Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Critical Mass Tonight
It's that time of the month!!! Come on out tonight to ride dress warm, bring a light.
Meet @ 6:30 PM SE Corner of courthouse
Ride @ 7pm
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Mayor's Walk and Ride May 2nd
Would like to get some opinions and ideas for the May 2nd Mayor's ride, we can then pass this along to the city.
1: The ride should take place from downtown, this is a central place and will be visible to all of the Public.
2: Instead of just a ride have a short short portion of the route for: walking, skateboard, strollers etc... We need to include everyone, this will help with educating and promoting this to the public.
3: Have booths setup maybe in the park or downtown square to promote all different forms of transport. We don't need to just have "clubs and organization's being the only ones representing this.
4: Tall Bikes
5: Music ..... Festival....
6: We should also help with promoting it: Flyers, Email, Press Releases, News Media ..........
7: Car Free day??? Or promote car pooling to the ride.
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/queens-play-street/?autostart=true
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/williamsburg-walks/?autostart=true
Put you ideas in the comments.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Bike Summit II set for Feb. 12
From the Courier Jounal
Bicycling enthusiasts of all levels are invited to attend Louisville’s Bike Summit II Feb. 12 at the Salvation Army’s Male Campus, Old Male High School, at Brook and Breckinridge streets.
The free, all-day event is designed to allow those who attend to learn what has been accomplished since Louisville’s first bicycle summit in 2005. They will hear about bicycle project plans and hear bicycling experts discuss how Louisville can become more bicycle-friendly.
Speakers will include: Andy Clarke, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists; Dan Burden, a leading authority on bicycle and pedestrian programs and design; Earl Clark, president of the Louisville Bicycle Club; and Mayor Jerry Abramson.
The mayor launched the city’s Healthy Hometown Movement in 2004 and hosts the popular Mayor’s Hike and Bike events on Memorial Day and Labor Day.
The summit will also have breakout sessions on a variety of bicycling topics.
People can register to attend the summit through Feb. 2 at the city Web site. Visit www.louisvilleky.gov and look for the Bike Louisville logo.
Bike Summit II is sponsored by Humana and the Humana Foundation and supported by the Louisville Bicycle Club and Louisville Metro’s Bike Louisville program.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Vintage Ride Sunday
This is either the new vintage ride or the new original vintage ride, either way get off your ass and ride
Sunday
2pm
HSV Middle School on Adam Street (behind California Park on California Street-- nearest major intersection is Lowe).
All bikes welcome. This is a great time to pull out your vintage or cruiser bike and go for a fun, conversationally slow and short ride around the downtown area.
Tomorrow's ride starts at HSV Middle School and goes North-- off to see the carved bear tree. Later socializing-- maybe Old Towne coffee, Star Market, Sonic or some place near by. You may head back or stay as long as you wish. (bring pocket money)
Kids are welcome too-- but need to be street safe (or in a trailer or attached bike seat). Helmets on those 17 and under.
Hope you will join us for some cycling fun. Please, spread the word & bring your friends.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Posey Peep Show
Saturday - 24th - The Posey Peep Show is WANTED!, Admission $7 (9pm)
Sunday - 25th - The Posey Peep Show is WANTED!, Admission $7 (8pm)
BANK OF DAVE AND NIKKI
Thursday, January 22, 2009
city council meeting
tonight
6pm
308 Fountain Circle
Come to the city council meeting tonight if you can. The Bike Advisory & Safety Committee will be presenting it's purpose, goals, and objectives overview, as well as an up to date progress report on the committee happnens' to the council and public.
Boston - Bicyclists rejoice
Eight years after it was first introduced, Gov. Deval Patrick signed the Bicyclist Safety Bill into law last week.
The new law, a grassroots effort spearheaded by the Mass. Bicycle Coalition (MassBike), will require police recruits to receive training on bicycle-related laws, bicyclist-related injuries and dangerous behavior by bicyclists and motorists, and allows for police to ticket motorists (and their passengers) up to $100 for opening car or truck doors into the path of bicycles and pedestrians.
Among the law’s 11 additional statutes, bicyclists will be allowed to ride two abreast when it does not impede cars from passing and explains how motorists should safely pass a bicycle, provides legal protection for cyclists who wish to ride to the right of other traffic, repeals the bicycle registration law in cities and towns where it’s required, and requires bicycle rental businesses to make helmets available to renters.
“The new law will encourage more people to ride bicycles by enhancing bicyclist safety and comfort level on state roads,” said David Watson, executive director of MassBike. “It will also make Mass. a healthier, greener, more sustainable state.”
If not a bicyclist-friendlier one, as Watson and MassBike added that now the “work really begins. We will start getting the word to bicyclists, motorists and police, so that we can begin to see the improvements that the new law makes possible.”
State representatives William Brownsberger of Cambridge and Kay Kahn of Newton helped push through the bill — S.B. 2573 — and convince Gov. Patrick to sign it. The law comes after two of its original authors have retired, and the previous administration vetoed it in 2006.
“It is rare to see a law that directly addresses so many of the most challenging issues we face today: Climate change, the health impacts of decreasing physical activity, and the rising cost of transportation,” Khan said.
For more information, visit www.massbike.org.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Good Riddance
Goodbye and fuck off, 8 years of torture, greed, stupidity and murder you are a war criminal.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Share The Road
The Cass Corridor is cold, snowy and largely deserted outside of The Hub in Midtown Detroit this time of year. That’s not the case inside the new bike shop just north of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Bicycling enthusiasts of all ages, colors and creeds rub tires inside a space littered with custom wheels and vintage bikes.
There is a constant stream of people coming and going from the shop in the dead of January, and they all got there on two wheels. Cold or no cold, these year-round commuters brave the freezing temperature, ice and snow to keep on pedaling. The destinations for these die-hards are their jobs, local businesses, friends and families.
"The winter time weeds out all of the wussies," says Jordan Bentley, the mechanic manager at The Hub.
This is the fifth year the 23-year-old has been riding year-round, and he is far from alone. The steady stream of half-a-dozen people in The Hub in the dead of January are all year-round commuters. The type of people who watch the Weather Channel to pump themselves up for another day of biking in a winter wonderland.
"I cheer myself up by looking at the weather in Barrow, Alaska," says John Orland, a 21-year-old College of Creative Studies student who lives in Woodbridge. "That’s the coldest place in the U.S."
Hot for cold rides
Most of us look out the window at the snow drifts, icicles and blowing wind and say to ourselves, "No way I’m going out in that." The people at The Hub and numerous other bike shops across Metro Detroit do the same and say, "I can't wait to go out and have fun in that!" read more here
Alert Shirt order
I will be placing an order with Alert Shirt later. I currently have a shirt, a vest, and gloves from them. They have the standard ANSI lime and orange shirts. All the reflective strips are 3M Scotchlite, which is the best reflective stuff, better than Nathan. There are also shirts more appropriate for recumbent riders. There is a mesh 4X vest for $15 that is good for wearing over a backpack/messenger bag, especially on the Arsenal; it will fit over packs that the 'one size fits all' will not. Note that for road riders on the drops there is no reflective material at the bottom like Nathan, so that may not be as good. There is also a set of traffic directing gloves with stop signs on the palms and ANSI lime reflective arrows on the other side with rectangles on the fingers. These are really nice for wearing over cycling gloves and making the turn signals more visible, especially at night. Check the clearance items too. So let me know if you want to order anything, at least before the end of this month. I'm not trying to make any money off of this, just save everyone some on shipping.
I'm not trying to push any agenda with this either. It may help avoid a wreck. It helps with being noticed by distracted drivers. The ANSI colors are designed and proven to be about the most attention grabbing colors you can get. So this is an opportunity to help motorists see you better even though they should be anyway if you don't already have similar clothing.
Gearing up for protest
Add angry cyclists to the list of people eager to hold a rally in San Francisco.
At 9a.m. Friday, organizers with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and their supporters will be pedaling to Market and Octavia streets to protest the city's plan to remove a short segment of bike lane at the dangerous intersection. Among those scheduled to make an appearance are supervisors Bevan Dufty, Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly.
Their beef is a plan by the city's traffic engineer and his bosses at the Municipal Transportation Agency who want to force bikers and drivers to share a lane in the hopes of reducing the chance of collisions between two-wheelers and cars and trucks. Since the freeway ramps opened in 2005, there have been at least 16 collisions in which bikers were hit by vehicles making illegal right turns onto the Central Freeway from eastbound Market Street. more here
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Co-Exist
From Fort Collins Co-Exist Campaign more here
San Francisco has one too
These would look great at the DMV, City Buildings, Bike Shops, Coffee Shops etc....
Bicycle accidents and contributory negligence
Is this "personal responsibility" ? Why is it that 48 other states do not have this law.
Alabama is one of only two states in the union that continues to allow defendants to escape any liability pursuant to the doctrine of contributory negligence. In essence what this doctrine states is that if you are the least bit negligent and if your negligence proximately causes the resulting injury, then you are barred from any recovery whatsoever. This can have a devastating effect on an injured party. Accordingly, as a cyclist (and for that matter, as a motorist as well) you should do everything you can to protect yourself from having this doctrine prevent (or lower) your recovery if you have been injured because of someone else’s negligence. Understand that this doctrine prevents your recovery even when the other party is indisputably negligent, and even if the other party’s negligence is 99% the reason for the injury and your negligence is but 1% the cause. What got me thinking about this is the following note sent by a cyclist in Huntsville. Here it is:
Give the rash of motorist v. cyclist incidents lately (or what seems to be a rash of incidents) it seems to me that cyclists need to be absolutely sure that they are following the letter of the law in regards to their safety equipment, specifically their rear reflectors. read more here
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Do Helmets Save Lives????
Key facts about cycling safety
It takes over 3,000 years of average cycling to suffer a serious head injury. [1]
Road cyclists account for less than 1% of serious head injuries seen by hospitals in the UK. [2]
Only 1 in 350 emergency admissions to hospital are due to any kind of cycling injury.
Around 1 in 1,000 are due to head injury. [3]
The most effective way to reduce the likelihood of injury when cycling is to increase the number of people who cycle. When cycle use doubles, the risk of injury per cyclist falls by 35% to 40%. [4]
Read More Here
THE PROBLEM WITH HELMETS
Myths about helmets are another absurdity that has taken hold in countries where bicycling is not commonplace. Fear mongering rhetoric has escalated to the point where those not familiar with bicycling believe that if you so much as swing your leg over a bicycle you will smash your head open. Helmet rhetoric that sets bicycling out as far more dangerous than it is, has done immeasurable harm to efforts for increasing bicycling. Be sure to take this fun Quiz to adjust your perspective on the dangers of bicycling: http://www.bicyclinglife.com/SafetySkills/SafetyQuiz.htm
Mandatory helmet laws often follow the spread of these myths, adding the weight of the law to the idea that bicycling is more dangerous than any other form of transportation. In fact, as you will have found in the above Quiz, if these laws took a realistic approach to their attempt to prevent head injuries, all pedestrians and car drivers would be required to wear helmets as well. And, it seems, wearing a helmet inside the house should also become mandatory.
Please understand that we support people who want to wear helmets and even encouraging the use of helmets. We simply expect the reasoning behind wearing helmets to be factual so that people who choose to wear a helmet understand the limit of safety that helmet will provide them. Combining this understanding with the facts about how safe bicycling truly is will do wonders for efforts to increase bicycling. See this web page for a good overview of reasons to question overzealous helmet propaganda: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1012 . You will also find important papers linked from that site. Here are some more we recommend :
Read More Here
From These Websites
http://www.onestreet.org/bike_driver_education.html
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/index.html
Dirt-Cheap Gas in 2009: Be Careful What You Wish For
From Alternet
Oil costs a third of what it did in July, and prices keep dropping. That may seem like a godsend now, but we'll pay through the nose later.
Only yesterday, it seems, we were bemoaning the high price of oil. Under the headline "Oil's Rapid Rise Stirs Talk of $200 a Barrel This Year," the July 7 issue of the Wall Street Journal warned that prices that high would put "extreme strains on large sectors of the US economy." Today, oil, at over $40 a barrel, costs less than one-third what it did in July, and some economists have predicted that it could fall as low as $25 a barrel in 2009.
Prices that low -- and their equivalents at the gas pump -- will no doubt be viewed as a godsend by many hard-hit American consumers, even if they ensure severe economic hardship in oil-producing countries like Nigeria, Russia, Iran, Kuwait and Venezuela that depend on energy exports for a large share of their national income. Here, however, is a simple but crucial reality to keep in mind: no matter how much it costs, whether it's rising or falling, oil has a profound impact on the world we inhabit -- and this will be no less true in 2009 than in 2008. read more here
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Men on Bicycles
From the New York Times
A well-worn landscape like Long Island’s yields few surprises to the driver’s gaze. Shops cluster by size and species: pizza with bagels and nail salons, Home Depot with Old Navy. But one roadside incongruity that always unnerves me is the sight of a person outside the shell of a car on purpose — like a man pedaling slowly beside a highway on a bicycle.
Bicyclists and suburbs are an uneasy fit. I don’t mean the racing bikers who swarm like neon-colored beetles, hogging the middle of the road. I’m talking about the guys without helmets, on beat-up mountain bikes: restaurant workers wearing windbreakers over white dress shirts and ties; men in sweatshirts and baseball caps riding home from the store, plastic shopping bags hanging awkwardly off the handlebars.
Such sights are evidence of a valiant adaptation to a hostile environment. For immigrant workers, as with so many of us in the suburbs, life boils down to the job, the bed and the travel between. But when you live in a landscape designed for cars, and you are poor, and it is too far to walk to work, and there’s no bus to take you there, the only option is two wheels. This is what is cheap and effective. It can also be deadly.
On Christmas Day, a car going at least 80 miles per hour on Route 111 in Central Islip hit a bicyclist, Hector Rapalo. The driver sped off. Mr. Rapalo, a 39-year-old Honduran immigrant who worked at a pizza shop, died. Police said that the collision may or may not have been an accident, but that the driver surely knew that he or she had struck someone.
Immigrants ask for little more than the opportunity to work so they can send money home. Their lives are quiet but precarious, in a place that accepts their labor but offers little warmth or welcome. An inveterate hostility sometimes sinks into brutality, as in the fatal stabbing in Patchogue last November of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant set upon by a gang of teenagers.
The accidents they suffer go unnoticed, except when carnage briefly makes the news: Santos Javier Ramos, 21, a bicyclist killed by a car in Selden; Enrique Aguilar-Gamez, 26, fatally struck by a minivan while bicycling in Copiague; Adolfo Reyes, 42, a day laborer badly injured by a hit-and-run driver while on foot in Holtsville. The police in that case suspected a hate crime, because there were no skid marks or evidence that the driver slowed down after Mr. Reyes flew into his windshield, fracturing his skull, collarbone and arm.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Long Road North
I know I have already shared this video with many of you but, for those of you who have not seen it watch this trailer. I have already put in my request to be able to purchase this film and hopefully we can have a screening of it for anyone who is interested in seeing the film.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Thursday City Council Meeting for Jim Spagnola
If you did not already know, Jim Spagnola was hit on Christmas Eve. He is ok but the person who hit him has no insurance and told Jim he should not be on the road etc. etc...It is not our responsibility to teach the public that bikes have a legal right to the road. It is the Mayor and the cities responsibility. There is also an attitude that it is ok to hit, maim or kill a cyclist. This needs to change also. We need to push the Mayor to speak and educate the public. NOW!!!! PSA's have been made and produced by the public, you can view them here http://www. youtube. com/watch?v=6ykhTWOo1lc&e along with Printed materials etc... We need the city to act and work on educating the public. These are things that can be put in place immediately by the city, if we the public lobby them to do it.
Items that need to be addressed:
PSA's need to be run on all major media outlets
PSA's need to be on the city website ( a "high tech town" should have an up to date website along with rules of the road)
PSA's have been produced and are airing on WLRH and submitted to WJAB. The city could pressure some of the other radio stations to run.
Printed material created and paid for by the city. (Tri Folds to be handed out at the license bureau and DMV)
Alabama is at the bottom in Education (45th) and obesity(3rd) a way to address this would be the Mayor's day out with the public" A bike ride with the Mayor in the spring.
We are less than two months away from March so the time to get started is now.
If you want to speak please sign in at the desk and put your name on the list. What we are trying to accomplish is to get the city to move quickly to educate the public so try to focus on that if you can.
Please bring a friend we need a big turnout!!!
Hope to see you there Thursday Jan 8 2009 @ 6pm
Telephone:(256) 427-5011
Fax: (256) 427-5024
Address:
308 Fountain Circle
Huntsville, Alabama 35801
--
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Is Lance giving cycling a bad name?
No helmet, smiling and enjoying himself....... this could be the collapse of cycling.
Atheist bus campaign goes nationwide
Richard Dawkins to launch national advertising campaign today
A £140,000 advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with a plan to broadcast a message doubting God's existence on the sides of buses, the tube and on screens in central London.
Its slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on buses in central London. A total of 200 bendy buses in London and 600 buses across England, Scotland and Wales will carry the slogan from today and tomorrow following a fundraising drive which raised more than £140,000. read more here and burn in hell
Monday, January 5, 2009
More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying
From the Washington Post
Lisa Rein and Josh White
Sunday, January 4, 2009;
The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes. read more here
Friday, January 2, 2009
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