Let’s start with a little bad news from one of LA’s best bike clubs.
Because if you’ve got a few extra bucks lying around, Watts’ East Side Riders could use your help.
The group does invaluable work, using bicycles as a starting point to uplift and feed the community. And they give back far more than they receive.
But that work will be on hold for a least a few days, after someone crashed into their van, pushing it up the street. Best case, it was a hit-and-run driver; worst, someone vandalized their van on purpose.
They haven’t asked for help yet, but they can clearly use it. So give ’em a hand if you can. You can donate directly to them right here.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
And yes, I gave a little, too.
Photo shamelessly borrowed from the East Side Riders Bike Club website.
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Streets For All is once again asking for your help to get a half-dozen bills across the finish line in the final days of this year’s state legislative session.
We need your help to get 6 critical bills to the governor’s desk
The legislative session is about to end do it’s all-hands-on-deck for getting these final bills passed.
We need you to reach out to your state senator because time is running out.
Here are the bills that need to get to Newsom:
- AB 917 – Cameras on buses to enforce bus-only lanes
- AB 122 – Bicycle safety stop
- AB 339 – Requiring local governments to have a teleconferencing option for public comment
- AB 1238 – Decriminalize jaywalking
- AB 1147 – Active transportation program for regional agencies
- AB 43 – Allows cities the ability to lower hundreds of miles of speed limits
AB 43 is important for racial justice as a disproportionate amount of pedestrians killed are in black and brown neighborhoods
Here’s how you can help in 2 easy steps:
1) Email a comment to your state senator as soon as possible!!
If you do not know who you state senator is, don’t worry!
You can easily find out right here.
Use our email template below, but for maximum impact, personalize your message.
CLICK HERE to email your senator
2) Add your name to the I MADE A DIFFERENCE LIST
This helps us keep track of the outreach we have made and where we need to focus our efforts.
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The good news is the CHP may have recovered your stolen bikes.
The bad news is they apparently weren’t registered or reported stolen, so the state police don’t know who they belong to.
— CHP Baldwin Park (@CHPBaldwinPark) August 27, 2021
And it’s yet another reminder that registering your bike now, before something happens to it, is your best hope of getting it back if anything does.
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Kittie Knox was also one of the first women to join the League of American Wheelmen, today’s League of American Bicyclists, aka the Bike League.
She joined just a year before it changed the bylaws to Whites Only, but since the rule was not made retroactive, Knox was grandfathered in and allowed to remain.
And went on to become a trailblazer for Black women on bikes, and all women.
US, late 1800s, Kittie Knox was among a small group of black women cyclists in Boston's early bicycling craze. Kittie also broke taboos by wearing knickerbockers. It was working class women like Kittie who made the bicycle a liberator for all women #WomensArt pic.twitter.com/VMjsRmPzxm
— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) August 29, 2021
Thanks to Ted Faber for the heads-up.
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We’ve often linked to stories from British bike scribe and historian Carlton Reid, as well as his internationally bike touring son.
But this one hit him close to home, as his son’s girlfriend totaled her bike, but was lucky to escape with minor injuries, when she hit a massive pothole hidden by standing water.
Two passing doctors made sure she was OK at roadside and took her to the Village Inn at Long Framlington to keep warm. I took car to pick up Emma’s written-off carbon bike. The pub was great. Made her comfy, brought hot tea. Wouldn’t take payment. https://t.co/Nck4q0f6JP
— Carlton Reid (@carltonreid) August 22, 2021
Which is another reminder not to ride through puddles, because you never know what is — or isn’t — underneath. Like pavement, maybe.
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Today’s common theme is celebrities and their kids on bikes. And one little girl who should be one.
Credit a bike ride with the success of Michael Jackson’s multi-platinum Thriller album. The gloved one took a ride on a borrowed bike to ride to a Los Angeles schoolyard to watch the kids play after concluding the recording was “crap,” then returned to the studio with a clear head to remix and fix it.
Ben Affleck’s nine-year old son Samuel is one of us, after dad upgraded him to a new Co-Op bike from REI.
Ava Fouts is one of us, too. The ten-year old Tucson girl has done over 200 rides totaling more than 2,500 miles, despite a surgically repaired congenital heart defect. Seriously, if you need a good smile, read this one.
Orlando Bloom has been one of us for a long time, as the British actor posts a photo of himself riding a bike while wearing a back brace after a dangerous fall in his 20s. Oddly, I did exactly the same thing by riding my bike wearing a back brace back in the day. But my broken back resulted from a cracked car jack.
Evidently, British paparazzi never give up, turning out to capture former comedian Lee Evans riding an ebike, seven years after he walked away from his comedy career to spend time with his family.
Luxury car marque Rolls-Royce was founded by one of us; Charles Stewart Rolls started his career as a racing cyclist at Cambridge in the 1890s. Too bad he didn’t just stick to bikes and build a luxury bicycle, instead.
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GCN has advice on how to ge the most out of riding with your family.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Kansas City man got the blame for crashing his bike into a van, even though the driver clearly violated his right-of-way by left-crossing him. Never mind that the story doesn’t mention the driver.
No bias here, either. The New York Post somehow thinks maintaining a smoggy, dangerous and traffic-choked boulevard on 5th Avenue is good for business, and returning the street to a more human scale means declaring war on cars. Right. If LA’s elected and appointed leaders had half the courage and imagination of their New York counterparts, we’d already see this on Wilshire Blvd, and a half dozen other major corridors, as well.
To the NY Post it's a "War on Cars" but this plan to reshape 5th Avenue between Central Park and 42nd Street will be immensely popular and transformational if officials have the spine to see it through. https://t.co/4owljcSxIy pic.twitter.com/onimhvEff3
— Peter Flax (@Pflax1) August 28, 2021
A Welsh driver was fined the equivalent of over $500 for a dangerously close pass of a group of bike riders, which appeared to clear them by a matter of inches.
A British bike rider unwittingly and painfully demonstrated the dangers of overly close passes, when he suffered serious injuries after a driver ran him off the road, and head first into a set of wrought-iron gates.
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Local
West Hollywood’s massive Melrose Triangle project promised to “coordinate” designated ride share and passenger loading areas with the existing bike lanes on Santa Monica Blvd. Let’s hope that works better than it sounds, because it sounds like a nightmare.
Something must be in the water in Culver City, where another massive 1800-word NIMBY screed decries plans to improve safety for bike riders and pedestrians at the three-way intersection of Overland, Kelmore and Ranch, fearing that a planned refuge island for bicyclists and pedestrians would require dangerous mixing of the two, and that the best solution is just to put up a sign banning street crossings entirely.
State
Sad news from Bakersfield, where a man was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his bicycle early Saturday; police are looking for the driver of a possibly red, late model small to mid-sized SUV. Although it would have been nice if the Bakersfield Californian, which should know better, even mentioned that the car had a driver.
Speaking of Bakersfield, you can thank the local golf course and a funding shortfall for killing a “whimsical” proposal to extend the Kern River Bike Path.
A San Francisco writer decries the city’s “inability to address madness and criminality on public transit and on the streets.” And complains about what she calls “whimsical” plans to put bike lanes on the Bay Bridge, saying most would only “undertake the slog” as a last resort, while insisting that biking is a non-starter for small children, seniors, and others with mobility challenges. Clearly, she’s never heard of ebikes. Or met many older bike riders or paracyclists. And what’s with that whimsical word all of the sudden?
National
It was a big weekend for naked people on bicycles and chaste camera views, as the World Naked Bike Ride was marked in Mad City, Philly and even Amsterdam.
A kindhearted cop raised funds to buy a new bike and helmet for a Gloucester, Massachusetts teenager, after he was unable to recover the boy’s stolen bicycle.
Three people were injured when their bikes collided at a bottleneck in New York’s annual Five Boro Bike Tour, which was limited to “just” 20,000 riders as a pandemic precaution.
It takes a major schmuck to push a 74-year old Pennsylvania man down after threatening to steal his bicycle, and only making off with the man’s water bottle.
A group of Baltimore volunteers are delivering meals by bicycle to families in need during the coronavirus crisis.
A man on a cross-country bike tour tries to outrun a hurricane, scurrying just days ahead of Ida’s landfall in Louisiana on Sunday.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is celebrating his 80th birthday by riding his bicycle 80 miles a day for 10 days straight, for a total of 800 miles. Although he might have to take a break for a day or two until Hurricane Ida blows itself out.
Seriously? A Florida man faces felony charges for stealing $2.67 worth of soup and some crackers after crashing his bicycle into a patrol car while trying to flee from police; the petty theft was escalated to a felony due to his previous theft convictions. Anyone who steals something like that does it because he’s hungry, not for financial gain, regardless of his record.
International
Treehugger takes a look at surprising ways e-cargo bikes are being used for low-carbon commerce.
Cycling News recommends the best bidons, otherwise known as water bottles for us plain folk.
After a bighearted Saskatchewan boy got a new bike to replace his stolen bicycle, he passed it on to another kid whose bike was stolen, when a Good Samaritan found his purloined bike and returned it.
She gets it. A London physician says she should be able to ride her bike to work without worry, but that we will continue to see more people killed as long as we continue to prioritize the people in the big, dangerous machines.
Never mind the cars, England’s Countess Sophie got a scare from big-horned stags on a tandem ride with a blind stoker.
A university lecturer in the UK asks if ebikes are ruining mountain biking.
The Dutch may ride at home, but Great Britain’s Dutch ambassador set off a firestorm by saying he doesn’t dare ride in London.
An Aussie business professor puts his expertise to work opening a bicycle-themed hotel in the heart of Belgium’s Flanders region, where “bicycling is practically a religion.”
Calcutta regresses into an auto-centric past by banning bicycles from major streets; an Indian magazine calls it a “warped idea of planning and an antipathy towards the working classes.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Pink Bike considers what’s next for Afghanistan’s growing mountain bike community, over fears of a crackdown by the Taliban; one rider complains he feels like they’ve been dragged into a black hole.
Road.cc says ongoing Covid lockdowns in Asia continue to adversely affect bicycle supplies in Europe.
Competitive Cycling
No change in the leader’s standings, as Rafal Majka rode a 56-mile breakaway to victory in Sunday’s 15th stage of the Vuelta.
Twenty-four-year old Evie Richards became British woman to claim the mountain bike cross-county world championship on Saturday in Val di Sole, Italy.
Openly gay Canadian cyclist Kate O’Brien took silver in the 500 meter time trial in the Paralympic Games, just five years after competing in the Rio Olympics, and four years after she was nearly killed crashing into a race moto.
Aussie cyclist Caroline Buchanan became the first woman to land a mountain bike front flip onto a dirt surface.
Finally…
Sharpen your pocket knife while you sharpen your riding skills. Your next bike light could be powered by the wind.
And watch out for cars when you stick your imaginary landing.
I would’ve made it if the car wasn’t there :/
byu/LowLeft9933 inGrandTheftAutoV
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
