Congratulations to Sky and the crew at Velo Cult for making Bicycling magazine's list of 100 best bike shops. I know these lists can be pretty lame, but in this case it's well deserved. The list is in the October issue along with a very nice article about cargo bikes.

BBC travel article on Copenhagen. Mentions bicyles only topically, and provides a linker to Copenhagenize.com, but the article focuses on other aspects.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20110906-living-in-copenhagen

neat lil article about bike storage...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/realestate/the-bicycle-muscles-in.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=fb-share

DIY infrastructure :face-devil-grin:
http://www.grist.org/biking/2011-09-08-the-case-of-the-disappearing-bike-lane

Sam:Joseph Ricardo Fernandez, 46, was convicted in July of hit-and-run causing death and faces up to four years behind bars for the April 10 death of 47-year-old James Swarzman of Encino.

Idiot comments. I await the sure-to-be-dissapointing reduced sentence.

Did the f-ing judge really say something about lane positioning?

^^^ I concur with your rant, dstone. Wholeheartedly.

Car Driver Takes Ride Through Store, Injures 3

Published September 15, 2011

MISSION VIEJO, Calif. – Veteran bicyclist John Bain, 34, says he's had scrapes and narrow escapes while riding in traffic, but nothing matched nearly being run down by a speeding Cadillac that plowed through a bike store.

"This is the craziest thing that's ever happened," Bain said Thursday from the Rock N' Road Cyclery, where he is manager.

Three people suffered minor injuries when an 86-year-old driver barreled completely through the store at about 5 p.m. Tuesday.

The woman, who was not cited or immediately identified, told authorities she was parking in a handicapped space in front of the store when she accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

Bain said three customers and five employees were in the store when the 2001 Cadillac Deville and smashed through the glass front door. He estimated the car was doing 30 to 40 mph.

"It was weird, it was like blur," he said. "It was so loud. ... The squeal of her tires. She actually burned out when she took off. It was like someone catapulted her."

Bain said he was about five feet away but other staff barely escaped with their lives.

"My head sales guy and assistant manager almost walked right into her as she came within the store," he said. "If they even backed away from the counter like even three inches, they would have been dead."

Store surveillance video posted on YouTube shows a man and a woman on crutches frantically jumping back against a counter a second or two before the car zooms past them, scattering merchandise and narrowly missing them.

The car continued some 100 feet or more through the store, plowing through a concrete wall into a newly built studio and slammed into the back wall with the back wheels still spinning.

When store employees reached the woman, she still was pushing the gas pedal to the floor. The car was leaking some kind of fluid and the spinning tires had melted a hole in the floor, filling the store with smoke.

"I literally thought someone blew the store up," Bain said.

The woman at first did not want to leave the car because she could not find her purse but eventually she was persuaded, Bain said.

Her adult granddaughter also was in the car.

They both seemed stunned after the crash, Bain said.

They were "completely stone-faced, didn't say a word," he said. "No crying, no tears, no apology."

"The car was so wedged into the back of the store they had to get a winch and pull it out," Bain added.

Two male customers and a woman customer had minor injuries.

One person suffered a swollen left ankle, another had a bruised left calf muscle and a third reinjured a knee, Amormino said.

Bain said the woman on the crutches was wearing a leg brace because she had undergone surgery on a knee ligament two days earlier.

"The car grazed her," he said. "She's OK. She actually came in the store the next day to watch the video."

The store had reopened this week after a $300,000 remodeling, Bain said.

The car destroyed about $30,000 worth of merchandise and caused about $20,000 to $30,000 damage to the store, he estimated.

"We opened the next day," he added.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/09/15/car-driver-takes-ride-through-store-injures-3/#ixzz1Y3uIRm1w

Yikes. that was a close call.

mileco:... you do not deserve to drive a one-ton weapon.

3978lbs for the base model (crap, almost TWO)
Besides the point, it's just insane to test vehicle emissions regularly, yet not the operators. If she drove through the DMV or police station, would they say "whoops"?

I heard this story this afternoon (September 22, 2011) on KPBS. You might be able to hear it again just about 10 minutes after 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM.

Why the Republicans don't understand the long term benefits to traffic, health and pollution reduction and especially the cost effectiveness of all these reasons and their reduction of future spending is a real puzzler. I am a fiscal hawk and believe there are real long term savings to be had by embracing the burgeoning bicycle consciousness.



Bike Infrastructure Hits Congressional Speed Bumps
by Brian Naylor




Ride well and be safe out there,

OKB
:face-plain:

markphilips:@OKB:
After bike riding to get in LA today the quote below struck a chord in me. All three lanes along Wilshire from Korea town to Santa Monica was very congested. Smoke and vehicular fumes were thick, traffic noise over powered everything else, there were no bike lanes and I didn't even try riding on Wilshire. It wasn't a very welcoming place for cyclists. Thankfully, sidewalks were 10-15 ft wide that I could ride on it (at 8-10 mph) and the adjacent side streets were much nicer to ride on. I know it's illegal according to the law to ride on the sidewalk but that is the only safe place to ride.

AlanKHG and I rode from USC area to West Hollywood on a Sunday morning along Wilshire. It was fairly inhospitable even then. The only street I found even more uninviting was Highland- it is actually a much smaller street, but riddled with folks headed to Hollywood with attitudes inversely proportional to the size of their small speedy cars.

I have never trusted cabrón fibre forks and not one of my 30+ bikes is equipped with one. I have read of riders seriously injured when they fail at speed.

http://blog.brooksengland.com/wps/brooks-is-closed/

dstone:

markphilips:@OKB:
After bike riding to get in LA today the quote below struck a chord in me. All three lanes along Wilshire from Korea town to Santa Monica was very congested. Smoke and vehicular fumes were thick, traffic noise over powered everything else, there were no bike lanes and I didn't even try riding on Wilshire. It wasn't a very welcoming place for cyclists. Thankfully, sidewalks were 10-15 ft wide that I could ride on it (at 8-10 mph) and the adjacent side streets were much nicer to ride on. I know it's illegal according to the law to ride on the sidewalk but that is the only safe place to ride.

AlanKHG and I rode from USC area to West Hollywood on a Sunday morning along Wilshire. It was fairly inhospitable even then. The only street I found even more uninviting was Highland- it is actually a much smaller street, but riddled with folks headed to Hollywood with attitudes inversely proportional to the size of their small speedy cars.

20 years ago I sometimes had occasion to ride from the UCLA area to the West Hollywood area. I always rode the sidewalks on Wilshire. You could ride side streets in Beverly Hills. But the ride basically sucked. Riding in the other direction, from Westwood towards Santa Monica, it is generally possible to avoid Wilshire. But Wilshire is more direct, and at least back then, pretty much all cyclists rode the sidewalk on Wilshire. However, I often had occasion to make that trip after midnight, when traffic was sparse, and I would sometimes tear down the middle of Wilshire just because I could.

20 km in 52'13" = 14.3mph average => pretty impressive for somebody even half his age!

Bill - I concur, many active cyclists can exceed 14.3mpg for an hour: When I nonchalantly threw out the measure "half his age" it was to give the guy some extra well deserved credit and 2) I was thinking more of the "average mid-life human" than the average 46 year old active cyclist.

At any rate - does anybody how the 20K route works on Fiesta Island? Is it three of the "long" laps? And is Start and Finish in the exact same spot, or are they (more likely) offset to reach a total distance of exactly 20 kilometers? Would be fun to know for my own riding. And I assuming for the TT that riders are allowed to use full aero gear (helmet, wheels, handlebars, clothing, etc.)?

Nevermind - I found a lot of the info here.

My best time at Fiesta Island was in 1999. 31:05, 24.12mph average.

I was commuting from Cardiff to UTC back then. Inside of Torry Pines 4x a week does the job.

I think Gordy is a national treasure and a nice guy to boot.

WP - where does the 20K Fiesta Island TT course start and finish? I know they do three "long" laps and that the third is not completely full, but wondering where the start and finish lines are located on the island. Thanks.

bikingbill:...and the finish is past the start by a bit. So you do a bit more than 3 laps.

It appears from this (point 3) that the 20K is presently just shy of three full laps.

New bike racks adorn downtown Escondido

Nice looking rack!

OKB
:face-devil-grin:

I guess it could happen to anyone! (Notice the Sharrow.)

Bike Cop Doored.


OKB
:face-plain:

Check out the comments on the same Escondido accident on 10 news

Doored in North Park

http://www.10news.com/news/29337023/detail.html

Modern day streets are just that "dangerous by design."