Baker's dozen cross-country bike tours offered in 2010
It's never too soon to start planning for a major bike ride next year. Although cross-country bike travel isn't in the cards for me, I started checking into self-contained or fully supported coast-to-coast bike tours that are offered in 2010. Here a a few that I stumbled across that are being offered by non-profits or as fund-raisers for charitable causes. The rides are targeted for everyone from college students to women over 50. I'll be update the 2010 Cross-country Bike Travel page for more ri

Half a million pieces of chocolate equals 5,000 bikes for Africa
Cadbury Canada brought together two of my favorite things -- chocolate and bikes -- in a promotion to do some good in Africa. The chocolate maker is sending 5,000 bikes to central and southern Ghana where they'll give people access to schools, medical care and local markets. Chocaholics participated in the bike donation by converting their Cadbury purchases into bicycle parts at The Bicycle Factory website. Consumers entered UPC codes from their chocolate purchases to "create" bicycle parts. Each UPC equaled a bicycle part. It took 100 parts to build a bicycle ...

Rail-to-trail bike travel provides economic stimulus
Bike travelers on the Great Allegheny Passage pump about $40 million a year into the local economies and $7.5 million into wages along the 132-mile rail-to-trail from Cumberland, Maryland, to the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Those are the not-so-surprising findings of the Great Allegheny Passage Economic Impact Study conducted in 2008 and 2009. The report once again proves the "build-it-and-they-will-come" relationship between trails, bicyclists, and profitability to businesses in the vicinity, espec

Armstrong and Evans at Tour Down Under in January
Lance Armstrong will have some competition as the most popular kid in the peloton for Australia's Tour Down Under next January now that favorite son Cadel Evans, right, has committed to the bike race. Evans had earlier been quoted that he was going to skip his nation's bike race because it didn't fit into his training schedule for the 2010 Tour de France, which he is hungry to win. But having relocated to BMC Racing after dropping his five-year tenure with Silence-Lotto last week, Evans and BMC are said to

Adventure Cycling names "Bicycle travel award winners"
Bikers' cabin, Virginiacirca 1984 Here are the latest and final election results. Trust me. There will be no charges of mudslinging or requests for recounts. I'm talking about the results from the Bicycle Travel Award contest hosted by Adventure Cycling Association, the nonprofit that has developed 38,000 miles of bike routes criss-crossing the US. The folks named below were nominated by some of you. The individuals were chosen for making the on-the-road lives of bike travelers easier and their work in furthering the enjoyment of bicycle touring. The Ju