On October 4, Adventure Cycling announced the receipt of four new grants totaling $100,000 to support its efforts to create the U.S. Bicycle Route System (USBRS).The grants came from a number of prominent foundations and a leading cycling business: $45,000 from the Tawani Foundation; $30,000 from the SRAM Cycling Fund; $15,000 from the Surdna Foundation; and $10,000 from the Lazar Foundation. The grants from Tawani, Surdna, and Lazar focus on the U.S. Bicycle Route System. The grant from SRAM will support Adventure Cycling’s work on the USBRS, as well as its efforts to help understand and organize the bike-travel industry. Read more.

Louisiana progress is clicking along with the help of the Baton Rouge Advocates for Safe Streets. Resolutions of Support for USBR 90 are steadily being passed by parish governments. Check out their website devoted to the project.

To stay up-to-date on the USBRS, follow the conversation on Facebook or Twitter,@usbicycleroutes.

New to the U.S. Bicycle Route System? Read our U.S. Bicycle Route System 101 blog post to get the basics and follow our weekly blog posts on Building the U.S. Bicycle Route System to stay up-to-date on USBRS developments.

Don’t forget, the USBRS is on Twitter and Facebook — show your support, follow our tweets and become a fan!

Photo via: Adventure Cycling Association

Active Lifestyle, Advocacy, Osprey Life Adventure Cycling Association, Bike Routes, SRAM, U.S. Bicycle Route System

Time’s Up! announces a new campaign called Love Your Lane, and all are invited to take part! The Love Your Lane™ campaign is designed to inspire community support for the positive new cycling infrastructure sprouting up all around New York City.    Help us promote respect and utilization of the exciting new green infrastructure and bicycling lanes created by the NYC Department of Transportation.

Join the lovefest and get this campaign off to a rousing start, here is what we are doing on 2/11/2011, on Valentine’s Day weekend, the Love Your Lane Bike Ride and After-Party at the Living Theater in the East Village.

Goals of the Love Your Lane Campaign:

• Create a positive buzz about the new bike lanes and green infrastructure.

• Promote usage of the new infrastructure – If we don’t use it, we lose it.

• Work with DOT to promote the smooth acceptance of their designs in all different communities.

• Bring the cycling, skating and walking community together as a unified voice for safe streets.

• Encourage all to share the road with love.

Active Lifestyle, Advocacy, Health, Lane Love, Pedaling Change NYC, Time's Up

If you build it, they will come… in the case of bicyclists, this just might be the case. Check out this chart that Reuters posted last month:

This is a chart of the number of bike commuters in New York. It’s known as the NYC Commuter Cycling Indicator, and it comes from surveys taken ten times per year at predetermined points around the city. It doesn’t give a good count of the number of bike commuters in New York, but it gives an excellent idea of the trends: bike commuting has essentially quadrupled in the past decade, and has doubled over the past four years. Which just happen to be the four years during which Janette Sadik-Khan has run the Department of Transportation.

This is important because it shows just how effective strong leadership can be, when combined with a dedication to creating good infrastructure…

The lesson of this chart, then, is that if you build bike lanes, cyclists will appear to fill them. That’s fantastic news, since cities with lots of cyclists are always the most pleasant cities to live and work in — even for people who don’t bike themselves.

Read more…

Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our Facebook page, shoot us an email at blog[at]ospreypacks[dot]com or upload to our Flickr group and we might just feature it here on our weekly photo feature, Lane Love.

PHOTO via

Active Lifestyle, Advocacy, Lane Love, Pedaling Change, The Cycling Buzz bike lanes, infrastructure, NYC, transportation

We all know it can be difficult to hop on your bike when the weather takes a turn. Rain, snow and icy roads can sometimes deter even the most hardcore riders amongst us. That’s why it’s good to have a few friends to hold you to it… enter the Winter B-icicle Challenge…

As winter settles in across all Northern Hemisphere nations, and the cold wind blows, it’s tempting to put your bike away for hibernation. But as of December 1, we’re asking you to keep on pedalling through all three winter months.

Why are we doing it?

• To see if we can put our money where our mouth is in regards to living a greener life, and not just when weather permits

• A good time to reflect about those people without homes during winter

• We love riding our bikes and don’t want to go three months without it

• We hate traffic jams!

Rules. We will ride to work or school everyday unless:

• The road is so icy we’ll most probably break our necks (read here for alternatives)

• We have a meeting or activity that is more than an hour bike ride away

• We’re so sick with the flu we can’t even be bothered to watch The Wire

What we want from you.

Join us! If you’re heading into the depths of winter.

Learn more here and sign up on Facebook here.

Active Lifestyle, Advocacy, Bikes Around the World, Ditch Your Car, International bike commuting, challenge, winter biking

We all know that it’s better for us and the environment if we hop on our bikes to commute, especially the short trips we have every day, but it’s always awesome to have some solid numbers on our side too. Check it out…

Read more…

Active Lifestyle, Advocacy, Bike Europe, Ditch Your Car, Health, International, Pedaling Change bike commuting, co2 emissions, Denmark

We love all of the bicycle-inspired infographics popping up these days. This one makes it pretty clear: you’re going to save a lot of money and maybe your life by riding your bike to work. A few choice bits we pulled out…

• 20 bikes can be parked in the same space as 1 car
• Bikes are 50% faster than cars during rush hour
• Adding 30 minutes of daily cycling saves us $544 in medical costs annually
• The average person loses 13 pounds in their first year of riding

Definitely makes us feel good about hopping on our bikes everyday.

Created by: Healthcare Management Degree

Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!

Active Lifestyle, Advocacy bike commuting, biking to work, economy, health, infographic

What are we most thankful for when we hop on our bike each morning? We’re thankful for our healthy mind and body that makes it possible to pedal every day. We’re thankful that we ride through the sun and the rain and the snow all year long — living and breathing through each and every season. We’re thankful for the freedom that we feel when we’re riding our bikes — having the fresh air whip by our faces and turn our cheeks pink — that’s a pretty wonderful feeling.

We could go on and on about how grateful we are to be on our bikes and for this bicycle movement as a whole, but here’s a word from blogger and bike advocate Elly Blue over via Grist.org:

In last [month]‘s New York Times, columnist Mark Bittman compiled a list of people and things in the food movement he’s thankful for. The bicycle movement deserves its own list. Here’s a start:

1. I’m thankful for the power of bikes to enable people-powered protest movements. Bicycles have been playing a supporting role in the Occupy movement, and seem to be bringing out the best in everyone, whether used byprotesters or police.
2. Free bicycles are on the rise, thanks to an international network of bike collectives. Chances are there’s one near you — find out onthis list — where you can build yourself a bike and learn to do your own repairs. Or, to see an economic multiplier at work, donate money, parts, or time to a bike collective that provides free bicycles to teens or adults with low incomes.
3. Hooray for fenders! Riding through a light drizzle is a secret pleasure of mine, and if I had to choose between a raincoat and fenders, I’d choose fenders every time. After all, the rain is far cleaner coming down than it is when it’s tossed back up by your tires.
4. I love the energy of small cities with big visions. As the giants like New York and Seattle wrangle over relatively small amounts of bike infrastructure, people in smaller cities around the country, from Oklahoma City to Newton, Mass., are seeing the appeal of bicycle transportation — and can have a much quicker road to revising their infrastructure and habits.
5. There is a 325-mile continuous paved trail on which you can bike, hike, or ski between Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh. It’s called the Great Allegheny Passage. How cool is that?
6. Let’s hear it for sharrows and bike lanes. Cycling advocates argue fiercely about what kind of bike infrastructure is most effective, but the truth is that every time any kind of bike markings go down it’s a giant, sometimes bright green billboard reminding all of us that bicycles belong on the road.

What are you most thankful about in the bicycle movement?

PHOTO via

Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!

Advocacy, Ditch Your Car grist.org

Two years ago, Shannon Galpin became the first woman to mountain bike in Afghanistan, a country where women are no longer allowed to ride bikes. In 2010, she rode across the Panjshir Valley, a 2-day journey of more than 150 km that tested the perception of women riding bikes, while highlighting the beauty and potential for adventure in this remote area of the world.

On October 8, riders across the US used their bikes as vehicles for social change by participating in the Panjshir Tour — showing their support and raising funds to fuel Mountain 2 Mountain‘s programs in Afghanistan. Well, now it’s time to celebrate.

If you’re anywhere near Denver, don’t miss the finale ride tomorrow at Bear Creek Lake. Show up wat 10a.m. on Saturday, October 15, to empower women and children in Afghanistan. Look forward to delicious refreshments from New Belgium Brewing beer, and Oogave – The original agave soda, sweet gear from from Osprey Packs, a wheel set from Stans NoTubes, and gorgeous red frame from Niner Bikes. All up for grabs and in support of Mountain 2 Mountain.

Shannon wrote on the prAna blog:

It was my goal to challenge perceptions and invite conversation on both sides of the equation. Challenging the stereotypes of women and Americans in Afghanistan, while challenging parallel stereotypes of Afghans as a people and as a nation in the United States. Bridging cultures and communities on two wheels… by coming together with our bikes, we can fight for justice, we can battle for change, and we can do it one pedal stroke at a time.

Advocacy, Bikes Around the World, Events, Pedaling Change human rights, international, mountain 2 mountain, shannon galpin

Earlier this week, General Motors launched a new ad campaign on urban college campuses to encourage students to “Stop Pedaling… Start Driving.” But after running this ad in student newspapers across the US, GM is getting an earful, and it didn’t take long for remakes to start popping up.

Here’s on from Giant Bicycles…

And another one from Kieran O’Neill from the AMS Bike Co-op in Vancouver, BC…

What do you think about the ads?

Active Lifestyle, Advocacy, Ditch Your Car advertising, bike advocacy, general motors

Photo courtesy 88Bikes

This summer, Osprey participated in 88Bikes’ Village project in our own backyard of Navajo Nation. The project focuses on small rural locations where bikes can have a major impact. We have long supported the incredible work of 88Bikes because we believe that bikes really can change the world.

To continue our support of 88Bikes, we will be selling our new Zealot 1o packs at Interbike next week. Packs are $35 with 100% of the proceeds going straight to getting more kids on bikes. If you’ll be at Interbike, please swing by the booth and pick up a pack and support 88Bikes!

Learn more about 88Bikes and how you can help, here.

Advocacy, Events, Non-profits 88bikes, human rights, product promotion