Free Republic

The message of peace pedaled into Pueblo on Saturday. Riders with Bike4Peace, including former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who ran for president in 2008 on the Green Party ticket, stopped in Pueblo on a cross-country trek to the White House. "We started at the House of Common Sense in Oakland (Calif.) and we're going to end at the White House, which needs some common sense," McKinney said Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Church on the East Side, where the bikers were treated to a potluck meal. McKinney and five others cyclists are biking across the U.S. promoting peace...

There is something profoundly wrong with a nation where more adults ride bicycles than children. America might now be such a nation. While kids sit at home texting their friends and slaying computer-generated monsters, a growing number of their parents and grandparents are clogging the roads atop a contraption that was once considered a child’s toy. We will have accurate data when the 2010 census is complete, but there are already strong indications of bicycling’s rise in popularity. Fortunately for red-state America, the phenomenon is more common in urbanized regions along the coasts. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia recently...

HERMANN, Mo. -- The 19th century German settlers who saw visions of the Rhineland in the rolling Missouri hills likely didn't anticipate the more modern voyagers who flock to these parts: Spandex-wearing, energy-bar-chowing cyclists lured by a 236-mile rails-to-trails path -- the nation's longest. What they instead discovered was fertile farmland ideal for growing grapes while hardy enough to endure the extremes of Missouri weather. For Katy Trail riders, the abundance of wineries in what before Prohibition was the nation's second-largest wine-producing region makes for a memorable two-wheeled vacation. An added bonus for bicycling history buffs: much of the trail...

Fearing that bicycles parked along the route that President Obama plans to take on an upcoming visit could contain pipe bombs, New York City police cut the locks and carted off hundreds of vehicles. The confiscation was so hasty that no procedure for owners to recover their bikes has been established. The fact that owners might become alarmed at finding their bikes missing was brushed off by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “The convenience of a few hundred cyclists has to take a back seat to the safety of the President,” Bloomberg said. “No potential threat, no matter how remote or seemingly...

On a windy Monday night, Pete’s Candy Store—a bar in Williamsburg with a railcar-shaped performance space in the back—is crammed to capacity with the thin and the bearded. Almost no one is drinking. The mood is pregame, expectant and nervous. We’re at one of the oddest New York City powwows in recent memory: a panel designed to quell a metastasizing dispute between bicyclists and Hasidic Jews. Except no Hasids are present. For a moment, it looks like the bicyclists will have to debate themselves. At immediate issue is the Bedford Avenue bike lane. It’s the longest in Brooklyn and runs...

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a “major policy revision” that aims to give bicycling and walking the same policy and economic consideration as driving. “Today I want to announce a sea change,” he wrote on his blog last week. “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized.” The new policy, which was introduced a few days after Mr. LaHood gave a well-received speech from atop a table at the National Bike Summit, is said to reflect the Transportation Department’s support for the development of fully integrated transportation networks. It calls on state and local...

"Obama Transportation Secretary: ‘This Is the End of Favoring Motorized Transportation at the Expense of Non-Motorized’" Wednesday, March 24, 2010 By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) - Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced that federal transportation policies will no longer favor “motorized” transportation, such as cars and trucks, over “non-motorized” transportation, such as walking and bicycling. LaHood signed the new policy directive on March 11, the same day he attended a congressional reception for the National Bike Summit, a convention sponsored by a bicycling advocacy group, the League of American Bicyclists. LaHood publicly announced his agency’s new direction four...

My favorite Chicago political photo of all time wasn't even shot in Chicago. It was shot in Paris in 2007. It depicts Mayor Richard Daley riding a bike outside Paris City Hall, wearing a suit and tie, squeezing the handlebars while steering a wobbly little circle, an impish grin on his face. Happy days. The bike was part of a unique program in which the mayor of Paris provided bikes to the people to make his city more "green." For a small fee, Parisians could pedal whimsically for hours through the city of light. And what did the bikes cost?...

Lawrence police detectives have identified a man who allegedly tried to grab a Lawrence girl off her bike on the Kansas River levee on Aug. 4. Detectives made contact with the 45-year-old man on Aug. 15, but he has not been arrested.

PHOENIX — Prosecutors have charged 23-year-old Phoenix resident Timothy M. Kissida with using the Cash for Clunkers program to ditch his BMW after a fatal hit-and-run crash. Phoenix police say Kissida was driving his light blue BWM 325i shortly after midnight on Aug. 8 when he hit bicyclist Charles Waldrop. The 52-year-old was riding home from work and his bike had lights and reflectors.

PARIS (AFP) — US President Barack Obama and his family received a hero's welcome in Paris on Saturday as they were given a private tour of the famed Notre Dame cathedral. Thousands of cheering Parisians and tourists lined bridges over the River Seine as the presidential motorcade swept past, desperate for a glimpse of Obama, his wife Michelle, 10-year-old Malia and seven-year-old Sasha. Applause and whistles erupted as Obama's 20-vehicle motorcade pulled in to the large square in front of the cathedral, closed off to the public specially for his visit. With Paris abuzz, the presidential party spent more than...

Eugene’s naked bike riders are back, and this time they have the police on their side. This evening, cyclists in various states of undress will pedal through downtown Eugene to protest the country’s dependence on oil and other nonrenewable energy sources. City officials initially tried to prevent the ride, citing a city ordinance against public nudity. But when the bicyclists objected, the city conceded it had no legal grounds to bar the ride. Courts have found that government can’t ban public nudity that’s aimed at conveying a political message, the city acknowledged.

The man tried to back up, but bumped into a biker. "This enraged the group," Jamieson said.> The driver tried to drive away, but hit another bicyclist.Critical Mass riders cornered the car again and started spitting on it and banging against it. One bicyclist punched the driver through his open window, and another used a knife to slash the Subaru's tires, Jamieson said.

Young dogs today, they’re so lazy. It seems to me they only want to take the car when it’s time to go somewhere. That’s why I was pleased to see this video of a dalmation taking his bike for a spin. Sure he isn’t very good at it, requiring training wheels, but at least he’s getting his exercise.

Dear Ann Romney: This newspaper devoted a lot of space last month to a series about your husband and his run for president. I'd hate to see all that grunt work come to naught. So please get him to stop talking about Vietnam, OK? The Romney men have a genetic predisposition toward self-destruction on that topic. First, Papa George blows up his campaign in 1968 by claiming to have been "brainwashed" by the US military. Now here comes Mitt, in this paper, talking about his own, completely imaginary, experience in Southeast Asia. "I was supportive of my country. I longed...

WASHINGTON, April 30, 2007 – Nathan Potts was one of about 50 seriously wounded servicemembers who went for a two-day, 110-mile bike ride this weekend, just to show they could. Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert Magnum greets Eric Frazier, a former Marine, April 29 at the National Naval Medical Center, in Bethesda, Md., after Frazier took part in the 2007 Face of America ride sponsored by World T.E.A.M. Sports. Defense Dept. photo by Linda D. Kozaryn  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “The ride proves that I can still do something. I’m not going to waste...

It was supposed to be a birthday night out for the kids in San Francisco, but instead turned into a Critical Mass horror show -- complete with a pummeled car, a smashed rear window and little children screaming in terror. The spontaneous Critical Mass bike rides, in which thousands of free-spirited cyclists roam the city, have been a fixture on the last Friday night of the month since the early 1990s. But even bike-weary cops, who have seen their share of traffic disturbances and minor skirmishes, weren't prepared for what happened during the latest exercise of pedal power. Here's the...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2006 -- Jeff Klare put his bicycle where his heart is Oct. 1, and set out on a 300-mile trip to raise awareness of the need for more corporations to hire workers with disabilities. Eric Madaus, 8, leads Jeff Klare, chief executive officer of Hire Disability Solutions, to the finish of a 300-mile bike ride at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., Oct. 6. Klare began his ride at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York to bring attention to the need for more corporations to hire workers with disabilities. Madaus suffers...

COVINGTON, Ind. -- A vehicle hit by a truck slammed into charity bicyclists Tuesday, killing a state trooper and a sheriff's deputy and injuring three other riders, police said. Indiana State Police spokesman Sgt. Joe Watts said several police agencies were participating in the ride. The group was traveling south on Indiana 63 about two miles from Interstate 74 in Vermillion County near the Indiana-Illinois state line. Riders were raising money for survivors of police officers killed while on duty. Karen Shelton, director of operations for the Indiana Troopers Association, said a state trooper and a Lake County Sheriff's deputy...

President Bush, in York, Penn., gets on a motorcycle during a tour of the Harley-Davidson vehicle operations plant. At right is roll test operator Joel Toner.