This year’s Bristol Sports Festival will include group rides of several distances on Saturday, September 26th. For more details, please see the official ride website, or click here to download a PDF of the event brochure.
Aug 292009
Aug 252009
Do you know anyone who has been ‘doored’? By that, I mean riding alongside parked cars, and having a driver or passenger open their door into the path of the bicyclist. It’s not uncommon, although I personally know of only one such crash. The experienced adult cyclist suffered a broken arm.
There have been cases where the cyclist has fallen under the wheels of an overtaking vehicle, resulting in serious injury or death. Here’s what the League of American Bicyclists has to say.
Aug 122009
There will be a great local ride to benefit hospice care on Sunday, September 13th. I’ll paste a few details below, but check out the event’s official page through the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care for registration and the latest information.
When and Where:
Sunday, September 13, 8 a.m.
Start & Finish at St. Patrick’s Park in South Bend [MAP]
Cost:
$30 by August 31, 2009
$40 beginning September 1, 2009
12 years & under ride free!
Proceeds benefit The Center for Hospice and Palliative Care and the Bike Michiana Coalition.
Ride Options:
Family Ride — 3.5 – 11.5 miles (your choice)
25 miles
40 miles
62 miles
Enjoy the area’s best SAG stops!
Aug 092009
Aug 082009
It’s less difficult than you might expect to get around the most auto-dependent sections of Michiana, as long as you’re willing to cut through a few parking lots.
I’d imagine that the practice is officially illegal, potentially dangerous, and probably not LAB-approved, but those are true of a lot of well-established, practical cycling techniques. The hard fact is that currently if you want to ride to Wal-Mart and you’re not prepared to take arterial traffic sewers, parking lot skipping is the only way to go.
When you start looking at infrastructure that way, you really start to notice details about the landscape, like the lack of any bridge over Juday Creek under 4 lanes. Or which parking lots link together, which require off-road curb hopping, and which are unfortunately impassible. Or which parking lot entrances are directly opposite each other and which require the dreaded right-to-left. (I myself cut through two lots every commute to round off an ugly right-to-left!)
This all ties into a greater facet of bike infrastructure that I think is perhaps obscured from recreational cyclists and other would-be advocates: Often the greatest benefits to utility cyclists come from careful planning and tiny changes to stuff that will be built anyway.
What do you think? Do you ride through parking lots? Which ones are your favorites? Which are the most heartbreaking non-connecting lots?