I rode with Peggy on her tandem to the last of the first round of Regional Transportation Plan Workshops in McKinleyville, last night.

Peggy is sight-impaired, so this was a cool way to get to a workshop that would have been difficult to attend by transit. There was no bike parking out front so we brought our bikes into the Lobby. Jim from the Schattz Energy Lab rode over from Arcata with us.

My heart goes out to the neglected bicycles of Humboldt County. Some are left unsheltered from winter storms.  Others, ridden through muddy puddles, aren’t cleaned or oiled, and their moving parts grind grit.  Lamenting audibly, their rusty stiff chains squeak in agony. 

An unlubricated chain causes poor shifting and wears itself, the chain ring, and rear sprockets quickly. And it saps power from your legs.

Show your bike a little love with two minutes of maintenance. Cleaned and oiled, it will run smoothly for thousands of miles.

Winter is here, but don’t let a little rain and lack of sunshine stop you from riding. Instead of huddling indoors, make a few adjustments to your bike and throw on some rain gear to enjoy riding. As I like to say, there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. Here are a tips for biking in the winter.

Carrie Wolski’s first memories of taking the bus were from when she was three years old. Twice weekly, Carrie and the other children enrolled in Humboldt Educare would board an Arcata & Mad River Transit bus to take field trips to places like the Judo Hut (the former home of Humboldt Community Television), the Fire Station, Arcata Community Recycling Center, and the Arcata Co-op. Instead of always remaining within a playground and classroom/daycare area, Educare staff reasoned, why not bring these young minds out to explore more of their community? And in this sense, the bus was as much a destination as a means to get there.

Changing diapers for two beautiful babies several times per night is one of my new joyful challenges these days. But being a father of newborn twins is also forcing me to revisit many of my views and habits with regard to alternative transportation. Completely avoiding driving with two newborns would involve substantial sacrifices. Transit doesn’t directly serve my low-density residential Greenview neighborhood very frequently, so I usually rely on a bicycle to get around town

Wow! Talk about taking a proactive step in eduacating law enforcement and, indirectly, the public. What a great example the San Francisco Police Department is setting! One step forward in Sharing the Road. Way to go SFPD and SF Bicycle Coalition!

See that happy face on Kevin Wright? That's what Fickle Hill Friday is all about. That's him smiling on the way up. His smile was even bigger on the way down! See if you can see it in the video below. According to Kevin, "Fickle Hill Friday has not died," and happens Friday's at 5:30pm beginning at CCAT on the HSU campus and continuing up Fickle Hill until we've had our fill. "For those of you new to FHF we do ride as a group and do take breaks and wait for people on the way up. The ride has catered to all sorts of cycling ability levels and always ends with an exhilarating downhill rush. The scenery, social atmosphere, and sense of

Need some humor? You're going to love this:

I found this on StreetFilms.org and they found it somewhere else.

This is an update from a letter to the City of Arcata.

At the beginning of July I was driving back home, yes in my truck, and passed through the new road construction on K Street, Arcata near 11th Street. As I crossed 11th Street heading north I was completely shocked and pissed-off that the new, temporary lane markers indicating the centerline directed motorist right into the class II bike lane. It frustrates me that it appears that construction crews and the City only acknowledge that motorists use the roads, and fail to meet the needs and safety concerns of bicyclists while construction is taking place.