Sometimes the news hits a little too close to home.
And sometimes, it’s far too close.
That’s how Zachary Rynew is feeling today.
The man behind the popular CiclaValley website learned shortly before the world did that the son of one of a close friend had died from a seizure at just 20 years old.
Someone the world knew as Disney Channel star and rising young actor Cameron Boyce.
But Rynew knew him simply as Cameron, the son of LA bicyclist and LACBC member Victor Boyce.
And the grandson of Jo Ann Boyce, one of the famed Clinton 12 — the first black students to attend the previously all white Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, following the US Supreme Court’s order to desegregate the school in groundbreaking 1956 Brown vs Board of Education case that sounded the death knell for legal segregation in American Schools.
Although in reality, far too many urban schools have become victims of de facto re-segregation in the years since.
As Rynew points out, Victor Boyce’s Instagram feed is devoted to two things: His family, and riding his bikes.
In fact, a video showing Cameron dancing in front of Boyce’s impressively organized bike collection last year has gained over 1.6 million views.
Though most of those are probably fans of his son, rather than his bikes.
And it’s with Victor Boyce that Rynew has gone gravel biking up Sycamore Canyon.
Rynew also adds that a few weeks ago, he was with Boyce when they spotted a couple of junk bikes someone had tossed out by the curb.
He had planned to take them home to repaint as ghost bikes. But Boyce claimed one first.
And later that same day, this photo appeared, after he had already fixed it up and given it to his wife.
So while the world mourns Cameron Boyce, the actor and rising movie star, maybe the bicycling community can take a few moments to mourn with a fellow devoted bicyclist and his family, who lost a loved one far too soon.
And remember that every tragedy touches someone, somewhere, very deeply.
I hope you’ll join me in offering our sympathy and prayers for Cameron and Victor Boyce, and all their family and loved ones.
Photo of Cameron Boyce, center, from the Pedalers West Instagram account.
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There’s something seriously wrong with our streets when a close encounter with a dangerous driver can make an expert cyclist and former national crit champ rethink his decision to bike to work.
That reality sunk in as I started 2 pedal towards work. I was cruising around 21 before the incident but when I realized he was right, I lost all my energy and slowed to 15 all the way to work. Commuting has been fun, but not worth my life. Might reconsider. Out of shape vs dead.
— Rahsaan Bahati (@bahatiracing) July 3, 2019
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This is the cost of traffic violence.
Fallen bicyclist Frederick “Woon” Frazier supported his disabled mother until a hit-and-run driver took his life.
While a crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $10,000 to give his infant son a better start in life, part of that was seized to pay his bills — including the hospital that did nothing more than declare him dead on arrival. Leaving his mother struggling to survive while she waits for any kind of justice.
Now a new crowdfunding campaign has started to help get her back on her feet.
Although sadly, in over a week, it’s received just $20 of the $10,000 goal.
We can do better than that.
Thanks to Sahra Sulaiman for the link.
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If riding California’s coast highway is on your bike bucket list, maybe you should get a move on while it still exists.
Not the highway.
The coast.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. And on.
Someone has been laying potentially deadly booby traps on trails in a British national park, ranging from a wall of rocks across a trail and tree branches hung at head level, to pins and carpet tacks placed where they could puncture bike tires.
When a driver deliberately slams into someone on a bike, police call it assault with a deadly weapon. So what do you call it when a New York cop uses his car as a weapon to make a traffic stop by crashing into a red light-running bike rider? Needless to say, the NYPD doesn’t think he did anything wrong. In effect, it’s no different than the officer firing his gun to stop a speeding driver. In either case, it’s using deadly force for what amounts to a simple traffic violation.
………
Local
This is who we share the roads with. A pair of street racing teenagers lost control after colliding in San Marino, killing an adjunct professor at Pasadena City College and his dog as they walked on the median on Huntington Drive.
A pair of public workshops will discuss plans to revitalize the upper LA River, starting tomorrow night in Sylmar and concluding in Glendale on Thursday. Thanks to Walk Bike Glendale for the heads-up.
WeHoVille offers tips on how to get out and about on a bicycle from some of the city’s most passionate bike riders, including members of the city’s West Hollywood Bicycle Coalition.
The Long Beach Post talks with Jo Manny Silva of Compton’s Manny’s Bike Shop, calling him the godfather of lowrider bikes.
State
San Diego residents turn out to fight for their God-given right to parking along 30th Street, where city leaders plan to remove 420 parking spaces to make room for protected bike lanes.
Thanks in part to its growing bike infrastructure, WalletHub has named San Diego America’s best city for recreation. Los Angeles checked in at a surprising number 10. But probably not because of our bicycle non-network.
Sad news from San Jose, where a 62-year old man was killed by a hit-and-run driver as he rode his bike; police later arrested a suspect in the case. Thanks to Robert Leone and Al Williams for the heads-up.
A San Francisco newspaper says a new three-mile Lake Tahoe bike path offers magical views of the lake.
National
America’s “favorite oddball motorcycle engineer” is turning his attention to making a “handsome, cohesive and convenient” 32 mph ebike with a 125 mile range.
It used to be that a fraternity road trip meant bundling a few brothers into a car and driving to Florida for spring break. Now a fraternity from a Kentucky college is biking across the US, hoping to raise $70,000 for Alzheimer’s research.
A bighearted Massachusetts deputy sheriff better known as Bob the Bike Guy has founded a charity to give refurbished bikes to underprivileged kids, many of whom don’t look too kindly on cops; the group has given away 1,200 bikes in just two years, with another 2,000 bikes in the pipeline.
A Canadian man hops on a restored Schwinn, and revisits his old paper route in Upstate New York half a century later. I used the profits from my paper route to buy my first 10-speed bike.
A Rochester, NY newspaper editor explains why bicycling matters for “women, minorities and everyone.”
They get it. The New York Daily News says Mayor De Blasio’s temporary crackdown on drivers blocking bike lanes won’t end Gotham bicycling fatalities.
New York’s recent rash of bike-by shootings continued over the weekend, as a man on a bike fired multiple shots, injuring two men sitting on a Central Park bench.
A Philadelphia cop will take part in a 65-mile bike ride to raise funds for the children of fallen or severely injured police officers, three years after he was ambushed by a gunman while on duty.
Nominally bike-friendly DC ripped out a bike lane on one side of a street so local residents could get their parking back.
More on the late Lee Iacocca, early adopter ebike pitchman, when he rode one in a Florida parade nearly two decades ago.
International
The head of a Winnipeg, Canada bike advocacy group says better eduction is the solution to the city’s dangerous patchwork of bike lanes, not better infrastructure.
Um, no. The annual RideLondon sportive wanted to show that it wasn’t just for white men. So they just photoshopped a black woman into a picture from the event.
After 100 years, a British author says he’s cracked the unsolved murder of a 21-year old bike-riding woman felled by a gunshot as she rode on a country lane, calling it a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
The UK’s popular Deliveroo food delivery service plans to switch from bicycle deliveries to motor vehicles, even though bikes are often faster.
No bias here. A new documentary examines the British bike rider who records distracted drivers using their cellphones behind the wheel, while drawing a false equivalency by showing clips of scofflaw bicyclists. It’s as if they think a single bike rider bears responsibility for every other bike rider on the roads, while failing to draw the same conclusion about lawbreaking drivers.
Bicycling experts tell Irish leaders that if they have the courage to reduce the number of cars on the street, people won’t want their traffic back.
Competitive Cycling
Fifty years later, the Cannibal continues to cast a long shadow over Belgian cyclists. Meanwhile, forget today’s high-tech wonders; VeloNews says the coolest bike on the tour is the orange, steel-framed classic Ernesto Colnago built for the legendary Eddy Merckx.
Sometimes it takes a pretty good bunny hop to avoid crashing in the tour.
#Replay 🎥 / 🇮🇹 Vincenzo Nibali (TBM) évite la chute… ce que ne fait pas 🇩🇰 Jakob Fuglsang (AST). https://t.co/R8mKhdGLx5
— Renaud Breban (@RenaudB31) July 6, 2019
Now you, too, can buy the same Pinarello Dogma bike defending champ Geraint Thomas rides in the Tour de France for the low, low equivalent of a mere $15 grand. But no, it won’t make you as fast as he is.
Pakistan’s Tour de Khunjerab claims to be the world’s highest bike race, starting at over 9,000 feet and rising to 15,400 feet above sea level; over half of the 88 competitors in this year’s second edition failed to finish in the allotted time.
Finally…
Oh, nothing. Just your everyday, garden variety, bike stealing, armed to the teeth antichrist. Don’t use Civil War battlements for mountain bike jumps.
And if the new bicycle you stole won’t fit in the back seat of a Kia, just dump it at a gas station.
