Everyday should be Bike Month Day

Ahoy my little bike pirates scouring the high seas, I hope that the recent tidal waves of snow on the east coast don't trick you for a minute into not gearing up and going for a ride. Plowing through the snow on your bike is a wonderful experiecne that truly seperats us from the animals, except maybe the weasel.

As many of you know, i have started to amp up my mechanical skills at a local bike collective here, Bike Recycle. It's a project of Local Motion who are sorta of the Transportation Alternatives of Burlington. Once a week I am hitting it up, learning how to fix and repair bikes by fixing and repairing bikes that will be sold for nearly nothing (with helmets, lock and lights) to those who need to have transportation and freedom. It's a great project.

I also will be making money by helping kids and dudes looking to blow a lot of money on bikes reach that goal. In March I will begin working at Earl's Cyclery, a locally owned bike shop here in the Urban Burlington area. More on that as it develops.

Stuck at work or the rain with nothing to read? Well, I ahve the solution to that. Fietspad Magazine, the brainchild of us at Sonadei is a bicycle community magazine that will work to highlight the goings on, comment on those going ons, and generally make for good bicycle related reading. You can subscribe to it just like you do my blog.

While there are still winter chills making my bike chain less productive, the knowledge that spring and summer will come already makes me start thinking of some tours. This year I wont be doing any crazy tours (I'm saving up for that ONE!!!!) but rather little doodles, maybe a few days here and there, like riding around lake Champlain, or up to Quebec, down to the Garden State, etc, just little guys. But regardless of the distance, I am getting closer to making a hardline desicion on how to carry my cargo, via a free-radical system from Xtracycle

What about some biking news I hear you screaming? Well, this just in, women are better at biking (or so says the internet:

 

Read about this crazy theory here: http://cycleandstyle.com/2010/02/women-are-better-cyclists/  

More cycle-hate?  Another critical mass crackdown.  This helps make cycling mroe dangerous by making it fringe and seen as only a radical lifestyle rather than allowing criticl mass be a welcmong event where all people from all walks of lfie feel comfortable aprtaking in.  

Monday, February 01, 2010

By Yokota Fritz

Back in 1997, then Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco was slipping in the polls. To direct attention away from his failing policies, he set out to crack down on the San Francisco Critical Mass. When 5,000 cyclists showed up at Justin Hermann Plaza in response to Brown's public challenge to Critical Mass, police responded by arresting (and eventually releasing without trial) 150 cyclists and pedestrians, violently attacking many of them without provocation.

In an apparent repeat of this history, newly appointed police chief George Gascón says a review of Critical Mass is under way at his department. “I am not satisfied with Critical Mass,” he says.

Gascón threw some fuel on the fire with a direct challenge to cyclists, suggesting a (clearly unconstitutional) ballot initiative to ban Critical Mass would "pass with flying colors."

The SF Chief's review is supposedly part of his plan to reduce crime in San Francisco by 20%. Cutting down on the number of red light cyclists just might do that!

Keep pedaling!!!