Free books from a tricycle

From DailyCandy Chicago:

August 15, 2008
Free Ride
The Book Bike
bookworm!

Once upon a time, there was a bibliophile named Gabe Levinson who wanted to spread the word about his passion for books.

So he did the obvious: ordered a custom-built tricycle with a 200-pound capacity and wrote to dozens of publishers asking for book donations. The hook: He’d ride around in his Book Bike and give away free books to the masses.

The responses flooded in — from McSweeney’s, Dark Horse Comics, Not for Tourists, Drawn & Quarterly, and Washington Square Press, to name a few.

Levinson now spends his Saturdays pedaling around Chicago parks giving away free reads. Cops have tried to stop him, but he woos them with his bounty.

This Saturday, you, too, can be wooed (check his website for location).

Pretty cool in our book.


For locations, go to somethingtoread.net.

Jeannie Longo Is One Tough Cookie

Since May, Jeannie Longo has been training and racing in Colorado in preparation for Beijing. Sure, she's headed to some bigger races like Mt. Hood, but she also has shown up to almost all the local things. Sometimes she races in the men's 35+, a field that is stacked with former pros, former Olympians, and other local strongmen, and she walks away in the top three. When she races the women, she always adds another one to her list of over 1000 career wins. 1000! I think I have 3-5 career wins, and 2 of them don't count as they were by default, so 3. She is also in her 50s, went to the Olympics the year I was born (1984), and is a really cool person. She hangs out after the races and shoots the shit with everyone and talks about how much she loves Colorado. I would love to be badass by proxy by saying that I have raced against her, but really she and I have only ever shared the same start line for a very short amount of time, and then she lights the field on fire, cooks it, eats it, and spits it out. The picture is lifted from a friend, M. Hottman, and is of Jeannie accepting a medal at the Salida Omnium. She is so cool, and though French, I'm totally rooting for her in Beijing!

"The Climb"

I'm glad somebody mentioned this blog: "The Climb," the account of a regular dude's quest to complete a mountain stage of "le Tour." (Hat tip to Thomas Sutton.)
Looks kind of entertaining.

other cycling websites

On the right margin of this website there's a short list of "useful sites" and "other sites we like" about cycling or bicycles. I'm not particularly familiar with the cycloblogosphere or cycling websites in general, so if there are other sites that you think would be of general interest to UCVC members, please leave a comment below with the name of the site and its URL, and maybe I'll add them to our lists. Thanks!

Movies about cycling or bicycles

Jacques Tati, in "Jour de fête"
Here's a list of movies about cycling or bicycles. In some of them bicycles play a really secondary part (did you know that Goldeneye or Tomorrow Never Dies were movies about bicycles!?). But all the important ones are there, I think, up until 2007. I think we can consider the list comprehensive.