There’s a cross-country tandem cyclist who rides shotgun, letting the stoker sit in front. Why, you ask? Gene Bisbee explains.

Seattle’s Jill Kintner wasn’t the dominating force at this year’s Crankworx that she was last year, but she did take top honors in the Pump Track competition. You have to be super strong to do pump track right. Jill’s progression toward World Cup downhill success continues apace. Check her blog for the full scoop.

Cam McCaul injury update.

Dan Atherton injury update.

Crankworx partial injury rundown: “Brandon Semenuk suffered a neck/collar bone with back flip on last drop. Darren Berrecloth suffered an arm/wrist injury on last jump 360. Yannick went to hospital after a crash on an odd landing.”

Every time Seattle proposes a road diet to reduce speeding cars, traffic congestion, hazardous conditions for cyclists and pedestrians and other ills of contemporary transportation management, a few people get scared.

Washington State again No. 1 ranked of “Bicycle Friendly” states by the League of American Bicyclists.

Word continues to get out that Seattle has a cycling mayor. We prefer to state it as: Although other cities have mayors who ride and who support cycling, Seattle has the ONLY bike-commuting mayor.

GoMeansGo dug up a funny video on cyclists’ rights from the mid-1990s (I’m guessing late spring 1997). (Thanks to Eric Stobin for the tip.)

Yes there is such a thing as an organic bike.

Is bicycling the new golf? I dunno … is Red Bull the new double martini?

One more reason why I’m buying a new set of Easton Haven carbon wheels no matter how much they cost!

We’ve been posting in Questionland on The Stranger, where the topic of the week is bikes.

Another Drunk Cyclist gives up the bottle on DrunkCyclist.com. Also see the profile on the transformation of Big Jonny in the June issue of Mountain Bike magazine as well (not online).

Thanks to Lance and Levi for donating their Tour of California bikes to a great cause.

Kudos as well to Trips for Kids, which pulled in $25,000 for its bike commute challenge.

Anthill Films’ new “Follow Me” DVD is finally out and available to the general public!

Plan your biking vacation elsewhere

So it pains us to call for cyclists to join a growing boycott of Arizona over the state’s misguided new immigration profiling law. In a nutshell, the law mandates police to pull over and ask ID of anyone who might look like they’re “illegal” (undocumented).

The law is anti-American, it’s as simple as that. It divides us as a people and as a nation. It smacks of Jim Crow in the old South, anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe and apartheid in South Africa. It’s about as backward, totalitarian and repressive as government gets.

We’ve started a Facebook page, “Cyclists Boycotting Arizona,” in protest. It seems the least cyclists can do as a subculture ourselves. Please join. You can also sign a petition. And as always, your comments are welcome.

Fat Cyclist continues to live the dream!

RC reviews the new Stan’s ZTR Crest wheelset and Raven tires… perceptive comments as always.

Bernie Hoffacker, founder of Palo Alto Bicycles and an industry icon, died December 5 at Stanford Hospital. Back in the day, Palo Alto Bicycles and Ric and Jon Hjertberg’s Wheelsmith a couple blocks away made Palo Alto one of the coolest places on earth. Palo Alto Bicycles had the classiest mail order catalog anywhere, helping to fuel the bike boom of the ’70s, and its posters of Tour legends and local wheel-building icon Jobst Brandt riding the Swiss Alps still hang in my basement.

It was during the Tour when PA Bikes became a real gathering place. You have to remember, there was no TV coverage or even mention of the Tour. Newspapers ran nothing, not even results.

So every afternoon we’d gather at Palo Alto Bicycles (or Wheelsmith) for results, usually posted on a small piece of paper tacked to a bulletin board or wall. And then we’d debate about who was going to win and fantasize what it would be like to be following the peloton through the mountains.

We never thought we’d get live coverage of the Tour each day, or be able to chatter on our keyboards via the Internet. We were happy just for the stage winners and Top 10 overalls. Thanks to Palo Alto Bicycles for feeding the mind, inspiring the soul and supplying the kit over the years. Twitter tributes here.

New editor at Momentum magazine. The redoubtable Amy Walker will step aside to focus on creative direction, while the former Web editor, Sarah Ripplinger, takes over the helm. Whatever the challenges of print publishing these days, Momentum’s a great group and has a good bead on bike culture. We wish them well for 2010.

How do you shoot at someone’s head, come an inch from murdering them, and walk away with just a 120-day sentence? As DrunkCyclist explains, you do it by making sure the person you’re shooting at is riding a bike. If I’m not mistaken, DC is studying the law, so his deconstruction makes for edifying reading.

And in other anti-cycling news, David Zabriskie makes it easy for cyclists to put in a bad word for the Los Angeles physician recently convicted of intentionally injuring cyclists by jamming his car to a stop in front of them. The physician reportedly is gathering lots of letters of commendation; let’s counter with letters of condemnation. “The District Attorney’s Office is collecting these statements in support of the cyclists,” Zabriskie’s “Yield to Life” site notes. “She plans to submit the letters with the motion at the end of next week so we encourage you to submit a letter to her in a timely fashion so that she can include it in her packet to the judge.” All you have to do is click.

Just 6 days away: The annual Fairfax CA Turkey Day ride, or “Appetite Seminar.” Last year there were hundreds of mountain bikers climbing all over the hills, and this year’s weather forecast looks smashing. Never to be missed. See you there!

Robb at Mountain Biking by 198 interviews the venerable, the humble, the august, the acclaimed Joe Breeze.