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Messenger downed in D.C.; insurance may not pay

A bike messenger in Washington D.C. was apparently the victim of a hit and run accident. Now he is in a coma and there is no evidence as to the cause of the injury. As a result, the insurance company may deny the claim. The letter (from the courier company) below was posted by Gwadzilla who is calling for publicity with the hope that a further investigation will ensue and common sense will prevail (my words not his).

As many of you already know, Ricardo "Rico" Palacios, a bike messenger at Apple Courier, was critically injured on Thursday, November 3. He has been in intensive care at Washington Hospital Center in a coma since then. He was put on a respirator this past Monday. His situation, frankly, does not look promising.

To add yet another layer of tragedy on top of this, the insurance company that should be paying his medical expenses and disability payments may well deny this claim. The company's position is that there is no way to prove this claim, as Rico is completely incapacitated and unable to communicate the circumstances of the accident. As yet, no eyewitnesses have come forward. Thereis a need to loccate an eyewitness to this accident and do so very soon.

Rico's accident occurred sometime just before 5:00 PM on Thursday, November 3, 2005. He was most likely near the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and K Street, NW or somewhere en route to that location from 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW in DC. There would have been literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in that area at that time. Surely at least one must have seen something and would be able to recount the circumstances of this accident for the insurance company.

Libby is turning to you for help. Please ask your friends, co-workers, neighbors, anyone at all that could have been in the area of Rico's accident if they witnessed anything. It should be noted that Rico's mother, an immigrant working as a housekeeper at the Capital Hilton, having to not only suffer the tragedy of possibly losing her only son, but also then be laden with outrageous medical bills.

Contact information is below; she can be reached on the Apple phone numbers 24 hours day.

Elizabeth "Libby" Francis
Customer Relations Manager
Apple Courier, Inc.
Washington, DC
phone: 202-338-0930 toll free: 888-620-3300
fax: 202-338-7600
email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Now we're talking...

DT's on to something with his Google Maps Mashup idea. He's talking about adding topographical info on top of street maps from Google to help cyclists find or avoid hills on their routes.

Let's keep these ideas flowing.

MTB story told through pictures

La Paz to Coroico Bike Ride
Originally uploaded by jennifrog.

I often scan the mountain bike photo streams in Flickr and every once in a while something catches my eye. Here we see Jennifrog's bike at the bottom of a cliff in Bolivia.

There's clearly a story here when you look at the set of photos...it's just not exactly clear how this happened. One minute she's in a bus with a group of people on her way to a ride...the next minute her bike is being hoisted from a cliff. Did the bike fall off the bus? Did she go off the cliff?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Best Bike Blogs of 2005: Nominees

Cyclelicious is running a contest for readers to select the Best Bike Blogs of 2005. The call for nominees is now open and voting will begin shortly. The Cyclelicious Top Ten are automatically nominated (of which we here at GC are proud to be a part). A few of those listed would also be on my nominee list, including, Blue Collar, Fat Cyclist, and Making it Easier, but here are a few others that I will nominate for the contest (in no particular order):

Gwadzilla - Probably the most unique style of all bloggers that I read. Free-flowing. Deep. Not just covering bike culture, but living it.

Guitar Ted Productions - A master bike mechanic that always seems to have tons of fun. G-Ted has nice insight on the bike industry and a particular fondness for 29ers.

Publicenergy - A new blog from across the pond from an avid mountain biker and photographer. Spectacular photography that's not to be missed. Even though there is more here than cycling it is well worth a look.

Bicycle Design - Launched in '05, this relatively new blog fills an interesting niche in the cycling world. James challenges us with interesting design and insight from an industrial designers point of view.

Feel free to comment on this list, but be sure to leave your own nominees here.

Father and son ride

Yesterday I took Jack out for a ride at Fox Mill Park. What a great feeling to be able to take your son out on a mountain bike ride. Jack is still a little apprehensive when he rides, but he clearly enjoyed the time out in the woods alone with Daddy. He also got progressively better as time went along. There's no doubt that the bike held him back. Even small inclines proved to be momentum busters. I can't wait for the day that he can go full on with me. I won't rush him though...or at least I'll try not to rush him. Now if you'll allow the proud papa to indulge:

Took this while riding. I kept telling Jack to look ahead and not down. Trust that the bike will follow his eyes. At just that moment I looked down at the camera...Jack came to a stop...and I ran into him at slow speed and toppled over unable to get my feet out of the pedals.

About to mount the Giant Frantic singlespeed.

Guzzling it down. He didn't believe me when I told him he'd work up a sweat. It was about 40 degrees.

Like father, like son.

Next we hung out by the "watering hole" in the center of the park. Jack's favorite place to hike and now bike!

Hey, is this thing working? Shortly after this stunning self-portrait Jack's right foot slipped into the frigid water. Time to cut this short and head back to the car.

Still with a smile on his face. Even with a soaking wet foot!

So today at dinner we were talking about getting ready for school tomorrow when Jack said, "I know what my teacher is going to ask us to do tomorrow."

"Oh yeah, what's that Jack?" asked Mommy.

"She's going to ask us to write about our Thanksgiving vacation. I'm going to write about how I went mountain biking with Daddy," exclaimed Jack.

Just imagine the smile on my face.

Puff is dead

My poor car "Puff" is dead. Jack and I named him Puff after he blew puffs of smoke out through the tailpipe a few years ago. Puff is a 1995 Mazda Protege with about 96,000 miles that blew a head gasket while driving on I-95 to Baltimore. Given that it will cost about as much to fix it as it is worth (about $1500 blue book) it has been donated to charity.

A couple of weeks ago, on a drive home from a family trip to New Jersey, we stopped at the Baltimore service station - where the car rested in its final days - to collect the roof rack, etc. before it was to be picked up by the donation company. Jack and Claire just cried and cried...they couldn't believe that Puff was dead. (They pulled themselves together for the photo, however.) It's just amazing how attached kids can get to inanimate objects. While they were mourning the loss, I was quietly rejoicing as I would finally have an excuse to get a new car.

I was planning to get a new car in June after my daughter's private kindergarten tuition ended (she missed the public school cut-off date by two weeks). But oh well...the car is dead...its time to get a new one right? Well, my wife kindly pointed out that the reason I did not already have a new car hasn't changed. Therefore, I would have to come up with an alternative until June.

Damn, I hate it when she does that!

I'm pretty lucky. I live in one of the most congested parts of the country, but I commute only five or six miles to work against the traffic both ways. I also have many options. I can carpool with my friend/colleague who lives around the corner from me, borrow the neighbor's truck (he and his wife both work from home and rarely use more than the one car), and/or have my wife drive me in each day.

I have decided, however, that the options above will be my back-ups. Its time to put up or shut up and commute by bike each day.

It's actually perfect timing. I have been complaining about how few miles I have ridden since the little darlings have gone back to school and the days have gotten shorter. In fact, I was considering commuting by bike even before the car died so it just forced me to get over the mental hurdle.

Anyway, its been interesting preparing. Getting organized for commuting is much different then preparing for a ride on the trails. I'll post up what I learn as I go along.

Thanks for reading!

MTB in NYC

I was thumbing through the recent issue (#118) of Dirt Rag and stumbled on a short article about trails being built in NYC. It got me curious about the cycling scene in the big apple so I did a little poking around.

Imagine being a mountain biker in New York City. Every-time you would want to ride you would have to hoof it to Jersey (limited options) or Long Island to find some singletrack. Minimum one hour drive. This means mountain biking for New Yorkers is pretty much relegated to a weekend activity.

But not for long. The Concerned Long Island Mountain Bikers (CLIMB) has helped some active city riders to form a new club of New York City Mountain Bikers called NYCMTB. The goal - one trail in each of New York's five boroughs. The organizations are already off to a nice start with one trail in upper Manhattan (Highbridge Park) and one in Queens (Cunningham Park). Apparently there is also some sweet unsanctioned trail at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. If NYCMTB can bring this trail under its wings they would have three of the five covered.

Beyond the obvious physical barriers to mountain biking in NYC, the city government seems to be increasingly antagonistic toward cyclists. Over the last few weeks I have been reading articles (I wish I could find them now) about the many tickets and fines levied against cyclists for things such as the lack of reflectors, riding outside the boundaries of the bike lane (scroll way down on page), and locking bikes on poles, lampposts, etc. The feeling is that Mayor Bloomberg is cracking down on cyclists due to the many Critical Mass rides that occur.

As one who grew up in NJ just west of the city, I have always thought of NY as the city with the best of everything. Never even gave it a second thought. Today I live just west of another great American city, Washington D.C., but I have often struggled to find things unique to the city that can't be found in NY (aside from the politics and monuments). While this region is not without its cycling struggles, it has a very diverse cycling culture and more singletrack within an hours drive then most cities out there.

Booth Babe 2005

After months of hoarding these pictures for our personal viewing pleasure, we have finally decided to release them to the world.  We will not be responsible for any damages whatsoever (real or imagined) resulting from your viewing of or fantasizing about the Interbike Booth Babes.

Late but still lovely.

When I first agreed to this assignment, I had no idea that it would literally consume all of my time at Interbike.  Time I could have spent checking out bikes and products; Time I could have spent scavenging for the next tapped keg or Angela Sucich and her tequila party; Time I could have been chasing the turtle.

If you weren't approached by the Go Clipless Interbike Booth Babe Patrol (IBBP), there's always next year.  Be on the lookout for Go Clipless in '06.

To kick off a long weekend with the in-laws, we present you with an alternative....VOTE!!

View the full booth babe photo shoot.

Kona for kids

It's about time a major manufacturer put some effort into bikes for kids! Kona has just announced an expansion of it's line of "performance oriented, discipline specific bikes...to get kids on the singletrack or in the park young and keep them moving fast." (Read the press release on BikeBiz.com for all of the particulars.)

Models include:

Cross-country: Makena, Hula

Dirt jumping: Stuff 2-4

Freeride: Stinky 2-4

Cyclocross/Urban: Jake 2-4

With a name like Stinky it just about seals the deal for my kids.

President Bush, come ride with MORE

Just tons of traffic coming in from people searching for news about George Bush mountain biking with the Chinese National Team. Trouble is they are finding my old post about the prez. when he first started riding. I wasn't going to post anything about this since many others already have, but hey, give the readers what they want! Right?

I've got to say that when I first posted about the president mountain biking back in July of '04, I really didn't think it would last. Turns out he is quite fit and very serious about riding (at least according to all that have ridden with him. I saw an article from the editor of Bicycling Magazine about his riding some time ago...but can't seem to find it online...anyone?)

Given my local mountain bike club (MORE) covers the Washington D.C. area, one of the members has suggested that the club petition the president to ride one of the club maintained trails.

Politics aside this would be a real coup for the club (am I allowed to say that when referring to the president ;-).

So how about it Mr. Prez?