It’s Day 6 of the 6th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!
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‘Tis the season.
Gear Junkie recommends 16 biking gifts for the bike rider in your life. Even if that’s you.
Nice story from Southern Colorado, where a kindhearted woman reached out to replace a boy’s bicycle after learning he was the victim of bike theft for the second time, then she and her kids ended up “adopting” the boy’s family for Christmas.
Florida’s famed Jack the Bike Man is struggling to buy a building to get out from under their $175,000 annual rent, and continue their mission of refurbishing bikes for kids who wouldn’t otherwise have one for the holidays.
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Former basketball great Bill Walton regaled fans with his tale of biking in the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena, seemingly forgetting the game he was there to cover.
Bill Walton oh my god pic.twitter.com/URyslwbChe
— JY (@yahdley) December 1, 2020
Although someone should tell them that Mountain High is a ski resort off the Angeles Crest Highway, not a reference to riding in the mountains while high.
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America’s last remaining Tour de France winner is expected to become just the 10th individual athlete to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.
Greg LeMond will receive the honor, one of the country’s highest civilian awards, this weekend unless Trump vetoes the resolution.
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Local
Curbed’s Alissa Walker asks the burning question of whether new LA councilmember and urban planner Nithya Raman can fix Los Angeles and save the city from itself.
Glendora has installed a temporary protected bike lane on Glendora Avenue as part of an effort to improve first mile/last mile connections with the coming L Line station, née Gold Line.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is one of us, making the news for falling off his bike in Manhattan Beach after catching a wheel while riding with fellow entertainment moguls Brian Grazer and Bryan Lourd. Who wants to bet at least one of those three bike-riding Hollywood hotshots reads this site every morning? Yeah, probably not.
State
A Georgia man will stand trial for the hit-and-run death of bike rider Dan Sweeney in San Diego last August; Mauricio Armando Flores got out to look at Sweeney bleeding on the pavement, then moved his bike and fled the county.
National
Cycling News asks whether women can ride men’s bikes, and if we even need gender-specific bikes anymore. Which sounds a lot like a return to the bad old days of “pink it and shrink it.”
Authorities in Boulder, Colorado have dropped charges against a man originally accused of killing another man in a fight over a stolen bicycle in a convenience store parking lot, after additional evidence revealed the victim’s meth use and a heart condition contributed to his death.
Houston is using $1.3 million in federal funds left over from building a commuter train line to build protected bike lanes, and encourage Texans to leave their cars at home and take a multimodal trip to work.
The mobility coordinator for Fayetteville AR makes the case for why you should stay off the sidewalk and ride in a bike lane, for your own safety.
Life is cheap in Illinois, where a semi-truck driver walked with just a $500 fine for illegal passing after killing a bike rider. Evidently, passing within 100 feet of an intersection is illegal, but slamming into someone riding a bicycle is just fine.
The bike boom is alive and well in New York, as ridership on bridges leading into the city jumped an average of 21% this year compared to last year, with a whopping 30% increase in October.
A New York columnist calls for returning the city’s streets to the people.
Here’s another one for your bike bucket list, as a group of newly retired friends take a 334-mile journey along the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal trails over the Eastern Continental Divide through Virginia and Pennsylvania.
When a North Carolina mom struck out trying to teach her son to ride a bike, she walked across the street to the local police station, and asked them to teach him. So a kindhearted cop set his paperwork aside and did.
A Georgia newspaper remembers a local man who completed an inadvertent ride around the world on his single speed bike in the 1930s.
Tragic news from Florida, where retired ABC News correspondent Tim O’Brien was killed in a collision while riding his bike; the 77-year old Emmy-winning attorney served as the network’s Supreme Court expert for 22 years. O’Brien was collateral damage in a collision between two drivers as he was riding on a sidewalk.
International
Toronto is taking a step back on Vision Zero by ripping out a protected bike lane just four months after it was installed. Although I have a hard time calling a painted bike lane set off from motor vehicles by a few bendy plastic posts “protected” in any way.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A Toronto bike rider was killed when he was right hooked by the driver of a cement truck, 15 years after he walked away from a successful real estate career to become a teacher.
Tragic news from the UK, where a pair of cousins killed a man by tracking him down and repeatedly stabbing him in the mistaken belief he had stolen their bicycle.
The European Union has slapped a stiff 25% tariff on US framemakers, collateral damage in the ongoing feud over commercial aircraft subsidies.
Bicycling Australia offers a refresher course in why bicyclists ride two abreast, while making the case that it’s better for motorists, too.
Competitive Cycling
The New York Times picks up the story of multiple US cycling champ Justin Williams in his battle to diversify the sport through his L39ION of Los Angeles cycling team.
Win the Cannondale SystemSix bike Rigoberto Uran rode into Paris on the final stage of this year’s Tour de France.
Sad news from Italy, where former pro cyclist Celestino Vercelli, founder of Vittoria Cycling Shoes, passed away at age 74; the company notes his death was not related to Covid-19.
A Colombian cyclist learns the hard way to wait until you cross the finish line before celebrating your win.
https://twitter.com/wcsbike/status/1333475679866925057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1333475679866925057%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Froad.cc%2Fcontent%2Fnews%2Fcycling-live-blog-1-december-2020-279135
Finally…
How not to build a bike lane. If you ever get tired of your mountain bike, just turn it into a DIY snowmobile.
And speaking of the protection value of flex posts…
https://twitter.com/AmericanFietser/status/1333948483557003265
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And wear a mask, already.
