How Great Was It To Bike With My Tampa Bike Pal Ellen!

 

It was surreal and quite a treat to be bicycling with my old Tampa bike buddy, the one-of-a-kind Ellen Pierson, a kind and generous bicycle pal.

We shared bike rides all over the Tampa Bay area, especially from South Tampa across the Courtney Campbell Causeway to Clearwater.

We biked the bridges around St. Petersburg, too.

Ellen was in Las Vegas with her sister, Julie, superpal Maria, plus Maria's niece, Denise, for the Project Hero Honor Ride down the Strip and back to the Clark County government center in downtown Las Vegas.

Ellen is off to Arizona and eventually back home to Tampa, Florida. 

It was amazing to see her.   

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Enough is enough -- Too many deaths on Las Vegas roads to bear

 

Enough is enough.

The LVSportsBiz.com letter to the county commissioners on the road violence in the Las Vegas area.

Another Bicyclist Killed In The Las Vegas Area

 

The anger is building and building.

Another accused drunk driver here in the Las Vegas area killing an innocent walker or bicyclist or another motorist.

This time Sunday, Nov. 2.

And yet beneath the anger is the intellectual reality that this is predictable in Las Vegas, the logical result of a lethal combination of impaired drivers and limited prison times and lack of police enforcement.

Bicycling is ageless; Always keep rolling

 

Never too old to not be bicycling!

Keep it rolling. 

Joyfully celebrating bicycling at Pedal Fest bicycle festival Nov. 1 and 2; Way to go SNMBA!

 

The Pedal Fest weekend and the Chainsmoker mountain bike races Saturday showed there's bicycle love in the Las Vegas area.

It was great to hang out with the Jared and Heather Fisher family of tents -- Save Red Rock, Escape Adventure, Las Vegas Cyclery and Aquarius Trail and Hut tours.

The event had lots of outdoorsy spirit and bike love -- and we need that more than ever.

The Southern Nevada Mountain Bike Association (SNMBA) put on the weekend event and it was great to see the many bike groups and retail shops out there.

See You At Pedal Fest In Blue Diamond Saturday and Sunday!

 

Just because local government struggles to create safe roads and safe places for people to bike doesn't mean you have to throw in the towel. 

Create your own bicycle event to celebrate bicycling all the benefits and joys it brings.

Like Pedal Fest at the park in Blue Diamond Saturday and Sunday. It's mountain bike races on Saturday and swap meet on Sunday with a vendor village of tents and tables at the Blue Diamond park off the road off Srare Route 159 in Red Rock Canyon.

 

It's a great opportunity to talk to people from all types of bicycle groups.

There will be lots of people who love the outdoors, plus I will be hanging out at the Las Vegas Cyclery and Aquarius/Hut bike tour tents with my Bicycle Man books!

See you there this weekend on Nov 1 and 2!

You Never Know Who You Will Meet On The Beautiful Red Rock Scenic Drive

 

When you live in Las Vegas, you put up with four months of 100-degree weather. And this summer was a "cooler" one, so there wasn't 117-degree days furnace-blasting Southern Nevada.

So when these lovely days of 70 degrees arrive in late October here in Red Rock Canyon, it's a sin to not roll out the bicycle and pedal the famed Red Rock Loop.

And who do I meet near the top of the Red Rock climb between Mile 4 and the scenic drive overlook but the gang at Escape Adventures and owner Jared Fisher.

Escape Adventures is the premier bike-touring operation in the western U.S. For today's Red Rock action, Jared was working a corporate tour, with the show attendees doing the bike ride on both bicycles and e-bikes.

The weather was exquisite. I was dragging at the Red Rock Homestead. But as soon as I began bicycling there was the magic of the pedaling rhythm along State Route 159 as I headed for the Red Rock Loop entrance.

I also bike a monster single-speed Surly Pugsley, a beast of a steel-framed bike that makes cycling a road bike so much qui ker.

The Red Rock Loop was quiet around 2:20 PM as the tours of e-bikers and scooter riders and small go-carters were done.

Look at this afternoon.

Bicycling is my church, my emotional safe haven, my healing center.

 

Keep on rolling everyone and I will see you at the mountain bike races and Pedal Fest this weekend in Blue Diamond.

Why Do Public Roads Have Lower Safety Standards Than Private Roads?

 

While I was picking up garbage along State Route 159 in Red Rock Canyon, I found this note along the road.

Interesting to see the driving rules set in a private place like Red Rock Country Club in Summerlin such as the lower speed limit and not parking within 40 feet of corners so your visibility of other cars is not blocked by parked cars.

Why do the public roads have lower standards than private roads? So you can reach Albertsons two minutes faster?

The road infrastructure in Clark County is awful, obviously created under a public works head who is a little behind the times. The focus is on moving cars as fast as possible, walkers and bicyclists be damned.

Great sign here applied to Clark County and Las Vegas.

 

Pugsley and Me On Garbage Pickup Patrol in Red Rock Canyon

 

It's my hope that photos of collected garbage would spark others to follow suit and pick up garbage.

Today, it was three grocery plastic bags filled with water bottles, beer cans, cigarette packs and even a road tire tube along State Route 159 via the Surly Pugsley, my friendly two-wheeled, single-speed beast.

My thinking is that if a shlumpy, selfish, self-absorbed shlump like myself can find time and effort to pick up garbage scarring and marring the beautiful Red Rock Canyon, then maybe you can follow suit.

I have to admit it takes anger and that pissed-off feeling inside when seeing the garbage on the side of the road amid the natural beauty of Red Rock that I get into a mental groove of biking the Pugsley and picking up cans and bottles and general trash.

Leadership is not giving speeches. It's living by example and performing deeds that help everyone.

People in Las Vegas are blessed to have the BLM-managed Red Rock National Conservation Area in their back yard. It's both stunningly beautiful and close in proximity.

It was great to meet two Blue Diamond ladies doing their own garbage pickup on SR 159 near the street that leads into the small village of Blue Diamond while I biked home.

Laura and Lynn were out there picking up garbage with pickers and their orange trash bags. Nice work, Laura and Lynn!

They are with Save Red Rock and look for the group's tent at this weekend's mountain bike events at the park in Blue Diamond.

Pugsley and I will be there selling my book, Bicycle Man.

Come On Cities Of Las Vegas And North Las Vegas -- You Can Do Better

 

It's not your imagination. The cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas are not great places to ride a bicycle.

That according to the national People For Bikes organization which ranks cities across the U.S.for their bicycle neworks.

LVSportsBiz.com wrote this based on the People For Bikes study:

Las Vegas and North Las Vegas have low-scoring, low-rated bicycle networks according to a 2025 city bike ranking list released by a national bicycle advocacy organization, People For Bikes in Boulder, Colorado.

The city of Las Vegas ranked 2,073 out of 2,901 cities, good for a miserable 29 percentile ranking, according to the People For Bikes group. Here’s the organization’s city bicycle rankings.

The city of North Las Vegas was even worse.

People For Bikes said North Las Vegas ranked 2,383 our of 2,901 cities -- coming in at an 18th percentile rating. Yikes!

Fontainebleau Hotel On North End Of Strip Refuses To Allow Me To Lock Up My Bicycle

 

I bicycled over to the Fontainebleau hotel on the north end of the Strip and had a horrible bicycle experience.

I was there to cover a technology show, but was told by security and a manager that there was no bicycle parking or bike racks in the parking garage,

But I did see these nice bike racks.

But the security and manager said only employees are allowed to lock their bikes there.

I tried to explain I was a journalist and I would be there only one hour.

But security said no way -- no locking your bicycle here.

Fontainbleau, just like Las Vegas, anti-bicycle. 

 

Good Grief, Bike Racks at Las Vegas' Airport Are Awful; Does Anyone In Local Government In Las Vegas Support Bicycling?

 

Pictured above is the Las Vegas airport's awful bike racks, comparable to the crappy bike racks at the Red Rock hotel-casino in the parking garage at the Red Rock Resort in Summerlin. Below are much nicer bike racks found at T-Mobile Arena outside the VGK arena:

Hey Las Vegas, when it comes to airports, you don't know how lucky you are.

Your airport is geographically close to the Strip. You can walk from Terminal 1 to the Strip in 55 minutes or ride a bicycle to the Strip in about 15 minutes or so. That's not bad when you're waiting around for a taxi or Uber for a half-hour just wasting time. Naturally if Las Vegas was a real major league city it would have public bus shuttles to the Strip or public monorail service to the Strip.

So, today I tested out the bicycle resources at the Las Vegas Airport -- LAS

It was relatively easy to bike into Terminal 1 via sidewalks off Tropicana Avenue inside the airport that are hardly used by walkers. I used the sidewalks as paved trails and gave walkers a verbal notice when I approached them from behind. The sidewalks were functioning as multi-use trails because riding a bicycle on the airport roads where people drive like reckless maniacs would have been a death wish.

There are ways to reach the terminal via the sidewalks, then cross over the many lanes of chaotic traffic via crosswalks at the terminal to reach Level 0 and the bike racks where motorcycles are also parked.

There are no bike rack or bicycle parking signs at the airport. 

And once you find them, you see instantly that the LAS airport bike racks are awful. Bike racks should be individual posts or hoops that allow a bicyclist to lock any part of the frame of the bike to the secure post. But these bike racks at the airport suck.

 

Please, Las Vegas Airport, install bike lockup equipment and gear like these at Raiders headquarters in Henderson:

I plan to use the airport bike rack to lock my bicycle for an out-of-town jet trip. Stay tuned for that report after I get back.

Let's Bike To Death Valley From Beatty, NV: An Autumn Journey With Kevin

 

The starkly beautiful Death Valley National Park is so enormous and sprawling that there are several ways to find your way into this gorgeous national park with the out-of-this-world raw landscape.

One of those routes into Death Valley is from the Beatty, Nevada direction.

So I jumped at the chance to bike with my photographer and bicycling buddy Kevin Cannon, who suggested meeting at Eddie World in Beatty and biking to Death Valley via the Nevada gateway along State Route 374.

The weather was absolutely perfect, an exquisite 74 degrees as Kevin and I biked on the two-lane road out of Beatty.

On the way to Death Valley Kevin and I made a right turn of SR 75 for a visit to the popular Rhyolite ghost town, probably one of the most photographed ghost towns in Nevada.

The old building frames of the local bank, school and store are still stand, while the train depot is probably the structure that looks the most complete. 

After we biked back to Beatty and pedaled around the small town situated on Route 95 about two hours north of Las Vegas, Kevin continued north to Tonopah while I headed home through Death Valley via the Furnace Creek visitor area.