IndyStar article about INDYCOG regular, Steve "Tool" Allen

Daniel Lee just dropped a story over at the IndyStar about our good pal, Tool. It's an interesting profile about his cycling and commuting habits.

Steve Allen opens his garage door at his Northside Indianapolis house just before sunrise and prepares for one of those rituals of parenthood: taking his 6-year-old daughter, Emma, to school.

Only this is a morning commute with a two-wheeled twist.

Allen uses a bicycle -- actually one of his five bicycles -- for almost all of his daily transportation needs. He rides year-round in rain or snow, hot or cold.

Emma, dressed in her plaid-skirt school uniform, straps on her helmet and hops into the back of a yellow bike trailer. Allen, donning his own helmet, covers her with a blanket to guard from the morning chill and then mounts his Bianchi bicycle.

Allen, his bike and trailer shine and blink with a half-dozen lights and blinkers. "It looks like a Mardi Gras float," he quipped.

Full story here.

Check it out, and while you're there, help out the comments section. It can get rough over there on bicycles.

P.S. Thanks to Daniel for the INDYCOG mention!

The New Major?

Daniel Lee is killin' it getting bike stories published in IndyStar lately:

Elite bicycle racers will hit the streets of Marion, Ind., on Saturday

For Indiana University graduate Rahsaan Bahati, a career in pro cycling is rooted in his getting into trouble as a middle school student in Compton, Calif.

He had been caught throwing an eraser at a teacher -- that teacher then encouraged the young Bahati to enroll in an after-school cycling program as a way to channel excess energy. Bahati has been furiously churning the pedals ever since.

The 27-year-old Bahati -- one of the top sprinters on the U.S. cycling circuit, and one of a handful of black competitors focused on elite cycling -- is among a field of top racers set to compete Saturday in the Marion Classic race in Marion, Ind.

Bahati was lured to Bloomington to attend IU and to race for Team Major Taylor in the school's Little 500 bike race. He said he was inspired by the legacy of Marshall "Major" Taylor, a black cycling star from Indianapolis who overcame racism to become a world champion in 1899.

"It took a few years to realize that what we're doing is history and how thankful and grateful I was to be in that situation," said Bahati, who hopes to inspire other black cyclists.

Full story here.

Awesome work, Daniel. Glad to see the IndyStar doing a bit of celebrating of what Indy cycling has to offer.

Better late than never?

Three weeks later, the Indy Star sounds off on NAHBS.

As glad I am that they gave some column space to NAHBS, it's something of a sad trombone moment to me that they are a few weeks late to the game. I'll grant that they did some preview articles for ArtBike! on Indy.com and had some ad space attributed to NAHBS, but as Indy's largest newspaper media outlet, I find it a little sad that a good portion of the comments on this article quip that they hadn't heard about NAHBS or had heard about it from another source.

And, despite what previewing they did for the event, 3 weeks later for a wrap-up of the event is a little shoddy. Not to mention, it seems the only reason this wrap-up even happened was because the columnist who wrote the piece, Daniel Lee, is an avid cyclist himself. So, thank you, Daniel. It really is a great piece on the event; just wish IndyStar would have gotten it in when it would have been a little more pertinent.

Lastly, you IndyCog readers should go and let the commenter who goes by Purdue know 6400 was a damn good number, and how great Indy really is to ride. Sure, we're not Portland, but we have momentum, and we have heart. Attitudes like his simply perpetuate the idea of Indy as a place not for bikes, and that is becoming more and more a lie every day.