News of the awesome.

First awesome news: Last nights ride was historic! No crashes, no injuries, plenty of nudity, and everyone seemed to have a relatively chill, problem free pub crawl. Could that have actually been the first Midnight Ridazz pubcrawl without bloodshed? If so, I'm impressed! Hell of a ride y'all! I had a blast, and think that EVERY pub crawl should include a strip club stop. During the ride I heard discussion about some of the up-coming rides and let me tell y'all, you're in for a treat. I don't want to spoil it for Mims but I'll give you a sneak peek at one ride: When the weather warms up there's going to be a viscous substance wrestling crawl. Think mud, pudding, KY, etc. Oh yeah, it's gonna to be nuts, it's gonna to be messy, and I'm pretty much 100% sure it's gonna be awesome.

Next up: Not local news, but relevant due to the several police/cyclist interactions as of late; The NYPD officer who body checked a cyclist to the ground in a recent NYC Critical Mass ride has been indicted! Hell yeah! Critical mass: 1, Fascist Thugs: 0! If it wasn't for the current scorecard of Critical Mass: 3 vs. Fascist Thugs: 1,394,059 this would be great news, as it is it's definitely a step in the right direction, and proof for why we need more cameras in the hands of citizens. The cops cannot be trusted to tell the truth, but the video does not lie. It's the best tool we have in our fight to be free from the violent, gestapo-like police tactics of yesteryear. A cheapo camera will set you back less than a hundred bucks and can be invaluable in protecting the rights of fellow citizens against police and government oppression. I love technology, it's finally helping to balance the scale.

Closer to home: The Center for Transportation Research at UT recently conducted a state-wide survey regarding the cycling practices of Texas residents, conducted entirely online. The reason behind the survey was to help establish planning guidelines for designing safe and efficient bicycle facilities both in Texas and around the US. If you want to know more you can read UT's news release regarding the survey, or you can go directly to the source. If you want a more in-depth look at the survey, the League of Bicycle Voters have been kind enough to host a copy of Chandra Bhat's research documentation for your perusal. Check it out:

http://www.lobv.org/docs/Bicycle_sener_eluru_bhat_revised_9Dec08.pdf

http://www.lobv.org/docs/sener_eluru_bhat_bicycle2_13Nov08.pdf

I'm sure that there are more great things going on in the news that's bicycle-related, but those were the ones that really jumped out at me (or were emailed to me) this morning.