ABC’s Community Bike Educator training.(Photo: Cristina Mihaescu, courtesy of the CCC) Exciting news in Portland’s bike advocacy landscape – there’s a new organization and they’re on a roll. Yesterday, the Community Cycling Center, a Portland bicycle advocacy and education nonprofit, announced their partnership with a new organization, Andando en Bicicletas en Cully (ABC) – the […]
Seeding the Grassroots: Portland’s newest bike advocacy group
The power of tooting your own horn
Posted onLast weekend in Seattle I was lucky to participate in a roundtable discussion consisting of two of the other Expo presenters, Amy Walker and Ulrike Rodrigues, and women on the staff and board of the Cascade Bicycle Club – all of us leaders in the bike movement, as Kathy McCabe, the CBC’s deputy director and […]
Playing the publishing game
Posted onLast night I participated in Smallpressapalooza, Powell’s Books’ annual celebration of super small scale indie publishing. Out of a breathtaking variety of readings, most of them awesomely good, I was the token non-literary reader (my rendition of this essay was surely informative for all, if comfortable for few). The guy before me had a multimedia […]
How Seattle riders deal with hills
Posted onLast weekend, Joe and I took the train up north for the giant Seattle Bike Expo. We were only there for two short days, most of which I spent either riding or talking about bikes. The highlight of the weekend by far was getting to meet and talk with dozens of people – Seattle seems […]
This is not an International Women's Day...
Posted onThe Internet reminds me that today is International Women’s Day. It’s a day when many of the sites I frequent will highlight the accomplishments of prominent women, or pay special tribute to participants in various aspects of the bike world who are women. This is better than nothing, I suppose, but seeing these posts is […]
Bridging the bicycling gender gap
Posted onThe gender gap in cycling is alive and well, both in transportation and sports (I may have mentioned this a time or two in the past). Fortunately, there are always plenty of inspiring people ready to disregard the obstacles, tear up the stats, and bridge that gap. Two such stories broke this morning. The first […]
The year ahead in zine publishing (and s...
Posted onHi everyone! Thanks for checking in with this sadly neglected blog. It’ll be up and running again soon; for now, it’s high time to post a quick update about a few different professional goings-on: Zines Taking the Lane #6: Lines on the Map went off to print this week! That means it’s important to fully […]
Guest post: Transitnomics: The real cost...
Posted onThis guest post is by Brian Morrissey, hailing from Chicago. He tackles social and economic transportation issues on his blog, Commuter Age (or is that Commute Rage?) and on Twitter. Here, he takes a close look at the economic implications of the federal transportation funding shakeup on Chicago’s transit system. He has also written an […]
Guest post: Carfree families: Doing the ...
Posted onThis guest post is by Sarah Gilbert, a Portland writer and blogger. She’s also the mom whose story of being turned away from a local burger joint with her three young kids led to the chain retooling their drive-thru policy and signage to actively welcome people on bikes. Even in dreamy Portland, carfree parenting isn’t […]
Jobs and the Transportation Bill
Posted onThe news of the moment is that federal transportation money is in a tough spot, and Congress is currently batting around various transportation bills. One of them will eventually pass, and it is pretty much guaranteed to include lots of money for new freeways, new regulations that allow heavier trucks, a mandate to drill for […]
Bike-Sexuality -- a call for submissions
Posted onUpdate: BikeSexuality exists! You can buy a copy here. “Bike-sexual” panel from TTL5(click to make bigger) The seed of this idea started while the submissions for Our Bodies, Our Bikes were rolling in. The first several entries were also the most frankly sexual, and their writers, even the ones who chose to remain anonymous, ended […]
Lines on the Map
Posted onUpdate: Lines on the Map exists; you can get a copy here. The next (and sixth!) zine in the Taking the Lane series is in the works. I’ll keep this post short and sweet and leave you with this link to the Kickstarter project where guest editor Katelyn has described it well. I’m thrilled about […]
What's right under our nose
Posted onWhen biking – or, particularly, driving – about our daily lives, we pass through many spaces that are meant only to be passed through on the way to someplace else. Stopping to watch for a while is often enlightening. The video below was taken by a volunteer bike counter at the intersection of a busy […]
A lovely review
Posted onI’m not entirely sure when I became aware of the eloquent Lovely Bicycle blog, but I have admired it for some time. To my pleasure, its pseudonymous author (who turns out to be, as she says, a friend of a long-ago friend who I’ve fallen out of touch with; she’s also contributed some well-informed comments […]