BikinginLA

If you ever wanted to see a famous LA chef naked, here’s your chance.

Border Grill chef Mary Sue Milliken is participating in this month’s 300-mile ChefsCycle for No Kid Hungry, with a goal of raising $20,000 to stop childhood hunger.

Make a tax-deductible donation of $10,000, and she’ll send you one of her annual Nude Year cards — without the usual aprons and cooking utensils covering up the more private areas.

Or donate $100,000, and she and fellow Hot Tamale Susan Feniger will come to your home and serve dinner for 10 people in the nude.

Which might be worth a crowdsourcing campaign to come up with the money.

………

Twitter user teamonies points out what looks suspiciously like a bicycle chop shop in East Hollywood in the area around St. Andrews Place and Fernwood Ave; however, he reports having little luck getting the LAPD’s interest.

If you’re missing a bike, it may be worth checking out.

………

More on Tuesday’s Kalamazoo MI crash that killed five bike riders and injured four others.

• The victims have been identified, ranging in age from 42 to 74.
• The heartbroken Kalamazoo community is grieving following the crash.
• A Michigan website remembers three of the victims of the crash.
• The victims were experienced cyclists who called themselves The Chain Gang.
• At last report, one of the survivors is in critical condition, with two others in serious condition.
• Area bicyclists are determined to keep riding in the wake of the wreck. The story features a photo of six mangled bikes that’s one of the most gut-wrenching things I’ve seen.
• Witnesses describe the chaotic scene during and after the collision.
• A man who lived across the street was the first to put up a cross as a memorial; one of the bikes landed in his driveway.
• Police still haven’t revealed whether the driver, who remains in custody, was under the influence.
• Hundreds of bike riders participated in a Ride of Silence last night in memory of the victims.
• A group set up following the recent shootings by an Uber driver is collecting funds to help the victims and their families.

………

Good news from Italy, as a South African cyclist’s life is no longer in jeopardy following a collision with a team car while competing in the Coppa della Pace race. How many lives have to be put in jeopardy before they finally ban motor vehicles from bike races?

More good news, as Belgium rider Stig Broeckx remains in an induced coma following a massive crash caused by a race moto at the Baloise Belgium Tour, but his injuries are no longer considered acutely life threatening.

The leader in the mixed-sex Trans Am 4400 transcontinental US bike race — not to be confused with the better known Race Across America (RAAM) — lost her lead when she took a wrong turn, but remains in second place. So who said women cyclists can’t compete with the men?

………

Local

CiclaValley is going all in on Sunday’s LA River Ride this week, listing key sites to see on your way to Long Beach. Online registration is over, but you can still register on the day of the event.

LA Magazine’s Neal Broverman notes Paris is banning cars made before 1997 to fight smog, and asks if LA should do the same.

A Boyle Heights website looks back on last month’s Eastside Mural Ride highlighting the artwork and history east of the LA River.

The Source previews Sunday’s 4.9 mile Viva SGV open streets event in El Monte and South El Monte.

As we noted yesterday, West Hollywood will host the official ribbon cutting today on the new Fairfax Avenue bike lanes, which connect with existing lanes in LA to create continuous bike lanes from Willoughby Ave to Hollywood Blvd.

Speaking of WeHo, a rider catches a frighteningly close pass from a Starline Tours bus on his bike cam, and just avoids getting sandwiched with a parked car.

 

State

Santa Ana’s Bicycle Tree co-op celebrates it’s 10th anniversary.

A Huntington Beach father just wants sidewalks in the neighborhood so his disabled son can safely go for a walk, while NIMBY neighbors worry about giving up a small fraction of their lawns.

A Ventura letter writer places tongue firmly in cheek to respond to a complaint about those damn freeloading bike riders. Thanks to Jim Lyle for the heads-up.

After a witness saw a San Luis Obispo bike thief using bolt cutters to steal a locked bike, the victim got his bike back. And the thief got a well-deserved black eye and a trip to jail.

A driver from the San Luis Obispo area faces up to 19 years in prison after pleading no contest in the drunken hit-and-run death of a bicyclist in 2014; not only did investigators find alcohol, meth and THC in her blood, but she was already wearing an ankle monitor from a previous DUI arrest. It’s not enough to suspend a driver’s license; convicted drunk or stoned motorist too often drive anyway. We have to somehow take their cars away until they’re no longer a danger to others.

When a Pittsburgh CA high school student couldn’t get a ride to an important scholarship interview in Walnut Creek, he rode his bike to the BART station, rode to the Walnut Creek station and biked the rest of way. And got the scholarship.

A Palo Alto Bagel shop will pay $1.9 million to settle a lawsuit after one of their employees ran down a then 12-year old boy while he was riding his bike to school four years ago; the driver, who was not charged, claimed the sun was in his eyes even though the bigger problem may have been the meth in his system.

 

National

A cyclist confronts the drunk driver who just missed killing him when he rode up onto an embankment.

So much for the Amazon Prime program making deliveries via Seattle bike couriers.

Still more bad news from Michigan:

• A driver faces up to 15 years in prison for fleeing the scene after running down a woman on a 146-mile charity ride last year.
• In a tragically anachronistic crash that could have come from the 1890s, a 79-year old tourist was killed when she fell off her bike and was run over by a horse-drawn carriage on Mackinac Island. Thanks to Bob Young for the link.
• And a bike shop is one of three businesses getting the blame for halting an annual classic car show, even though their objection was to monster trucks jeopardizing the safety of pedestrians and bike riders, rather than the show itself.

Shockingly, NYPD breaks with their long-standing tradition and actually arrests a truck driver for the fatal left-cross of a bike rider, instead of just writing it off as “no criminality involved.”

Nice gesture from New York’s Jewish Anti-Defamation League, which offered a $2,500 reward in the assault of a Muslim man who was attacked as he rode his bicycle outside an Islamic Studies Center.

The DC city council drops a provision from a bike safety bill that would have allowed bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields after the police and AAA objected.

In a case of weird life imitating low art, a Georgia man fled from police on an orange Dukes of Hazard bicycle after stealing a ball python and an albino frog; he was arrested behind a sub shop with the snake and a beer, but the frog is still missing. I have a sick feeling where they could find the frog.

 

International

An older Vancouver man was seriously injured when he was struck by a hit-and-run bike rider while walking on a pedestrian-only pathway. Seriously, don’t ride in restricted walking areas, always ride carefully around pedestrians, and damn it, stop if you hit someone, already.

LA cyclists dodge careless drivers, Brit cyclists dodge careless cows.

An English driver gets off with a suspended sentence for killing a cyclist after claiming the wind blew his van into the rider. Sure, let’s go with that.

An ultra-orthodox Israeli Jewish sect has banned bicycling for women and girls as young as five, deeming it too immodest and provocative. Anyone who thinks a five-year old on a bicycle is provocative shouldn’t be allowed around children.

Police in an Emirates city seize 109 bicycles for “flouting” traffic regulations and endangering road users — most for the heinous crime of not wearing reflective clothing. Which doesn’t endanger anyone other than the rider. If that.

 

Finally…

Actually, the biggest mistake indoor cyclists make is not riding outside on real bicycles. You may look ridiculous, but at least you’ll be dry, more or less.

And if you’re really worried about the Zika virus while competing in Rio, just freeze your sperm in advance.

Preferably once it’s been removed.

………

It’s a little late, but Ramadan Mubarak to all those observing the holy month.