Today's Picture: A view of an Iowa highway overrun with bikes during the 2009 Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). It's a week-long adventure that attracts bicyclists from all over the U.S. and the world to ride nearly 500 miles.
One young Louisville guy rides the whole way on a unicycle! I hope to make RAGBRAI a summer vacation for the fifth year in a row. Only 262 days to go!
The bicycle is an amazingly compact, efficient, clean, and pleasant way to get around. It's fun. It's challenging on rainy and cold days. It offers health benefits no other form of transport can offer – except perhaps rowing or canoeing, both of which require waterways.
When you're on a bike, you're the engine. Your vehicle runs on whatever you ate for breakfast this morning. So, when you pay for your groceries, you're taking care of your nutritional needs and your transportation costs at the same time. The cost of the bicycle is practically nil when you spread that sum across the miles. Bicycles, which outsold automobiles in the first quarter of 2009, cost a small fraction of the automobile prices.
So Compact
Bikes take up less than one cubic meter of space. And some folding models can practically fit in a briefcase for carrying on bus, train or plane. So just think what American neighborhoods would look like without cars lining all the streets. Most of us don't realize that the big reason we're so fascinated by European streetscapes and villages is that they aren't so strewn with cars. You can see the environment.
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PS: Remember, every lane is a bike lane. Share the road.
freewheelin
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Enjoy the ride home.
Today's Picture: A view of an Iowa highway overrun with bikes during the 2009 Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). It's a week-long adventure that attracts bicyclists from all over the U.S. and the world to ride nearly 500 miles.
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bikecommuter