One of the biggest misconceptions held by members of the motoring public -- especially when they relate to bicyclists -- is that they own the road because they pay for it.

Not true. Road construction and maintenance is paid for by a myriad of taxes, of which gasoline taxes are only one part. In fact, most cyclists also own cars, so they pay their fair share of gas taxes as well.

One place where motorists won't be making that argument, however, is Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society raised funds to help pay for a road repaving on a popular bicycling road ....

We all know that Seattle is one of the top bicycling cities in the US, usually ranked near the top with the likes of Portland, Boulder and Minneapolis on the lists for "best 10 cities for bicyclists."

But how do Seattle's neighboring cities rank?

The Cascade Bicycle Club set out to determine that and published its results in a six-page publication -- Puget Sound Bicycle Scorecard -- released this week.

The top city was Kirkland, followed closely by Redmond and Renton. Bringing up the bottom of the list were Federal Way and Shoreline. ....

I can ride my bike with no handlebars, but I can't  write and send a Twitter message while I pedal along.

But Janeen McCrae can.

That's because McCrae rides Precious, a bicycle that's been outfitted with sensors and electronics that enable it to send out Tweets with the push of a button. Actually, McCrae and Precious collaborate on the Twitter messages.

McCrae is riding Precious from coast-to-coast on Adventure Cycling's TransAmerica Bicycle Route to raise money for the Livestrong Foundation ....

Leave it to the guy who's never competed on a mountain bike before to win one of the premier off-road bike races in the U.S.

Levi Leipheimer won the Leadville 100 mountain bike race on Saturday, setting a new course record in the process. His RadioShack teammate and defending champion, Lance Armstrong, didn't race due to injuries sufferd in the Tour de France.

Listening to his comments after the race, it sounds like the 36-year-old left it all out on the 100-mile Rocky Mountain route that ranges between 9,000 and 13,000 feet.

"Twenty miles to go, I didn't care if I was an hour behind or a half an hour ahead, I just wanted to get it done .... It was just torturous. .....

A cyclist from the U.K. is riding across the U.S. on a bicycle with three goals in mind: To travel. To share. To inspire.

But Dominic Gill isn't making the journey alone. He's riding from the rear seat of a tandem bicycle that's outfitted so the captain sits in back and the stoker rides and pedals out front.

Gill's passengers are all people whose physical impairments would make it impossible for them to make the trip on their own.

Keith Rogers at the Las Vegas Review Journal writes about one of those passengers, Carlos Terrazas, 22, who has been blind since birth.....

Apparently enough Republican voters in Colorado believed in Dan Maes's conspiracy theory regarding bicycling and the U.N. to support his run for governor.

The businessman told an audience last week about his fear that support of pro-bicycling projects, like the Denver B-cycle bike share program, were linked to a United Nations plot that would "threaten our personal freedoms."

His bicycling comments were roundly ridiculed in the past week, yet he must have touched a nerve. Voters in the Republican primary gave Maes a 1.3% margin over opponent and former congressman Scott McInnis, according to last night's returns .....

Defending champion Lance Armstrong will not return to race the Leadville 100 on Saturday, but his RadioShack teammate Levi Leipheimer will be making his debut.

Also on hand for the mountain bike race will be David Wiens, the 46-year-old winner of six Leadville 100s from 2003 to 2008.

The Leadville is one of the most storied mountain bike races. The course is 100 miles long and all takes place above the 9,000-foot level on mostly dirt and gravel back-country roads in the vicinity of Leadville, Colorado. It was the subject of last year's documentary, Race Across the Sky (left).

While many enter the event (some 1,500 registered this year) ....

A portion of the Cedar River Trail just east of Renton will be closed for repairs Aug. 16 - Sept. 3 as work crews repair damage to the levee from last year's storms.

The section to be closed starts at 154 Place SE and extends to 175 Avenue SE. That's essentially from the undercrossing just east of Ron Regis Park to the Riverbend Mobile & RV Park.

King County says the trail will be closed 24 hours a day and there will be no flagged reroute during construction.

To bypass the trail, bicyclists ....

My bicycling buddy Kazuki and I are shown celebrating the exhilarating experience of crossing the soaring bridge over the Carbon River gorge on the way to Mount Rainier National Park this week.

This is one of the amazing landmarks on the way from our suburban Bellevue, Washington, neighborhood to our destination deep in the Mount Rainier National Park.

We had loaded up our mountain bikes and trailers and departed Thursday for a ride to the Ipsut Creek Campground. After spending the first night camping at the Kanaskat-Palmer State Park, our night spent in the wilderness campground inside the national park was completely different ....

One of the Republican candidates for governor is expressing fear and loathing that pro-bicycling policies of his possible challenger in the fall elections is turning Denver into a stooge for the United Nations.

Dan Maes is quoted at length in the Denver Post saying essentially that Mayor John Hickenlooper's support of bicycle commuting -- as seen in the Denver B-cycle bike-sharing program -- could threaten personal freedoms.

Maes's comments were made at a campaign rally last week: 

"This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed ... This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms.... These aren't just warm and fuzzy ideas ...

Colorado took the wrapper off its plans on Wednesday to host a week-long bicycle race next year entitled the Quizno's Pro Challenge.

Named for its sponsorship by the sandwich shop chain, the bike race is scheduled Aug. 22-28, 2011. It steps into the void left by the demise of the Tour of Missouri, which was unable to land a title sponsor during its short 3-year history.

Making the announcement were Lance Armstrong and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter. Armstrong now makes his home in the Aspen area and has been lobbying Ritter for more than a year to host a bike race that would be a descendant of the famed Coors Classic ....

Cyclist on a fund-raising mission
at Seattle Livestrong Challenge

Whether Floyd Landis's accusations are true or not, this federal investigation of Lance Armstrong is going to get plenty ugly before it's resolved.

As that ugliness may tarnish Armstrong's image, what will be the effect on his crusade to fight cancer and help survivors -- the Lance Armstrong Foundation? Devastating, says one expert.

The feds are looking for proof of the Landis claims that Armstrong and his teammates doped during his amazing string of 7 Tour de France victories.

Through all this, I've been wondering about the effect on Armstrong's biggest legacy outside the record books -- his establishment of the LiveStrong Foundation. .....

It's too early to sign up for next year's STP, but it isn't too early to plan for the 200-mile bike ride.

The Cascade Bicycle Club released the dates for next year's Group Health Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic -- July 9 and 10, 2011.

As with all the Cascade bike rides next year, registration for members opens at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 4. Registration for nonmembers opens Feb. 1.

If history is any indication ....

It's been a while since I've written about my monthly bicycling mileage totals, but July represents a good all-around biking month for me.

My monthly "tale of the tape" was a common topic of this blog back in 2008 when I was shooting for a 4,000-mile year; I finally achieved it by plowing my bike through the snow on the last day of the year.

With no goal in mind for 2009, I bicycled 2,496 miles. So far in 2010, I've covered 2,046 miles on either my road bike or mountain bike.

I don't have a hard and fast goal set for 2010, except for one objective: Stay ahead of Barry ....

At least one of the 1,000 cyclists who rode in the Seattle Century on Saturday is all smiles after crossing Lake Washington on the I-90 bridge bike trail.

This was the last leg of the ride for the cyclists who headed from Seattle and into the eastside hills to the spectacular Snoqualmie Falls. The ride ended at Magnuson Park with ...

Hundreds of cyclists dressed up in their favorite costumes and rode their bikes in the Tour de Fat bike parade around Seattle's Fremont neighborhood on Saturday.

The parade is the opening event in the day-long bike festival presented for the past three years here by New Belgium Brewery, for Fort Collins, Colorado.

After returning to the home base at Gas ...

A RAGBRAI cyclist died after falling from his bicycle and two others suffered injuries from collisions with motor vehicles in the latter half of the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.

A 68-year-old RAGBRAI veteran died Friday from injuries he suffered when he clipped the tire of another bicycle and fell.

The man, Stephen Briggs of Waverly, Iowa, ...

London launched its bike-sharing program on Friday, joining other forward-looking cities seeking to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality by making bicycles readily available.

The London system, dubbed Barclay's Cycle Hire for its sponsorship by the financial services chain, has distributed 6,000 bicycles to 400 docking stations.

That's a smaller start than the Velib system in Paris, which launched with 10,000 bicycles 3 years ago and has grown to 25,000 bicycles. But it's larger than two roll-outs in the US this summer -- Minneapolis's Nice Ride Minnesota with 700 bicycles at 65 kiosks and Denver B-cycle with 500 bicycles at 50 docking stations....

For the Seattle bicycling community, the arrival of Tour de Fat is something like the circus coming to town.

The festival at Gas Works Park on Saturday is just one of the bicycling events in the Seattle area this weekend. Others include the return of the Seattle Century and a bike collection drive in West Seattle for the Village Bicycle Project.

This is the third visit to Seattle by Tour de Fat, a celebration of the bicycle put on by New Belgium Brewery, the makers of Fat Tire beer.

As always, the festival starts with a parade of decorated bicycles around the Fremont neighborhood .....

Cyclists in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina are coming to grips with the latest tragedy on local roads:

Two bicyclists riding single file along the white line were struck from behind by a Jeep Friday morning on a rural road south of the city. One cyclist, Donald Sunday, 62, of Winston-Salem, died at the scene. The other, Barry Leonard, 49, suffered a broken pelvis and rib.

News stories about the tragedy were accompanied by sinkening rants from motorists with a superior right to the roads....