Thursday, June 11, 2009

Local blog round-up

While trying to fall asleep last night, I thought: Why not try to do for local cycling blogs once a week what Bobby of Douglas and Main does for the entire Wichita blogosphere on a near-daily basis? Surely I can manage once-a-week. So: on Thursdays during the summer, at least, I'll be linking to new and/or interesting posts on the other cycling blogs and news from the cycling-club websites. If it doesn't appear in this space, it either has not been updated since I last checked or it has gone moribund. In the meantime: if you know of other "local" cycling blogs, I hope you'll let me know.

The first notice I want to post here is not from a cycling blog, but bicycles may be involved . . . today begins the Delano Area-Wide Garage Sale. Various residences will be holding garage sales from today through Saturday. Go here for the addresses of who will be selling when and for a link to a downloadable/printable map. I plan to ride through the area this morning before heading to WAMPOpalooza (consider this a reminder of those events, too), so I look forward to the chance to meet a reader or . . . well, a reader.

On to the cycling blogs now . . .

Over at the Coasters' Bicycle Club website, Randy has posted notice that Thursday, July 2 will be the Patriotic Pub Pedal (for more on the what and where of the weekly Pub Pedals, go here).

Over at Bicycleptic, Bryan gives a brief report on his 50-mile ride the previous weekend to benefit ADA that apparently went from El Dorado to Cassoday and back. Bryan is usually a fixed-gear guy, but he reports that the wind that day made him grateful that on that day he had decided to be a mere mortal and leave it at home in favor of a multi-speed.

What to call something that has a website on whose homepage is the declaration that it "is not an organization"? Wichita Critical Mass. I'll just say again that I can fully support Critical Mass's ends--they are why I started this blog, in fact; I welcome a discussion, though, about the means to those ends.

Chris has not posted at Random Chaos since his ominously-titled post from last October, "Am I dead yet?" I sincerely hope the answer is "No."

Anyone want a good-looking tandem bike? Go have a look at the one over at Randy and Nova's place.

Robert continues to add content to Wichita's newest cycling blog, River City Cyclist. In his most recent post, he affirms the sheer pleasure of cycling above and beyond its obvious practical benefits. He's also added RSS feeds for Kansas Cyclist's list of bike rides and, even Craigslist ads for bikes for sale. Go have a look.

Have I missed anyone? Any other cycling blogs out there? Let me know.

[UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias isn't local, but this post's larger message is exactly on-point with regard to today's WAMPO events: the better and more available public transportation is made, the more people of all social classes will use it. In the cities I've visited with robust public transportation that I've used--New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Mexico City--buses and trains are both plentiful AND crowded with folks of every social description. Streets and highways are convenient because they go everywhere--they've been built everywhere. Public (and alternate) transportation options obviously can't go everywhere, but they can be designed to go along the major routes that people tend to travel by car and given their own lanes. Even in Mexico City, drivers respect the dedicated lanes . . . because the buses run so frequently, AND against the traffic besides.

See? There are ways . . . ]

2 comments:

Karen C said...

I was wishing I'd gotten the bike (and myself...) tuned up and re-tired earlier, since yesterday I ended up touring all of Delano delivering those garage sale maps. (Which, incidentally are at: http://www.delanowichita.com/delano-garage-sales/) Not only did I have to do it motorized, but our nice little subcompact car has a mechanical issue, so I was stuck driving a land yacht of a minivan.

A bike would have been much faster, given the number of times I ended up parking half a block from a sale, then walking back up to it, then driving another block and parking. I'm betting it was only fractionally faster than just walking the whole thing, but since I stuck the last sign in the ground at 9pm, I needed that fraction. (Yeah, I'll grant that the minivan came in handy while hauling signage around, but that was a small part of the job.)

Robert said...

Thanks Again John! I appreciate you helping to get the word out on my site.
My basic concept is to make it a community blog since what I have to say is not always that interesting.
For example I would like to have 10 or 20 (more in due time?) cyclist blogging trough my site as contributors.
If enough of us small guys get together we might in a combined effort get close to having a site as informational as Johns here :-) .
Please visit the site get involved and anyone interested please contact me via email or the
contact page. Robert[at]RiverCityCyclist.com.
All suggestions and criticisms welcome.