Every summer in Eugene, the city blocks off a neighborhood to car traffic for an afternoon, and people come out to bike, walk, roll, dance, do yoga, listen to music, and celebrate in the streets. The event, called Sunday Streets, and similar ones around the country are inspired by Bogota, Colombia’s Ciclovía, which started in 1976….
My sister, Columbine Quillen, is studying in Shanghai, China this summer. She wrote this guest post about the bicycling culture there. Let’s hope China does not lose its love for the bicycle as it strives towards modernity and first-nation status. In Chinese cities, rivers of people flow in every direction. So too do the cyclists,…
“Drive to work. Work to drive,” my husband likes to say. He has a point. The average cost of owning and operating a vehicle soared to $9,100 this year, according to AAA. Saving money is not the only reason to consider living sans vehicle, at least for awhile. We’ve done it on and off over…
Last week I asked you for your favorite blogs, and you gave me so many to explore. Thanks for your feedback! I’m already familiar with some of them, but it’s exciting to find a few new ones. For anyone looking for new reading material, here’s a small sampling of the recommendations, described in the bloggers’…
What’s not to love about May? Spring flowers, budding trees, longer days, warmer weather…. and it’s National Bike Month! I’ve written so much about bikes that I fear anything I have to say here will be redundant. But as we wax on about all of the seemingly intractable societal ills – global warming, pollution, traffic…
“Maybe we should get the car fixed,” I mutter to my husband as icy rain pelts my face It’s a pitch-black, moonless evening. It feels more like midnight than 5:30. We’re on our way to a birthday dinner for my husband’s colleague, pedaling onto a bike bridge that crosses a busy street. Below us cars…