Kansas Cyclist - Kansas Bicycle Guide and Reference

KCFreePress.com offers up a look at Kansas City’s Critical Mass ride, which takes place the last Friday of each month on KC streets:

When people hear the words “critical mass,” they probably imagine a motley crew of cyclists drinking beer, slowing down traffic and generally getting in everyone’s way.

While that assessment wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, it’s tough to get the whole story until you actually take part in the monthly bike parade and experience Kansas City from a cyclist’s perspective.

The ride moves at a pace that slower riders can keep up with, and red lights do not necessarily equal “stop.” Outlying riders, or “corkers,” post up at intersections to make sure cars don’t disrupt the peloton, usually by waving thanks to the drivers and wishing them a “Happy Friday.”

While disregarding traffic signals might seem like a dubious method of promoting safe biking, the movement certainly succeeds in making drivers reconsider who owns the roads. Critical Mass turns the traffic hierarchy on its head, as streets that might otherwise be dangerous for a lone biker become grand bicycling thoroughfares for a larger group. As cyclist Matt Lavigne states, “The mass is what’s critical.”

“It’s just a bunch of friendly folk riding around, having a good time,” said Ryan Jones. Cyclist Chris Lee called Critical Mass “a real spirit-lifter.”

Read more: Critical Mass a ‘spirit-lifter’ for KC cycling community

Click the images below for videos from March 26th’s KC Critical Mass:

See also: KC Critical Mass on Facebook

In 2006, the Adventure Cycling Association awarded Gillian Hoggard of Ordway, Colorado their June Curry Trail Angel Award. “Gillian provided food, drinks, a warm shower, and free lodging to bicyclists along Adventure Cycling’s TransAmerica Bicycle Route, making her home a welcome oasis on the hot, dry, and windy high plains of eastern Colorado.”

In 2008, much of the town of Ordway, including Gillian’s home and property, was destroyed by fire. Gillian vowed to rebuild, and now she’s done it:

I recently received notice that Gillian is back in the saddle again as a cyclists’ only lodging host. In her note she tells me that she has “invested in a 30 foot trailer/caravan in English speak… for cyclists to use while enroute.” No need to have her address to find the place when you arrive, “when they ask [for Gillian] in town it will work…small place…and many more now know of this stopover for cyclists…even with this ‘prehistoric’ method I still get tons of people.”

Read more from the Adventure Cycling blog: Cyclists’ Only Lodging: Ordway Trail Angel ready to serve again

Welcome back, Gillian!

Photo courtesy Craig Sternagel, via Biking Bis.

The Oz Bicycle Club of Wichita, Kansas recently launched a new version of their web site, featuring a wider and more open layout, an expanded and more-easily-accessed event calendar, plus (finally!) an RSS feed.

Although the new design appears to be a work in progress (many links aren’t working yet or consist only of boilerplate text), it’s a great start, and long overdue for “one of the oldest and largest cycling clubs in the midwest”.

Also of note is a new email newsletter and a new Facebook page for the club. The site also advertises a Twitter feed, though that doesn’t appear to be active yet.

Nicely done!

You can check out the new web site at http://www.ozbikeclub.com/.

By most conventional measures, Eureka Springs, Arkansas is not a bicycle-friendly community.

It doesn’t have any bike routes. None of its streets have bike lanes. I didn’t notice any bike racks in front of businesses. I’m not aware of any bike paths. I doubt the city has a bike/ped plan or coordinator.

And yet, as I rode around the town, it certainly felt like a nice place to ride a bike.

Driving a car in Eureka Springs has always been a bit of a scary experience for me. The streets are extremely narrow and twisty, and there’s an indecipherable rats nest of intersecting roads leading off at odd angles. Throw in a few one-way streets and dead-end roads, along with some incredible hills (the town bills itself as “Little Switzerland”), and it’s hard to get around on four wheels.

But exploring these same streets on a bike is an entirely different experience. Somehow these roads that feel confining in a car are open and inviting on a bike. They’re human scale.

It doesn’t hurt that the speed limit in most of the town is 15 MPH, and, granted, I was there in the “off season”, but still, it wasn’t what I had expected.

Getting around by bike was easier — way easier — than getting around by car.

Now that’s real bicycle friendliness.

Even traffic on Highway 62, the main east-west road through the city, wasn’t bad. It wasn’t exactly welcoming, but it was manageable.

Many of our communities are not pleasant to ride in because the roads are optimized solely for vehicular traffic: wide right-of-ways, multiple lanes, gentle curves, smoothed-out hills, a minimum of intersections. Cities with this type of infrastructure have to make special efforts — often extremely costly and controversial efforts — to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians.

In Eureka Springs, even though they’ve probably given no thought to being bicycle friendly, they’ve been forced, through the vagaries of topography, to create a community that’s easy to get around in by bike (or on foot).

Here’s a map of downtown Eureka Springs, just to give you an idea of the layout:

So I guess there’s more than one way to become a bicycle-friendly community.

Unfortunately, outside the city, those same forces produce decidedly bicycle-unfriendly roads, where the restrictive topography of mountains and valleys funnels all traffic to a few arterial “through” roads, with higher speeds, no shoulders, narrow and twisty routes, big hills, and heavy truck traffic the result.

Ah, but lets not dwell on the negatives. Eureka Springs itself is a great place to ride a bike, and many of the secondary and tertiary roads in the area are wonderful as well — very little traffic, most of it at low speeds, and with incredible scenery and challenging terrain. Just don’t expect those “good” roads to lead anywhere…

(By the way, if you ever get a chance to ride a bike in Eureka Springs or the surrounding region, make sure your bike has good brakes. You will need them. That, and a strong pair of climbing legs…)

Kansas Trail News for March 25, 2010 from Sunflower Recreational Trails:

Number Of Rail-Trails Continues To Grow

The Spring/Summer 2010 edition of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy magazine reports that there are now 1,631 rail-trails in America and over 19,462 open rail-trail miles. Also, there are at least 727 new rails-to-trails projects underway. In Kansas there are approximately 17 rail-trails and with over 138 miles developed and open. Most of these are under five miles in length. There are at least 26 rails-to-trails projects and several proposed rails-with-trails projects.

South Hutchinson Nature Trail

The City of South Hutchinson railbanked the 2.9 mile former BNSF rail line in 2004 and later converted it into a nature trail reports Public Works Director Paul Hiebert. The chat-surfaced trail stretches from US 50 north to W. Morgan (near the Arkansas River). He expects to deck the railroad bridge in the near future. The South Hutchinson Nature Trail is just one of several recreational trails in the Hutchinson area.

Trail Advocate Bicycles On

Trail advocate Mike Mingenback, 63, died from an apparent heart attack in late October riding his bicycle on the Arizona Canal Bike Path in Phoenix in October. In 2001 Mingenback was instrumental in reorganizing the Kansas Horseman Foundation (renamed Kanza Rail-Trails Conservancy in 2003). In fact he was the first president of the revitalized organization which is developing the Flint Hills and Landon Nature Trails. At least Mike died doing what he loved. See an excerpt from a Great Bend Tribune obituary below:

The task of finding happiness and seeing love in all things came easy for Michael Keith Mingenback. The recumbent bicyclist, whose mission and purpose on Earth was to marvel at the mystery in all things, spent his retirement crisscrossing North America on treks where he explored the beauty of British Columbia to the wonders of Washington, D.C.

From Yosemite to New York to Niagara, Mike made hundreds of friends along his way. Commandeering his motor home and collection of bicycles to places yet undiscovered, Mike created tales of wanderlust, always encouraging those in his wake to make their own way and listen to their hearts, too. Not only did he fulfill his desire to see and do — he helped others believe, build upon and follow the beauty of their dreams. (Nov. 2, 2009)

Overbrook Trail

A new trail circling the new eight-acre Overbrook City Lake and Jones Park is getting lots of use. The trail was built with federal funds from the National Recreational Trails Program allocated by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. Such funds may also be used to build a connecting trail four blocks south past Santa Fe Trail ruts to the Landon Nature Trail. The Board of Directors of Kanza Rail-Trails Conservancy recently created an Overbrook Division which stretches from 141st Street (2 miles north of US 56) south to Lomax (on the Flint Hills Nature Trail and west of Pomona town). The division will develop and maintain this trail segment. It is expected that Karl Umscheid, who is on the Overbrook Recreation Commission, will be the new division superintendent.

Kansas Trail News is published monthly by Clark H. Coan, Public Information Specialist for Sunflower Recreational Trails, P.O. Box 44-2043, Lawrence, KS 66044, 785-842-3458. Reprinted with permission. If you have any trail news you’d like to share, please contact us.

From Bike Manhattan comes news that a new bike club is starting up in the Manhattan, Kansas area:

Flint Hills Area Bike Club (FHAB Club) is holding its official kick-off Saturday, April 3, in Triangle Park, Aggieville. Members of the club will be on hand beginning at 10 a.m. to explain the club’s mission, answer questions, and help new members join. At 12:45 p.m., members will lead rides for every ability and rider. So bring your bike, your helmet, your kids, your friends – get to know other folks who bike in Manhattan, Fort Riley, St. George, Wamego, and the rest of the Flint Hills, have some fun, and get some exercise.

Read more at http://ci.manhattan.ks.us/index.aspx?NID=1070.

The Flint Hills Area Bike Club doesn’t appear to have a web site yet, but they do have a Facebook group, or you can learn more about the club by emailing them at fhabclub@gmail.com.

You don’t see too many bicycle tourists on the Trans-America Bicycle Route this early in the year. Even if a cyclist can make it through the cold, there’s always the possibility of cold rain, ice, and snow to contend with, and that’s before even thinking about the Rockies, where mountain passes are often blocked by snow well into April or even May.

But as I was passing through Pittsburg, Kansas over the weekend, I stopped in to talk with the folks at Tailwind Cyclists, and there I met Andrew Powell, who’s pushing the envelope a little bit.

Andrew started in Yorktown, Virginia in early February, just in time for some of the largest snowstorms in decades:

Charlottesville, Virginia.

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Preparing to cross the Mississippi River from Illinois to Missouri.

Andrew in Pittsburg, Kansas.

By the way, in many of Andrew’s photos you’ll notice his mascot, Grommit (of Wallace and Grommit fame). Andrew says that Grommit has been very popular with the kids along the route.

And helping kids is one of the main reasons Andrew is doing this trip. He’s raising money for Great Ormond Street Charity, which enables Great Ormond Street Hospital to provide world-class care for its young patients and their families, and to pioneer new treatments and cures for childhood illness. The hospital is located in Andrew’s home town of London, England.

You can follow Andrew’s progress, and donate to his cause, by visiting http://www.justgiving.co.uk/Andrew-Powell.

You can also contact Andrew via Facebook, or via his event page on Facebook.

Andrew’s doing this trip self-supported, sleeping in campgrounds and city parks along the way. He’ll be passing through Kansas this week, so if you see him along our highways, stop and say hello and offer him a little hospitality.

Good luck on your journeys, Andrew! Hope Kansas treats you well.

From the Coasters Bicycle Club, news of a bicycle swap meet on April 25th hear Wichita:

Where: Haysville Hometown Market @ S. Main and Grand, Haysville, Kansas.
When: Sunday, April 25th. 8:00am till whenever. Vendor setup 7:00am.
All types of bikes, parts, bicycle related clothing, memorabilia etc.
Music by Accent Mobile Music.

Bring a bike to ride, and enjoy the Haysville Hike and Bike Path. The Haysville Hometown Market is part of the Hay’s Village Historic Park.

Vendors:
This swap is open to vendors wanting to sell any kind of bicycles, parts, memorabilia etc… Antique, Road, BMX, MTB — it’s all welcome. Bring your own tables and chairs. Bring change. Pavilion Booths are $5 and have electricity, concrete floor and need to be reserved. All other spots are free and on a first come basis.

Learn more at midwestbicycleswap.com

Received the following message from a reader about a recent car/bike collision near Wichita:

Hey, all you drivers, please remember that there are others on the road who are on two wheels, whether it is a motorcycle or a bicycle… Please look out for us. A buddy of mine was struck by a car Saturday. It happened out in the country so no reason for not having seen the guy … he just turned left and T-Boned my friend Dave Wills.

Here’s what Dave had to say for himself:

For those who have not heard I was hit by a car yesterday. I was heading east on 21st, and the car was turning left onto Colwich Rd. He t-boned me, sent me sailing, and my flip should get me a 9.5 at the Olympics (deductions for not getting the landing right). I have a dislocated shoulder, compression fracture of the 3rd lumbar, cracked rib(s), and good ole’ road rash. The bike is toast obviously.

On Twitter, Dave (@dew68) said: “The Oklahoma race was a no go. Instead I decided to see what it is like to be hit by a car. I do not recommend it. It hurts way too much.”

As far as I know, the collision did not make the papers, and I have no information on any citations or charges against the driver…

Dave Wills races for the Specs Racing Cycling Team. You can learn more about Dave on his Hookit page. The photo of Dave is from the Overland Park Grand Prix Criterium, part of the annual Tour of Kansas City.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Dave!

Today there’s a new feature of Google Maps: Bicycling directions!

To use the new feature, just go to the Google Maps web site, enter a starting location, an ending location, select “bicycling” as the mode of transport, and the app will attempt to provide you with a route that uses bike routes, bike lanes, multi-use paths, and low-traffic roads.

In a quick test, it worked pretty well, though it routed me onto a high-traffic arterial at one point, which wouldn’t be my first choice.

It appears that Google Maps is aware of bike routes, lanes, and trails in Johnson County, Kansas and Wichita, Kansas, as well as the Prairie Spirit Trail. Other Kansas trails (such as the Flint Hills Nature Trail and the Landon Nature Trail) don’t appear to be in the Google database yet, nor do bike lanes and bike routes in other Kansas communities.

You can learn more from the League of American Bicyclists: National Bike Summit 2010 – Google Announces Bike Google Maps at Summit Today!

Here’s a short video about the new feature:

Give it a try here: