Weight can be a make or break when it comes to a hill climb! But by how much? Hank and Manon see just how much of a difference 2kg can make when climbing the epic Alpe d’Huez!
By Alex Crevar
Near the Gediz Delta, a third of the way across Turkey’s section of the EuroVelo Cycle Route 8, a flamboyance of flamingos appears overhead. As if the 300-mile journey hugging the Aegean Coast isn’t dramatic enough, the honking birds provide a fiery-pink chevron escort along a corridor that was once the stomping ground of Greek poet Homer and Alexander the Great. Bookended by UNESCO-listed sites, this route across Izmir Province forms one small part of the cross-continent EuroVelo cycleways network. It opened in 2019 and was developed for average cyclists; though it takes four to five days to complete using a combination of quiet streets, bike paths and packed-gravel roads, riders can also tackle it as single day rides. It starts near the ruined city of Pergamon and ends in the ancient city of Ephesus. In between, cyclists pass through vineyards, nature reserves and seaside towns with bazaars and cafe-lined harbours, including Urla, Çeşme and Sığacık. Here are four highlights on route.
1. Pergamon
Likely established between the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, Pergamon was a regional powerhouse for nearly 150 years and is one of Turkey’s most important sites. Travellers can visit the remains of the city, once capital of the Attalid Kingdom and later the Roman Empire’s Asia Province capital. Today it forms a UNESCO-inscribed cultural landscape with relics of Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman history. Take the cable car to the ancient Acropolis for views south across the countryside, the modern city of Bergama below and the route you’ll soon be cycling. At the top, you’ll also see the giant Altar of Zeus, a theatre with vertiginously banked hillside seating and the Temple of Trajan with its giant, free-standing, Corinthian-capped columns.
Photo by Aydin Hassan on Unsplash
From CronkiteNews.com
By Zach Bradshaw/Special for Cronkite News
PARIS – The City of Light has become a “gold medal” example of modern bicycle infrastructure, making transportation during the Summer Olympics more accessible than ever.
Improvements to existing infrastructure has allowed the French capital city to also be widely known as the capital city of biking.
“It’s pretty great,” said Hannah Warmerdam, a Paris-based bike tour guide who works at Holland Bikes Tours & Rentals in Paris. “I mean, the biking infrastructure in France restarted in Paris.”
Since 2010, the city has devoted over 400 million euros, about $434.8 million, to retrofitting roads, developing parking solutions and strengthening the bicycle infrastructure. Many projects were carried out in preparation for the Olympics.
“The challenge was to ensure that this cycle network was built for the Olympic Games,” said François Wouts, director of the city’s Roads and Transport Department. “Therefore, an ambition linked to reaching each of the competition sites, but also to be able to serve the whole.”
As Los Angeles prepares to host the Olympics in 2028, Paris city officials say L.A. should make strides toward better bicycle infrastructure.
“I think that in Los Angeles there must be roads sized very largely and on which we could certainly take a little space of the volumes to the automobile and reallocate it to soft travel like the bicycle, like what we finally did in Paris,” said Christophe Najdovski, the Deputy Mayor of Paris in charge of greening public spaces, green spaces and biodiversity.
Photo by Svetlana Gumerova on Unsplash
From CyclingNews.com
UCI’s push to ban radios has been met with fierce resistance from pro teams but women’s medalists enjoyed radio-free racing
The Paris Olympics served up two thrilling road races, in particular the women’s event where the winning move came inside 4km to go. The open, dynamic racing comes partly due to the small team sizes but mostly because there are no race radios so riders have to figure out what to do on their own.
The radio debate is due to fire up again as the UCI introduces another test of race radio restrictions, first at the Vuelta a Burgos beginning on Monday and during three stages of the Tour de Pologne (12-18 August).
Our world is built up of roads and cars to get us to our destination! But what about cycling and even walking? Have we been brainwashed to think that the car is always king? Si goes on a deep dive into just how we are convinced to think that modern car culture is acceptable in our lives!
From TimesofSanDiego.com
by
SANDAG on Saturday opened the long-awaited Pershing Bikeway through Balboa Park, with City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, other lawmakers and bike enthusiasts in attendance.
The new 2.3-mile bikeway includes a two-way separated bikeway and a pedestrian path. The bikeway starts at Utah Street and Landis Street in North Park, continues through Balboa Park along Pershing Drive, and ends at C Street in downtown San Diego.
The bikeway has a set of road improvements, including a diagonal crossing at B Street and 19th Street. Another feature is a 75-foot bridge, allowing people to cross over Florida Canyon creek.
From TheEastsiderLA.com
Griffith Park: Those driving through Griffith Park should get ready for a major change: Vehicle lanes along a stretch of Crystal Springs Drive will be reduced from two to one in each direction as the city adds biking and pedestrian paths as well as a buffer separating those areas from traffic.
Construction is tentatively set to begin by the second week of August and should last about a month and a half, according to Stella Stahl, a spokesperson for City Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose District 4 includes the park.
Photo by Gustavo Tiffer on Unsplash
Ever wondered how the Tour de France is filmed? Alex goes into all the complexities that happen on the ground, in the air, and even to who pays and has the rights to broadcast the big bicycle race!
From CNTraveler.com
On a sunny afternoon this spring, I rode a bike from Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the sixth arrondissement to Châtelet in the first to meet a friend. The feeling of sliding along the Seine was incredible—wind against my skin, the fresh feeling that comes with breezing past a body of water—until I reached my destination, where I stumbled upon the usual scene: four cyclists struggling to return their rides to a completely full bike rental station. Another biker and I spent 15 minutes finding another station with free spots—and another 15 to walk back to the first station, near where we had to be. We complained, but simply had to laugh. How typical this had become, just another Sunday for the cyclists of Paris.
Short or big, rusty or brand-new, sometimes with a ringing bell that alerts and annoys, bicycles are inescapable in the capital. This epitome of Frenchness, often associated with rather stereotyped Parisian accessories—up there with the baguette, the béret, and the Marinière shirt (that striped pattern, you know the one)—has become indispensable in the City of Light. As the city has been increasing its investment to make Paris more bike-friendly, the use of bikes by Parisians (about 11% of commutes) surpassed the use of cars (about 4%) for the first time in 2023, according to the Institut Paris Région, a research center for urban development in the the Île-de-France region.
Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash
From MyNewsLA.com
A nearly $10 million federal grant will help build a pedestrian and bicycle crossing over the Long Beach (710) Freeway, officials announced Friday.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis and other local officials at Humphreys Avenue Elementary School to celebrate the funding, which they say will “reconnect this section of East Los Angeles that was divided by the construction of I-710.”
Photo by Owen Lystrup on Unsplash
