Your Peak. Trailer on Vimeo. [via velosport]
Urban cyclist's survival guide
Some great tips on tricksome: Rules to cycle and live by.
The Road to PBP
Forgot to mention this when Paris-Brest-Paris was on, but a highly recommended read is Raymond Parker's series of posts on his road to PBP—I couldn't get enough of this story.
Woodcrafty
Masterworks' functioning wooden bike takes craftsmanship to next level [Thanks tom]
Questionable taste
What do you think of the Playmobil ambulance with hit-and-run victim toy set? via BikingInLA
I thought it might have been a clever fake, but no: it's real.
Bark!
Says tom, "I hope I have a video camera ready when I see the first person try this" technique for dealing with aggressive dogs.
Share the lurve
Spinlister is a bike rental marketplace that allows you to find a great bike to rent or list your bike to earn cash (or hopefully both!). We think biking is the best way to get around and explore…Spinlister takes all the best bikes available for rent, whether from bike shops or individuals, and puts them all in one place.
"Melbourne's troubled bike-share scheme"
"Melbourne's troubled bike-share scheme has been pushed into the suburbs in a bid to boost its poor numbers" according to Melbourne's little paper and by "suburbs" they mean "Port Melbourne, Richmond and South Melbourne". Dude, to most people in Melbourne that's still inner city.
At any rate, that sounds more like some bike stations are being redeployed to logical places where they should have been in the first place, not a concerted push into the suburbs.
Bike Shaped Objects: ugly, bad…good?
Are BSOs bad for business? makes a similar point to that which I made about cheap bikes at Aldi.
Cycling vs ADHD
Article in Bicycling Magazine, Riding is My Ritalin asks, "Did we put a generation of potential Tour de France riders on Ritalin instead of giving them bikes?"
Video bonanza
- If you ever wondered why randonneurs do it, take a look at this Seattle Randonneurs Trailer. [twitterer]
- Another cool bike ad by Hutchinson (even if I don't quite believe what they're offering).
- A terrific video via VeloTroll about a cross-country stage race—is it cyclocross, MTB orienteering, or rough-road randonneuring?
- I'm sexy and I know it.
- 3 year bike tour in 3 minutes!
- Gorgeous aerial video on Vimeo.
- The world has changed. You can too. [via PUT THE FUN BETWEEN YOUR LEGS]
- BOND bicycle with ejector seat and flamethrower [Thanks tom]
- A professional display of 50 No Handed Bike Moves performed to "Golden Tree" by Martin Brooks.
Herne Hill velodrome
guardian.co.uk: "London's last remaining venue from the 1948 Olympics is to be restored to its former glory following an energetic renovation campaign from local residents and cycling fans".
We are traffic—just not this sort of traffic
WSJ.com on why traffic jams are bad for your health:
As roadways choke on traffic, researchers suspect that the tailpipe exhaust from cars and trucks—especially tiny carbon particles already implicated in heart disease, cancer and respiratory ailments—may also injure brain cells and synapses key to learning and memory.
Oh, goody!
Laidback
And remember, if you diss recumbents apparently this is what you get.
Cyclist = bum?
Okay, so I've basically been told - albeit in the friendliest way - that I was either a bum or a woman of leisure if I had the time to travel by bike.
Too true
How to true a bicycle wheel on a home-made stand. A very practical video.
Bloggage
Going soft?
Are you going soft? A'ME Heated Grips will be right up your alley. twitterer
HTFU!
Jahvahaah: not enough cool to go around.
The best route to road safety: don't drive
Professor Hank Weiss, director of the Injury Prevention Research Unit at New Zealand's University of Otago, aregues that the best route to youth road safety is not driving:
They call for deep change in road safety instead of the old paradigm of focusing in on trying to make people safe while they drive more. We should think about the more holistic approach, and think about the safety that stems from driving less, and about the multiple benefits across society from driving less…
I'm talking about active transport as a safety measure…The more you drive, the more you're at risk…There's a multiple flow-on effect from reduction in vehicle miles traveled in terms of safety.
Logical really: reduce your exposure, reduce your risk.
Put down that damn phone
Meanwhile road.cc on How to make the roads safer? Turn off those mobiles:
As cyclists we all know that mobile-phone-using drivers are a dangerous nuisance, and here's the proof. UAE newspaper The National reports that during the recent outage in the Blackberry network, which affected email, internet and messaging services for users of the popular smartphone, accidents fell by 20% in Dubai and 40% in Abu Dhabi.
Evolution of speed
New Scientist: Cars have evolved to go faster – but humans haven't
Car buffs more likely to be aggressive drivers. In other news, grass green, sky blue [twitterer]
Speed cameras work
Yes, speed cameras work, now shut the hell up.
Active transport FTW!
NPR.org on the secret to a long, healthy life: bike to the store:
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin were wondering if getting people out of their cars just a wee bit would create measurable improvements in health…They found that if the Midwesterners ran half of their short-distance errands by bike rather than by car, 1,100 deaths would be avoided each year, and $7 billion would be saved in reduced health-care costs. The trips were 2.5 miles one way; less than a 25-minute bike ride, the researchers figure.
Meanwhile, research out of Lund University finds that car and public transport commuters report poorer health than bicycle and pedestrian commuters.
Ridiculous!
Kim Harding: say no to ridiculous car trips, while Karl McCracken and Carlton Reid trade ideas on how to increase the proportion of short trips made by bike.
Utility cycling discouraged
The Courier Mail reports on a video campaign to axe mandatory cyclist helmet law. [twitterer]
So, what is wrong with bicycle helmets? [Thanks tom]
Car-free livin'
msnbc.com lists the best cities to live car-free in America:
The majority of cities that are easy to maneuver on foot or by public access also have relatively large bicycle communities. For example, more people bike to work in a city like Portland, Ore., than in a city like San Antonio, Texas, which is not very pedestrian or bicyclist friendly. These cities tend to have an exceptional number of programs and bylaws for bicyclists. Seven of the cities on the 24/7 Wall St.'s list are also featured on Bicycling magazine's list of the top 50 bike-friendly cities.
Urban design fail
The Washington Post asks Can we stop gas prices from squeezing the middle class? [twitterer]
Speaking of design failure, BikePortland.org on ODOT ready to install 29 new bikeway signs near I-5 bridge. [via Paul Johnson]
29 wayfinding signs required for one bridge?!? Sounds like a fundamental design fail to me.
Zombie bike apocalypse
Is America ready for the Zombie-bike-pocalypse? [twitterer]
The zombies are coming, I tell you!
More crap
The Melbourne Urbanist on more bikes are for creeps and losers crap. See also the discussion kicked-off by Richard Masoner.
Passing
Remember Ian Walker's reseach on passing distances? Well the most 'dubious' of his findings, based on how feminine Dr Walker looks in a long wig, has been replicated in a report by Florida Department of Transportation [PDF]. Yes, female riders do generally get more passing space. [twitterer]
Keep calm
The Urban Country Bicycle Blog argues the topic traffic calming a waste of money? [twitterer]
Punter
Hobsons Bay Leader on getting a free punt on the Yarra. Yep, the Westgate punt is back.
It doesn't happen overnight…
How the Dutch got their cycle paths [twitterer]
But "how did we lose our pedestrian-, bike- and transit-friendly cities so easily?" The answer, as always, is "politics".
Bikes outsell cars: the illusion
Preventive Medicine: "Where have all the bicycles gone?" Are bicycle sales in Australia translated into health-enhancing levels of bicycle usage? [twitterer]
Unusually good
Here's something unusual in the mainstream media: a generally positive cycling story with generally positive comments:
But it's now clear the benefits of regular riding with mates go way beyond just keeping physically fit, allowing participants also to tap into the sort of social support network psychologists say is essential to good mental health. In fact, while cycling has long been labelled "the new golf", increasingly it is also winning a reputation as "the new men's shed".
The Japanese way
Toyota proposes 250,000km of bicycle lanes across Japan over 5 years [twitterer]
The Russian way
Moscow builds it's first cycle path—and it looks like they used Crap Cycle Lanes of Warrington as a reference guide.