Word is just breaking that a Huntington Beach man died last week following a freak accident at an Orange County skatepark.
According to KCBS-2, 25-year old Tyler Kanarr was riding at the popular Vans Skatepark in Orange on February 25th when he somehow hit a ceiling beam, and suffered a gash in his neck from a florescent light.
When firefighters arrived, they found t-shirts wrapped around his neck in an effort to stop the bleeding.
Despite reportedly doing everything they could to save him, Kanarr lost too much blood before they could get him to the hospital directly across the street.
Today’s a holiday, in case you hadn’t noticed. Which is easy to do if you didn’t get it off.
But my wife did, surprisingly enough.
So we’re going with sort of a Morning Links lite today, with most of the weekend’s bike news, so I can get a little sleep before she wakes me up too damned early in the morning; we’ll catch up on the rest tomorrow.
Today’s photo is what’s left of a bike after thieves stripped it, leaving its mangled carcass behind.
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Today’s common theme is stolen bikes and the jerks who take them.
Introducing my new favorite South African hip hop video.
Seriously, who can top rhymes like this?
When I hop on the metal and push on the pedal, there’s a certain peace that I get that’s really good for my mental.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. And on.
A Willits CA woman intentionally ran over a man on a bike who she had been arguing with; she was arrested after fleeing the scene, along with her husband and son-in-law, who were booked as accessories after the fact for helping with her coverup.
No bias here, either. A Toronto columnist says the city’s Vision Zero isn’t failing because drivers need more safety education, but rather, they break the law because they’re frustrated by gridlock caused by all those bike lanes and lower speed limits. Which doesn’t explain why drivers broke the law before all those things, though.
Less than a year after taking up riding, newly retired NASCAR favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. vows to ride his bike 50 to 100 miles a week, even with a new baby on the way. Anyone who has a new baby is probably thinking “Good luck with that.”
It’s now officially legal for drivers to pass bicyclists in a no passing zone in Illinois, and for cyclists to ride on the shoulder of a roadway. Even if they may have to wait for the state to thaw out first. It would be legal for drivers to briefly cross the yellow line to pass bicyclists in California if Governor Jerry Brown hadn’t vetoed an earlier version of the three-foot passing law that contained that provision.
Auto-centric Michigan is finally getting around to updating the laws to protect people on bicycles, including a five-foot passing law and banning distracted driving. Although based on the previous story, it sounds like tougher penalties for DUI and fatal crashes might be a good idea, too.
Baltimore drivers are complaining about protected bike lanes, saying the streets are too narrow to accommodate a buffered bike lane, a parking lane and two travel lanes. Although it sounds like what they really want is to get their parking spaces back.
A British bike advocacy group says a biased online survey of that found drivers want bike riders to have insurance and wear hi-viz is, well, biased. Meanwhile, the head of that advocacy group was stunned to get his stolen Brompton back after someone found it abandoned at a train station.
Caught on video: A Brit bicyclist is nearly squeezed off the road in a punishment pass by a bus driver. And he responds with the same language I’ve used under similar circumstances, which is why I usually post my videos with the sound off.
The husband of an English woman killed in a crash with a bicyclist calls for a new law banning dangerous or careless cycling that results in injury or death. Even though the rider who hit his wife was sentenced to 18 months behind bars, which is more than most drivers get.
A bighearted stranger bought a British boy a new bike after the one he got for Christmas was stolen at knifepoint in a bike-jacking.
The deputy director of Zimbabwe’s national intelligence agency was posthumously named a national hero after he was killed in a traffic collision, despite killing a bike rider in a crash 16 years earlier.
This is why you should always carry ID when you ride. Australian authorities are trying to identify a man who collapsed while riding his bike. I wear my Road ID whenever I leave home, whether or not I’m riding; it doubles as my medical alert bracelet.
My apologies for the continued problems with email notifications for subscriber to this site. We’re still working on getting it fixed.
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Jonathan Weiss, longtime LA Bicycle Advisory Committee, has discussed the history of BMX racing with us before, including the birth of the sport right here in Los Angeles. So when I received the following email from him over the weekend, I wanted to share his thoughts with you.
I have a local history addiction. I’m into bicycling. And I hopped off curbs on my Schwinn as a kid in suburban Detroit. So, when I learned that Palms Park in the nearby Palms district of West Los Angeles was the birthplace of BMX, I had to do something about it. I could imagine and identify with some these local kids (and others they attracted) racing up, down, and around some hills on their modified Schwinn Stingrays like motocross racers and with races sanctioned (entrance fees, awards and even insurance) by Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department. This nearby park was the Elysian Fields, the first field of dreams, the epicenter of the first X-Games sport.
So, I put together some of the story, I set up a Facebook page, and I got in touch with some of those who started BMX racing. That’s the fun part of history. The tougher part is when some of the participants and eye-witnesses to history, those who I’ve been lucky enough to get to know, start to go. On October 1st, another left us – Rick Twomey.
From me, and from fans from around the world, thanks for sharing your memories with me and on the Facebook page, Rick. And thanks for what you’ve left behind.
If we’re lucky enough to have the 2024 Olympics in Los Angeles – with BMX competition in Long Beach – I know I’ll be thinking of you, innovator, sponsor, and author Rick Twomey, and of Rec and Parks’ Ronald Mackler, who left us in 2010, and of Scot Breithaupt, who left us last year.
Note: I failed to mention that Weiss left the BAC earlier this year. We all owe him a round of thanks for his years of service to LA’s bicycling community.
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Speaking of the BAC, the next bi-monthly meeting of LA’s only official voice for bicyclists is tomorrow night in Hollywood.
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If you missed it, bicyclists sadly lost their lives in both Palm Springs and Yorba Linda over the weekend.
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Local
The Los Angeles County Bicycling Coalition’s Tamika Butler spoke about Planning While Black at the NACTO Designing Cities Conference last week, with a presentation that reportedly brought down the house.
Plans are in the works for a single, integrated bikeshare system that would include Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Long Beach and UCLA, with possible expansion to Culver City and the South Bay.
Rolling Hills Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes and Palos Verdes Estates make plans to work together to address traffic and safety issues across city borders on the peninsula, as South Bay bicyclists push for greater safety on the roads.
A horrifying story from Redding, as a man believes he was attacked while riding his bike to the drug store, but can’t remember what happened after suffering a broken arm and eye socket, along with multiple skull fractures.
A sports website looks back on the Tour de Trump, the American bike race sponsored by the GOP’s current presidential candidate for a two whole years back in the ‘80s.
A Chicago letter writer says bikes should be banned from the city’s busiest streets, insisting that bicyclists somehow make traffic worse by never obeying the law on streets he claims are paid for with gas taxes. Never mind that public taxes pay for city streets, traffic is caused by all those cars, and most drivers aren’t all that law abiding, either.
Sad news from Indio, as one of the founding fathers of BMX riding was found dead in a tent over the weekend.
A member of the BMX Hall of Fame, Scot Alexander Breithaupt had organized some of the first races while growing up in Long Beach in the 1970s, before going on to win a national championship and founding SE Racing bikes.
According to his wife, he was just fixing his bicycle when the officers arrived. Although she doesn’t explain why he jumped a fence in a apparent attempt to get away.
No weapon was found at the scene, and no reason was given for the shooting.
People for Bikes offers six reasons to watch the Tour de France, which kicked off on Saturday.
Aussie Rohan Dennis got a yellow bike to go with the yellow jersey he won in stage one of the Tour de France, while GoPro offers a first-bike view of the first stage.
Turns out there’s another race going on right now. And unlike the other one, an American is in first place, as US Nat. champ Megan Guarnier takes the leader’s jersey after the second stage of Italy’s Giro Rosa.
Virginia police write a whopping 12 tickets for violating the state’s new three-foot passing law last year, but at least that’s up from two tickets for unsafe passing the year before.
A British lord says a survey saying people don’t like spaces shared by cars, bikes and pedestrians is proof they’re a dangerous and costly folly. After all, there’s no point in relying on facts or anything.
A Brit driver is allowed to remain on the road with three-and-a-half times the number of points against his license for moving violations than the law allows. No point in taking dangerous drivers off the streets, either.
A record-setting adventurer rides 102 miles through the Scottish countryside on a Penny Farthing.
Now that’s more like it. The man in charge of managing roadways for an Australia’s Victoria state says you can’t build your way out of congestion, and recommends getting a new job or riding a bike to avoid gridlock.
Aussie cyclists ride topless to protest the country’s mandatory helmet law. No, not like that.
