Amy Walker's blog

Check out the first broadcast of Bicycle Radio's Escape the Peloton of 2010 featuring - me!

Originally broadcast live Tuesday nights out of Arizona and hosted by Sean Mellor (he's hardcore & commutes 20 miles!)

I was on the show this week - Escape the Peloton broadcast. 01-05-10

http://www.bicycleradio.com/shows.html

They mostly talk racing - but are introducing more everyday cycling into the show. Nice folks!

It's here! Check out our latest issue:

Momentum Magazine #42
Out on the web, in the stores and in your mailboxes:

– Why yes, it is the answer to the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything!"

This issue's pages are packed with:

Features

A Profile of Los Angeles by Richard Risemberg

Mia Birk of Alta Planning in Portland (and this issue's charming cover model!)

An article on Project For Public Spaces in New York

Columns

The Adventures of Mitey Miss by Ulrike Rodrigues - A New Kind of Traffic

The Advocate by Kristen Steele - Picture This!

Finally read Stephen Irving's Twitter posts and discovered this nice video - sure it's from a while ago, but that makes no difference to me.

If you have not seen it yet it is worth watching. If you've seen it, well, watch it again and marvel at the brilliance of Benny Zenga (Winking Circle) and co.

if you do not see the embedded version, check out the BFF Trailer on youtube.

OUROBOROS from sam3 on Vimeo.

Ouroboros
by Sam3
sam3.es
sam3.es/projects/2008/ouroboros.html

Stop motion filmed in Berlin, September/November 2008
music by Bijan Cheminari / Noh Zarbi album Eos

I wish I could have been in Oakland last week for the Bike For Life Ride!
The July/August issue of Momentum features Tyrone Stephenson and his scraper bike building friends in Oakland.

http://www.momentumplanet.com/features/scraper-bikes

 Luckily John Hamilton of Street Films created this film from the event which took place July 25, 2009.

http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/scraper-bikes/

Have photos from great bike events? Email photo@momentumplanet.com

I love it when I see a story with a distictly Momentum-ish flavour in a mainstream media outlet. They appear with delightful frequency these days and affirm that bicycling is growing in the public consciousness. I love that these papers are also able to create beautiful imagery, and great reporting on the simple everyday revolutions happening in our towns and cities!

The Toronto Star published a field guide to Toronto cyclists recently which was along similar lines to our Field Guide to Vancouver Cyclists. They did a beautiful job of illustrating the piece and exploring 11 different subcultures. You could say "stereotypes" but this is part of cultural observation - noticing the diversity as well as the "types."

The Star also recently featured Julien Myette who uses his bicycle as the main mode of transport for his moving company, Transport Myette.

Transport for London has done it again with a great follow-up to their "Do the Test" Cycling awareness video (remember the one on the basketball court?)

Thanks to Chris Brennan of Toronto for sending this in.

I'm in love with the tweed cycling movement which started appropriately in Saville Row in London and is capturing the sartorial imaginations of cyclists in cities and towns around the globe, most recently in Chicago and San Francisco. 

Momentum has been dressing up in tweed for a while now. Check out the following links to tweedy articles from Momentum. While riders take the spirit of dressing "dandy" in many directions on these rides, wool is the ultimate fibre for the tweed ride, and the "return to rational dress" signifies a celebration of more than just dressing up in nature's best fibres.

Upcoming Tweed rides are planned for Sydney and....????

So many publications are getting on the bikestyle bandwagon. We say, "Oh Yeah!" - the more the merrier.

This is going to be a fabulous year for bikestyle.

Here's a nice slideshow from the New York Times celebrating the "It man" on two wheels.
They're not taking about the guy that backs up your hard drives... seems like biking just gets sexier all the time. 

BUST Magazine featured a lovely photo of a skirt-sporting high-heeled cyclonista.

Plus, here's a more practical article about style-consciousness for the everyday commuter from the UK's Times Online

Cycling is fun! Why not show it! 
So it's springtime... what cute numbers are you bustng out for your bike?

Some of our favourite designers who are making clothing specificallyfor bikers are:

Today Matt sent me a link to a story on the BBC about Poland's Constitutional Court upholding a ruling to keep on treating drunken cyclists as they would drunken motorists. Read the story here.

Having been a drunken cyclist, and having the notion that cycling and alcohol seem to mix a little too well in our fledgeling Norh American bike culture, I feel compelled to ask what is fair.

I don't think Poland's response is fair - not to the extent that "Two thousand Poles are currently in prison for riding a bicycle whilst under the influence of alcohol." What a waste of the state's time and the people's money, punishing those who pose a minimal threat to general safety.

Many who I have encountered in the past month will know of my passion for the bicycle beard.

No one quite knows me as well as my dear friend Kyla Kinzel who sent me this picture today from the BBC

Look at the original here

I haven't found a beard so intertwined with the bicycle in all my travels, though I have observed a few really fine ones. In February I
had the pleasure of joining a Momentum posse to the cold and wintery Minneapolis for a festival known as quot;FrostBeard" where the men (and ladies!) gather for a festive facial hair ritual. Local gentlemen engage in spirited games and celebrations of stubble.

There's the flurry of frottage called "rubbing of the beards," a highly competitive "trimming time trial," hours of ponderous "waxing & wagging" etc. etc.

Please click HERE for the story!
Thx!

Chuck Harris, the lovely mirror-making man from Ohio, has produced about 88,000 (!) rear-view bike mirrors with bicycle artwork inside for glasses and helmets since 1969. We were fortunate to bump into Chuck at NAHBS and ask him a few questions.

MOM: Tell us how you started making the mirrors.

Chuck Harris: I met a doctor, Gene Gaston, he was a well-known cardiologist on a bike tour, wearing a dental mirror taped to his glasses. I was so impressed with how effectively he was riding that the idea stuck in my mind about a glasses-mounted mirror. A few years later, roughly 1968 I began noticing aluminum beer cans growing on the roadside, they had always been steel up to that time, and it struck me that this was a renewable, infinite resource and there must be some use for it. The idea came to me that I could mount rear-view mirrors in recycled aluminum. I tried it out and it worked. I made some models for
my friends in  different sizes and styles. As it happened I had weird friends and they all liked the very tiny mirrors, even smaller than this.

Momentum was happy to return this year to the 5th Annual North American Handmade Bicycle Show. This year’s show was held in Indianapolis, Indiana and featured 115 exhibitors including bike craftspeople, makers of components, bike accessories and clothing as well as services for cyclists and bike media. The show has drawn a crowd of around 6,500 over three days. It’s an inspiring and drool-inducing festival of bike – though it is still heavily evolving, as is the world of custom and hand-built bikes in North America.

The show has attracted people of all ages from all parts of the US and Canada and features bikes for all purposes. While I enjoy meeting everyone, I can’t help being focused on the transportation bikes on display and on the culture of the show itself and that of the attendees.