Columbus Rides Bikes!

An artist's rendering of the new crowdfunded bike lane expected to open in Denver this year.   Alta Planning Your friends ask you to fund their marathon training, their home renovations, even their  potato salad . Why not crowdfund something you'd actually use, such as a bike path or a public park? That's what a growing number of startups are helping people do, as communities with a goal look for sources of financing outside the municipal bond market. "More and more, people are seeing this as a great alternative avenue ... to going through your tax dollars or local public servant," says Slava Rubin, the chief executive officer of Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform. Rubin says he started seeing public works projects on the site in 2011, with campaigns funding such small-scale infrastructure projects as a $1,000 dog park in Chicago, and that he expects interest only to increase. [Keep reading at Bloomberg]

A Mountain Bike Adventure: Wales from Chris Davies on Vimeo .

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Bike the Cbus 2013 at its launch point in front of the historic Lincoln Theatre Ride with us on September 5, 2015! Our signature annual event—Columbus’ original city-wide ride since 2008—highlights our city’s unique and evolving center-ring neighborhoods. Bike the Cbus is a casual bicycle tour welcoming cyclists of all ages and abilities with 4 short routes totaling 30 miles and stops hosted by local organizations who provide snacks and entertainment. Check out 7 years of cycling in these delightful  photo albums ! With a 3-fold increase in participation to approximately 600 riders in 2013 and 2014, plus a newly expanded finish line after party with free food for riders and a beer garden, Bike the Cbus has undergone as many changes as the neighborhoods we explore. This year, another exciting change comes in the form of a new metric century we’re calling “Bike the Cbus+”. Speedier distance riders will appreciate this unique urban route. [Register at Yay Bikes!]

Bike the Cbus 2013 at its launch point in front of the historic Lincoln Theatre Ride with us on September 5, 2015! Our signature annual event—Columbus’ original city-wide ride since 2008—highlights our city’s unique and evolving center-ring neighborhoods. Bike the Cbus is a casual bicycle tour welcoming cyclists of all ages and abilities with 4 short routes totaling 30 miles and stops hosted by local organizations who provide snacks and entertainment. Check out 7 years of cycling in these delightful  photo albums ! With a 3-fold increase in participation to approximately 600 riders in 2013 and 2014, plus a newly expanded finish line after party with free food for riders and a beer garden, Bike the Cbus has undergone as many changes as the neighborhoods we explore. This year, another exciting change comes in the form of a new metric century we’re calling “Bike the Cbus+”. Speedier distance riders will appreciate this unique urban route. [More at Yay Bikes!]

PHOTO BY TOM SWALLOW Sarah and Tom Swallow of Swallow Bicycle Works Riding your bike across the U.S. is hard enough, but why not throw rocky creek crossings and 20-percent-gradient  dirt climbs  into the mix, too? If you’ve ever been on a grueling  gravel ride  and wished it could go on for months and months, we've got a trip for your cycling vision board. Start keeping tabs on two people making the gravel dream happen along the entire frame-rattling Trans-America Trail (TAT)—and maybe even join the fun. Sarah and Tom Swallow, co-owners of Swallow Bicycle Works in Loveland, Ohio, learned about the route when they unknowingly stumbled upon a stretch of it during a trip to North Carolina and Tennessee. Although the TAT was originally designed for motorcycle touring, they met several other cyclists who had ridden up to 800-mile stretches of it—so the Swallows decided to tackle the whole thing. [Keep reading at Bicycling]

Click to Open Overlay Gallery GERMANY GETS A  lot of things right. Huge beer mugs. Amusingly long words made up on a whim. And best of all, a highway system made for going as fast as possible.  Now, Munich wants to extend the thrill of the open highway to cyclists with  a network of bike lanes  running through the city and into the suburbs, in a bid to encourage car-free commuting. [Keep reading at Wired]

  In Groningen, an estimated 61% of all trips are made by bicycle. Photograph: Alamy Motorists woke up one mid-70s morning to find new one-way streets made direct crosstown journeys impossible by car. Forty years later Groningen boasts two-thirds of all trips made by bike … and the cleanest air of any big Dutch city Traffic lights with rain sensors to give quicker priority to cyclists on wet days … Heated cycle paths so cyclists won’t slip during bouts of frost … This might sound like science fiction to you, but in the Dutch city of Groningen it will soon be everyday reality.  The inhabitants of this lively northern university city regard their homestead as the cycling capital of the Netherlands. They might very well be right: 61% of all trips in Groningen are made by bicycle, rising to more than 70% for  trips made to educational institutions . You might think the city authorities would be satisfied with these statistics. But apparently it’s not enough, and ne...

Most of us lead a life that revolves around work. The average US worker, for example, clocks  47 hours a week , and when you add the  time we spend commuting , another five to 10 hours, it pushes our total work-related hours over 55. Then there's  work-related stress , which damages our health. All of that can paint a vulgar picture of life in our modern world, one that two or three weeks' vacation can hardly remedy. Then there are those who refuse to buy into all that and choose to live on the fringe, like  Ultra Romance , a 35-year-old from the Connecticut River valley who works as little as possible — usually for six months a year — and then goes adventuring around the world with his bike and modest camping gear. [Keep reading at Business Insider UK]

After surveying 18,000 people, Wesley Marshall, an associate professor of civil engineering  at the University of Colorado, is trying to understand why cyclists, in particular, might bend  or flat-out flout traffic regulations. Credit:  Sascha Kohlmann via Flickr Answer honestly. As a bicyclist do you follow all the rules and regulations of the road? Ever zipped over the speed limit, or glided past a stop sign when no one’s around? When it comes to obeying traffic laws, “we’re all criminals,” says  Wesley Marshall,  an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado. After surveying 18,000 people, Marshall is trying to understand why cyclists, in particular, might bend or flat-out ignore traffic regulations. [keep reading at Public Radio International (PRI)]

Photo The Astana Pro team’s Vincenzo Nibali during the second stage of the Tour de France on July 5 in the Netherlands.   Credit Sebastien Nogier/European Pressphoto Agency RODEZ, France — When  Alberto Contador  won the  Tour de France  in 2010 while riding a bicycle made by Specialized for the first time, Andrew Love was both elated and apprehensive. “I knew they would be coming,” Love, the company’s head of brand protection, investigation and legal enforcement, recalled. Contador’s success was ultimately short-lived — the title was revoked two years later because of doping — but that had nothing to do with Love’s fear: that Contador’s victory aboard the Specialized carbon fiber bicycle frame would hasten the arrival of copies from China, where there has been a surge in counterfeit high-end bikes, wheels and even helmets. Unlike, for example, a fake Rolex watch that stops ticking, fake cycling products can have dangerous consequences, several manu...

Ale-8-One is a  ginger-ale-like soda  usually sold in glass bottles and popular in the hills of eastern  Kentucky . During a bike trip through the region last month, for example, I washed down a burger with one on the back porch of a bed-and-breakfast owned by a man who once walked more than 3,000 miles across America on stilts. The next night, I blasted another out of the crook of a tree branch with a 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson. I rarely drink soda and I’m not into guns. But what’s the point of travel if not to have new and sometimes discomforting experiences? Frugal Traveler Tips for how to navigate the world on a tight budget. A $50 Day in Knoxville, Tennessee  JUL 2 How to Eat on a Budget While Traveling  JUN 24 How to Pick a Cellphone Plan for Traveling Abroad  JUN 16 Exploring Franche-Comté, France’s Well-Kept Secret  JUN 11 In Sardinia, an Affordable Family-Run Farm Stay  JUN 4 See More » Eastern Kentu...

Breakfast rides became a popular Sunday non-event a generation ago. The rides were the idea of Harold Absalonson. This photo was taken March 28, 1983. (Rich Landers/Photo Archive/The Spokesman-Review) By Lindsey Wallace I’m done wearing a bike helmet. Now, don’t hold me to that. Maybe I’ll want one in the winter when the roads are icy. Maybe I’ll be required to wear one on a group ride. Maybe I’ll travel cross-country, planning to bike on deserted roads. But when it comes to casual riding, I’m done. At the conference I attended last week, I mentioned, “I don’t wear a helmet, and I’m a public health professional,” to audible gasps and laughter. I invited people to ask me why later, and many of them did. I’ll share with you what I told them in just a moment, but let me preface this: I think the main problem around making an informed decision about whether to wear a helmet is hard because there isn’t great data around helmet use. Due to the confirmation bias, we...

CC BY 2.0 Lloyd Alter/ Vancouver bike infrastructure We do go on about bike safety, primarily the question of whether the emphasis should be on building better infrastructure for cyclists so they don’t get squished or mandating helmets for their head to try and protect them when they do. On the  Alternative Department for Transport,  a UK website, the author notes that in the UK people do wear helmets and hi-vis vests- because they are afraid not to. If we genuinely want to make cycling safer, more helmets aren’t the solution. They are really a good indicator that the streets aren’t safe. When people don’t feel safe when cycling, they will wear a helmet – and hi-vis vest – with or without advertising. Higher helmet use shouldn’t be a goal, it should be seen as a failure of policy, an embarrassing statistic. An increase in helmets is a sign that the government has failed miserably in their duty to provide safe streets. The Minister of the ADFT (he doesn’t give his...