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BikeHugger is covering the Spring Olympics by bike and may, just may, be the culprit behind balmy weather suited more to wheels than blades and boards.

E-bike sales: Growing but still tiny, tiny when compared with regular bikes, or e-bike sales in other countries: 300k expected in 2010, double 2009. But total in U.S. is just 500k.

Idaho’s mountain biking license plate moves forward.

Brian Lopes is selling his pimped out Sportsmobile for a mere $67,000…the good news being you can claim it as a second home mortgage deduction. Assuming you have another home. And it’s worth more than $67,000.

Despite all the rain, things are cookin‘ in Aptos!

SeattleLikesBikes: Issues with counting bike commuters.

Good LA Times story on bike thievery. It’s every bit as ugly as we assume.

Psst. Hey. You and I could sell our homes and buy an entire town up by Whistler in B.C. Mountain biking all summer long. Skiing all winter long. You don’t get to see another soul, but hey. You’re getting away from it all!

3-feet-please? How about FIVE. More on Iowa’s Bicycle Bill of Rights.

Washington’s “Vulnerable User” legislation is already further along than a similar bill made it last year.

Jonathan Maus at BikePortland.org raises the question of why a local newspaper seems deliberately provocative (one might say antagonistic) on the issue of the city’s 2030 Bicycle Plan:

“Instead of helping to foster civil public discourse about a very important plan for our city’s future, I’m afraid this story will only serve to intensify the “bicyclist” versus “motorist” sensationalism that The Oregonian has admitted to “overplaying” in the past.”

As newspapers (the ones that survive) continue to focus on their natural constituency, that being local communities, our hope is that they’ll show more sensitivity and receptiveness to the bicycling community in the transportation matrix. The perplexing irony in this case is that The Oregonian has on staff one of the nation’s experts on just this subject — Jeff Mapes, author of “Pedaling Revolution.” Maybe he could persuade an editor or two at his newspaper to read his book?!

For your good deed of the day — heck, the whole weekend — take the Bicycle Leadership Conference survey.

We like Ryder Hesjedal for two reasons: First, his mountain bike heritage. Second, his first name. Keep an eye on him in the 2010 season.

Have a great weekend! Hopefully the weather will let you Get out ‘n RIDE!

In L.A., a booming promise that “The culture of the car ends now!” No throwing projectiles, no verbal abuse, no cutting within 3 feet … and yes! No strangulation! “(No) making physical contact with a bicyclist from a moving vehicle on the roadway either by physical person or use of an implement.” Yay!

I remember when I was this anal about my ride logs…but it was a long time ago.

Reminder that the Marin County Bicycle Coalition’s “Dirt Bowl” fundraiser is Sunday, Feb. 7.

(Two) wheels ‘n feet account for 9.6 percent of all trips, but just 1.2 percent of federal funding. Other goodies as well in the Alliance for Biking & Walking “Benchmarking” report.

Add mtbchick to the growing list of hosts for “Awesome Land: Women of Dirt” showings .

Alan at EcoVelo looks at the iPad’s potential for mobile blogging.

Nothing to do with cycling, other than Yokota’s involvement, but a wild story nonetheless. So wild that the Man Himself, Gary Fisher, retweeted it.

Have a great weekend! Winter’s on the decline, time to get out ‘n RIDE!

You can still make a difference.

Interesting discussion of the legislation in Cascade Bicycle Club forum.

“Right now, if a driver is speeding, or runs a light, or makes an illegal u-turn and mows down my child walking to school or maims my husband biking to work, that driver most likely will be given nothing more than a $42 traffic ticket. There are drunk driving and vehicular homicide laws that are more aggressive, but if a driver is breaking the law and kills or maims a pedestrian or bicyclist, Washington State laws favor the driver. So what caused my reluctance to support this bill?
 
I support all sorts of good causes these days, some quite controversial, with no qualms at all: 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, SCALLOPS, Sustainable Food Systems, Transition Towns.  And I don’t like the idea that a distracted, incompetent driver can mow down walkers and bikers with impunity. It hearkens back to the Middle Ages when lords could run over peasants and not look back.
 
And then I realized why I waffled. It is because I could be that distracted driver. I speed (just a little). I talk on the phone in the car (only in rare cases). I have been known to catch just the tail end of a green (well, yellow) light. My car. My weapon.

I have an obligation not to cause great harm in everything I do. I would want the redemption of punishment, more than a $42 ticket, if I killed a cyclist while I was running a red light. That is exactly what the Vulnerable User Bill does. It fills the gap between a simple traffic ticket and more serious offenses. It requires a court appearance and possible community service for drivers who kill or gravely injure pedestrians, bicyclists or other vulnerable road users. It is a deterrent to negligent driving and will encourage us to focus our attention as we negotiate the urban streets more and more filled with our friends, children, and neighbors.
 
Please choose to fill out the quick on-line form supporting the Vulnerable User Bill. Now.”

From a selfish standpoint it was a great success. I got to meet and chat with Carson, who has an amazing history aboard two wheels, including a head-on crash that flipped him into the air for 3 somersaults and a shattered kneecap, among other injuries. He’s also had a gun pulled on him while riding … twice! All by way of explaining why he is so passionate about equal access for bikes on the road, and why hate pages seem so irresponsible to him.

Carson got 125 RSVPs and “maybes” to the Facebook rally. Normally you expect some dropoff, but this was pretty stark. We speculated that a break in the miserable weather may have hurt the cause. Given the chance to get out and ride after a week of slop, cyclists chose to exercise their quads rather than their right to assembly.

I also think the Twitter generation may believe that email and online petitions and a coupla tweets get the job done just as well as in person. They may be right. It does seem a tall challenge in this day and age to get people to commit and show up.

Maybe the solution is to do the Lance thing and combine the two. His latest Twitter ride (in Australia) drew 5,000 cyclists! If it’s impromptu and uses cool tech, it may have a far greater chance of succeeding than the old school sign up and show up approach. Saul Alinsky would understand.

Thanks in any case to Carson for organizing the page and drawing attention to the misbegotten hate every cyclist has faced on the road.

Protests are good. Action is even better. What you can do today to actually combat anti-cycling mentality is to click on over to Cascade Bicycle Club’s advocacy page and contact your legislative representative re Washington State’s proposed “vulnerable user” law (SB 5838). It’s a nicely automated system that takes mere seconds. I know. I timed myself.

BTW, New York state is considering similar legislation.

Have bike riders in Portland become so intimidating that they scare automobile drivers? A new report says the “biking community is so strong that motorists sometimes feel discriminated against.” Yes, it’s a real problem, how bikes hold up cars, even extremely busy and important Bimmers and Mercedes, on uphills, and how they take up valuable parking space with bike racks and oh, don’t forget, cause the dreaded “driver squint” at night with their blinkies and bike lights. But the worst is, bikes leave scratch marks on car paint when motorists run them over. Yeah, we feel real sorry for that most persecuted of all minorities, Portland motorists. Next thing you know bike riders will be demanding use of the full lane! (On a serious note, congrats to BikePortland.org for topping the list of local blogs.)

And hey, Portland isn’t the only place where motorists feel discriminated against. From Florida:

Who are you honking at? from Keri Caffrey on Vimeo.

Jacquie Phelan unearths one of her earliest bike writings, an essay in the not forgotten and still lamented Bike Tech. Interesting that she cites the Gary Klein piece, one of the ones I most remember. I also remember riding one of the earliest aluminum road frames from France — and yes, thinking Budweiser. The thing was actually glued together. I purchased one of Gary’s first road frames, which I still have, and was a big Klein fan back then so naturally assumed he was right to sue. Oh the stories the old guard can tell. And how they pale compared to the backstories.

And how far we’ve come. The latest issue of Mountain Bike Action magazine, drawing from its annual reader survey, notes that “a staggering 86 percent” own aluminum bikes. Carbon fiber at 6 percent and steel at 5 are distant trailers, as well as ti at 3. Quick calculations tell me that of the 32 bikes I own or have owned, 6 were steel, three carbon and 1 ti, so my ratio is not too far off.

Cozy Beehive takes a detailed look at the Kolelinia, which we derisively thought was the scientific term for temporary insanity.

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The legal woes blocking the San Francisco Bicycle Plan are finally ebbing, and work is getting under way.

I’m having trouble getting worked up about the Tour Down Under, but here‘s Day Three results.

Bike commuting increases over past decade

EcoVelo has a report on the League of American Bicyclists’ study of “Bicycle Commuting Trends, 2000 to 2008.” In a nutshell, bike commuting keeps going up, even though it’s far below 1 percent of the working population nationally. In “bike-friendly” cities those percentages are higher, although not yet into two digits in metros. Still, progress keeps happening.

Don’t ask me how an Australian men’s Web site became the international authority on Planet Earth’s Top 10 bicycle-friendly cities, but AskMen.com is back at it with an update. Only one American city makes the list, and we’re gonna let you guess which one cuz our banner includes the word “intelligence.” No real surprises except possibly…Bogota? Colombia is a great cycling country and all, and we’ve never had the pleasure, but surely Portland’s elegant matrix and relentless cheer for all things velo could have carried them higher than… Bogota? Ah well. If AskMen drops that “n” and pays attention a bit, Seattle will be in the 2011 edition.

BikeRadar: Good piece on how Trek and the rest of Wisconsin’s bike industry are doing their bit for the economy. I still have the Trek cro-moly touring bike I bought in 1979 from Bicycle Outfitter in Los Altos. Thing is bulletproof.

The Vancouver B.C. bike scammer, the one featured in Mountain Bike Action magazine as a “Local Hero,” the one slapped with charges the mag said “may or may not be” true … he pleaded guilty to 36 charges.

Next month’s North American Handmade Bicycle Show is shaping up as a barnburner.

You’re one of the countless Americans who are being furloughed from jobs around this time of year, so what do you do to maximize the value of your time off? Two Wheels has the answer.