Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Fast Folks
Thanks to Sterling and the crew at Fast Folks for letting us hang out and play. They were super nice and gave us some stickers to share with Atlanta. It makes me want to get the candy skull Fast Folks logo tattooed on me. If you are ever in Austin, stop by for a visit.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Team Radio Shack US Service Course
Seems pretty small for a service course but hey its Team Radio Shack
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Flying The Flag
The picture is from Hipster Nascar. Why does it get a post here? Because prominently displayed is the Philippine flag and it’s on a velodrome.
Friday, August 5, 2011
10 Best U.S. Bike Cities of 2011
From The Street online…
10 Best U.S. Bike Cities of 2011
By Jason Notte 07/21/11 - 08:00 AM EDT
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- You sometimes need to be a Tour de France cyclist to make it easier to get from here to there on a bicycle instead of in a car, but you don't need to climb the Pyrenees to realize it's cheaper on two wheels.
With the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. soaring to nearly $4 in May and still at $3.68, or a 35% hike from what drivers paid at the same time last year, low-mileage alternatives are gaining traction and bolstering the ranks of bicycle owners. The National Bicycle Dealers Association says the U.S. adult cycle industry took in $6 billion in sales last year with 13.5 million adult bikes sold. That's a 15% increase from $5.6 billion in sales and 10.2 million bikes sold in 2009, but still down from the $6.1 billion and 14 million bikes in pre-recession 2005.
Sales last year contributed to 39.3 million Americans riding a bike six times or more in 2010, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. That increased ridership 3% from 2009 and has made bicycle commuters of 10% of all riders. Bicycle-buying patterns have shifted as well, with commuter-favored hybrid/cross bikes rising from 14% of the bicycle market in 2005 to 21% last year and road bikes accelerating from 16% of the market a half-decade ago to 23% last year.
Read on here.
Chicago Debuts City's First Protect Bike Lane
From the City of Chicago, I wish all bikes lanes were like this. There was an opportunity to do this with the Ponce/Trinity bikes lanes in Decatur. I don’t see additional bike lanes being built currently; all the more reason to support the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.
July 25, 2011
Kinzie protected bike lane completed
City officials and community members today marked the official opening of Chicago’s first protected bike lane along Kinzie Street between Milwaukee Avenue and Wells Street.
The protected lane features three main elements: a marked lane adjacent to the curb in each direction along Kinzie; a buffered area with flexible marker posts, and a parking lane for automobiles. Green paint and pavement markings depicting a bicycle help further define the lane.
Kinzie retains a lane for motor vehicles in each direction.
“This improvement will benefit not only bicyclists, but pedestrians and motorists as well,” said CDOT Commissioner Gabe Klein. Vehicles tend to slow down and become more aware of bicyclists, he said, and pedestrians benefit from the defined environment for cars and bikes.
“Everything we do for one mode of travel should benefit the other modes of travel,” Klein said.
The ½-mile-long lane is the first in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to install 25 miles of protected bike lanes each year—to help achieve his goal of making Chicago the best big city for bicycling in the United States.
Klein also announced the location of the city’s next protected bike lane: Jackson Boulevard from Damen Avenue to Halsted Street. Like Kinzie, Jackson was chosen for its available roadway width, existing bike traffic and connections to existing bike lanes and bike routes.
Work on Jackson is set to begin by early August, and the work will be coordinated with an upcoming resurfacing project along Jackson.
Most of the Kinzie lane was completed in early July. The last element—custom-fitted plates that cover the Kinzie bridge’s open-grate deck to create a smooth riding surface—was installed late last week. The plates were installed with temporary fasteners; permanent fasteners will be installed in August.
Already, the lane is proving very popular with bicyclists: Recent counts of bicycle traffic during the morning rush hour at Kinzie and Clinton saw a 60 percent increase over May 2011 counts—from 413 bicyclists to 656. Both counts were taken on good-weather days.
And a week ago, bicycles accounted for about 48 percent of the morning rush hour traffic on southbound Milwaukee at Kinzie—819 bicyclists vs. 892 motor vehicles.
For more info on the bike counts, click here.
CDOT has also surveyed Kinzie bicyclists about their experience with the new lane. 41 percent said Kinzie was not part of their normal route before the protected lane was installed, but is now. And 49 percent said they feel motorist behavior has improved.
“That’s exactly the kind of change we’re hoping to achieve,” Klein said.
The Kinzie lane cost roughly $140,000 to install. The Chicago-based SRAM Cycling Fund donated $10,000 worth of pavement markings to the project. Cost estimates for the Jackson lane are not yet finalized.
SRAM officials, along with Alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd) and officials from the Active Transportation Alliance participated in the ribbon-cutting.
Read on here.
Harassing bicyclists outlawed in Los Angeles
From the LA Times via Lake Tahoe news…
Harassing bicyclists outlawed in Los Angeles
Posted by admin in Outdoor & Sports on July 26th, 2011
By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday passed a pioneering new law intended to protect bicyclists from harassment by motorists.
The ordinance, which backers described as the toughest of its kind in the nation, makes it a crime for drivers to threaten cyclists verbally or physically, and allows victims of harassment to sue in civil court without waiting for the city to press criminal charges.
Its passage comes one day after a 63-year-old bicyclist was struck and killed by a car on a downtown street — an incident that bicycle advocates say underscores the dangers cyclists face.
The new law is the latest bicycle-friendly measure to hit L.A., where an increasingly vocal community of activists has been calling for more protections.
Several of them showed up at City Hall on Wednesday to share stories of harassment; they described motorists who threw objects, shouted insults and tried to run them off the road.
As the number of cyclists on L.A. streets has swelled — local census data from 2008 show that about 13,000 commute to work on bikes, a 48 percent increase over the last eight years — so too have conflicts between motorists and bicyclists. Some motorists have accused cyclists of flouting traffic laws, while cyclists have complained that they are treated like second-class citizens.
Read on here.
Bicycles can mean a cheap commute
From St. Louis Today online…
Bicycles can mean a cheap commute
BY CYNTHIA BILLHARTZ GREGORIAN • cbillhartz@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8114
STLtoday.com | Posted: Thursday, July 28, 2011 12:01 am
Forget the fancy jersey covered in ads, the Shimano shoes and the $8,000 feather-light road bike.
This isn't France and you're not Lance Armstrong racing down the Champs-Élysées.
You're a commuter looking for an inexpensive, healthy, eco-friendly way to get to and from work. And as a growing number of local commuter cyclists have learned, all you need is a sturdy bike and a helmet. Neither needs to cost a lot of money, though you will have to put a little elbow grease into repairs and maintenance now and then.
Read on here.
Biking To All MLB Parks
From USA Today online…
Summer odyssey: Fan biking to all 30 MLB parks
By Chelsea Janes, USA TODAY
Until this summer, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Darren O'Donnell was that he emerged a Cincinnatti Reds fan from a childhood spent in Idaho. Then he took two of his passions -- biking and baseball -- and formed another unlikely combination, attempting to ride his bike to every Major League Baseball stadium in a six-month summer odyssey.
More than 8,000 miles, countless flat tires and one HBC (hit-by-car) later, and O'Donnell, 24, has reached 18 of the 30 ballparks.
A resident of Bellingham, Wash., and graduate of Western Washington University, O'Donnell was working at a food co-op when he joined friends on a biking trip to Chico, Calif., last April. O'Donnell, who never owned a car, had only biked short distances within his community but enjoyed the road trip so much that he came up with the idea of a bicycle baseball pilgrimage.
"I've always wanted to see all the ballparks," O'Donnell says. "It seemed realistic as far as mileage per day goes, and the whole time leading up to it I just kept thinking 'I don't see why it can't be done.' So I decided to do it."
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Jimmy Johns In The Bike Lane
Doesn't anyone want to enforce this. Seems like an easy ticket. Park Atlanta doesn't enforce it. They are limited to parking meters. Why doesn't JJ deliver exclusively by bike. They have bike jerseys and at least 1 bike delivery guy/gal. Or by scooter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)