I looked at the homepage of this site and could hardly believe what I saw. The most recent stories, stacked three high, featured black and white photos of Hollywood entertainers. Well, the celebrity mongering is over. For now. Let us return now to the lofty topics for which this blog is known. No, not liquor stores. Not pareidolia either. I'm talking about advocacy. Stop! Don't leave! This will be interesting. Did you know... Biking and walking make up 12 percent of all trips, but only 1.5 percent of federal funding. Two out of three pedestrian deaths take place on roads built with federal funding.  Ensuring funds for sidewalks, crosswalks, and bikeways help end preventable deaths and make roads safer for everyone. When town centers are biking and walking ...

Okay, I've spent the last hour looking through this year's Oscar Nominees in the acting and directing categories and doing Google Image searches to see who might be candidates for my effort to get someone to arrive to the event by bike. Yes, that means I just spent an hour, on the clock, looking at celebrities. Some people would say that means I have the most awesome job in the world. I, however, feel as though I'm being paid to pick my nose. I try not to be a smug cyclist, but in my disdain for celebrity worship in our culture, oh yes, I can feel quite uppity. And this... this exercise makes me feel dirty. In my bike-friendly workplace, one thing ...

Bike lover and film critic Steven Rea has long been the Web's foremost collector of celebrities on bikes on his Tumbler blog. Rea has a new book coming out, Hollywood Rides a Bike, which you can pre-order here. Yup, it’s true: Rides a Bike is soon to be a real hold-in-your-hands, stow-in-your-messenger-bag, position-in-an-honored-spot-on-your-coffee-table tome. Hard cover, 160 pages, 125 images, from Angel City Press. Your favorite cycling movie star shots from the Rides a Bike archive, but also scores of new pics that haven’t appeared on the Tumblr blog. This looks like it will be a must-buy for anyone who, (a) loves cycling, (b) loves celebrities, and (c) has a coffee table. I hit two out of three of those criteria -- although, technically, ...

Tom Bowden is a bike commuter from Richmond VA, a “suit” - a corporate lawyer with an MBA, and a conservative – You betcha! He is also a board member of BikeWalk Virginia, a pro cycling and pedestrian group in Virginia that raises money to promote cycling, walking and active lifestyles. Tom's lawyerly blogging can be found at: http://vabizlawyers.com/author/tbowden/ Should cycling advocates take their lead from the NRA? No, I don't mean by stockpiling ammunition or packing heat in your middle jersey pocket. Or appointing Chuck Heston as our national spokesperson (he's still dead). And after all, we have Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.).* I mean their tactics and their strategy. This article by Dan Baum and Leslie Bohm (PDF) describes how the NRA mainstreamed gun ...

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And I'm at work. (No, it's not because I live in Arizona. We actually do have this holiday here -- although you may remember that our state was notoriously reluctant to observe the holiday. Rather, it's because of FedEx. I work for an online retailer, so if FedEx doesn't have the day off neither do we.) With all my advanced Googling skills, I was unable to find a photo or quote that shed light on what Martin Luther King may have thought of bicycles. Perhaps he viewed them, as many people still do, as symbols of poverty, and inequality. But I'm thinking that somewhere in the complex mix of motivations I have for cycling rather than ...

When I think of Cambridge University, I think of Stephen Hawking, theoretical physics, cosmology. Heavy-hitting brainpower being applied to the most elusive and fundamental mysteries of the universe. Don't you? Slackers. When are the navel-gazers associated with that so-called University going to take on a real challenge, such as a grand unified theory that combines cycling, commuting, and dressing smartly? Maybe they have. The Cambridge Design Partnership announced a theoretical garment bag for bike commuters, called a Suitpack. The practice of cycling to work, whether for convenience or keep-fit, has risen sharply in recent years, yet cycling is still impractical for many people who need to dress smartly for their job. Commuters wanting to cycle often have to sacrifice either a sharp look or ...