Columbus Rides Bikes!

THE OREGON OUTBACK: A 360-MILE DIRT ODYSSEY 360 MILES, 75% DIRT KLAMATH FALLS TO THE DESCHUTES FULL ROUTE DETAILS — FRIDAY – MAY 22, 2015 – 7:00 A.M. — Due to the realities of living in litigious society, we are no longer taking any formal role in organizing this ride.  That doesn’t mean it won’t still happen – we fully expect folks to still show up and ride and it’s not like we were really doing anything beyond picking a date, time and route.  It just means we don’t want to potentially get sued if something happens to someone.   So even though we beat this drum repeatedly every year, here it goes again, with even more feeling:  you are really, truly 100% on your own.    You can read more about why we are doing this here .   But again, we expect our rides, including this one, to continue to go down on the same dates and times and in the same way they always have.  You can see when these rides are expected to happe...

Last night, Anthony Ryan was biking home from his job as a lecturer on fine arts at SF State University when he was nearly rammed by a motorist on Phelan Avenue. Ryan says the driver tried to door him and run him over multiple times. He  posted footage  taken by another driver showing the end of the encounter, when the assailant attempted to back up over Ryan. The assault occurred outside City College’s main campus. According to Ryan, the aggression began as he was riding in the left-turn lane from eastbound Ocean on to Phelan. Ryan, who previously had a more violent run-in with a reckless driver in the area, relayed his account in  a series of tweets : [Keep reading at StreetsBlog]

Janet Lee said she snapped this photo of a bicyclist throwing a bike lock at her car during a confrontation on Tuesday evening. Her teenage daughter was driving the car.  (Photo by Janet Lee) Update:   The second (non-bike-lock-throwing) bicyclist in the photo has contacted The Oregonian/OregonLive with his version of what happened. Read it below.   Dear Portland bicyclists: Bike locks are for locking up your ride, not hucking at cars during the evening commute.   A Portland woman says she has filed a police report against a bicyclist who she says threw a bike lock at her car and kicked her in the arm during a heated exchange east of the Hawthorne Bridge on Tuesday night. Janet Lee said her teenage daughter was driving their 2000 BMW when she snapped a photo of the cyclist heaving the heavy U-lock at the vehicle. [Keep reading at Oregonian]

SFMTA This fall,  San Francisco  will become one of the elite few cities in the United States to build a raised bike lane. The city's Municipal Transportation Agency will oversee the construction of an elevated pathway on Valencia Street in the southern Mission District. The curb-hugging lane will be raised about 2 inches above the road surface, and will measure 6-feet wide with an additional 5-foot "buffer zone." The city will follow up with a handful of other raised lanes next year, all planned for areas with high rates of bicycle injuries. [Keep reading at CityLab]

All charts: Pew Charitable Trusts [ PDF ] David Alpert at  Greater Greater Washington  shares this fantastic chart from a new study of transportation funding by the Pew Charitable Trusts [ PDF ]. Alpert explains: This chart from Pew shows where the transportation money comes from; it’s not all drivers. Basically, the bluish areas are revenues which come specifically from drivers: gas taxes, vehicle taxes, and tolls. The greenish ones are other revenues: property taxes, general fund transfers, and other funds. [Keep reading at StreetsBlog] 

Dave Hoverman and his wife, Abby Smith, in Berkeley, Calif., with their cargo bike, which can hold all four children. When Dave Hoverman, 38, a business strategy consultant in Berkeley, Calif., goes to Costco on the weekends, he ditches his Audi Q7 and instead loads his four children into a  Cetma  cargo bike with a trailer hitched to the rear. “We do all sorts of errands on the bike,” Mr. Hoverman said. “We try not to get in the car all weekend.” Mr. Hoverman is among a growing contingent of eco-minded and health-conscious urban parents who are leaving their car keys at home and relying on high-capacity cargo bikes for family transportation. [Keep reading at NY Times]

Support 2015 Ride of Silence Columbus http://yaybikes.com/programs/ride-of-silence/

I’ve been planning on writing this piece for a few weeks now, but struggled with finding the right way to go about it. Wouldn’t you know it, before I got my act together and sat down and finished the thing, badass mountain biker   Stacey , posted something very similar to the draft I had begun. I considered scrapping my piece altogether, but after more consideration, I thought maybe I could build off of what Stacey had started. So what is this popular issue? I’m calling it self-deprecation. Stacey calls it our need to apologize.  “I’d love to come, but you might be waiting for me at the top of the climbs…”   “I’m not sure I can handle that descent...”   “I’m racing, but my goal is just not to be last...” [Read more at Machines for Freedom]

Bicycle Touring - DC to Pittsburgh to Toronto from Levi on Vimeo .

Port Townsend from Raleigh Bicycles on Vimeo .

Your guide to the fattening They say that there are seven stages of grief. I went through all of them when I heard that plus-size tires would be the ‘next big thing’ in the bike industry. You know–shock and denial, pain and guilt, angry-as-hell muttering and throwing of crap at the wall. Photo by Van Swae But you can’t stay mad forever. I mean you can, but if you do you usually wind up living under a bridge, coaching a troupe of dancing rats. So, I resigned myself to getting some answers to the following questions: What the hell is “plus-size” anyway? What are these bikes supposed to do well? What are their limitations? What kind of rider might like a plus-size bike? Is this the end of ‘normal’ mountain bikes? Why are we also getting new fork and rear axle standards?  Ryan Palmer,  Bike magazine’s  gear editor, and I headed out on a cross-country journey to find those answers. It was like “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” or maybe “The Fellowship of ...

Former  NYC   DOT  Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan says a nimble,  tactical-urbanism-style  approach was key to her success. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams) Last week, former New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan spoke to a packed house of enthusiastic urbanists in Seattle as part of a Seattle Department of Transportation ( SDOT ) speaker series on the future of city transportation. Sadik-Khan is something of a celebrity in the alt transportation world for her role in implementing major positive changes to New York City streets under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Introducing her to the crowd,  SDOT  Director Scott Kubly said, “It’s not an overstatement to say she changed how the entire country thinks about transportation.” [Keep reading at Next City]

2014 Arizona Trail Race from Aaron Johnson on Vimeo . In April of 2014, about 17 of us lined up along the desolate Mexican border in Arizona, and headed north in a race across the deserts, mountains, forests, and canyons of Arizona, headed for Utah. This is the story of how my race unfolded. The Arizona Trail Race is a self-supported mountain bike race along the famed Arizona Trail. Starting at the Mexico border, there are two distance options: 300 miles to the Picketpost trailhead near Phoenix, or the full traversal to Utah, more than 750 miles. There is no race organization, there is no support; you carry all your own gear, and must be completely self-sufficient. Resupply is allowed only at any commercial establishment. Read more about the race here: http://www.topofusion.com/azt/race.php Huge thanks to Joe Polk at MTBCast for providing the call-in audio for the narration. MTBCast is a podcast that offers racers a way to call in and leave messages, sometimes the only commu...

2013 Colorado Trail Race from Aaron Johnson on Vimeo . The 2013 Colorado Trail Race. Self-supported mountain bike race from Durango to Denver, 550 miles. July 21, 2013 Race info: www.climbingdreams.net/ctr/ Filmed and edited by Aaron Johnson. www.mowglimedia.net Music: "Around the Block" by Pretty Lights www.prettylightsmusic.com "Holocene" by Bon Iver http://boniver.org/ "The Stable Song" by Gregory Alan Isakov http://gregoryalanisakov.com/

California Sierra Trail Race from Aaron Johnson on Vimeo . From the mind of Sean Allan comes the California Sierra Trail Race, a self-supported bikepacking race in the Tahoe region of California. Beginning and ending in Auburn, CA, the route traverses historic 19th Century mining trails and roads, winding its way slowly up the foothills and dropping down into Lake Tahoe. It then follows the Tahoe Rim Trail around the lake, over 100 miles of some of California's best singletrack, before making its way back down towards Auburn. At 430 miles and 70,000 feet of elevation gain, the route is a monster, but rewards those who attempt it with incredible scenery and riding. This film showcases the second running of this race, in July of 2014. Turnout was incredibly low, with only 4 starters, and the goal of this film is to generate awareness of this amazing course so more people can experience it. This year's racers: Jack Anderson Aaron Johnson Jeremy Noble Greg Levitsky A...