Wiki Bikes will be closed Monday November 12 in observance of Veterans Day

The basic fixie can get fancy

For the last five years, this column has avoided covering one of the hottest youth-culture urban crazes in the bike world: the fixie — a minimalist, single-speed bike with a fixed gear and no brakes. Some people like them ugly, others gaudy and others tricked-out with doodads and custom paint jobs. To be honest, I thought these bikes, which have introduced thousands of former non-cyclists to two wheels, were dumb deathtraps (hey, no brakes?) and that the fad would disappear along with the first crash.

Well, fixie-mania keeps growing, and a big reason for it is that the bikes are getting fixed. Riders and manufacturers, responding to public safety laws and common sense, have added brakes, multi-gear hubs, freewheels and fluorescent night-light paint. This makes for safer, more practical bikes that are faster, can coast and are more enjoyable to ride — all while keeping the minimalist and mandatory fixie look.

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Vintage bike museum in Ariz. includes work stations

Any grown-up who opens the door to the Oldspokes Classic Bicycle Museum is sure to find a bike that produces a wave of nostalgia.

From the 1940s Monarks to the 1970s BMX bikes, nearly 100 velocipedes in the museum span a century of riding for pleasure and work.

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Bikes rise from New York basements

Jonathan Figueroa paused, looking down more than 100ft to the East River below, and panted: “This is new. It’s tough.”

Past him on the cycle path of the Manhattan Bridge – which Mr Figueroa would normally cross on a D line subway train on the way to Hunter College on Manhattan’s upper west side – pedalled a steady stream of cyclists.

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Can America Embrace Biking the Way Denmark Has?

It’s a Monday morning in Copenhagen, and I’m tearing down a street called Rolighedsvej on my clunky steel rental bike, trying to make it to a meeting for which I’m nearly certain I’ll be late. As I zip along the beautifully maintained bike lanes, it strikes me that I’ve never had a city biking experience quite like this. Not only do I feel totally safe and secure, but I’m able to get to my destination faster and at a fraction of the difficulty and cost than if I were driving a car.

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Bike lanes to be installed on Waialae Ave.

It's a major victory for Oahu bicyclists.  The city made room for them on a busy Honolulu thoroughfare.

"This bike lane on Waialae [Avenue], people that have worked on it for 30 to 50 years -- thank you, thank you!" said Patricia Johnson of the "Red Hot Ladies" of the Hawaii Bicycling League.

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Colorado's new bicycling beast

BOULDER, Colo. — They sweep down steep, rugged valleys and whip up the other side, flying into the mountain splendor. They build up speed, then force their way across a 100-foot-long sand pit, pumping desperately to reach the other side. They dismount, grab their dual-wheeled vehicles and wheeze up a staircase a mile above sea level.

And they bring their kids — sometimes little kids who are just learning to stay upright on flat streets — who can try their young skills on these arduous challenges.

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From the Department of Redundancy Department...

Cycling is Safer in Bike Lanes

Today in unsurprising news, we have a report out of the American Journal of Public Health, which concludes that bike infrastructure, no matter how rudimentary, cuts down on cycling-related hospital admissions by 50 percent. Just for painting a white line on the road and eliminating a lane for parking, which the city has done this year to some grumbling (also unsurprising).

The study confirms what many cyclists have long know, or at least suspected: Dedicating cycling infrastructure not only makes riders feel safe, it actually makes them safer. Put up all the violent, blood-bath-looking pro-helmet signs you’d like, the thin white line is what really helps.


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Wiki Bikes will Be Closed for a long weekend...

We will be closed on:

Friday October 12
Saturday October 13
Monday October 15

Take these days to ride your bike and enjoy the beautiful weather.  See you on Tuesday the 16th!

More bikes sold than cars in Italy for first time since WW2

In a radical departure for the car-mad country, home to legendary marques such as Fiat, Ferrari and Lamborghini, 1,750,000 bikes were bought in 2011 compared to 1,748,000 motor vehicles.

As austerity cuts deepen and petrol prices hit a new high, the purchase of new cars has dropped to levels not seen since the 1970s.

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You can't argue with facts...

Bikers for Babies raises more than $600K for charity

Thousands of motorcycle riders raised more than $600,000 for the March of Dimes at Sunday's Bikers for Babies ride.

"He was born almost three months almost premature. He weighed two pounds, 12 ounces. He was doing great the first month then we found out he had some issues. He spent his first four months in the hospital," Lisa Warner said.

 

 

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In Bike-Friendly Copenhagen, Highways For Cyclists

Every day, one-third of the people of Copenhagen ride their bikes to work or school. Collectively, they cycle more than 750,000 miles daily, enough to make it to the moon and back. And city officials want even more people to commute, and over longer distances.

So a network of 26 new bike routes, dubbed "the cycling superhighway," is being built to link the surrounding suburbs to Copenhagen.

 

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Who left their bike out?

Something doesn't seem normal here...

Two arrests after dozens of bikes stolen from non-profit

Detectives arrested two men they said stole more than two dozen bicycles from a Vancouver non-profit.

The theft happened back on August 9 at the Hough Pool, where the group Bike Clark County stored their bikes.

Officers from the Vancouver Police Department’s “Neighborhood Response Team” took over the investigation and about two weeks later arrested Matthew Robert Smith, 27, and Jory John Aultman, 19, according to police spokeswoman Kim Kapp.

Both men face charges for burglary and trafficking stolen property.

Kapp said officers so far have only recovered one of the stolen bikes. They think the rest are still in the neighborhood somewhere.

 

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"Scraper Bikes for Life" Saves Lives in Oakland

On a recent afternoon, the skateboard park was the most populated section of gritty DeFremery Park in West Oakland. In this working class area, with unemployment, crime, violence and gentrification, just under the giant shipping cranes from the nearby Port of Oakland, a dozen skateboard enthusiasts, boys and young men, glided up and down the complicated series of ramps and jumps over and over, without saying a word. The calm was was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of The Original Scraper Bike crew.

This is a neighborhood where, much like boys everywhere, youth spend their summer days gazing at the passing traffic, fantasizing about the car of their future, the car of their dreams. But unlike their more affluent counterparts with stable homes and intact families, a car of one's own may be financially out of reach. After all, how many boys from this struggling neighborhood, in a bad economy, will be able to purchase and maintain a customized automobile, when one week, they may "stay with" their grandma, and the next, at their "play sister" or "auntie's" house? Where "family stuff," spoken with downcast eyes, is the reason given for not being able to stay in school or keep a job?

 

 

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Oregon man recovers stolen bike after sting operation

Jake Gillum loves his bike. So when it got stolen in Portland, Ore., while he was on a date, he was determined to get it back.

The quest seemed hopeless, but a week of poring over online postings for his 2009 carbon fiber Fuji paid off when he spotted the road bike offered for sale in Seattle. That sparked an elaborate interstate sting operation last weekend in which Gillum not only got his bicycle back but used it to chase down the suspect before police arrested him.

Gillum documented it all on YouTube under the username Simon Jackson.

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Md. couple ditches moving van, uses bikes instead

People move every day. They typically use moving trucks or vans or station wagons or pickup trucks or cars with mattresses strung to the roof, sort of like the horse and wagon days, though without the horse and wagon.

Anthony and Jess Reiss used bikes.

The College Park couple — he works at Proteus Bicycles, she’s an environmental attorney — sold their cars about a year ago. The idea: Cycle or use public transportation wherever they roam.

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Bikes For Kids: Detroit Program In City's Osborn Neighborhood

Kids in a northeast Detroit neighborhood known for its high concentration of children spent their summer immersed in bike culture.

The program, which wraps up this week, combines courses in bicycle safety and repair with community service. Along with fixing gears, kids in the program have also helped clean up the neighborhood's Millbank Greenway bike trail and set up a "pop-up" bike shop to tune up bicycles for local residents in a building located near the intersection of Van Dyke Avenue and Outer Drive. It was organized locally by the Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative (DECC) with the partnership of several other groups and made possible by a $12,500 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy grant sponsored by Coca-Cola.

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Another reason to buy used, Big-buck bikes are a popular burglary target in Minneapolis

In the hunt for high-end bicycles, thieves have gone beyond lurking around bike racks. Now they're driving down alleys, breaking into garages and loading their increasingly valuable loot into trucks and vans.

In Minneapolis alone, more than 1,000 bikes were reported stolen since January, up 12 percent from last year. The percentage of bikes stolen in burglaries -- typically from garages -- rose from 25 percent in 2011 to 34 percent since January, said Doug Hicks, a crime analyst with the Minneapolis Police Department.

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