Great Southwest Bike Swap recap

Yesterday’s Bike Swap was a resounding success. The swap hall at the Resource Connection was full pretty much all day, and it looked like there was a whole lot of buying, selling, and trading going on.

Thanks to all of you who came by and visited our booth. It was nice to have the bike community welcoming us back with open arms. Apparently many of you are just as excited about Trinity Bicycles as we are!

A big congratulations to Ron Huebner of Lone Lobo Productions in Flower Mound, Texas, who was the lucky winner of our drawing for a $100 gift card to Trinity Bicycles.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a photo of Ron to share with you, so you’ll have to make do with this bike swap photo of Bike Friendly Fort Worth creator Brad Blessing and Trinity Bicycles’ own Bernie Scheffler, who are teaming up to put on tomorrow’s Ride to City Hall

Brad and Bernie love Bikes and Fort Worth

Brad and Bernie love Bikes and Fort Worth

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Inaugural Bike Friendly Fort Worth Ride – Tomorrow!

Don’t forget, we’re helping Bike Friendly Fort Worth put on their first ever ride tomorrow, and it’s an important one. Meet us at 6 p.m. at the Hoffbrau trailhead to ride with us to Fort Worth City Hall. We will be showing our support for the City staff’s “Bike Fort Worth” plan, and encouraging them to implement it as quickly as possible.

Ride details are here if you missed them.

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Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! It’s Bike Swap Time!

Picture 27On Sunday you can find us at the Great Southwest Bike Swap, which will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Tarrant County Resource Connection (map).

It’s a great event every year, with everybody from bike shops, to framebuilders, to everyday cyclists looking to make some room in their garages participating.

We’ll have lots of bike parts, new and used, at swap-meet-only prices. We’ll also be showing off a few framesets from Kona Bicycles. Come out and see us!

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Ride with Us to City Hall!

arlie-d-robinson-1

F.W. Bicycle Commuting Pioneer, Arlie Robinson. Photo Courtesy Jim's Bike Blog. (Click Photo to Read Arlie's Story)

As we’ve mentioned before, this coming Tuesday the Fort Worth City Council is scheduled to vote on adoption of the City-Planning-Staff-Recommended “Bike Fort Worth” plan.

Well, what better way to get yourself to City Hall to show your support for Bike Fort Worth than on your bicycle?

We are teaming up with folks who are interested in starting up a “Bike Friendly Fort Worth” advocacy organization (yes, it’s modeled after and endorsed by the wildly successful “Bike Friendly Oak Cliff” group) to lead a ride to City Hall.

We will meet at the Trinity Trailhead near Hoffbrau Steaks at the intersection of University and Riverfront Dr. this Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 6 p.m. If you don’t know where that is, click here.

Shortly after 6, we will roll out as a group for a liesurely 4-mile ride to City Hall. This will not be a fast-paced ride–all levels of cyclists are welcome. We will also be sure to regroup on Foch Street so that we all have the comfort of being in a large, visible group when riding across the 7th St. Bridge.

It would be great if we could all dress in a manner that makes it clear that we are there to support Bike Fort Worth. That said, we will be in City Council Chambers, so leave your lycra at home. But positive, pro-bike T-shirts are more than welcome. At the very least, taking your helmet into the meeting with you will mark you as a supportive cyclist. Don’t wear it (The Fort Worth P.D. will ask you to remove it– no hats!), but keep it tucked under your arm.

Finally, it would be great if the City Council heard positive and encouraging comments from area cyclists about the plan, and how much we appreciate the planning staff’s efforts. If you’re not afraid of public speaking, fill out a speaker’s card when you enter the Council Chambers. They’ll let you go on for up to 3 minutes, but 1 or 2 minutes of why you support the plan will make just as big an impact.

That’s it! We hope you can join us for the ride on Tuesday!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Rico mentioned this in the comments thread, but this is important enough to add to the main post: You must bring appropriate lighting on this ride to make your bike street-legal after dark. The sun will already be setting when we begin around 6, so we will need lights both ways. Thanks for the reminder, Rico!

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TONIGHT: Tune in to a Live Discussion about the U.S. Bicycle Route System

I wish I had heard about this sooner, but hopefully those of you who are visiting our site regularly read this in time to tune in.

Tonight Ginny Sullivan, Adventure Cycling’s special projects director, will sit down with BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus in front of a live Portland, Oregon, audience to discuss and take questions about the U.S. Bicycle Route System.

Luckily, you can join in even if you’re not in Portland! The event will be webcast from BikePortland.org and you can ask questions there via chat or through Twitter (@bikeportland). 6:00 – 8:00PM Pacific (That’s 8-10 p.m. for us Texans).

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Lone Star Trail Building Course

There’s a great opportunity coming up for all you mountain bikers who want to learn the intricacies of building safe, sustainable off-road trails: The Lone Star Trail Building Course.

Both basic- and advanced-level trail building courses are being offered by the International Mountain Biking Association and S&S Trails at the Sid Richardson Scout Ranch, which is located about 60 miles Northwest of Fort Worth, on the Western shore of Lake Bridgeport. The class and overnight lodging at the camp are free; the only fee is $35 to cover 5 meals, unless you bring your own food.

As a bonus, trail building pupils will be working on sections of an actual in-progress trail on the ranch, which promises to be one of the more exciting and scenic trails in North Texas when it is completed.

Lone Star Trail Building Course

Click here to download the Lone Star Trail Building Course flyer.

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How Boulder, Colorado Became Bike-Friendly

This is a great little video about how Boulder, CO worked to become more bicycle-friendly. The key points that I take away are these:

  • It takes all the different groups (Road, off-road, commuter, bmx–everybody) of the cycling community working together to bring change
  • Teach a child to safely have fun on a bike, and you’ve created a lifelong cyclist
  • If you build it, they will come. Redundancy in infrastructure is a good thing.

But perhaps more striking than any of the points the video made, is the simple striking visual: a portrait of a town that has more bikes and fewer cars on the roads than we’re accustomed to here in the heart of Texas. It’s a beautiful little town, and I can’t help but notice how much of that beauty comes from seeing a community of people instead of just cars rolling through the streets.

Watch for yourself:

Boulder Bike Story from Bikes Belong on Vimeo.

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Trinity Bicycles is now an official Kona Dealer!

Kona Ute

We’re really excited to announce that when we open our doors in March, we will be a stocking dealer for one of the coolest, most complete line of bikes around: Kona Bicycles.

Whether you’re looking for a speedy road bike built for all-day comfort, a fully-featured loaded touring bike, the coolest cruiser we know of, a 29er mountain bike, or even a cargo bike for commuting with big loads, Kona–and now by extension Trinity Bicycles–has you covered.

Cruise on over to Kona’s website and peruse their entire catalog… and when you’re done, email us and tell us what you’d like to see in the store!

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Update! Bike Plan discussion at FW City Council Meeting rescheduled for Feb. 9

The Bike Plan discussion at the Fort Worth City Council meeting, which we told you about a while back, has been rescheduled. It will now happen at the Council Meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m.

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Muddy Dummy

We rode the Red River Riot yesterday, and it lived up to its name… a real riot. Rain from the very beginning of the day turned the dirt road ramble into a multi-hour mud slog. Painful, challenging, and loads of fun. Turned out my choice of the Big Dummy so that I could carry an entire day’s worth of food and water was a wise one. I needed every calorie I could get. Luckily, I didn’t need any of the tools or the floor pump I was carrying. Big Tires = no pinch flats

It was a ride that I definitely plan to do again. Given the variable weather conditions around here in late January, it will likely have a completely different character every year. Kudos to Kevin Lee who clearly worked his but off to put on a great inaugural event, and thanks to his family and cycling friends for also working so hard to make sure everything went off without a hitch. Check it out next year. We’ll definitely be back.

(By the way, in the photo of the bike above, it is actually really clean. That was taken about 35 miles into the ride, when the roads were still pretty decent!)

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