Let’s catch up with a growing list of upcoming bike ride events.
A bike ride will be held on Saturday to celebrate the groundbreaking of the new Alhambra Avenue street improvement project, including bike lanes, crosswalk and new sidewalks; the ride will travel 5.5 miles from Highland Park to El Sereno.
Bike SGV and Metro Bike invite you to learn how to knit your own seat cover this Saturday, or the following Saturday.
The very busy Bike SGV is offering a free, three-part city cycling course over the next three Saturdays.
Santa Monica Spoke and Santa Monica Planning invite you to join them for a ride with the city’s mayor on January 20th; the ride will also feature Calbike board members, as well as Jeffrey Tanenhaus, who rode a Citi Bike bikeshare bike cross-country from New York to Santa Monica in 2016.
El Sereno is a popular location this month, as the Eastside Bike Club will host an El Sereno Family Bike Ride on the 21st.
San Diego’s annual Recovery Ride rolls on the 21st, benefitting a pair of local nonprofits.
The LACBC has rescheduled their third annual Mulholland clean-up, hosted by former pro cyclist, author and cookie monster Phil Gaimon for January 27th.
Bike SGV’s first bike train of the year will ride up to the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights for a vegetarian brunch on January 28th.
Stan’s Bike Shop and the Eastside Bike Club are hosting the US premier of MAMIL “Middle Aged Men In Lycra” on February 21st; part of the film was shot at the bike shop and features several members of the bike club.
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San Francisco and New York are bucking national trends with record low traffic fatalities, even as deaths are on the increase throughout the US.
Which shows what can happen when cities take Vision Zero seriously, build bike lanes and pedestrian facilities, and actually stand up to the inevitable backlash.
Let’s hope LA is taking notes.
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Local
USC is welcoming the URB-E e-scooter sharing system to campus, even as the school still struggles to accommodate students and faculty on bicycles.
State
More bad news from the California legislature, where a senate committee gutted a Complete Streets measure that would have required Caltrans to consider the needs of all road users.
Maybe Rep. Darrel Issa is quitting his Orange/San Diego County congressional seat because he didn’t want to have to campaign by bicycle again this year.
The San Diego Association of Governments, aka SANDAG, has spent roughly $15 million a mile so far to build just four miles of high-priority bikeways.
Caught on video: A Fresno BMX rider snatched a woman’s purse as she sat on a bench by a parking lot.
For every 15 donations to the Stanford blood bank in Palo Alto, a local bike shop will donate a bicycle to a child in foster care or a single-parent shelter, and the blood bank will make a donation to the bike shop.
JUMP Bikes gets the permit to be San Francisco’s first dockless e-bikeshare system.
Streetsblog says the dismissal of charges against a road raging Marin driver after he completed an anger management class is proof that we need a statewide cyclist anti-harassment ordinance.
A Placerville bike rider says he doesn’t care if the city if bike friendly because he doesn’t need bike lanes; all he cares about is making it safer for pedestrians.
National
Bicyclists in Steamboat Springs CO may lose a new bike lane if drivers can’t figure out how to back into reverse-angle parking spaces.
Michigan lawmakers gut a proposed five-foot passing law, replacing the minimum passing distance with a vague requirement to pass at an unspecified “safe distance.”
Wired looks at the success of high-end underground clothing line Outlier, which was born out of a desire for clothes that could look cool and still be tough enough for New York cyclists.
The Atlantic offers a moving video look at the ghost bikes of New York; every image represents a life taken too soon, for no reason.
A New York community group is suing the city in an effort to force the removal of a bike lane they blame for increasing traffic collisions.
International
Heartbreaking story from the UK, where a coroner concludes a 16-year old time trial specialist was killed when he signaled to an oncoming driver that he was going to make a U-turn, and the driver misread it as a signal to overtake him.
Britain’s Daily Mail kind of misses the point, saying a cyclist sparked a road rage confrontation with an angry driver by yelling at him and flipping him off — never mind the unsafe pass that the rider was responding to.
Just what we all need. A seemingly innocuous intersection in the UK can actually make bicyclists and drivers invisible to one another until the last second, despite a lack of obvious barriers. Thanks to David Wolfberg for the heads-up.
Kindhearted Welsh residents use blankets, tea and hot water bottles to keep a man in his 60s from going into hypothermia after he suffered several broken bones falling off his bike; it took more than four hours for an ambulance to finally arrive.
An Irish bicyclist has gone missing in the desert of southern Israel for seven weeks; his wallet, keys and tablet computer were found on a trail in late December.
Parisians are seeing red over the absence of the popular grey Vélib’ bikeshare bikes from the streets, as a switch to a new operator runs aground.
Add one more trip to your bicycling bucket list — a 435-mile, 14-day trip across the Czech Republic.
Jump a red light in Saudi Arabia, and get the equivalent of an $800 fine.
Good piece from an Aussie writer, who says bicycling is legal; death threats — whether online or on the streets — aren’t.
This is who we share the roads with. A killer Australian driver with 16 previous traffic convictions bizarrely blames the media for all his problems, after getting caught riding a stolen motorbike 12 days after his license was suspended for driving stoned.
Competitive Cycling
Kiwi road cycling champion Jason Christie is under fire for apparently flipping off his competitors as he crossed the finish line, although the head of the national cycling council said it looks like more than one finger to him. Unfortunately, the video doesn’t seem to play in this country, but that looks like a single middle finger on each hand to me.
No, you can’t run red lights and make the equivalent of an illegal left turn, even if you’re the world’s leading cycling team.
Chris Froome could be banned from the world championships if his doping investigation isn’t resolved soon, while the head of British Cycling says leaking his failed test harmed cycling. Sure, leaking the test results hurt cycling, but failing the test itself was just fine.
Australia’s Tour Down Under is still benefitting from participation by the World’s Most Famous Doper, though Lance swears he was clean the three years he took part in the race.
Finally…
At least pro cycling isn’t as boring as snooker. If you’re going to steal a pair of high-end carbon track cycling shoes, make sure they’re your size first.
And you know you’ve made it when the pope agrees to baptize your kid.
This is day eight of the 3rd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. 
