Category: Other cycling

Back in the day, I used to be dazzled by the cool names of bike clubs I'd come across on bicycle rides — “Yellowjackets,” “Flyers,” “Wheelmen,” “Team On Your Left.”

Nowadays, however, I'm more interested in going-out-for-the-ride then getting-there-fast. Therefore, the club names that catch my interest now carry a hint of determination rather than perspiration.

Here's a list of my Top 10 favorite names for bicycle clubs, in reverse order.

10. Road Soldiers Cycling Club: Ohio Veterans Home, Sandusky, Ohio.

Nothing says determination like soldiering out for a bike ride. Many of the members are residents of the Vets Home, and their rides are often held with the Scooter and Wheelchair Owner's Group. I salute you all.

9. Old Kranks Bicycle Club: Ventura, California

Don't even try to join this club unless you're over 50. They usually ride out of the Goebel Senior Center Commission and most rides are 4 to 19 miles. They're Kranks, not cranky, so it sounds like they have a lot of fun.

8. Easy Riders Bike Club: Seattle, Washington

Their own description: “We are a kinder, gentler bicycle club …

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Update: Orphanage funded by charity bicycle rides still standing

That's horrific news coming out of the earthquake zone in Haiti. It always seems that the regions least capable of sustaining a natural disaster are the ones hardest hit.

Millions are waiting to hear from friends, relatives and coworkers in the area hit by the 7.0 earthquake. Meanwhile, a group that funds a Port-Au-Prince orphanage with charity bike rides (see 6-minute video at right) got good news Wednesday morning.

Both buildings of the H.I.S. Home for Children are still standing and being patrolled, although a security wall fell down, according to reports in the Herald News in suburban Chicago …

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The slogan on Vancouver, BC's BikeRescue.org website must have sounded almost too good to be true to someone trying to recover a stolen bicycle:

“Ripped. Rescued. Returned. Putting bikes back where they belong.”

The website claimed the project had returned 256 stolen bikes by finding obviously stolen bicycles for sale at low prices, buying them, then reuniting them with their owners.

Well, it was too good to be true.

The head of the organization, Gordon Sinclair Blackwell, 41, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to 36 counts of possession of stolen property (bicycles). …

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Deadlines. Always the deadlines. With this being the last day of 2009, here are a few things you might want to know about photo contests, Cascade Bicycle Club memberships, and New Year's Day bike rides.

Midnight is the deadline to vote for your favorite photos at the Alliance for Biking & Walking (formerly Thunderhead Alliance) People Powered Movement Photo Contest. More than 2,000 photos were submitted in 7 categories. The grand winner gets an all-expense-paid bike tour of Tuscany, so I'm sure the photographers appreciate all votes cast for their pics.

While you're thinking images, there's still time to enter your most prized picture from your bicycle tour in the first Adventure Cycling Association Bicycle Travel Photo Contest. The winning photo appears in Adventure Cyclist magazine. You can check out the entries at flickr.com; they're amazing.

Thursday also is the last day to sign up at the 2009 rate for a new or renewed membership at Cascade Bicycle Club and qualify for early-bird event registration in 2010 …

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Remember this video from back in April? It changed a cyclist's life.

Former Edinburgh bike mechanic Danny MacAskill became an overnight sensation when this video — about 6 months in the making — hit YouTube. If you're not one of the 13 million people who have seen it, you should take 5 1/2 minutes to check it out.

Now the New York Times interviews him in “A stunt cyclist's Tour de Fence” and tells how the 24-year-old's life has changed since YouTube stardom struck.

Earning $9 an hour a couple of years ago as a bike mechanic, MacAskill could pull down a six figure salary in 2010 …

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In between mixing batches of egg nog the past few days, I got curious about the most popular stories at Biking Bis the past year. I checked my stats and here's what I found:

January: The most popular story of the month reflects the biggest pro cycling story of the year — the return of Lance Armstrong. The story that got the most hits was “Versus TV schedule for 2009 Tour Down Under,”which tells me a lot of folks wanted to know when to tune in to view his first comeback race. Closely following that story was “Lance Armstrong's Tour Down Under bike, by the numbers.”

February: Armstrong's bike was the most popular story the next month too. “Citizen turns in Lance Armstrong's stolen bike to police.”  Like a chapter from The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, it turns out the do-gooder citizen actually had received the bike as stolen property after the heist in Sacramento during the Tour of California. The thief who busted into the Astana trailer to unwittingly take one of the most famous bicycles in the world at the time was sentenced to 3 years in prison. …

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Toronto's most notorious and prolific bicycle thief pleaded guilty to possessing 10 stolen bicycles and six drug charges on Wednesday, resulting in a 30-month prison sentence.

That guilty plea covers just a few of the 2,200 to 2,900 stolen bicycles that Igor Kenk, 50, had stored away in his bike shop, his home and in 10 garages he rented around the city.

Cooperating with authorities, Kenk allowed the government to confiscate those bicycles as well as a couple of motor vehicles and one of the buildings that housed the bikes.

The courts are considering a grand auction to sell the bicycles, although most aren't in good shape…

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A simple tandem bike ride may have unlocked a treatment for Parkinson's disease, a disorder of the central nervous system that impairs motor skills and speech.

The discovery happened when a biomedical engineer, Jay Alberts, captained a tandem in a 200-mile bike tour of Iowa with a friend who was afflicted with Parkinson's.

At the end of that 2003 bike ride, the tandem's stoker said her hand tremors had stopped at the end of the day.

A couple of years later, Alberts conducted a tandem bicycling experiement with a neurologist who suffered from Parkinson's. Again, his tremors stopped after a 50-mile tandem bike ride …

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UPS is putting bicycles with trailers back on the road along the West Coast to save the cost of increasing its truck fleet during the holiday season.

While UPS experimented with going back to its roots in Washington and Oregon in recent years, now the world's largest package delivery business is expanding the use of bikes to 45 routes throughout Northern California.

The bike-trailer set-ups cost UPS about $700 each. Still, using human-powered delivery saves UPS about $45,000 to $50,000 in fuel and maintenance costs by eliminating the need to rent 20 to 25 trucks ….