Vale Sheldon Brown

This has made me rather sad: Sheldon Brown died on Sunday. I had no dealings directly with Sheldon (was never one of the hundreds who emailed him daily) but have enjoyed his writing and benefited from his knowledge—freely shared—on countless occasions. Others will eulogise him far better than I, but I think we’ll all miss this genuine character in the cycling/online world.

Sympathy to Sheldon’s family and friends.

Melbourne Summer Cycle

Under the circumstances, it seems appropriate to mention that the Melbourne Summer Cycle is coming up on 24 February—a fundraiser for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

[Update] If you want to be quite specific about your reason for riding, Chris has set up a team for the Melbourne Summer Cycle in Sheldon’s honour.

Bike ban?

How to comply with the bikes on trains ban: buy an extra bike, and a lock for the bike locker. Oh yeah, and by the way there aren’t any lockers spare…or are there? It ain’t over yet. [via Bin the Bike Ban]

More maps than you can poke a GPS at

55 Free Bike Route Mapping Tools

Put yourself on ICE

Recently mentioned on the Audax-Oz mailing list was the ICE concept. As outlined at ABC Online:

The idea is that you store the word ICE in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted “In Case of Emergency”. For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc could be used.

As part of a complete personal identification scheme it could be pretty handy. This is one of those things I’ve been told about before (several times) but I finally pulled my finger out and I’ve just added a couple of ICE numbers to my phone.

By the way, the story that “ICE” entries stored in mobile phones allow viruses to access those phones and drain them of their credits is a just rather stupid myth.

Brrr!

Another type of ice: more observations on cycling in the snow by Peter Chen. This time with video!

[Photo credit: Solitude 008 by Mike Mc on Flickr]