Something tells me there’s more to this story.
A San Diego bicyclist riding with a group was busted after being chased down by a police helicopter for allegedly beating a driver in La Jolla.
Members of the group reportedly beat the man unconscious, before leaving after bystanders intervened.
The helicopter pilot tracked the group to Mission Bay, where a man police identified as the main aggressor was taken into custody on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and assault likely to result in great bodily injury.
However, what’s missing from the story, as usual, is any indication of what the driver may have done to set the riders off like that, if anything.
Because it’s highly unlikely they picked some random person in a car to attack just for the hell of it.
But whatever the reason, let’s all try to remember that violence is never the answer, tempting as it may be in the moment.
Lord knows, there have been more than a few drivers I’ve wanted to punch. But thankfully, didn’t.
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What the hell is wrong with these people?
More information today about the Michigan man who shot his six-year old neighbor, apparently for the crime of leaving a bicycle on the man’s yard.
When the boy and some young relatives came over to retrieve it, Ryan Le-Nguyen came out of his house and confronted the kid, unsuccessfully swinging a sledgehammer at the boy, who was able to avoid the blows.
Le-Nguyen then went back inside, and fired a shot through the window, hitting the boy in the arm.
Despite being charged with assault with intent to murder, Le-Nguyen is already out on a ridiculously low $10,000 bond. And presumably back home, next to a kid he tried to kill.
Let’s hope no one else leaves a bike on his lawn.
Just two days later, an 18-year old Delaware man was busted for shooting an 11-year old girl in the abdomen with a BB gun, following a dispute over her riding his bicycle.
Seriously, kids in this country face enough problems just trying to ride a bike without some asshole shooting them over it.
And yes, I use that term advisedly.
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Our new president certainly knows how to make a friend.
Meeting with Britain’s Boris Johnson for the first time as president, Joe Biden gave the bike-riding prime minister a new American-made bicycle, custom made for BoJo by family-owned Philadelphia bikemaker Bilenky Cycle Works.
Evidently, they’re so small they don’t even have a website.
Johnson responded with a framed photo of an Edinburgh mural of Frederick Douglass.
Point, Biden.
Update: Bilenky does have a website. Thanks to k_david for the correction.
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For once, there’s a list of bike cities Los Angeles can be glad it didn’t make, as 24/7 Tempo follows up on their clickbait list of America’s best bike cities with a similar clickbait countdown of the 25 worst.
No real surprise that Bakersfield and San Bernardino make the list at 25 and 24, respectively.
Bizarrely, though, so does newly bike friendly San Diego at number 18, which has made huge strides in accommodating bikes and other forms of alternative transportation in recent years, while neighboring Chula Vista joins them at 12.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina came out at the bottom, as their pick for the nation’s worst bike city.
Although LA’s Sunset Boulevard did make the list of the world’s coolest streets, in the non-temperature sense.
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More proof that free lifetime bicycle registration from Bike Index works.
Seriously, what are you waiting for?
BIKE RECOVERY: "A guy found it for sale on OfferUp and saw it listed on Bike Index as stolen. Huge thank you!" @FeltBicycles @bikinginla pic.twitter.com/K2duWDQGbE
— Bike Index (@BikeIndex) June 11, 2021
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Local
A writer for City Watch insists the fix is in, as Metro plows over Eagle Rock with the planned NoHo to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit project, regardless of resident’s wishes. Or, hear me out here, maybe a lot of local residents actually support the plan, even as others continue to oppose it. Kind of like every other project ever built, planned or proposed.
For sale: An RV big enough to hold all your bikes, and double as your next home when you get priced out of LA’s housing market.
State
A Sacramento man tracks down the burglar who tried to break into his home. And gets his neighbor’s bike back in the process.
National
For a change, the Wall Street Journal’s notorious paywall lets you see four of the six rewarding rail trail routes they recommend throughout the US, including Lassen County’s Bizz Johnson National Recreation Trail in Northeastern California.
I want to be like her when I grow up. A 70-year old lifelong bike rider from Tennessee wants you to know that riding an ebike isn’t the end of your bicycling career. As usual, read it on Yahoo if Bicycling blocks you.
A Spokane, Washington paper says bicycles were the ultimate safe recreation choice during the pandemic. And they still are.
Las Vegas bike advocates continue to call for safer streets, a day after a killer truck driver was sentenced to up to 40 years behind bars for the meth fueled crash that killed five bicyclists.
Bike-riding Tulsa OK residents were invited to try out the city’s first popup protected intersection.
New York bicyclists will ride today to demand the city disband the NYPD’s bike-riding Strategic Response Group, the so-called Goon Squad that has used bikes to batter protestors at recent demonstrations.
Streetsblog says New York state legislators are continuing to stall on legislation to keep bike riders and pedestrians safe.
Five Black bike riders followed the route of the Underground Railroad from Alabama to DC to honor the spirit of their ancestors. Once again, read it on Yahoo if Bicycling blocks you.
International
Shimano put Pioneer power meter users on notice that they have just one week before Shimano pulls the plug on the website supporting the Pioneer products, ruthlessly driving a stake through the still-beating heart of the product line they acquired last year.
Life is cheap in Alberta, Canada, where a woman walked with a lousy $1,000 fine for the hit-and-run death of a man riding a bicycle.
British king-in-waiting Prince Charles took a rare public bike ride to launch the 250-mile Palaces On Wheels ride to benefit the British Asian Trust. Although the prince didn’t look too steady on a bike that appeared to be set much too low for him.
Indian buyers of GoZero ebikes will now enjoy a corporate roadside assistance program.
Competitive Cycling
A deep US cycling team will be heading for Tokyo with ambitions of gold in next month’s Olympics, which appear to be happening as scheduled, pandemic be damned.
Ten-time world champ Chloe Dygert will compete in three events, just nine months after she was seriously injured following an apparent speed wobble in the world time trial championships; SoCal’s world-beating Coryn Rivera also made the team.
The only women’s rider representative on the UCI Safety Commission thinks the sport has been allowed to cut corners far too long, and needs to do more to protect cyclists.
Finally…
Get a lawyer before calling your family if you get hit while riding a bike. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with drivers blocking bike lanes, now we have to share them with robots.
And your next bike may be able to ride itself and come when you call.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And wear a mask.
And get vaccinated, already.
About once a month I was ready to jump off my bike and strangle the life out of a driver. Usually it was because they endangered our safety or our lives with some maneuver, especially if it appeared to be intentional. Riding with a group it wasn’t unusual to have someone empty a water bottle into a driver’s open window in such a case.