My bike touring buddy took this picture as I paused at the top of a climb on our overnight bicycle ride on the Olympic Peninsula over Labor Day weekend. It seems like a year ago.

I was suffering from carrying too much weight on a rollercoaster route through the Kitsap Peninsula, across the Hood Canal Bridge, and then along the shoreline on the lightly traveled but hilly Paradise Bay Road.

It was my highlight ride of the bicycling month, which has come to an early end because of pending surgery....   more »

A couple of blog items involving bicyclists convinces me that things are as bad as ever out on the streets.

The LAist blog writes about a cyclist getting handcuffed by police after his bicycle was damaged by a bus and Cyclelicious had an item about a struck cyclist who shoots at a motorist ....   more »

Tour of Missouri on Versus cable network: 4-6 p.m. (ET) Wednesday

Photo by Tamara Painter
Young fans meet racers

One of the major goals of the Tour of Missouri bike race this year was to boost tourism to the Show Me state.

But the bicycle race had the spillover effect of introducing a lot of folks to professional cyclists and winning a slight measure of respect for those who ride their bikes on Missouri's streets.

Blog reader Jack Painter wrote to me after the race that his family members were thrilled to meet many of the racers. And Kansas City Star columnist Bill Graham writes that following the race, "We need to keep working on making bicycling a bigger pastime in our communities." ...   more »

The folks at the Bellevue transportation department are planning to release the details of the 2007 Walk & Roll Pedestrian and Bicycle Plan on Thursday.

The city is basing its recommendations partly on a survey and focus groups from earlier this year. The staff is suggesting where bicycling improvements can be made and how to get them funded.

The meeting is at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Bellevue City Hall, 450 110th Ave. N.E., Room 1E-108. If you're like me and can't make the meeting, the draft will be posted online after the meeting at the Bellevue transportation website (2007 Ped-Bike Plan.)....   more »

If you rode your bicycle in Vancouver this weekend, there's a good chance that Lance Armstrong was riding nearby.

Armstrong helped draw cyclists to the inaugural Tour of Courage charity ride in Vancouver this weekend to raise nearly $3 million for the B.C. Cancer Foundation.

Hundreds of cyclists raised more than $1,000 each for the privilege to ride with Lance Armstrong at the event on Sunday; 50 high-rollers raised an average $21,000 each to ride with him on a bike ride on Saturday....   more »

"I'd love to answer the question but unfortunately I'm out of that business. I'm here to fight cancer. I haven't looked online. I still love the bike and ride all the time but on the competitive side I'm just not engaged." 

Lance Armstrong in response to reporter's questions regarding Floyd Landis losing his appeal of doping charges raised after the 2006 ...   more »

The Screens N Spokes bike team is a group of artists who are raising money for this month's City-to-Shore MS150 bike ride by selling limited edition bike posters.

The last time I checked, there are 18 different posters on sale. The one at left was created by strawberryluna. This is a cool idea to celebrate the bicycle in art and raise money for a good cause at the same time.

All proceeds support the Greater Delaware Chapter of the National MS Society, which is hosting the 27th edition of the City to Shore bike ride on Sept. 29-30 that leaves from Philadelphia and ends at Ocean City. ...   more »

A newly opened pedestrian bridge in the Salt Lake Valley will enable cyclists to cross between two bike trails that had been separated by a six-lane Interstate 215 in Utah.

The 280-foot steel-truss bike and hike bridge was opened Friday. Costing $3.5 million, it connects the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in the east to the Jordan River Trail to the west over Parley's Trail.

Known as Parley's Crossing, it was originally envisioned as a tunnel under the freeway. ...   more »

The three-judge arbitration panel that heard the doping case of Floyd Landis this spring has voted 2-1 to uphold the allegation that the American used synthetic testosterone during last year's Tour de France.

The ruling means that Landis faces a two-year ban from professional cycling, retroactive to Jan. 30, 2007, and that he must forfeit his Tour de France championship.

Oddly enough, however, Landis won a major part of his argument about the French lab doing sloppy work, but lost the case.

The panel rejected the results from testosterone-epitestosterone ratio tests ....   more »

Last weekend marked the one-year anniversary of the death of 15-year-old North Carolina resident Rachel Giblin on a charity bicycle ride in South Carolina.

As the Breakaway to the Beach went off again as scheduled, Rachel's parents talked about their efforts to raise the awareness of motorists to make things safer for bicyclists on the road.

The family has launched a website entitled "Share the Road for Rachel," and they're distributing magnets and stickers with that slogan. More than 1,000 have gone out so far....   more »

Here is a tale of two cities, one in the real world and another in the Bizarro World; one that rewards for helmet use and another that considers punishing accident victims for not wearing a helmet.

The first is Salina, Kansas, where firefighters are handing out candy coupons from a local grocer to bicyclists who are wearing helmets. Nice and positive.

The other is a suburb of Toronto where police are considering charging a 16-year-old cyclist for not wearing a helmet after she was struck by a truck. They want to interview her about it, but she's still unconscious   more »

Blue Eyed Fawn at flickr.com

It seems fitting that the 225-mile Katy Trail in Missouri should be named to the Rail-Trail Hall of Fame during the same year as the inaugural run of the Tour of Missouri bicycle race.

The crushed limestone bike and hike trail stretches nearly across the state, between St. Charles, on the outskirts of St. Louis, to Clinton in the west. It's used by local recreational cyclists to stretch their legs or touring bicyclists who jump off the trail to taste the local culture along the way.

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has begun honoring the best 25 bike and hike trails in the US, a five-year task ...   more »

This might seem a little odd, but there's an exercise book that recommends workouts based on your astrological sign.

"Zodiaction: Fat-Burning Fitness Tailored to Your Personal Star Quality" was written by TV fitness personality Ellen Barrett and astrologer Barrie Dolnick.

A newspaper story summarized findings for the different signs of the Zodiac and told which exercises were most appropriate for each group. Which signs are aligned with bicycling? ...   more »

There's something very odd going on with the Discovery Channel pro cycling team at the Tour of Missouri.

This year's winner of the Tour de France, Alberto Contador, is working as a domestique to the Tour's yellow jersey wearer, George Hincapie. When's that last time that happened on this team? What a difference two months can make.

After retaining the yellow jersey after Stage 4 on Friday, Hincapie told VeloNews:

"Everyone is working well. I have the reigning Tour de France champion bringing me bottles. That's not a normal thing, but it's a great honor to lead the race. I will do everything I can to keep the jersey." ...   more »

If the "How I bicycled my summer vacation" poll is any indicator, Biking Bis readers are an independent bunch.

That's how Missouri's Lazy Louie would have described the style of bicycling that half of my poll respondents said they preferred this summer.

Lazy Louie ran a roadside camp for bicycle tourists between Hartsville and Marshfield on the BikeCentennial Route. He was quite a character who had his own lingo for bikes that passed his way. There were Trucks (Treks), P Joes (Peugots) and Motor Pecans (Motobecans) ...   more »