Happy Friday, boys and girls. Stay tuned: I have photos of President Obama & his family riding bikes.

For most of this summer I’ve biked the 22 mile distance to San Jose from my office in Menlo Park. I usually Caltrain to work in the morning, but yesterday I planned to bike in. Unfortunately, I flatted just as I got to San Jose.

The bike cars on the 8:22 AM northbound train are always empty, so I figured I can maximize my time by hopping on the train and patching my tube on the train. I finished up before we passed Santa Clara, at which point a conductor approached and said, “In the future, don’t do your bike repairs here. This is a train, not a repair shop.”

Remember, this is an almost empty bike car, and there’s nothing in Caltrain’s bike rules about performing simple repairs. I haven’t purchased a Caltrain monthly pass since last May, but hey, Mr Conductor, if you don’t want my business, I’m glad to oblige.

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I first became aware and concerned about sprawl during the eight years I lived in a central Illinois farm town. Illinois, with 22 million acres of corn and soybeans under production, exports $13 billion worth of grain and beans annually, yet in recent years has annually converted 100 thousand acres to development.

It doesn’t take an agricultural specialist to realize farmland is a finite, non-renewable resource. Once you pave it over, it’s almost never returned to production. Now we see this happening in China.

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From Bicycle Colorado:

On Wednesday, August 18, three bicyclists that received tickets for riding their bikes in Black Hawk appeared in court for arraignment and pled not guilty based on an invalid ordinance. This initiates the legal process to determine the validity of the bike ban.

At the hearing, the defense attorneys moved to dismiss the charges and submitted a legal brief arguing that bike ban violates state law and is unconstitutional. Primary among the arguments are that the bike ban ordinance violates state law because it prohibits cycling on the access road connecting Black Hawk to other communities, and that it is unconstitutional because it treats Black Hawk citizens differently from visitors.

The judge ordered a comprehensive briefing schedule and set a hearing for oral argument on the matter for October 20 in Black Hawk.

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In April 2009, Ashleigh Jackson was hit by a silver BMW and seriously injured in a hit and run collision on Saratoga Los Gatos Road here in the Bay Area. One year later, police arrested Robert Schiro for the crime. Schiro at the time had a suspended license for previous DUI convictions, and it’s thought Schiro was driving drunk when he nearly killed Jackson. I’ve wondered since then how they caught the guy.

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While the people of planet Earth has mostly forgotten about the BP Gulf disaster and gone on with whatever it is we normally do, a small group of San Francisco radicals continue to keep the fire of indignation burning through direct action against a BP supplied gas station.

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We’ve all heard of the various schools that ban biking to school for supposed ‘safety’ reasons.

In Bellbrook, Ohio, the local high school banned student driving to the school after a student died in a car crash nearly 40 years ago.

Over the years, parents have lobbied to lift the ban. They finally got their wish for the 2010-11 school year.