Bicycle Austin forum

A local blogger also came upon this scene and posted a picture of the car. Check it out:

http://cyclebum.blogspot.com/2009/02/no-bueno.html

Wow, that sucks. Did you perchance get the officer's name or badge number? What a crummy attitude to have, "public servant" indeed.

Commuterman's path is the exact same route I used to take to work when I was at AMD down off of Burleson and McKinney Falls. It's not too bad besides that short stretch on Riverside and the little climb on Montopolis.

Oof, it always sucks to have a bicycle stolen. If you have a moment, please post any details you may have on the bike to my Stolen Bikes registry: http://www.atxbs.com/?q=node/407

It's just starting out but I'm trying to create a persistent location for people to log stolen bike notices, in hopes that other community members happen to see them and can get in touch with the owners. It's worth a shot.

Jason

May we stop building highways due to the overwhelming urge to speed (illegally) that nearly ALL automobile drivers seem to embrace headlong? These days if you're not going at least the speed limit, you're looked at as if something is wrong with you.

It seems that this urge to break the law in an effort to get to a destination faster is human nature, not just cyclist nature. Why does cyclist infrastructure suffer specifically because of it?

I'd love to see a bigtime austin cycling blog that's more than a 1 or 2 man show. There are a lot of great voices in town for the cycling community, and a blog seems to be the most popular modern outlet for collecting and disseminating the thoughts of like-minded individuals. Maybe it was due to the advertising, or the lack of frequent updates, but it never seemed that the BA blog took off to be that collection point.

Thanks for the mention Doug. I don't know if Michael left my site off accidentally or intentionally (either way no biggie), but ATXBS.com has been around for longer than the BA blog or either of the other two mentioned, and has been EXTREMELY active (both on my part and the part of commenters/contributors) the entire time. I try to keep abreast of as much local bike news as I can and update very frequently. Maybe even a little too frequently, but no one's complained yet. Likewise I'm constantly having people send me events, reports, pictures, and all sorts of great content relating to the austin bike community, which I repost with credit (vs. allowing other writers). Traffic has been increasing by about 50% month-over-month since February, and I expect it to really see a bump when Thursday's Chronicle hits newsstands. I've been getting lots of great positive feedback both via email and in person. And one guy calling me an a-hole, but I literally asked for that on my site.

BUT, my site is TOTALLY a dictatorship of me. I also swear a lot, hate a lot, and am in no way "reputable". Austin really needs a reputable, informative site, hopefully one that's maintained by multiple intelligent writers. Austinbikeblog is the closest thing I see to what I think Austin needs, and their two writers have been great, but I know there are people out there like Tom Wald, Rob DAmico, Michael Bluejay, Bob Farr, who don't have that outlet, besides the various forums and mailing lists around town. Y'all need a freaking blog! Maybe just not the BA blog.

And stay off of mine. It's mine. ;)

Jason
http://www.ATXBS.com

P.S. I forgot to mention before booking it to work, but there may be dawn on the horizon. Marsha Ungchusri has some interesting ideas for a local bike blog similar to http://www.bikeportland.org, but geared towards the Austin community. If she can get some local talent on-board and crack the whip every once in a while, I see good things coming from her efforts. Time will tell, but she's got a lot of good people behind her, I anticipate greatness.

Oh dude just you wait. That picture was from a guy that DIDN'T ride the upper deck. Prepare to have your mind blown, this video is from ME:

http://vimeo.com/1835832

From a long video shot where I counted 91 cyclists entering and leaving the frame I estimate 120+ cyclists took to the highway. We entered northbound I-35 at MLK and exited at Airport.

I mapped out the majority of the last leg of the ride (I can't do the ride to the final park since it's not in google's maps yet) but of this only about 1.75 miles were on the highway:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2300579

Mopac would be interesting, but I think once is enough for a while. I really don't want to get in trouble.

I was just thinking that Doug. When I was written a ticket for running a red light on my bicycle about two years ago it would have cost me the full amount and gone against my insurance if I hadn't beat it. It was no different than getting one in a car. Has this changed?

It's pretty easy to navigate that intersection, especially during traffic as it's a long light and is easy to get between cars. This is how I'd do it, taking Lane's suggestion and modifying it past Tisdale:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2291498

There's a slightly illegal jog to get from Anderson to the U-turn lane on Research, but it's really not hard to get to and made even easier when the light stops traffic. I live over there and go through that intersection all the time, it's easy.

Jason

That's AWESOME!

I've been looking everywhere for news on this. I try to mention bicycle fatalities and major accidents on my site but there seems to be NOTHING published about this accident. I'm so sorry to hear the cyclist passed away if that is indeed the case.