Time For Gimme Five

Every know and then, I post a Gimme 5 on a variety of bicycle stories that catch my eye.

1. Do you moan about biking hills? Check out this fella churning up a steep hill in San Francisco.

2. Speaking of San Francisco, check out this story on mobile bicycle chop shops.

3. Well, it's hard not to include a link on the Portland's World naked Bike Ride. More coverage here by BikePortland.org

4. An unsung bicycle hero in the Tampa Bay is Mike Olsen of God's Pedal Power, which rehabs hundreds of bikes in Tampa. His group gave 40 bikes to kindergarten kids. Way to go Mike!  There's also a new kinda satellite location of God's Pedal Power called South Tampa Bicycle Recyclery. Check that out.

5. Let's be real. Even with bicycle awareness messages on billboards or in PSAs, the first thought that goes through the mind of the vast majority of drivers when they see a bicyclist on the road is, "Great -- someone is on a bicycle in front of me and I can't drive as fast as I want."

The worst thing that happens to a motorist when driving on a road with a bicyclist is that motorists can't drive as fast as they want.

The worst thing that happens to a bicyclist when driving on the road with a motorist is that we get killed.

I want people to know that drivers kill hundreds of bicyclists a year in this country and these cyclists leave loved ones behind and big voids in people's lives. Here are the lives of two people who were killed by motorists recently -- one, a 20-year-old Sarasota Ballet dancer killed by a truck driver in Sarasota.

The other was a young man killed by a hit-and-run driver in south Los Angeles.