In case you hadn’t noticed, there are now two people posting to this blog. My friend and fellow blogger Perry Bessas is now a regular contributor to EcoVelo; you can read some of his prior contributions here, and read his most recent article directly below this one. Going forward, please take a look at the “posted by” credit at the bottom of each post to know who’s talking.

I’ll be adding Perry’s bio to the “About” page soon. We’re excited he’s on board!

I recently switched the EcoVelo theme from a two-column to a three-column layout. If you’re a regular visitor, you may need to refresh your browser to reload the new files. Thanks —Alan

In late July the EcoVelo Bicycle Gallery only contained around around 15 bikes. Since it was a little slow-going to start, I set-up a raffle to help jump-start the submissions:

The response was far better than I could’ve hoped for, and 6 weeks later I’m happy to report we’re at 109 entries. The first few people whose names were drawn were already good in the pedal department, but I did eventually find three eager recipients. So without further ado, the winners are… Jim, Tim, and Dartanyon.

• Jim submitted his Barcroft Virginia and Klein Pinnacle
• Tim submitted his Motobecane
• Dartanyon submitted his Centurion Elite GT

Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to everyone who participated. Let’s keep it going and grow the Gallery into something even bigger and better! —Alan

The EcoVelo Bicycle Gallery is a community project comprised of photos of transportational/utility bikes submitted by readers from all over the world. Any bike used for day-to-day transportation is welcome. It doesn’t matter what kind of bike it is and it doesn’t have to be “fancy”; what matters is that it’s regularly used in place of a car for some practical purpose. If you’d like to be a part of this project, please visit the Submission Guidelines page to submit your bike(s).

We did it. With your help, the EcoVelo Gallery now contains 100 bikes. I must say, I’m pleased and impressed with the level of participation. In a little over a month we went from 17 to 100 bikes in the Gallery. And I’m downright ecstatic about the tremendous variety of bikes that were sent in; what an eclectic mix! I find it endlessly fascinating to see how people are using their bikes to meet their transportation needs.

Many, many thanks to all those who have submitted a bike so far. Let’s keep right on going and build this out into something even bigger and better. I’m estimating that I have well over 2500-3000 regular readers at this point; I’m not going to rest until we have at least one bike in the Gallery for every person that visits the site!

Now, on to business. I’ll be drawing the names for the pedal giveaway within the next few days. Once I’ve drawn the first batch of names, I’ll contact the winners to make sure they want the pedals. If they do, I’ll ship the pedals right away. If, by chance, someone doesn’t need the pedals, I’ll draw another name from the hat. I’m still running a few days behind on posting Gallery submissions; if you’ve already sent in photos, no worries—your name will be included in the drawing.

The EcoVelo Forums are a place to discuss transportational cycling in an open format, outside the confines of the blog comment system. Feel free to dive right in and initiate a conversation!

Visit the EcoVelo Forums →

We’re almost there; as of today we have 91 bicycles in the EcoVelo Gallery. If you haven’t submitted a bike yet, this is your last chance to get in on the giveaway.

I appreciate everyone’s participation, but let’s not stop at 100. Hopefully we can keep it going and growing and continue to build on what is already the largest and most eclectic collection of transportational bikes on the web!

For those of you who are subscribed via e-mail, I apologize for the flurry of notifications recently; I’ve been very busy updating the gallery. I’m sure it’s getting pretty annoying by now, so instead of continuing to drive you all crazy with multiple notifications each day, I’m switching to a “digest” notification that will be sent once a day, regardless of how many updates I make to the blog. Our in boxes are already choked with enough junk without me adding to the problem.

Thanks and sorry for the overwhelming number of notifications the past few days—
Alan

The EcoVelo Gallery is a community project comprised of photos of transportational/utility bikes* submitted by readers from all over the world. To show my appreciation and encourage submissions, I’m currently running a little raffle. Here’s the deal: I have 3 pairs of lightly used Speedplay Frog SS pedals that I’m raffling off to 3 lucky winners. All you have to do is send me 4-6 photos of your bike, accompanied by a brief description of how you use it, and your name will be thrown into the hat for the drawing. If you have more than one bike you use for transportation, feel free to submit multiple (separate) entries - I’ll enter a ticket for each bike you submit. When we reach 100 gallery entries I’ll draw three names and ship the pedals to the winners. The sooner we fill the gallery, the sooner I pick the winners, so spread this around and tell your fellow bike commuters. Let’s build a gallery!

>>Visit the Bike Gallery Submission Guidelines page to submit your entry.

*A “tranportational/utility” bike is any bike used for commuting, running errands, etc. It doesn’t matter what kind of bike it is and it doesn’t have to be “fancy”; what matters is that it’s regularly used in place of a car for some practical purpose.

As expected, due to the change in focus from the Recumbent Blog to EcoVelo, there’s been a flurry of both new subscriptions and unsubscriptions on my e-mail notification list. A number of people have sent me e-mails asking to be removed from the list, but this isn’t necessary. If you’d like to unsubscribe, please go to the “Subscribe via -E-mail” page (click here), enter your e-mail address, check the “unsubscribe” button, and click “send”. If you’d like to be added to the e-mail notification list, follow the directions above, but check “subscribe” instead of “unsubscribe”.

Thanks.

I’ve created a “Commute Stories” category to house readers’ stories from the road. I’m a big believer in sharing knowledge and I know we have a lot to learn from one another, so if you’re willing to share your bike commuting story, I’d love to post it here on EcoVelo. Just send your write-up in the body of an e-mail to alan@barnardesign.com, and if you have an accompanying photo, please attach it to the same. Thanks!

With the generous assistance of my readers, we built up a really cool bicycle gallery at my old site, the Recumbent Blog. Over a period of about two years, somewhere around 90 people sent me many megabytes worth of interesting photos of their bikes, with accompanying technical details, and I placed everything in a consistent format for easy viewing. I was amazed at the quality and variety of the submissions, and it’s still one of the nicest collections of recumbent photos around (if I should say so myself ;-) ). If you haven’t seen it before, you can view the Recumbent Blog Gallery by clicking here.

My intention is to create a similar gallery here at EcoVelo, but this time with a focus on bikes used for transportation. All types of bikes are on the table, so long as they’re being used in a utilitarian manner. I’ve already posted my own bikes to the EcoVelo Gallery to get the ball rolling. Please read my submission guidelines before sending your photos, and don’t hesitate to drop me a note if you have technical questions regarding file formats, etc. Let’s build this together! —Alan

PS - If one of your bikes is already included in the Recumbent Blog Gallery, and that bike is being used for transportation, please let me know and I’ll re-post it here in the EcoVelo Gallery - there’s no need to send the same photos again.