Today marks the beginning of National Bike to Work Week, which is part of National Bike Month. This is something I happen to like a great deal because I ride my bike to work and happen to think it's a great thing that a lot of people could easily pick up, thereby reducing cars, traffic, pollution, oil consumption, and stress levels, and making neighborhoods all-around more pleasant places. So if you've got a bike, you should pull it out of whatever dusty corner it's been sitting in and give bike commuting a roll. You might end up liking it. And if you're really lazy, at least go on Thursday, that's specifically Bike to Work Day.

To celebrate, a local bicycle advocacy group, C.I.C.L.E., is organizing a week's worth of events in Pasadena, including music, movie nights, workshops and more.

If you don't want to actually ride your bike, but want to look like you ride bikes, or maybe you like riding bikes but you're too punk rock to go with the flow in an organized event like this, you can always participate in Drive Your Bike to Work Day.

In other bike-related news that is unrelated to Bike to Work Week, I am exhausted from a weekend's worth of riding. On Friday, I think I must have put in about forty miles between Midnight Ridazz and my normal commute. On Saturday, I participated in the Tour De Strand, which is a bike pub crawl put on by the UCLA Business School (thanks for the invite, Juan) and goes from Santa Monica to Redondo Beach. That's fifteen miles one way, plus fifteen miles from Silver Lake to Santa Monica. The ride back brought the total mileage of the day to 60. In the bike world, 60 miles is a metric century (100 km). Oh yeah, I did both days fixed, too, so I earned those miles. Not a bad way to spend the weekend, especially since most of it involved drinking.

The other bit of news is that I have acquired yet another bicycle. Yeah, I know, who needs four bicycles? Even the owner of my favorite bike shop was joking with me when I was in there last week saying, "Jon, you need help." Well, one is for sale if anyone is interested. And besides, how could I say no to this hotness?

Those are photos from the ebay auction. I got it on Friday and built it up for Midnight Ridazz really quick. My photos will come once the build is officially done.