Jackson Bike Advocates

What is an Alley Cat?

An alley cat is a scavenger hunt on bikes.

At the beginning you get a booklet or what we like to call a manifest. The manifest details clues about the locations you have to hit up on the ride. You decipher these clues and figure out the best route!

Each location you go to will ask you to perform a task. You may have to answer a question, do a dance, draw a picture, etc. in order to get your stamp for that location!

Some locations are local Jackson businesses and will be offering discounts to participants during the Alley Cat so we encourage you to take your time and eat some food or have a beer and go with friends.

We give prizes out to those to those who get all the stamps including the bonus stamps! whoa what’s that?! There will be a cyclist or two hanging out at these locations. If you can determine who that person is based on the clues, they will give you a stamp!

The Alley Cat will take place on May 8th at 7pm in front of Rainbow Co-op. $10 will get you a manifest, discounts at different locations and into the door for the JBA Song Cycles benefit concert at Hal and Mal’s that night featuring Emily Baker and Horse Trailer!

The Double Decker Festival is happening in Oxford in a couple of weeks, and I will be there dancing to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.  Along with the festival, Oxford Cycling is hosting the Double Decker Spring Ride.  Check it out here.

I found this blog post about Google Bike There.  Not much there for Jackson, but we may be able to help them by contributing feedback.

EDIT: This was originally posted at: http://www.cyclelicio.us/2010/google-maps-bike-there-real-soon-now/

The www.cyclelicio.us blog has a lot of good bicycle information, check it out.

Google Maps Bicycling Directions now live for the United States and Canada.

Here’s a screenshot for biking directions from downtown Santa Cruz to the Santa Cruz Wharf. Below the static image is the embedded map from Google.

View Larger Map

Interesting findings on the service:

• By default, when you select Bicycling directions, the map shows the bicycling facilities it knows about with green lines (as shown in the static image above). With bicycling facilities show, though, you cannot embed the map into another web page. You must click on the “More” button in the map and turn off the “Bicycling” checkbox for embedding to work.
• The trip estimator takes road grade into account for trip time. Google Maps tells me, for example, the 6.7 mile trip it suggests from my home (elevation 500′) to the beach in Santa Cruz takes 36 minutes (about an 11 mph average speed). The reverse trip takes 48 minutes (8 mph average speed).
• You’ll see in the embedded map above that the bike directions assign a very high weight (or preference) to bike facilities, especially off street bike paths. To get from downtown Santa Cruz to the Wharf, I normally shoot straight down Front Street and then straight to the Wharf. Google Maps routes me to the San Lorenzo River path.
• The map takes one way streets into account and does not route cyclists the wrong way down them. It doesn’t know about the contraflow bike lane on Beach Street in Santa Cruz, though. I haven’t tried testing some of the other contraflow bike lanes I’ve heard about.
• Google Maps shows a green line for the railroad trestle bridge in Santa Cruz next to the Boardwalk, but won’t route bicyclists across that bridge, routing cyclists a mile out of the way instead. Walking directions, however, use the bridge.
• Maps doesn’t know about the bike access across the Santa Cruz Harbor.
• The 25 mile bike ride from downtown San Jose to my office in Menlo Park in reality takes me about an hour and 20 minutes. Google Maps estimates over two hours for this trip with a 10 mph average speed. The routing for this longer trip is pretty lousy, giving strong preference to the numerous bike paths in Santa Clara County instead of sending me along the faster and straighter road routes.
• This one’s pretty bad for the South Bay: “Bike There” doesn’t seem to know that the Santa Clara County Expressways are the preferred bikeways for longer distance cycling. For the trip from Cupertino to the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, Google Map routes me onto some less desirable roads away from Foothill Expressway.
• Google Maps knows about bike paths and pedestrian bridges. It doesn’t always know about some commonly used shortcuts, however. There’s a cut through for walkers and cyclists on Ivy Drive in Menlo Park, CA, for example, that neither walking nor bicycling instructions take advantage of. There is a button for users to provide additional input to Google and let them discover these shortcuts.

In summary, Google Maps “Bike There” is very very very cool. I list the shortcomings above for informational purposes and to remind cyclists to always do an on the ground reality check so you don’t bike off of an unfinished bridge or something equally ridiculous, but honestly I’m amazed the service works as well as it does. It seems to work best for shorter trips (under about 10 miles), but that’s reasonable — people going on longer rides will probably want to be a little more thorough in their planning anyway.

Come one and all!! Everybody get to the Capitol tomorrow (Friday) morning!!! We must be there to show our support for the John Paul Frerer Bicycle Safety Act. It should be up for vote in the Senate in the morning!

Info on John Paul Frerer

Break out your rain cape!! ‘Cause we’re riding rain or shine tonight!!!!

Here’s some advice about riding in the rain:

Safe riding in the rain.

See y’all there!

FROM BIKE WALK MISSISSIPPI:

CALL TO ACTION!

John Paul Frerer Bicycle Safety Act
We now have official bill numbers for the our Safe Cycling 2010 Bill which has been named in honor of a young man, John Paul Frerer, who lost his life in a collision in August of 2009. John Paul, from Tupelo, inspired many of us to continue working to educate and encourage others to increase safety on the road for all.

John Paul Frerer Bicycle Safety Act: Senate Bill: SB3014 House Bill: HB1452

This legislation will provide additional measures to increase safety on the road. You can read the full text of each bill by clicking the bill name above. Two critical pieces this year are implementing 3 Feet and Anti-Harassment language to protect bicyclists.

Mississippi’s cycling and running community sincerely thanks Senators Tom King andBilly Hewes and Representatives Kevin McGee , Toby Barker, David Norquist, Cecil Brown, Brandon Jones and Warner McBride for their dedicated leadership and professional interest in improving cycling and running safety in our state.

How can you help?

1. Contact your State Representative AND Senator. Ask them to support or sponsor the bill (Representatives=HB1452; Senators=SB3014).
Need to locate your legislator, click here: http://www.growthevote.org/lookup.asp?g=AFPA
Within the link above, click on “More Information” to locate the address, email, fax and phone numbers for your legislators. Urge for their support by asking them to please cosponsor the John Paul Frerer Bicycle Safety Act and support your Mississippi cycling, running, and walking community to save lives, improve safety, awareness, and education, and prevent accidents

2. Sign the petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/jpfbicyclesafety/

3. Contribute to our advocacy efforts for Bicycle Safety Legislation.

The 3-feet law has been enacted in 15 states:

SOUTHERN STATES: Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee
OTHER STATES: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia
Main purpose – EDUCATE motorists about safely passing cyclists and pedestrians.

Provides law enforcement, MDOT, and cycling clubs the opportunity to inform motorists about the need for a safe passing distance that can be easily remembered.
Motorists may not be aware of the danger of passing too closely. Clearly defines “due care/safe distance” as three feet.
No requirement for distance-measuring equipment.
Use of numeric distances to educate the public is not uncommon in our traffic laws: Section 63-3-611, MS Code of 1972: When approaching within one hundred (100) feet of or traversing any marked or readily distinguishable intersection or railroad grade crossing…
MAKING MISSISSIPPI’S ROADS SAFE FOR ALL!
Improve Safety, Education and Awareness, Prevent Accidents
Save Lives
www.mississippi3feet.org

3 Feet ordinances have been passed in Tupelo, Oxford and Lafayette County – with several others gearing up to implement as well. The grass roots iniatives show our legislators how important these measures are to the communities and push towards a statewide implementation. Once passed, we can focus on educating motorists and cyclists on new legislation and encouraging more to ride throughout the state.

Contribute to our advocacy efforts for Bicycle Safety Legislation.

Do you have your Share the Road Tag?

More cars on the road are being spotted with these tags – is yours?

Help make 2010 even better, join or renew your membership with BWM!

Bike Walk Mississippi
9 Industrial Park Drive, Suite 108, Oxford, MS, 38655
bikewalk@bikewalkmississippi.org
www.bikewalkmississippi.org

Hello all! Lizzie here. I’m in Mexico and these Yucatecos know what’s up!

biking to church.

We had twelve show up for the community ride on Christmas Day! We took the pedestrian bridge over the tracks that goes from Mill St. to Pleasant Ave, Saw a dog skeleton , rode under the tracks on Capitol St. and came back up N. State St.

Got a bike? Got a belly full of Holiday Cheer you need to work off? Join us on a short bike ride to celebrate the end of 2009 and welcome the new year. We’ll be singing Xmas carols and riding around town!

This is an earlier ride than normal at 4pm! so don’t be late!

Helmets and bike lights encouraged!