Who needs to carry around a heavy lock when you can simply employ your canine companion to watch your ride for you?
Apparently, that’s exactly how the owner of the dog in this video feels. Turns out man’s best friend can also be man’s best bike lock.
Every Monday on Lane Love, we’ll be featuring bicycling news, stories and photos from around the world. Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our
A good time-lapse video may be just what you need to get over the mid-week hump. Or maybe it’s the collective 12,000 images of people riding their bikes compressed into just 1 minute and 50 seconds that will get your blood pumping. To us, this video is worth watching for the simple fact that it represents one simple act: people joyously cycling on a warm, beautiful day.
For a little more background on why we see people riding through the seemingly car-less streets of L.A. in this video, here’s the scoop. The above images were taken during a CicLAvia day on April 15th, 2012. CicLAvia is a temporary closure of streets in L.A. to cars, during which pedestrians and cyclists alike can take to the streets of their own accord. Inspired by a weekly street closure event that began in Botoga, Colombia (ciclovía), CicLAvia prides itself on being able to do the following (via the CicLAvia site):
Connecting communities and giving people a break from the stress of car traffic. The health benefits are immense. Ciclovías bring families outside of their homes to enjoy the streets, our largest public space. In Los Angeles we need CicLAvia more than ever. Our streets are congested with traffic, our air is polluted with toxic fumes, our children suffer from obesity and other health conditions caused by the scarcity of public space and safe, healthy transportation options. CicLAvia creates a temporary park for free, simply by removing cars from city streets. It creates a network of connections between our neighborhoods and businesses and parks with corridors filled with fun. We can’t wait to see you at CicLAvia!
What’s more, we hope to see more CicLAvia-like events pop up in more cities across the U.S. The more we encourage communities to leave their cars parked and hop on their bikes, the better.
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!
via Reveal the Path:
A visually stunning adventure by bike: Reveal the Path explores the world’s playgrounds in Europe’s snow capped mountains, Scotland’s lush valleys, Alaska’s rugged coastal beaches and Morocco’s high desert landscapes. Ride along and get lost in the wonders of the world… Enjoy the authentic locals living modest yet seemingly fulfilling lives, leading us to question what it means to live an inspired life – however humble or extravagant. Filmed across four continents and featuring Tour Divide race legends, Matthew Lee & Kurt Refsnider, this immersive film is sure to ignite the dream in you.
Now if this doesn’t make you want to explore the world by bike, I don’t know what will.
Bike Europe, Bikes Around the World, International, Travel, Video
Happy (belated) Earth Day! The day to celebrate was yesterday — but that doesn’t mean we can’t carry the festivities through this beautiful Monday. As a result, we bring you a photo we discovered through SFGate, The San Francisco Chronicle’s blog. In honor of Earth Day — and the ‘Mobilize Earth’ theme of this year’s day — the SF Chronicle dug into its archives and found some fantastic old bicycling images to share. This is just one of many images the newspaper chose to share (to check them all out, go here). We love the idea of digging into the old piles of images and finding ones that celebrate Earth and cycling. Do you have any old cycling photos that serve as inspiration or motivation? Share them with us! Post your image to our Facebook page or upload to our Flickr group and share the Lane Love!
PHOTO via: SFGate
Every Monday on Lane Love, we’ll be featuring bicycling news, stories and photos from around the world. Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our Facebook page or upload to our Flickr group and we might just feature it here on Lane Love.
At its Mountain View Campus in California, Google offers a veritable fleet of on-campus bikes for its employees to use in getting from one building to the next. The concept was pioneered in 2008, when it first introduced its beach cruiser-like GBikes. Last fall, Google began an employee-wide competition, asking its people to create a design for the new GBike that would have just four design critera, according to this CNET article:
“The bike had to be easy to produce. It needed to be affordable. The bike had to be both comfortable and secure. And, in a nod to its culture, the bike had to be Googley, using novel components, structure, and appearance.”
“We’ve got an entrepreneurial and innovative culture,” said Brendon Harrington, Google’s transportation operations manager. “We said, ‘You tell us what you think is a cool design.’”
Whether you are a full-on competitive racer or someone who just enjoys a weekend ride with the family the Sea Otter Classic is the place to be April 19th-22nd. Monterey, California will play host to the 22nd Annual bicycle extravaganza known as the Sea Otter. Competitive events include the full gamut of mountain biking; cross-country, dual slalom, downhill, and short track. Road racers need not feel left out, there is a circuit race, a road race and a criterium to fill out the weekend. A cyclocross race has even been added for 2012.
We’ve just discovered this book, I love My Bike, a photo essay of sorts that celebrates the inherent beauty of the bike. Here’s the full rundown via Chronicle Books:
I Love My Bike is a photographic celebration of the grand kinship of bicycles, a bond shared by millions of peoplearound the world. This distinctive and affordable coffee table book for cyclists collects the best of the stories, photographs, and bicycles encountered by the authors during numerous cross-country photo-journaling trips. Readers will meet longtime messengers and hardcore roadies, casual commuters and weekend day-trippers, tattoo artists and skateboarders, bike builders and first-time owners—all of them in love with their two-wheeled contraptions. With gorgeous full-color photos on every spread, I Love My Bike delivers the trifecta of awesome for any cyclist: cool people, cool photos, and really, really cool bikes.
Pick up your copy here and in bookstores as well, according to Momentum magazine. You can also check out the I Love My Bike Facebook page to view photos, then show us how much you love your bike. Post a photo of you and your two-wheeled steed on our Facebook page!
Every Monday on Lane Love, we’ll be featuring bicycling news, stories and photos from around the world. Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our Facebook page or upload to our Flickr group and we might just feature it here on Lane Love.
PHOTO: ew.webster via Capitol Hill Seattle
Ever felt inspired to do something artsy with your bike? You could add a small plant to its frame, or knit your own well-designed saddle bag or even get this, attach it, and call it your own kind of creativity. But if you want a real piece of frame art, you’d have to go to the pros, a group of Slovenian artists who are far more creative than any of us could ever hope to be.
This video showcases what the Orto Bike Project crew is capable of when it comes to painting, gluing, crocheting, stenciling and drawing onto bikes to make them utterly unique; watch and prepare to be amazed.
making of Orto Bikes from Multipraktik on Vimeo.
Thanks to Wend for posting this vid!
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!
Just one of the hundreds of creative teams in the New Belgium Urban Assault ride
Earlier this month, the New Belgium Urban Assault tour traveled through Charlotte, North Carolina — bringing with it hundreds of competitors. The Urban Assault Ride combines the best parts of a bike race, adventure race, obstacle course and a back yard party.
“From 2001 and 2009, the average annual number of vehicle-miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) decreased from 10,300 miles to 7,900 miles per capita — a drop of 23 percent.” This news comes via a report titled Why Young People Are Driving Less and What It Means for Transportation Policy recently released by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and The Frontier Group.
But the study didn’t just find that today’s young folk are driving less, it also found that they’re cycling more: “In 2009, 16 to 34-year-olds as a whole took 24 percent more bike trips than they took in 2001.”
The overall gist of the public interest study is that young people (Generation Y) are driving change when it comes to transportation. More specifically, states the study: “Young people are driving less for a host of reasons — higher gas prices, new licensing laws, improvements in technology that support alternative transportation, and changes in Generation Y’s values and preferences — all factors that are likely to have an impact for years to come.”
Active Lifestyle, Advocacy, Health, Lane Love, Pedaling Change
