Over the next couple of weeks, you’ll occasionally see a new byline here – mine.  I’m Mark Blacknell, and with Richard’s assistance (and the Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s support), I’m off to Taiwan to check out its road cycling.  This will be something like the trip that Richard took last year, but since I bring a fresh pair of eyes (and legs), I hope you’ll find my take on cycling in Taiwan worth your time.  Hit the jump for links to my first few of posts on the trip, and a little bit about me.

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“Va fa Napoli” means something like “Go to Bakersfield,” if you take Bakersfield as a metaphor for hell.

From Blue Barn Pictures. The film was shot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (where else — it’s the hipster capital of the world) in one day with a Canon 5D.

The UK Carbon Trust — a green non-profit working to “to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy” — discourages cycling on company business because cycling is too dangerous. They also don’t reimburse employees for Boris bike rentals because “the company cannot assess the quality or safety of any Boris bike and it is impractical for it to undertake risk assessments for each individual journey and to provide training and equipment.”

Sir Chris Hoy and Kelly Brook demonstrate exactly how cycling is dangerous in the below photo: They’re both riding without helmets, without high visibility gear or lighting, and their riding the bike in a way that’s clearly not supported by the design of this bike. Don’t ride like this: they are professional stunt bike riders.

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Elly Blue’s article on safety in numbers is making the rounds in the cycling blogosphere / Twittersphere / Facebook-o-sphere, and it’s worth repeating: safety for cyclists seems to improve when there are more of us on the road.

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Red mud is a highly caustic byproduct of aluminum production and is the sludge that inundated several towns in Hungary when a storage pond failed. Though researchers have experimented with alternate uses of this waste product and efforts are made at reclamation, land that is dedicated to red mud storage is typically lost forever to building or agricultural production.

Below are some view of red mud storage depots around the world as seen on Google Maps. These are all adjacent to bauxite / alumina refinery operations. These red mud storage ponds are common to any facility that processes bauxite aluminum ore into alumina. You’ll see many bauxite refineries are located adjacent to rivers or coasts. Before the 70s, aluminum producers around the world commonly dumped toxic red mud directly into oceans and rivers. The ponds came later when governments forced them to stop damaging the environment.

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Police in Suffolk County, New York say three people — two in gorilla suits and the third in a chicken suit — assaulted a bike riding teen on Long Island Monday afternoon. The two gorillas punched the kid in the face, knocking him off of his bike. The chicken grabbed the bike and rode off while the gorillas ran.

North Shore Sun: NY bike bandits wore gorilla, chicken suits.