What do you do when you have 7 kids, lose your house, and lose your job? Most people would not be thinking about a bike ride. But Bill and Gloria Fox are not just anybody. Instead of letting their circumstances get them down, they gathered up their family and set out on a bike ride across the country from their hometown of Monterey, CA to Portland, Maine.
From their blog:
Bill and Gloria Fox and their seven children, aged 5 through 18, are embarking on an epic bicycle tour across the U.S., from Monterey, California to Portland, Maine this June. They are leaving their home, jobs, schools, and hectic lifestyle to experience together God’s grace and provision as they journey across the U.S. by bicycle.
They’re currently 90 days into their adventure, somewhere near Salem, Indiana. Drop by their blog to follow their story and offer a little encouragement.
I just discovered Bicyclog: Found, Used and Interesting. The site has only been active since July of this year, but Yanek (the site owner) is already doing a good job of giving us a feel for bike culture in Tel Aviv. His “found” bikes include a Tino Sana wooden bicycle (pictured above), an old Raleigh, a Gazelle, a Mercedes bike, an Indian Rickshaw, and a number of other unusual bikes. I’m looking forward to watching the site grow.
Peter Mulvey’s hitting the road on his RANS Stratus for another car-free concert tour:
From September 10-20, Milwaukee singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey will again take to his bike for a concert tour around Southeast Wisconsin. This year’s No Gasoline Tour ’08 will follow a route similar to his September 2007 tour [see video], with a victory lap planned for early October in the Netherlands (he will not be biking to the Netherlands, just around them).
Peter has calculated that by biking, rather than driving, the roughly 535 miles to the seven shows on this Wisconsin tour – with mileage ranging from 35 to 95 biked miles a day – he will save .15 metric tons of CO2. While that might not sound like much, take a closer look: a typical seven-show tour for Peter involves driving close to 3,000 miles, and/or an airplane flight, all of which ultimately emit roughly one full metric ton of CO2. Peter typically does 15 or 20 of those tours a year. So on this tour, he’s saving .15 metric tons vs. emitting one ton, so let’s go for broke and say he’s actually saving 1.15 tons by leaving the car at home.Â
Add to that the emission savings banked by the performers who will be opening Peter’s shows: Brianna Lane (Sept. 10-13 shows) and Antje Duvekot are (Sept. 18-20 shows) will also be biking alongside Peter on their show days. Peter will have other friends joining him on rides along this tour and his final day’s ride from Fort Atkinson to Milwaukee will be larger and organized to raise money for the Urban Ecology Center.
The tour is sponsored by Wheel & Sprocket, who have set Peter up with a Rans recumbent bicycle and custom aluminum guitar-carrying rack (courtesy of W&S mechanic Bob Jung). That means no extra trailer to pull this year.
Two of my favorite cycling blogs are Bike Hugger and Cyclelicious. Both are staples of my daily blog fix and sit at the top of my RSS bike feeds. So you can only imagine my surprise and excitement at finding EcoVelo on Bike Hugger’s Top-Ten Bike Blog List (assembled for Blogs.com). As if that wasn’t enough, Cyclelicious gave EcoVelo a big shout out today. I’m feeling all warm-and-fuzzy with all this blog love going around…
Dick Brooks of ActionMedia sent me a wonderful set of photos from the streets of Bangalore, India.
I went out today a grabbed a few shots of bikes at work in India that you may like. It’s amazing how many of the Atlas rod brake bikes there are. Old, new, tons and tones of them. A brand new one goes for 3200 ruppees ($80). Some geared bikes are around too, but this is a very flat area, no need for gears. Note in many cases the bike is being used to hang cargo and is pushed, not always ridden… however when all the fruit and coconuts are sold it is ridden back home.
I’ve been a fan of David Byrne’s going all the way back to his work with Brian Eno and the Talking Heads. What many people don’t know is that he’s a long time bike rider and advocate for cycling. Recently he’s been asked to judge a bike rack design contest in New York City. Being the creative fellow that he is, he couldn’t help but join in and design a few himself. Watch the video to see what he came up with.
When I was a kid, the best thing about Cracker Jacks was the anticipation of finding the “Toy Surprise Inside”. I loved digging down in the box and ripping open the little envelope that contained the prize. Of course, the prize itself was usually a disappointment, but it never kept me from wanting another box when we went to the ball diamond the following weekend.
Panda Portraits are a little like Cracker Jacks. If you’re not familiar with Panda Portraits, they’re self portraits taken while riding a bike. Taking a Panda Portrait is pretty simple. If you have a camera that allows you to manually set the shutter speed, set it to around 1/25-1/30 of a second so the background blurs, then while you’re riding along, take a large number of shots of yourself and/or the bike from different angles. Of course, because you’re holding the camera away from you, it’s impossible to know what you’re capturing. That’s where the “Toy Surprise Inside” idea comes in. The anticipation of whether you’ve captured any good photos is like that old feeling of digging through a box of Cracker Jacks. Typically, most of the photos are completely blurred or framed poorly or show some other defect, but once in a while everything comes together and a real gem pops out. With some practice you eventually figure out what works and your keeper-to-reject ratio improves.
One of our friends from the blogosphere seems to be under the impression that we’ve given up on recumbents altogether, but nothing could be further from the truth. To prove it, here’s a photo of our Screamer tandem, our #1 touring and country-road-cruising ride. It’s still the greatest vehicle ever made for bringing out the best in a relationship (or the worst, depending upon who you talk to… LOL). It’s not much of a city bike, but we’re saving it for the day we’re able to take a tour up the coast or do some island hopping in the San Juans. In the meantime, we dust it off now-and-again and take a cruise just to make sure we haven’t forgotten how to ride it. It’s a wonderful machine.
I get a kick out of looking through Flickr group pools. For the uninitiated, Flickr is a free photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo! A Flickr group pool is a collection of photos on a particular subject (or in a particular photographic style) submitted by members of the group. A few of my current favorites include the Panda Portraits group pool, the I Carried This On My Bicycle group pool, the Dutch Bikes group pool, the Bicycle Commuter group pool, and the Ladies & Gents Roadsters group pool. If you hadn’t noticed, down toward the bottom of my blogroll in the right-hand column there’s a “Photostreams” section with links to a number of bike-related group pools. Check it out!
Aw, what the heck; here’s one more Guv’nor photo for you, this one from Loring Kohrt, the distributor for Pashley Cycles in the U.S. The bike belongs to Adrian Williams, the Director of Pashley Cycles. He rides it from Bath to Stratford-on-Avon everyday. He is at least 6′ 6″ tall.
Share This Post | 
2 Comments » | Posted in Fun & Games, The Kitchen Sink
