New cars, new distractions

From Maureen Dowd in the NY Times: Have you driven a smartphone lately?

NYC bike commuting...and all bike commuting

Here's an Outside Magazine piece by the author of Traffic. He interviews bike commuters and activists and rides with a guy with on his epic commute. Super well done, evenhanded writing. Thanks, Donald!

1880s cycling culture - on the Rivendell site

Check this out today or soon, please. The square you see top-center on the Rivendell home page is given to a series of paragraph-long comments on cycling life in the 1880s, a time that few of us long-termers will claim to remember. As you click from one paragraph to the next, you come eventually to a selection of photos of humbly outfitted Friends of the Brand. Enjoy those photos but don't miss the last paragraph selection after the shots.

And remember not to drink too much water or over-ring your handlebar bell.

Here's a motorcycle piece that WILL, after all, be published....

I wrote the piece that used to be linked here in reaction to the almost unprecedented motorcycle media blitz about the new Ducati Diavel muscle cruiser. Maybe it's a muscle cruiser; maybe it's a new and terrific kind of motorcycle. Whatever it turns out to be, its allure was lost on me, and I grew tired of the predictably drooling, gushing coverage.

I didn't and don't want a Diavel but maybe thousands do. Maybe Ducati is merely making sure that their new baby gets the buzz that it needs to perform in a subdued motorcycle market. Maybe I'm simply wrong, or wrong-headed about this bike. If you're curious about the Diavel, Google will lead you to...overload.

THE NEWS: My editor at Motorcycle Sport and Leisure has agreed to run the piece! This will mean nothing to you if you had not already read it, but believe me, it could bring him problems with Ducati sellers and marketers. Because he's going to publish it, I removed the above link. I'll replace the link after the magazine hits the stands (in the UK; it's nearly impossible to buy here in the States).

Jeez, I wish I'd written this:

Cigo has left a new comment on your (Jan 4th, 2011) post "Hey! Whereya been?":

I know I felt the same when I left Berkeley for Santa Cruz in '89. My cycling dreams sort of died with my ordinary genetics. I missed the club rides, meetings, and the shop. None of it was the same where ever I went - even when I returned to Berkeley in '93. It made me sad to ride. It made me feel isolated.

Fast forward to now, in Portland, where there is always a tailwind, and it always rains at night (yeah, right)...Wasn't that what you wrote once about some mythical bike paradise? Anyway, its here, the dream is alive, in Portland ;-).

But the happiness is in the doing- I'm finding. Doing for the it's own sake, not for the memories, but for the new ones you will create, the new friends you will find if your heart is open, and the newness of the old familiar roads as the seasons change. It's there, if you decide to find it, I think.

What a rush to read that, and to imagine being in that open-heart frame of mind....

Again from Visor Down - hipsters on motorcycles...more of the same

From a British motorcycle web site, here's a US-made do-it-yourself video about a hipster motorcyclist so cool, he has to "pull the bitches off himself."

Appropriate punishment - that's the question

Manhole thief caught in Cheddar, England...from VisorDown