Could this be the year a solo rider wins the B.C. Bike Race?

In the bicycle capital of America — Portland — there is a war going on over bicycle access.

Just the opposite in Issaquah, where everyone seems on board with becoming a mountain biking destination — more along the lines of Moab than Whistler.

Sun Peaks is open, and check this out: The trails are tacky.

We’ve all had bicycles worth fighting to keep, of course. But attempted murder? That would seem to be carrying things just a bit too far, wouldn’t you say?

It’s just a short blurb in the local paper. But you have to wonder what might have been going on in Hiromi Monro’s 41-year-old existence that led him to do a stunt drop off a loading dock without so much as a helmet on — causing him to die from blunt-force trauma (see comments queue as well).

The Colorado town of Black Hawk has banned bicycles for safety reasons. For some reason we think of Gandhi, and what he would do if he were a cyclist.

Police have returned a specially constructed bicycle to the autistic girl from whom it was stolen. For some reason we think of Carl Hiassen and the novel he would write (e.g., Strip Tease where the villain steals wheelchairs from the disabled).

If you’ve ever been chased by a bear on a bike and wondered how fast a bear can run, you know the age-old answer to that age-old question is itself a question: How fast can you ride?

Pump tracks are spreading all over.

When Team Spam and its irrepressible leader, Traveling Software’s ingenious Mark Eppley, did the famed Telluride-to-Moab hut-to-hut tour in 1996, Eppley hooked up his cell phone recharger to his rear wheel generator and by God it worked. For awhile anyway. Most of the time we couldn’t get a signal. Nothing stopped our gang from reporting updates on the fly though.

Nearly 15 years later, Nokia makes it all just another day not at the office.

Mayor of Los Angeles says video of bicyclists getting knocked around by LA cops is “disturbing.” No, a 16-year-old girl trying to sail around the world is disturbing. Carly Fiorina’s inability to tell when a microphone is on or off is disturbing. The fact that Haagen Dazs no longer offers Swiss Almond Chocolate ice cream is disturbing.

Cops beating up cyclists is indefensible. It’s unpardonable. It’s unlawful. It’s cause for termination from the force.