Columbus Rides Bikes!

Highlights 9 riders, including 4 fat bikes 26 miles, Nelsonville to Athens and back 22 degrees at start, sunshine made it feel like upper 20's Trail was snow covered with ice base heading to Athens Trails was mushy on way back to Nelsonville

YEAR OF YAY! is a series of 12 rides to celebrate our city and promote membership in Yay Bikes!. Everyone who rides with us will receive an exclusive button designed by Bandito Design Co, as well as other goodies TBA.   January's theme is "warm & cozy", so we'll be visiti ng several coffee shops to warm up as we ride through OSU campus, Grandview, Franklinton, German Village and Downtown. Layer up and come on out to kick it with some really great folks. This ride is FREE! All future YoY rides are free for Yay Bikes! members and $5 for everyone else. Check out details and tell us your are riding with is on Facebook

Measure your bicycling performance with an iPhone by  Edward N. Albro ,  PCWorld    Jan 12, 2012 3:30 pm Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the  Geek Tech blog  at  PCWorld.com . SIMILAR ARTICLES The Week in iOS Accessories: CES mania! iBike Dash CC iPhone 4S review: It's a sure thing iOS accessories on display at CES Hack the iPod's Notes Review: MacBook Air (first-generation) Really serious bicyclists measure their performance not in speed, but in watts, with power meters integrated with their bikes. The problem is, those power meters come with really serious price tags. The soon-to-be-released  iBike  Powerhouse makes it possible to measure your power output much more cheaply. iBike makes a case to mount your iPhone on your handlebars. The Powerhouse, which will cost $269 when it’s released later this spring, consists of a special case for your iPhone that attaches to your...

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by  Noah Kazis This map of bike-share trips in D.C. reveals plenty about cycling patterns in the city, but New York City's data will be far more robust, including exact routes for each trip. Image: CommuterPageBlog via  GGW. Here’s one more reason to get excited about the launch of bike-share later this year: the reams of data generated by the GPS units located in every public bicycle. The Department of Transportation will use that data to inform their bike lane planning, commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan revealed last night. “It’s going to be amazing to have GPS generated data for all these trips,” said Sadik-Khan. “For planning purposes, it’ll be huge.” Right now, data on individual bike trips are very scarce. While bike-share trips aren’t representative of the larger set of bike trips, the ability to track exactly where a large set of riders bike and at what speeds could be quite valuable for bike planning. DOT has used taxi GPS data to measure traffic speeds...

Abstract GreenWheel, developed by the MIT Media Lab Smart Cities, is a modular, in-wheel electric motor that transforms any pedal-powered bicycle into an electrically assisted hybrid bicycle (an "E-bike"). In a jointed workshop between the MIT Mobile Experience Lab and the Smart Cities group we imagined different scenarios combining GreenWheels with mobile phone and sensors. Design Process The Green Wheel, developed by the Smart Cites group at the Media Lab, is a self-contained unit that includes an electric motor and battery, along with a generator that can recharge the battery. With a wirelessly operated throttle, the generator can release energy stored in braking to support pedaling during more difficult stretches. While the concept of bikes that can recycle their own energy and even make small contributions to the grid provides numerous opportunities, the Green Wheel project is not limited to power microgeneration. The Mobile Experience Lab combin...

As part of the  Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) update , MORPC has developed a draft bikeway prioritization methodology for the region. This methodology helps MORPC to prioritize future bikeways at a regional level. We welcome any comments on the methodology and map by January 18, 2012 to  tplan@morpc.org. To view and download the methodology, please click on the following link:  2012 Draft Bikeway Prioritization Methodology. To view an interactive version of the map, please click on the following link:  2012 Draft Bikeway Prioritization Interactive Map. To view a pdf version of the map, please click on the following link:  2012 Draft Bikeway Prioritization PDF Map. MORPC plans for the development of bikeways as a component of a multimodal regional transportation plan. The goal of the bikeway planning effort is to create a network of bikeways that provide transportation between Delaware and Franklin counties, Bloom and Violet townships i...

Kiwi Chronicles: Episode 3 - On the Road Again - PathLessPedaled.com from Russ Roca on Vimeo . In this episode, we leave the city of Auckland and get our first taste of riding in the New Zealand countryside. We work our way to Rotorua where we interview Jeff Anderson, NZ's only steel bike builder. We also interview Damian Day, who suffers from several nerve disorders but has been bike touring full time through NZ for the last 5 years. www.pathlesspedaled.com www.facebook.com/pathlesspedaled

2011 GT Peace Tour Commuter Bike Overview Thinking about giving bicycle commuting a try? GT's Peace Tour commuter bike is ready when you are. It's the real deal, with a triple triangle frame made with Reynolds 531 steel tubing, the choice of touring enthusiasts worldwide because of its fabled combination of strength, stiffness and resiliency. It has 27 gears for efficient power transfer no matter what the road conditions, and mechanical disc brakes for dependable, all-weather stopping power. Integrated fenders help shield you from road spray on rainy days, and Schwalbe Delta Cruiser tires feature puncture protection to keep you rolling and reflective sidewalls to increase your visibility at dawn and dusk and give you commuting peace of mind.  Triple-Triangle frame is made with Reynolds 531 tubing, the legendary steel of choice for touring bikes because of its ability to render frames that are strong. stiff and responsive GT touring design fork has chromoly blades that h...

Here is what Burlington VT is doing for bike parking. Notice the snow on the ground and no cover. Yep, people ride their bikes in the snow without worrying about a cover to protect their bike. If you haven't heard by now $480,000 is being spent on the 16 bike shelters ($30,000 each) around Columbus. They look like bus shelters and I have yet to see more than one bike locked in them. During a discussion with a friend he suggested that the process should (coulda/shoulda/woulda) have involved local designers working to create unique and relevant design art/sculptural bike parking and have local companies fabricate the designs for installation around Columbus. Unfortunately, we ended up with relatively expensive bike shelters that do nothing to raise the bar on innovative and cost effective bike parking solutions. We had a chance to be, "oh, wow", and ended up with, "oh yeah, they cost WHAT?". Do you want your voice to be heard? Stop down to the  COLUM...

Editor's note: As many of you know I love food trucks in Columbus and routinely lead the Tuesday Night Ride to support taco trucks. CMH Gourmand picks apart a recent Dispatch article about food trucks. [excerpt] ...Recently there was an article in  The Columbus Dispatch  about placing Food Trucks in Franklinton as a means to help grow an area of town looking for a boost and to create a few jobs. Neat idea, everyone wins. Hooray! Well…no. There is a vocal minority in our city who have a deep-seated hatred for mobile food. There is also a sizeable apathetic majority who don’t care one way or the other. This is not a surprise to me. I have encountered these concerns since 2009 when Andy, Bethia and I started the  Taco Trucks Columbus website . From our perspective we were sharing a hidden part of Columbus culinary culture with the world. The number and the quality of Taco Trucks in Columbus sets our city apart from any city in the Midwest and most in the country. It...

Fast Track Cycling needs your help to get phase one of our project — the construction of an outdoor Velodrome — off the ground. We've passed the halfway point and want to keep moving forward: we've raised  $160,000  of our  $300,000  goal. Please click the graphic to learn about how you can support the velodrome! [Click here]

Purchase Image A bicycle and pair of shoes belonging to a 15-year old sits in the road near the corner of Foor Boulevard and Blacks Road in Pataskala on Jan. 4. / Jason Lenhart/The Advocate NEWARK — A Pataskala man accused of driving impaired and striking a teenage bicyclist was found guilty of not maintaining proper distance. Scott Bowles, 40, pleaded no contest and was found guilty of failure to maintain assured clear distance, a minor misdemeanor. Licking County Municipal Court Judge David Stansbury fined Bowles $25 on Tuesday. Bowles also pleaded not guilty to two counts of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, each a first-degree misdemeanor. A trial was set for Feb. 8. [keep reading at Newark Advocate]

On top of completing some top-notch community work in 2011, Yay Bikes! has also devoted considerable time to developing our organizational capacity during these past few months. And now, the spoils are ours (and yours!). Behold! NEW WEBSITE —Today is a day of great rejoicing, for we have launched a New Website and it is Good! We hope it will allow you to get a better picture of who the hell Yay Bikes! is and what the hell it is we do...because we admit that it's been difficult to ascertain heretofore (ahem...!). Unfortunately, the forums have been a casualty of this upgrade, if only temporarily — as you're probably aware, they are old and ugly and don't really work all that well. So we'll need to make some substantial revisions before relaunching them this spring, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please  contact me  to participate in the forum upgrade and/or to sponsor it. In the meantime, comment on this post with any suggestions for i...