BikinginLA

Sunday afternoon was spent watching other people ride their bikes.

Or more precisely, working in the LACBC’s booth at the River Ride, sending a number of riders home with souvenir jerseys, and helping enroll more than a few new members into the area’s largest and most effective bicycling organization.

As much as I would have enjoyed rolling down the river myself, I had a great time meeting cyclists of all ages and every possible type. And watching an absolutely amazing group of volunteers work their collective tush off to help make the ride a huge success.

From my little corner of the booth, I only saw a small part of the work involved. And only met a tiny fraction of the people who gave up their day — and in some cases, months of their life — to pull this event off.

So I won’t even try to list all those who did the hard work that let everyone else enjoy the day.

But as a board member, and a member of cycling community, I would like to personally thank JJ Hoffman and Erica Yoshimoto for doing the impossible by making this all happen. Along with everyone else who had a part, large or small, in pulling it off.

Without them, this ride would not have happened — let alone been the success that it was.

And I’m sure there are several thousand cyclists who’d agree today.

Update: One of those riders I met yesterday, Kim West, sent a link to a great photo set from yesterday’s ride — definitely worth checking out for a reminder of what you experienced.

Or what you missed.

………

Could a biotech firm fight cancer by building a bike path in Santa Monica? The annual AIDS/LifeCycle takes off from the Bay Area Sunday, on it’s way to an L.A. arrival next Saturday. A first person account from victim #3 in last week’s hit-and-run attacks in San Francisco. The Bahati Foundation racing team reorganizes under new management following the death of Jorge Alvarado and the Floyd Landis disaster. Just because you can legally pass on the right doesn’t mean the police won’t find you at fault if you do. After the court repeatedly let a bus driver off the hook, a cyclist ends up like “a bug on a steamroller’s wheel.” Bicycling in Memphis shouldn’t be so dangerous. Over 13% of commuters in my old hometown get to work by bike; that’s probably about 12% more than in my new hometown. Some days it’s a bike, others it thinks it’s a truck. Instead of worrying about cars, maybe we need to be worried about the air we breathe. Ride cross country to raise money and build houses along the way. Maybe it’s time for Britain’s government ministers to get out of their Jags and onto a Brompton. Roll the streets of London on a bicycling architecture tour. Organs from a 15-year old cyclist save 6 lives after he’s struck and killed by a double-decker bus. The mini Tour de France runs through the French countryside this week. Naked Greeks on bikes roam the streets of Thessaloniki. Rome plans to transform into a cyclists utopia in just 10 years; imagine what L.A. could do with that kind of commitment.

Finally, L.A. considers taking another small step forward by requiring developers to count all forms of traffic, rather than just cars.