Pacific Northwest's free biking rags and politics of riding

Around Seattle you can pick up free copies of local bicycle publications. The BicyclePaper calls itself the "Northwest Cycling Authority Since 1972."

I picked up the August issue at my local car roof rack retailer. I'm far from being involved in race events, so I sometimes wonder if this newspaper has anything to say to me. It does. Tucked in among all the reports of people setting records in local velodrome events, and an interesting piece by a local physical therapist on whether a midfoot cleat position will give me more racing power and economy [would this have made pushing Sir Gulliver up some of those Breton hills any easier, I wonder?] is this one: "League of American Bicyclists 2010 State and Community Rankings" on page 6. Apparently I happen to live in the number one bicycle friendly state, followed by Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon. For the reports, go to LAB. There's a related one from Alliance for Biking and Walking 2010 Benchmarking Report that gives a shout-out to Idaho, along with the usual suspects WA and OR. What is it about rainy places?

This is a nice antidote to the reactionaries out there who think that people who ride bikes are the Anti-Christ. The LA Times recently carried a story about the 100-person town of Black Hawk, Colorado that has banned bikes from its narrow horse- and buggy-era streets, because they inconvenience the tourist buses dropping off weekend gamblers at the local casino. Hmm. I wonder how many of the town fathers have ever sat on a bike? But, those gotta protect the revenue stream to those one-armed bandits, right?

Here in Seattle we have a lot of noise without much light being shed on the city's plan to put 125th Street, another of our dangerous and congested roads on a "diet." The Seattle Department of Transportation has reduced and reconfigured lanes elsewhere in the city [Fauntleroy, Nickerson] to force speeders to slow down, stop terrorizing pedestrians, and open the roads to other users besides cars. The battle lines are being drawn, with the extremes dividing into the "get off your duff and ride a bike, you porkers" and "roads were built for cars, goddammit, so-you-bikers-git-the-heck-outta-my-way" camps. Read about it in The Seattle Times.

Unless asked, I don't think I'll be sharing my recent experiences riding in a first world country where nearly everyone, from cars to tractor-trailers actually slow down behind cyclists out on the open road.