This time of year, the headquarters of the Community Cycling Center on NE Alberta street is like Santa’s workshop; complete with elves, toys for the kids, and a magical sense of anticipation for the Big Day.
A group of Portland transportation activists are putting together a bid to try and persuade the World Carfree Network — the “hub of the global carfree movement” — that Portland would be an ideal place for their yearly conference, Towards Carfree Cities.
A UK-based website called thewashingmachinepost has published a nice interview with Ira Ryan.
Ira is an up-and-coming local bike builder and former messenger who recently launched Ira Ryan Cycles, located in the basement of Weir’s Cyclery in North Portland.
Check out the interview.
If you can’t get enough of Ira, check out his blog or peruse my Ira Ryan photo archives (don’t miss this one of him feeling the love from fellow builder and friend Sacha White.
Who will ever forget this guy? Not me. After my post a few weeks ago, I was amazed at how many people remembered seeing him. Readers chimed in from all over the country to say how impressed they were with the moxie and ingenuity behind this man and machine.
Flexcars are everywhere in Portland. So are bikes. So why not have Flexbikes?
I’m not talking about a snazzy, European style bike-rental program (like the one being discussed by Commissioner Sam’s office), I’m talking about pedal-powered vehicles that you’d rent when your regular, everyday bike just won’t cut it.
Portland cyclist and journalist David Rowe — the man behind the Ready to Ride website — might have found the perfect “bike” for this application.
The Castelli name may not be as well-known as legendary bike racing heroes like Fausto Coppi or Gino Bartali, but their histories are forever intertwined. Back in the 1940s, Armando Castelli stitched clothing for both men.
When Coppi demanded something different — something that would give him the edge over Bartali in the Alps — Castelli suggested a change in jersey fabric from traditional heavy wool to lightweight silk.
With the new creation on his back, Coppi rode to victory in the 1949 Tour de France.
Castelli would go on to many other innovations (including the first lycra shorts) and be the clothier of choice for a who’s-who of bike racing legends that included Jaques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, and Eddy Merckx.
My Perceptions of enforcement post last week spurred some interesting discussion. Curious about how the perception of my readers differed from the reality of statistics, I asked for people to guess how many tickets were written to bicyclists last month.
Of the 74 comments the average guess was around 60.
As promised, here are the official October stats from the Traffic Division of the Police Bureau:
BikeCraft II is shaping up nicely. I’ve just finished the event flyer (see below) and so far there are 15 confirmed vendors!
One of them is Elias Grey. He moved to Southeast Portland less than a year ago and he makes messenger bags under the name Lemolo Bags. He’s just getting his business off the ground so he’s excited to share his creations with us.
I just hope he brings a lot of them, I think they’ll be very popular.
I’ve now transferred this site over to a new host and server.
The main site seems to be working fine, but there’s a major problem with the Forums and for some reason my event listings are not displaying properly. *Fixed them!
The site also seems a bit slow.
I am working on all of these issues and should have them resolved soon. Thanks for your patience.
I can’t wait to just focus on content and put all this tech stuff behind me!
Starting today, Police officers in Missoula Montana will give away a free set of bike lights to cyclists stopped for not having them.
Sound familiar? It should. The program takes a page out of a similar program by the Portland Police Bureau that began over a year ago.