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!

I watch the Tour on Versus, follow results on Velo News and listen via Twitter. Hey there’s nothing like being fully plugged in while you wait 3 hours for something interesting to happen. Today (Stage 7) I was disappointed at the lack of attacks. It seemed like everyone was just out for a country ride, courtesy of their paid team of guides called Astana. Beautiful scenery, I must say.

But this was the first mountain stage, with two more on the way. Tomorrow could extract a higher toll as recovery time starts to be a factor. Although Alberto Contador looked like he could climb for hours, tomorrow is always another day. I wish I could say may the best rider win, but I fear doping is still a problem and still games the results. Doping is key to recovery turnaround, of course, so maybe if we see some attrition in the back-to-back-to-back mountain stages, we’ll know the peloton is finally cleaning up its act.

Biking Bis: Rain forecast for the second day of the 200-mile Seattle-to-Portland classic. I did this ride a number of times back in the day (in this case, the 1980s) and can remember getting drizzled on. But the ride later moved to mid-July to virtually guarantee sunny, warm, dry weather. I mean, normally it’s a lock.

But this spring/early summer has been different. After a ruinous first half of May, which dumped twice the month’s average rainfall in a matter of two weeks, Seattle had nothing but dry and mostly sunny weather through June. As any grizzled Northwesterner knows, you eventually have to pay up for a run of good weather. Looks like this weekend could be an intro to the Great Reckoning, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed for otherwise.

PinkBike: Hornby Island. Hornby’s a classic XC place with rollicking, swoopy trails. A bit of a challenge with all the ferries, but worth it in the banana belt of the Gulf Islands.