BikinginLA

Finally, a little good news about Egee Marbolis, the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s parking lot manager severely injured on the Ride With No Name last month.

According to the LA Weekly, the fork on his bike bent backwards when he tried to brake, causing the wheel to lock up and flip his bike, throwing Marbolis straight up into the air. He came back down feet up, landing directly on his head.

A witness says there was no blood and he looked okay. He even said he was good afterwards, but had no feeling when another rider squeezed his hand.

He’s reportedly regained some movement in his hands and feet following spinal surgery, and friends say he will eventually walk again, though rehab will take years.

As of last night, the gofundme account to help defray his medical expenses had raised nearly $20,000, while the goal had been increased to $45,000.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Magazine focuses on Marbolis’ popularity and his cool temperament under pressure at the lot.

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Don’t miss the LACBC’s annual Open House tomorrow night; admission is free for members, which is a good incentive to join at the door.

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‘Tis the season for bighearted people.

A Syracuse NY funeral director plans to give away 2,500 bikes to area kids and teens; his organization has donated an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 bicycles to children over the past 20 years.

Bighearted English kids pitch in to buy a new bicycle for a fellow student after he loses his new birthday bike in a fire.

And Palms Springs Life tells the story of how Frank Sinatra once bought a bike for boy on welfare, then disguised himself to delivered it in person along with a bag of groceries, as well as other examples of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ anonymous generosity.

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Local

More than 600 people of all ages attended Santa Monica’s recent Family Bike Festival.

A Long Beach family is raising funds to pay funeral expenses after two men related by marriage die just days apart; one from natural causes and one killed while riding on the Vincent Thomas Bridge last month.

The man accused of being the bike-riding Western Bandit, who terrorized LA’s Western Avenue over a three-year period, pleads not guilty to 53 felony charges, including two counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder.

Good idea. Cycling in the South Bay recommends adding MedPay to your auto insurance coverage, in addition to the uninsured motorist coverage we’ve discussed before, so they pay directly if you’re injured while riding, regardless of fault.

 

State

San Diego-area police are on the lookout for yet another hit-and-run driver after a cyclist suffers minor injuries in a National City collision.

A Carlsbad woman reunites with the hero bike rider who saved her life, a year after she collapsed with a heart attack while jogging along the beach.

Palm Springs police bust three bike thieves in two separate incidents.

Fillmore police will hold a bike and skateboard safety rodeo on the 9th.

Turmoil by the Bay? The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition faces a contested board election just weeks after the unexpected resignation of their new Executive Director; SFist offers more information than you’d want to know about the situation.

A last-minute agreement promises to save a bike and pedestrian project promised when voters approved a construction of a commuter rail line.

 

National

Streetsblog says bad street design kills.

Arizona police recover and return a three-wheeled recumbent bike that was stolen from a partially paralyzed teenager.

A writer for the Grand Junction CO paper says hosting the first stage of next years USA Pro Challenge is marketing, not economic development.

Progress is slow in improving safety for Houston cyclists; one candidate to replace the current mayor want to get bikes off the streets instead of making them safer.

Life is cheap in Chicago, as a drunk driver gets a whopping 100 days for killing a cyclist. On the other hand, a Michigan driver faces 15 years for allegedly killing a three-year old kid out riding his bike while she was high on coke.

Pittsburgh is the latest city to consider adopting a Complete Streets policy.

A Boston writer takes a test ride on a prototype bike that promises to be virtually indestructible and theft proof. Full disclosure: I turned down a sponsorship to promote that bike through social media; if I mention it — or anything else — on here, it’s because it’s worth discussing, not because I’m getting something for it.

No bias here. Boston-area police blame a bike rider for a collision because a driver apparently didn’t see his signal for a left turn.

New York considers forming a bike safety task force, as a councilwoman’s office naturally focuses on seniors’ complaints about scofflaw cyclists instead of keeping riders safe from cars.

This is the cost of traffic violence. A little girl will grow up without a father after political pundit Mary Katharine Ham gave birth this weekend, two months after her husband, a technology advisor to the White House, was killed in a collision while riding his bike.

A DC-area study shows neighborhoods with access to bikeways have higher property values than those without, using two neighboring communities as examples. Of course, it could be a case of a chicken/egg conundrum, since more desirable communities may get bikeways first, rather than the other way around.

 

International

Cycling Weekly offers advice on how to deal with those embarrassing problems on a bike, from smelly feet to big boobs. However, they fail to offer advice on what to do when you get dropped by the neighborhood kid fresh off his training wheels.

Mounties bust a British Columbia bike thief after he jumped in a frigid harbor to avoid capture; he was taken into custody after a hot shower for hypothermia.

You know it’s a small Canadian town when ticketing a cyclist for riding on the sidewalk makes the news.

A deadly UK truck driver loses his commercial license for 10 years for running down a pair of cyclists two years ago, in addition to the eight and a half year sentence he received last year. Since those run concurrently, he’s really just banned for two and a half years after he gets out of prison, since he’s not likely to do a lot of driving before that.

A Chinese company is fined £63,000 by a UK court because their hi-viz jackets weren’t; they were found to be 97.6% less reflective than they should have been.

The Guardian considers how bicycling could significantly cut emissions and help the Paris climate talks change the world.

Even in the Netherlands, the government is criticized for not paying enough attention to cycling policies, especially for e-bikes.

A cyclist offers five lessons gained from riding in Pakistan.

 

Finally…

Lock your bike up to the wrong signpost, and get slimed. We all hate bike thieves, but hacking one with a rusted machete is not the answer.

And throwing your bike out the window is probably not the best way to deal with the situation, whatever it may be.

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Thanks to Serena Liu for contributing to the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. And a special thanks for her note saying my worked helped inspire her to get involved in bike advocacy; that made my day.

Or maybe even my month.