I climbed back onto the saddle -- gingerly -- and set off on my first ride. Over the next few days I rediscovered the fun of cycling, my appetite, and how bicycling seems more friendly in the fall ... more»
Depending on where you live, it might be a little late in the season for taking scenic bike rides to catch sight of brilliant leaves along roads and trails.
If there's still time in your area, or you just want to see what's available to bicyclists in other parts of the country, Bicycling magazine and Rails-to-Trails Conservancy recently created a list of "leaf-peeping" bike tours.
Unfortunately, they both ignore the Pacific Northwest. Although people mostly think of giant conifers and other evergreens inhabiting the region, there's nothing more colorful than our local big leaf maples whose leaves have turned bright yellow in the fall ... more»
Some concerned Seattle area bicyclists have set up a reward fund for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the nitbrains who shot bike commuter Peter McKay, left, last week.
Peter, a member of Seattle International Randonneurs, was riding home to West Seattle after work on Thursday when someone shot him from a passing car.
Amazingly, he completed his ride home after the incident, although he felt pain with every breath. He found blood on his clothes and two small bumps when he arrived home. Doctors at the hospital found one BB pellet had penetrated his left lung, releasing air into his chest cavity. The other just missed his aorta and spinal cord. ... more»
Congratulations to everyone recognized by the Adventure Cycling Association for going "above and beyond" to make conditions for bicycle travelers safer and more enjoyable.
Those honored for 2007 were:
Pacesetter Award: Neil Gunton, webmaster of Crazy Guy on a Bike; Trail Angels Award: Nita Larronde and Don Kearney, and Pie-O-Neer Café owner Kathy Knapp of Pie Town, New Mexico; Sam Braxton Bike Shop Award: Bicycle Outfitters of Seminole, Florida; Volunteer of the Year: Chuck Harmon of Dublin, Ohio ... more»
The busy mapmakers at Adventure Cycling Association have gone and done it again.
Before I could figure out how I'm going to pedal over their 36,180 miles of bicycle routes in a single lifetime, they've gone and added another 941 miles.
This is getting annoying. They've added a 152-mile spur off the Underground Railroad Route; a 394-mile Adirondack Park Loop in upstate New York, and a 395-mile Allegheny Mountains Loop between Virginia and West Virginia. ... more»
How did Missouri officials acknowledge more public interest in bicycling after a successful inaugural pro cycling Tour of Missouri in September? They fired the state's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the Missouri Department of Transportation on Oct. 2.
I'm sure there's no connection between the race and the firing, but the timing stinks.
Carolyn Szczepanski writes at The Pitch blog that the state has not posted an employment notice regarding the position at its website, an advisory committee has stopped meeting and former coordinator Caryn Giarratano has filed a grievance against the department for wrongful termination .... more»
The Seattle City Council unanimously approved the 10-year Bicycle Master Plan on Monday that one local bike activist called the best in the nation.
Mayor Greg Nickels, who just finished hosting the US Conference of Mayors on Climate Change, says he hopes to triple the number of people who ride bicycles in the city.
The plan calls for spending about $240 million over the life of the plan to build a network of bike lanes, bike routes and multi-use trails criss-crossing the city. ... more»
Before Chris Carmichael started advising Lance Armstrong or we had the Scarsdale or South Beach diets, people watched Jack LaLanne on TV to learn about diet and exercise.
Here's what the 93-year-old is saying now:
"Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Together, you’ve got a kingdom. If you have a Corvette, you don’t put water in the tank. The human machine deserves the same treatment. No cake, pies, ice cream, soda. Your hair is out of shape. Your skin is terrible. Your elimination is bad. The wrong fuel in the human machine does that. ...
"Would you give your dog a cup of coffee and a doughnut?" ... more»
More than once, I've been cut off by a Metro bus pulling to the curb to drop off a passenger. It's bad driving, but nothing compared to the addlebrained recklessness shown by operators of India's Blueline buses.
The Blueline bus fleet has caused 103 deaths in India so far this year. The country's media calls them variously "killer buses" and "rogue buses," names formerly bestowed on rampaging herds of elephants.
Official enforcement seems ineffective, so local residents are taking matters into their own hands. After the October 25 death of a cyclist who was run down by a speeding bus, a mob torched and gutted the bus as the operator fled ... more»
Just for the record, Lance Armstrong finished the 2007 New York City Marathon in 2-hours 46-minutes, beating his inaugural run last year by 13 minutes.
The official marathon website listed Armstrong as finishing 233rd, although other reports put him in the low 600s. Some 39,000 ran in the marathon on Sunday.
The news source that seems to have more coverage of Armstrong than any other, E! Online, also reported that Ashley Olsen was "nowhere to be seen" at the finish line. Apparently the two were seen together earlier this week playing kissy-face ... more»
The Seattle city council is set to vote on the 10-year Bicycle Master Plan at Monday's meeting, starting at 2 p.m. at City Hall.
People can comment on the master plan at the start of the council meeting, so this would be a perfect time to show up and directly tell council members what you think of it.
The document calls for adding 135 miles of bicycle lanes or bike routes to the city's 67-mile network over the next three years. Also, the "last mile" of the Burke-Gilman bike trail to Ballard would be completed ... more»
Many of the rails-to-trails routes in Washington state are suitable for skinny-tired road bikes. In fact, more than half of the 63 rails-to-trails in the state have surfaces that road bikes can handle.
Not the Klickitat Trail in southern Washington. One of the most remote rails-to-trails in the US, it is recommended that visitors use mountain bikes, preferably with front suspension.
The 31-mile trail is the trail-of-the-month for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. The trail starts in Swale Canyon then hooks up with the meandering Klickitat River, nationally designated as a Wild and Scenic River. It ends at the confluence of the Klickitat and Columbia rivers (above). ... more»
A Ventura County (California) jury has awarded $12.5 million to the family of a bicyclist who died when he was rear-ended by an 82-year-old woman in the fall of 2006.
It was the second rear-end accident in six months for the woman, who had learned about a month prior that she had severe cataracts in both eyes.
(Update: The Bicycle Diaries blog says the feds bailed out Chicago, 'til the end of the year. If there's no help after Jan. 1, Da Square Wheelman says commuters are emailing their favorite routes to CBF for others to use.)
As Chicago's bus system prepares to make drastic cutbacks beginning Sunday, the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation has prepared a Doomsday Survival Guide that's available online.
Chicago Transit Authority is cutting nearly 40 bus routes and laying off 600 transit workers on Sunday because of funding problems. That means many of Chicago's 1.5 million daily bus commutes will have to find an alternative way to work.
Promoting the wise use of bicycles, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation's guide is subtitled "Car-Free Alternatives for Chicago's Mass Transit Crisis." ... more»
(This is the first in an occasional series of my favorite memories from bicycling -- a bike tour from Cincinnati to Hueston Woods in 1965.)
My first bicycle tour came at the tender age of 15. I can't believe my mother agreed to it; I certainly wouldn't approve of such a venture for my own son at that age.
My good friend Steve and I had been caddying at a country club all summer. I'd catch a ride to work with Steve's dad then hitchhike home after carrying some guy's bag for 18 holes.
I don't know who came up with the bicycling idea. We were always scheming. I do remember looking at a road map of Ohio and seeing there was a place called Hueston Woods State Park that had a campground symbol. It was near Oxford, which was 35-some miles from Cincinnati. ... more»
"I went out and bought a hybrid and it's not getting the gas mileage I was hoping for, so I'm thinking, 'OK, well, I'll stick with this until the hydrogen fuel cell cars come around.' Still, I ride a bicycle when I can. Of course, I live way the hell up a very steep hill and sometimes I just don't have it in me. (laughs)"
-- Bob Weir, 60, of the Grateful Dead and now Ratdog, answering a question about whether hybrid cars are the way to go to reduce global warming.
A while back I remember pummeling myself for not hitting my monthly goal of 333 miles to reach this year's target of 4,000 miles. But when my doctor recommended surgery for prostate cancer, I thought my riding days were over for a long time.
A professor of Chicano studies is taking a bicycle tour around the United States to study the nation's "Latino-ization."
Pity poor George Hincapie. His teams can't seem to keep their sponsors.
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.
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.
Floyd Landis has begun filing appeals with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the last stage in his attempt to regain the 2006 Tour de France championship and overturn a 2-year ban from pro cycling.
A 31-year-old Hermosillo cyclist set a record in the 25th annual El Tour de Tucson on Saturday.
It's always nice when a favored contraption gets a little respect.
When I lived in Austin about 10 years ago, a nonprofit started a yellow bike program that allowed folks to use a bike and leave for the next person -- all for free -- in the downtown area.
The 2008 Amgen Tour of California is about three months from now, and organizers are announcing the stage details for the eight-day bicycle race that blasts along 650 miles of road from February 17-24.
Two new UCI-level bicycle races are on tap in the US for 2008, joining three regulars -- Tour of California, Tour de Georgia and Tour of Missouri.
Some of you who follow the Biking Bis blog know that I underwent prostate surgery for cancer at the end of September. 
Some concerned Seattle area bicyclists have set up a reward fund for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the nitbrains who shot bike commuter Peter McKay, left, last week.
The busy mapmakers at Adventure Cycling Association have gone and done it again.
The Seattle City Council unanimously approved the 10-year Bicycle Master Plan on Monday that one local bike activist called the best in the nation.
More than once, I've been cut off by a Metro bus pulling to the curb to drop off a passenger. It's bad driving, but nothing compared to the addlebrained recklessness shown by operators of India's Blueline buses.
Just for the record, Lance Armstrong finished the 2007 New York City Marathon in 2-hours 46-minutes, beating his inaugural run last year by 13 minutes.
The Seattle city council is set to vote on the 10-year Bicycle Master Plan at Monday's meeting, starting at 2 p.m. at City Hall.
(This is the first in an occasional series of my favorite memories from bicycling -- a bike tour from Cincinnati to Hueston Woods in 1965.)
