Why did the geese cross the road? Because they were following the bike, naturally.

We couldn’t help but share this adorable photo and equally aww-inducing story, which we found via Grist. It goes something like this: A large flock of misplaced geese were struggling to cross the road, “getting closer and closer to being hit by cars,” according to the person who took the photo above. At this point, a man on his bike came to the rescue, and led the gaggle of geese safely across the road. The geese, lured by a bag of bread that allegedly hung from the handlebars of the man’s bike, followed their mother bike to where they wanted to be, without a single casualty.

Yet another tale of the pure goodness of bikes.

Lane Love, Pedaling Change, Photos bikes, flock, geese, goodness, Grist

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.’”

Read more…

Active Lifestyle, Ditch Your Car bikes, ditch your car, GBikes, Google, ride

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

Active Lifestyle, Adventure, Lane Love, Photos bikes, books, I Love My Bike, photo-journaling, travel

Jason Remple looking out over Kootenay Lake

There is a certain comfort with the trappings of home. The familiar nooks and crannies of a house that one has grown up in, the hiding places, the comfort that is bred through this familiarity. The trails I grew up on evoke similar feelings. My travels take me all over the world, but my roots run deep into the dark forest loam of the Kootenays, my first home. I recently visited my hometown of Nelson for a few days, and managed to get out for a few mountain bike rides.

More than just the trails themselves, the feeling of re-immersing myself in an environment that nurtured me from a young age was a comfort in itself. The stoic and silent mountains that I grew up in seemed to welcome me as I climbed up the logging road towards the first Kootenay trail of my return. Even the scents of the forest seemed familiar, reminding me of my youthful adventures on the very same mountain.

Read more…

Adventure, Osprey Athletes bikes, hydration packs, joe schwartz, kootenays, mountain bike, mountain biking, Raptor, regular joe

As you may have heard, here at Osprey we love bikes. We love to ride them, we love to talk about them, and we love to build packs that facilitate a two-wheeled lifestyle. Which is why we thought it only fitting to launch our very own bike blog.

We’re here to make sure you’re inspired to live the two-wheeled lifestyle, be that on your commute, bombing down a mountain, touring the backroads of the West or simply just out for an afternoon jaunt.

We’ll have guest blogger posts, regular contests, cool bike stats, profiles on non-profits and daily bits of cycling inspiration.

See something that should be on here? Drop us a line. Use #ospreybike on Twitter, holler on Facebook or shoot us an email at blog[at]ospreypacks[dot]com.

Enjoy!

Osprey Life bike, bikes, blog, Osprey Bike