Day: September 3, 2010

Bikes. Worse than Heroin.

I posted before about a proposed new multiuse path through Santa Cruz’s Pogonip park. The city parks department held a meeting about this plan Wednesday night.

The gist of it: There’s a serious problem with heroin use along the eastern edge of Pogonip. The proposed trail for hikers, bikers and equestrians will bring more people into this area. The druggies will go away. The Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz have offered to pay for trail construction. Everybody is happy.

Except for the local chapter of the Sierra Club, because bikes are evil. (more…)

Eurobike 2010 wrapup

Eurobike is the big international bike trade show that takes place every year in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. The show is naturally Eurocentric, but you’ll see product announcements and other news that will filter to the American hemisphere later this month at Interbike.

An estimated 35,000 people will visit the 1,100 exhibitors by the time the show wraps up this weekend.

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Safety & helmets in Australia

Maybe this is a good reason to wear a bike helmet. From Tom Vanderbilt, who’s visiting Australia.

About that magpie. It turns out they can be rather fierce enemies of those on bikes, swooping down from trees to land on their helmets and peck at their ears. As a countermeasure, riders will strap plastic twist-tie-like things to their helmets, virtually sprouting of their heads like gangly antennae. It was a bit unnerving to find a couple of these fellows coming toward me, the shock troops of some alien two-wheeled race. I’m not sure if this sort of thing happens elsewhere, but it was the first I had seen in such active preparation for avian attack

Here’s another video where a magpie attacks a little girl on a bike.