personal

Persuade Google To Map Bike Routes

Persuade Google To Map Bike Routes:

We are asking Google Maps to incorporate a bike travel as an equal option  to automotive and bus transportation.
This would be very cool and useful, especially with the new tracing algorithms they have recently implemented.
Pass it around to all the cyclists you know.  Google responds quite well to these things.
http://www.petitiononline.com/bikether/petition.html

[Cool. Ya’ll go!]
Source: the Practical Pedal Blog

A year before the tragedy, Austin Miller wrote “Please Do Not Run Me Over”

A year before the tragedy, Austin Miller wrote “Please Do Not Run Me Over”: A year before a tragic fate befell Austin Miller, the 15 year-old Beaverton student wrote an opinion article on bike safety for his school newspaper titled, “Please Do Not Run Me Over.”

Writing under the pseudonym “Charlie Elsewhere”, the article (full text below) was published in The Savant, the school newspaper at the Art and Communication Magnet Academy in Beaverton, where Miller was a sophomore.

Reading through it, I had mixed emotions. As a father, I found it chilling and immensely sad. As a bike advocate, I found it frustrating. [It is to weep.]

City’s two-wheel transformation

City’s two-wheel transformation | UK news | The Guardian: Planners hope the changes will encourage a “critical mass” of cyclists to use the routes, creating a safe and accessible environment as well as cutting congestion and pollution across London. “We are aiming to make cycling part of public transport and if we can get even 5% of people out of their cars, off the tubes and buses and on to bikes it will mean 1.7m cycle trips in London every day,” said Mark Watts, transport adviser to the mayor. [London is so far ahead of New York right now. So far.]

Missing: Urban Policy in the Presidential Campaign

Missing: Urban Policy in the Presidential Campaign: It’s not a new problem. For more than a generation, presidential aspirants have mostly resisted acknowledging the importance of the cities’ well being. Blame the front-loading of the primary season with rural states, or electoral and legislative systems that give disproportionate weight to sparsely populated states. Whatever the reason, it is shortsighted. According to Bruce Katz, co-author of a Brookings Institution study promoting investment in metropolitan areas, the largest 100 cities and their surrounding communities are home to 65 percent of the nation’s population and account for about 75 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. [Here’s a chance for a candidate to really separate themselves.]
Source: StreetsBlog

The Great Mojo bar Taste Test!

So a while back I mentioned that I came across new flavors of Mojo bar, one of my favorite treats, and couldn’t believe that there was no information on the web, and no adverts that I had seen about the new flavors. C’mon! In this day and age?

So I’m now organizing The Great Mojo bar Taste Test. They’ve sent me a box of each flavor including the new ones, and I’m in the midst of distributing the stuff to my friends who blog and ride and eat energy bars, with a request that they in turn write about their likes and dislikes, comments, notes, what-have-you. Ya know, blog stuff.

If you think you should be included in the Great Mojo bar Taste Test feel free to write me daniel at circumtech dot com and we’ll discuss it.

More as I think of it!

How to: Custom Colored Cables and Hose

How to: Custom Colored Cables and Hose:

NSMB.com:

Here is a how to guide on changing normal black cables or hose on your bike to pretty much any color you could want. Not only is black boring, but the hard coating on the outside of the cables can rub through paint and even aluminum. I have seen a Hayes brake cable eat right through the stanchion on a Fox 40. Braided stainless brake lines look nice, but are expensive running over $50 a line and don’t match your derailleur cable. By using the same heat shrink tubing electricians use you can protect your frame and match your cables to any color scheme for your bike.

[Jenni, This one’s got you written all over it…]
Source: Blue Collar Mountain Biking

Bike Writers Collective — Cyclists’ Bill of Rights

Bike Writers Collective: NOW, THEREFORE, WE THE CYCLING COMMUNITY, do hereby claim the following rights:

  1. Cyclists have the right to travel safely and free of fear.
  2. Cyclists have the right to equal access to our public streets and to sufficient and significant road space.
  3. Cyclists have the right to the full support of educated law enforcement.
  4. Cyclists have the right to the full support of our judicial system and the right to expect that those who endanger, injure or kill cyclists be dealt with to the full extent of the law.
  5. Cyclists have the right to routine accommodations in all roadway projects and improvements.
  6. Cyclists have the right to urban and roadway planning, development and design that enable and support safe cycling.
  7. Cyclists have the right to traffic signals, signage and maintenance standards that enable and support safe cycling.
  8. Cyclists have the right to be actively engaged as a constituent group in the organization and administration of our communities.
  9. Cyclists have the right to full access for themselves and their bicycles on all mass transit with no limitations.
  10. Cyclists have the right to end-of-trip amenities that include safe and secure opportunities to park their bicycles.
  11. Cyclists have the right to be secure in their persons and property, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure, as guaranteed by the 4th Amendment.
  12. Cyclists have the right to peaceably assemble in the public space, as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment.

And further, we claim and assert these rights by taking to the streets and riding our bicycles, all in an expression of our inalienable right to ride! [Good stuff. Fight the good fight. Some of it is silly in that we already have these rights, but I believe what they are saying is that there seems to be the age old bias about “different” and how folks are treated. Just as with race, gender, color, etc. cyclists are seen as a group “separate” from normal folks, and therefore treated as “less than” by many. That really has to stop.]