Don’t forget to tell us what it’s like to ride your bike, wherever you ride, for our new Describe Your Ride feature — good, bad, or anything in between.
It can be anything from a few sentences to a detailed description, a rant, a rave, a bike cam view or your latest bike-related music video, here in LA or anywhere else. Just send it to the email address on the About BikinginLA page.
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‘Tis the season.
A Yucaipa teen with Cerebral Palsy will receive a special adaptive bike to give him more independence.
Over two dozen bike riders take part in a combination scavenger hunt and alley cat race to gather contributions to a Santa Barbara food bank.
A group of Sacramento businesses and charities give 4,000 bikes, along with 4,000 toys and helmets to needy children.
An Ohio bike shop owner is still collecting donations to give bikes to kids despite being burglarized twice this year; last year he gave away nearly 900 bicycles.
UK community members pitch in to buy a specialized bike for a four-year old girl who can’t walk or speak, raising the equivalent of over $15,000.
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Every time you give to BikinginLA, an angel gets its wings.
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Local
An Aljazeera OpEd says driverless cars won’t save Los Angeles, and they’re no substitute for bikeable, walkable streets.
Richard Risemberg says Santa Monica is batting a thousand when it comes to bikes and mobility.
Any Redondo Beach bike rental shop that has a Corgi — not Corgy, thank you — can’t be all bad.
State
Civic leaders are working to improve safety for bike riders in Orange County, where an average of four riders were injured or killed every day in 2012.
San Diego service members remember an Army vet who was killed in Texas last month, while on a cross country ride to call attention to the plight of homeless veterans.
Coronado holds Safe Routes to School workshops to make biking and walking safer. Maybe it wouldn’t be the state’s deadliest city of its size for cyclists if the residents weren’t so hysterical about banning bike lanes.
San Franciscans are in a heated debate over the proposed Idaho stop law, with the city council still two votes short of a veto-proof majority.
National
The first legally blind musher to compete in the Iditarod gives up her dream of competing as a tandem cyclist in next years Paralympics to become a mom.
In a truly bizarre tragedy, a Minnesota bike rider is killed in a collision with a train, at the same station where he had survived a similar collision just four months earlier.
Columbus, Ohio drivers and cyclists are confused by the city’s first protected bike lane. Actually, the description does actually sound pretty confusing.
Former Victoria’s Secret and current L’Oreal Paris model Karlie Kloss is one of us, as she rides a Citi Bike through the streets of New York.
A Baltimore to DC train finally gets bike cars, but only on weekends.
International
Advice for riding at night this winter.
Business are being asked to support the expansion of a London cycle track in the face of heavy opposition from taxi drivers.
Malta is accused of having an institutional bias against bicyclists.
Controversial Russian cycling team owner Oleg Tinkoff vows to leave the sport after next year’s racing season; a Canadian site says the man who compared Obama to a monkey won’t be missed at all.
Bangladeshi women are turning to bicycles and motorbikes to escape harassment on public transit.
Dubai continues to get safer for cyclists, adding the equivalent of 35 miles of residential-area cycle tracks to the city’s existing 110 miles of bike lanes.
A 14-year old Australian girl is planning to ride over 600 miles on a tandem to raise funds for a charity camp.
A New Zealand cyclist sets a new record for riding around the world in just 125 days, although he’s disappointed it only raised the equivalent of just over $2500 for charity.
Kiwi mountain bikers vow to ignore attempts to close illegal bike trails.
Five hundred Filipinos ride for cleaner air and call more action to help sustain the environment.
Caught on video: Twenty passers-by save the life of a Beijing bicyclist by teaming up to lift a car off her. Warning: Even knowing the positive outcome, the first part of this video is very hard to watch.
Finally…
Why bother checking the statutes when you can just ask Twitter whether sidewalk cyclists should be fined. An e-car driver wants permission to politely honk to tell bike riders to get the hell out of his way.
And chances are, you’ll never win the Nobel Peace Prize, but your bike might.
Maybe we can all spit the $1.5 million award.
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Thanks to Wesley Reutimann for contributing to the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive on behalf of BikeSGV.
