BikinginLA

Good news and bad news.

The good news is yesterday’s taping of Spectrum News 1’s Inside the Issues went well.

And the finished product offered an effective overview of the good, bad and very ugly of riding a bicycle in the City of Angels.

The bad news, Spectrum doesn’t post their programs online.

Which means there’s nothing we can link to. And anyone who didn’t tune in last night, or who doesn’t subscribe to Spectrum Cable, is out of luck.

That also means that most of the people in Los Angeles who need to see it most will never get the chance.

Hopefully, they’ll put a few segments online, which I’ll try to share with you when they become available.

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One of these days, I hope to actually make it down to South LA for the annual Ride 4 Love, which rolls tomorrow.

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Local

LA-based Swrve makes Bike Radar’s list of the best cycling clothes for rain.

The LACBC is hosting a training ride up Franklin Canyon tomorrow.

Over 500 bicyclists are expected to ride up to 100 miles through the San Gabriel Valley starting and ending at the Rose Bowl in next month’s Bike MS: Los Angeles 2019 ride.

Congratulations to Palmdale, which officially has the longest commutes in the US.

State

San Diego’s Bicycle Advisory Board is riding off into the sunset as the city replaces it with a new Mobility Advisory Board.

The new bridge to UC San Diego over I-5 opens today, bringing a more direct walking and biking route for students and faculty.

A Ramona firefighter returned home after raising $12,000 for charity by riding 2,500 across the US from San Diego to Florida.

Greater equity is coming to Modesto, as the city plans to invest over $6 million in new sidewalks and bike lanes in one of its poorest neighborhoods.

One more reason why drivers shouldn’t be allowed to steal a lane from bicyclists on the double-decker Richmond-San Rafael Bridge — bikes are lighter than cars, as large chunks of concrete fell from the top span onto unsuspecting drivers below.

National

You can kiss the last few Performance Bicycle stores — and the people who work in them — goodbye, as the company plans to close all remaining brick-and-mortar stores within the next month; however, they will continue to do business online. Meanwhile, an industry website considers how bike shops can buck the trend of retail store closures.

That’s more like it. A Bellingham WA housing development will open with 164 units, but just 100 parking spaces, along with spaces for 392 bicycles.

An Arizona driver kindly helped a young girl to the curb after hitting her bicycle, told her the same thing had happened to her as a girl — then drove off, leaving her victim stranded on the curb with a dead cellphone.

A Texas woman has ridden at least 100 miles in every state in the US, finishing last year with a ride through South Dakota.

A gang of bike thieves is breaking into small Chicago bike shops and stealing at least $70,000 worth of high-end bicycles.

A Chicago minibike rider will face well-deserved charges for groping a woman riding a bicycle, then punching out her husband when he chased her assailant down.

Instead of responding to an increase in bicycling and pedestrian death by going after the people in the big, dangerous machines, New York police are cracking down on the people on two wheels, in some cases ticketing bike riders from violations that don’t actually exist.

Meanwhile, an NYPD officer physically assaulted a bike rider, pushing him off his bicycle to issue a simple traffic ticket, just a block from where another rider was killed in a hit-and-run earlier this week; New York advocates plan a massive rally in protest. That’s like grabbing a driver and throwing him out of his car into the street just because he didn’t use a turn signal.

International

A new conversion kit will allow you to turn your existing bicycle into an ebike for about $700.

A Montreal veterinarian makes house calls by cargo bike.

No shit. A Canadian woman says justice wasn’t served in the hit-and-run death of her bike-riding father, after his killer served just one month of an all-ready too lenient six month sentence.

After his father called the police on him, a British man asked if he could change his shirt before being arrested, then trapped the officers in his own living room before escaping on his bicycle.

A man from the UK rode 10,000 miles through 20 countries in memory of his brother, starting in his hometown and ending in China.

The Wall Street Journal offers a video look at Tel Aviv’s unlikely embrace of e-scooters. Thanks to Jeff Vaughn for the heads-up.

A new Australian study claims the country’s mandatory helmet laws have cut bicycling fatalities nearly in half, suggesting 1,332 lives have been saved since the laws were introduced in the 1990s, and finding no evidence that bicycling rates have been reduced as a result of them.

Competitive Cycling

Ex-Tour de France champ and current cannabis purveyor Floyd Landis returns to his Mennonite roots, opening a bike, coffee and CBD shop in Lancaster PA not far from his childhood home.

The good news, former Columbian pro Juan Pablo Valencia Gonzales wasn’t accused of doping. The bad, he was arrested by Italian authorities on drug trafficking charges after he was found in possession of over 60 grams of cocaine he had allegedly transported in the seat tube of his bike.

Finally…

Edinburgh’s bikeshare system is going downhill — literally.

And when you get impatient waiting behind a group of bike riders at traffic light, try not to pull out into a garbage truck.