Catching On?

This is the time of year when you expect to see coverage of "bicycling" topics in the media. After all, the days are getting longer and warmer, the trails are drying up, and bicycles are coming off the hooks in the garage.

Traditionally, however, the stories are all about "bikes as toys." Places to find good mountain-bike trails, or Sunday fun on the Greenbelt, or an upcoming bike race, or the like.

But as $4 gas is forecast, "bikes as transportation" seem to be getting some well-deserved attention.

The website for our local paper has organized their bike stories into a catch-all - click HERE to check it out. You might even want to make it a "favorite" - I plan on checking back regularly to see if there's some good content.

Us dedicated, 5-days-a-week, year-round bicycle commuters tend to look down our nose at people who are more casual about their riding. But that is wrong - ANY use of bikes-as-transportation is better than dedicated single-occupant-vehicle.

There's a guy at my office who rides his HUGE recumbent bike (I call it the "lawn chair bike") maybe 5 times a year, when conditions are absolutely ideal. That's cool.

A good friend rides his bike every Tuesday and Thursday. That's WAY cool.

They just added another bike rack at my office, in anticipation of more bike traffic. That is AWESOMELY cool! (Imagine if they were deliberating about adding more BIKE lanes to deal with the heavy traffic, as opposed to slappin' down more asphalt along I-84, or "eminent domaining" 20 feet of peoples' front yards to add another CAR lane!)