CycleStreets: UK-wide Cycle Journey Planner and Photomap is a feature-rich route-planner for pedalers. Lotsa info and options, including a choice between the Fastest or Quietest route (or blend of both), an elevation map, an export in GPS format, and turn-by-turn directions w/ type of road (Quiet St, Cycle Track, Busy Rd, etc.).
They just released an iPhone app. Their web version’s in beta, and built on the OpenStreetMap project.
CycleStreets is a UK-wide cycle journey planner system, which lets you plan routes from A to B by bike. It is designed by cyclists, for cyclists, and caters for the needs of both confident and less confident cyclists.
Say you were pedaling from Wolverhampton and Nottingham (hey, I don’t name these places), here’s some of what CycleStreets tells you about your route:
Biking & Mic-ing the Lewis & Clark Trail; part 2 (of 2), from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean:
“Lewis & Clark: Down the Columbia” (2003 / 23:00) Barrett Golding
Chief Mountain Hotshots, Nicole Meeso and Aldon Wells, Powell Campground ID — Getting ready for a day’s work in the Clearwater Forest with the Blackfeet wildland firefighters, known as some of the best in the world.
Sister Carol Ann and the Bendictine Sisters, St. Gertrude Monastery, Cottonwood ID — Land stewardship is a matter of faith in these sisters’ rural Catholic perspective. We walk thru the woods of the monastery; 800 acres which the sisters have had to learn how to manage.
Lois & Betty, Patterson Restaurant, Patterson WA — Sipping coffee and surveying farm life from the breakfast tables of a small town cafe.
Louis Butler and family, Walla Walla River WA — Four Generations Fishing: A retiree from Hanford Nuclear Reservation goes catfishing with his daughter, grand-daughter and great-grandsons.
Ken Karzmiski, Archeologist, Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, The Dalles WA — Looking for lost Lewis & Clark legacy, and the artifacts and languages of native cultures drowned by the Columbia River dams.
USCG Duty Surfman Kyle Betts, now Chief Boatswain’s Mate and Executive Petty Officer, Cape Disappointment U.S. Coast Guard Station WA — The USCG Search and Rescue team pulls boats and people out of treacherous West coast waters along the Columbia River bar, where the river meets the ocean: “the graveyard of the Pacific.”
“On the Trail of Lewis & Clark” (1994 / 27:00) Larry Massett
An earlier pedal over the same route, from the Rocky Mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, interviewing whoever crosses our path: wind surfers, church organists, forest service employees, and “we’ve been talking to as many loggers as we can, to try and find out if they don’t see bicyclists, or they just hate us.”
The first movement in From the Journals of Lewis and Clark, a symphonic work for orchestra and choir based on the expedition’s journals. Montana’s Great Falls Symphony commissioned University of Idaho music professor Dan Bukvitch as the composer. The text is President Jeffersons’s instructions to Captain Lewis in 1803.
Biking & Mic-ing the Modern Lewis & Clark Trail; part one of two, up the Missouri River into the Rocky Mountains. Barrett Golding and Josef Verbanac, a radio producer and an English professor, a Jew and a Souix, bicycle from Missouri to Montana, enduring floods, war, worms, mud, and myriad Lewis & Clark festivals:
Prep: Cross-country preparations, then and now, from Penis syringes and Indian presents, to AAA and GPS. “Your observations are to be taken with great pains and accuracy, for others as well as yourself” –Jefferson’s Instructions to Lewis, 1803.
Flood: Missouri floodwaterss, a frog symphony, a million worms, bowfishing a beanfield, and in Marthasville MI little league it’s Lemke Trenching and Excavating vs. Miller Funeral Homes. Don Sherman, a retired Chrysler worker, who now volunteers his time taking care of the city park in the flood-prone landmark rural town — which, in Lewis & Clark’s time, was the last outpost of white society. And we go bow-fishing for in a bean field.
Rendezvous: Biking and mic-ing the Missouri River. Captain Lewis’ Aria, surveyor-stalking cougars, black powder bursts, cave wall Manitous, and Edens lost. Explorers express emotions and the Expedition breaks into song, in “Corps of Discovery: An Opera in Three Acts” produced by music professor Eric Dillner and the University of Missouri’s Show-Me Opera. Geographer James Harlan maps the Two Missouris, the Missouri Territory now and two centuries ago, using an 1815 Land Office survey and Clark’s field-notes. James Denny, Historic Interpreter, for Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources, points out where pictografs on a cliff were a landmark of the Lower Missouri, until the railroad blew ’em up; we tour through the tunnel of the ex-Manitous.
Wars: No Home on the Range, Chief Joseph’s Race Track, and Brothers Buddha and Brahma. Farrell Adkins, Campground Host at Arrow Rock MO sings the little known second verse of “Home on the Range.” Matt Nowak, Natural Resources Director at Fort Leavenworth Army Base KA describes this places part in the death and desctrution of the Nez Perce people.
Indian County: Daily pow-wows, casino economies, and Lewis’ birthday gloom. Neil Phillips, Penobscot tribal member and former canoe racer paddles from Maine to Montana, experiencing life on the river, a little-seen view of America. Joe Verbancec Sr. tours us thru the Standing Rock reservation.
The Strenuous Life: Bruce Kaye, Chief Naturalist at Theodore Roosevelt National Park recounts Teddy Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota. His ideas about conservation developed in the badlands, then get expressed in the acts of the President of the United States and the start of the National Park system.
Re-enaction: At Coal Banks Landing, on Missouri River “Breaks” in Montana, we encounters the re-reactors, traveling up-river using the boats, clothes, food, guns and knifes of the Lewis & Clark era.
Camp: Lewis and Clark made 600 campsites on their expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. So far, the exact location of only one has been identified. For 13 years, archaeologist Ken Karsmizki has been digging at Lower Portage camp of the Great Falls, on the Missouri River in Central Montana, and finding fire pits, butchered bones, wooden stakes and other artifacts, all dating to Lewis and Clark’s time.
Orchestration: “From the Journals of Lewis and Clark” is a symphonic work for orchestra and choir based on the expedition’s journals. Montana’s Great Falls Symphony commissioned University of Idaho music professor Daniel Bukvich as the composer, whose job was to make Art imitate History.
Don’t think I ever linked to this page at the Nature Conservancy, created a couple years ago by Atlantic Public Media and myself, “Tips For Long Distance Biking.” Another vers is at APM. Both have the Emily Botien-produced radio story, “Biking the Back Roads,” which inspired the Tips page.
David Brynes likes bikes, and has a new book about it, Bicycle Diaires.
His music tour travels with a few folding bikes, and the crew pedals around the world’s towns where they’re playing. Here’s the NPR interview, and book excerpt, “David Byrne’s Wild Wild (Biking) Life” (9:31 mp3):
“…aims to examine the feasibility of implementing cargo bikes made of bamboo as a sustainable form of transportation in Africa…
The bicycle is the primary mode of mobility for millions of people throughout many poorer parts of the world. In addition to individual transport, they see a vast number of applications including moving goods to market, the sick to hospital, and even the distributing medicines.
In Africa, very few people can own cars or even motorcycles and people without bicycles have to rely on inadequate and relatively expensive buses…
In this project, we will examine the feasibility of employing native bamboo for the bicycle frames, instead of the expensive and technically demanding carbon fiber material, or even the less expensive but also technically demanding aluminum or chromium-molybdenum steel that is commonly used to build bicycle frames… One key to a sustainable business is that the bamboo grows locally.”
After the Calzetta family returned from their 4K coast-to-coast bicycle trip, they compiled these Rules for returning to civilized society (from their Shut Up and Pedal blog):
1. No spitting.
2. Daily bathing is highly recommended.
3. Wear underwear. Preferably clean.
4. No eating food off the ground.
5. No made-up songs that contain profanity.
6. No bacon double cheeseburgers with ice cream sundaes.
7. No sleeping in your sleeping bag on top of the bed.
8. Use “inside voices” when inside.
9. No belching the words on road signs.
10. No shouting “A tour bus is coming” when your mother is peeing by the side of the road.
11. No peeing by the side of the road.
12. And please, no yelling “Fire in the hole” just before loudly farting.
In bicycle trials, evolved from motorcycle trials, “the rider negotiates man-made and natural obstacles without their feet touching the ground” (Wikipedia). This video of Scottish Trials Rider Danny MacAskill (for Inspired Bicycles was filmed around Edinburgh:
We’re on a bike trip right now and for most of June, so things might get a little lonely in these parts for the next few weeks. Never fear tho, we’ll be back by month’s end w/ all kindsa sonic trivia and innovation to post.
FYI, we were pedaling thru the Cascade Mtns in WA, but after getting south of Ranier, we got blocked by a bridge washout and snows still covering the road at 4K and up. So we’re now diverting to the OR coast, which we’ll ride for the reminder of the trip. Then we’ll cut inland to see friends in Ashland OR.
Note: in WA when the Forest Service sez Closed in Winter they sometimes mean Closed till Summer.
Life good on the road, talk at ya soon,
bg of hv
UPDATE: Made it to N. Cali coast. Turning around now and headin’ home (w/ a pretty good case of poison oak). Great ride, cooperative weather, excellent beer (thanks to Jack R Box for his NW selections). Obsessive posting will resume on this blog soon.
My friends sent this vid-tour of their bike store, the West Hill Shop in Putney, Vermont. What a place, down-home and damn inviting — makes me wanna pedal cross-country just to go there and buy somethin…
If you’re anywhere near Putney VT, stop in, ask for Jim & Diny Sweitzer: tell ’em HV sent ya.
Scraper Bikes, the videos, the photos, the song, the space, and the radio report, by Jacob Fenston with the “Scraper Bike King” (Tyrone Stevenson Jr.) — broadcast on California Report, then NPR:
Back from our bike loop around rural MT (Bozeman> Ennis> Dillon> Elkhorn Hot Springs> Butte> Willow Creek> Bozeman). Love riding thru the national parks; the Madison, Wise, Big Hole, and Jefferson Rivers make great travel companions. Got some tape and a few pix, but first gotta share with you this note magic-markered on the Whitehall MT cement picnic table where we lunched:
Heading into the hills of rural Montana for a week-long bicycle trip, w/ little to no net-connectivity along the way. So this blog may lay dormant for a few days: See ya next weekend.
“Jill Homer, of Juneau, Alaska, is training to ride her bicycle in the Iditarod Trail Invitational — 350 miles of wintry pedaling over tough terrain. It’s the same course used by the famous sledding race.”
“Jill is an Alaska journalist who likes to bicycle in horrendous conditions and eat goldfish crackers and Pepsi for breakfast. Jill records her daily adventures in pictures and words.”
Benjamin Allen Best is a biker on a mission, a mission dedicated to the lost soldier Matt Maupin. Benjamin is on a journey to bicycle through every state in the continental US, spreading the word of the sacrifice people like Matt have made for our country. His ride started in Florida in 2004 and continues still. Like on any epic adventure, the traveler can get a bit weary, as evidenced in his posts…
Missing Soldier Matt Maupin: WLWT-TV story archive‐ Keith Matthew “Matt” Maupin (born July 13, 1983) is a United States Army PFC captured by Iraqi insurgents on April 9, 2004 while serving in the Iraq War after his convoy came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire near Baghdad, Iraq. Read more about this ongoing ordeal.
The idea of a nearly infinity-geared bicycle is a half-millennia old, first drawn by Da Vinci, and now realized by a couple San Diego designers: “The Ride” is one of Popular Science’s Best of What’s New 2007.
CycleStreets: UK-wide Cycle Journey Planner and Photomap is a feature-rich route-planner for pedalers. Lotsa info and options, including a choice between the Fastest or Quietest route (or blend of both), an elevation map, an export in GPS format, and turn-by-turn directions w/ type of road (Quiet St, Cycle Track, Busy Rd, etc.).
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The 
After the Calzetta family returned from their 4K coast-to-coast bicycle trip, they compiled these 
NPR webseries, 
Benjamin Allen Best is a biker on a mission, a mission dedicated to the lost soldier Matt Maupin. Benjamin is on a journey to bicycle through every state in the continental US, spreading the word of the sacrifice people like Matt have made for our country. His ride started in Florida in 2004 and continues still. Like on any epic adventure, the traveler can get a bit weary, as evidenced in his posts…
