The 2009 Mayors' Ride/Busycle Author Tour Firestorm

In 65 days time, I leave for my third bike ride across America. If you want to help send me off on May 3 with a casual ride from Palo Alto City Hall to San Francisco City Hall, sign up HERE. There is a ton of excitement at hand. Here is an overview:

A) My Book is Done
B) "New" bike - Eagle Training BLOG
C) First documented coast to coast ride on Eagle HiWheel
D) 2009 Mayors' Ride on Facebook
E) 2009 Ride Schedule
F) Ines Brunn in Palo Alto, CA 4/4

a) Five years in the making, I finished the last rewrite of “How America can Bike and Grow Rich, The National Bicycle Greenway Manifesto” on Feb 9. During the month of March it will be in edit mode before we then run it out as a PDF that will be password protected and sold for a nominal price to build fire for the vision it contains

B) Upon completion of the above book that I will be touring with this summer, I have been away from it for a few weeks now with the next major hurdle over which I have to jump - the Eagle HiWheel bicycle that you see pictured below.

While mine is an almost exact reproduction made in 1991 of the bike (while mine is an Eagle, the photo is of a Star) you see being ridden down the steps of the US Capitol here in 1891, it is still tricky to ride. The benefits as you will see in this blog that I am running for this ride, however, are many, such as the ability to climb hills instead of walking them. As well, it is an amazing machine built like a Swiss watch by the father and son team of Jim and Jim St Spillane. Note: If you go to the first entry in this blog, you can see a video of me learning how to mount this amazing bike!

C) The coast to coast crossing I will be doing on it will be the first documented ride for a bike like this across the United States. While there may have been someone who rode a reverse HiWheel from the East Coast to the West back in the late 1800s, no one seems to know who it was or have any details. While there is no argument about the fact that it has never been done from West Coast to East....

D) I also got on Facebook a few weeks ago. And a lot of the build up I have been doing for this ride is documented there. And indeed it is a worthy place for such activity since a lot of the bike people and their activism shows up there. I had wondered where a lot of the names I had grown accustomed to seeing on web based bicycle forums had disappeared to. They're all on Facebook. Become one of my friends. Go to Facebook, search for me by my email address: hiwheeler@gmail.com

E) The 2009 Mayors' Ride schedule that I will be riding is at http://www.bikeroute.com/NationalMayorsRide2009

F) And last and yet probably one of the most important parts of this post is Ines Brunn's appearance here in America in Palo Alto on April 4 as per this page. I am posting this last because you will be seeing a lot about her upcoming show in the month ahead. And I am excited!! This woman can do magic on a bike beyond anything you can imagine. Until she comes to help me make the Summer of 2009 real, spend spend some time at her WEB!

THX 4 all of U!!