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It may not be time to take out the aged scotch yet, but you can at least crack a celebratory cerveza this weekend, thanks to a ruling this week from the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee that said bicycle groups have the right to sue the Florida Department of Transportation for failing to put in bike lanes.

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Kyle Munzenrieder

“Where did all these beautiful people come from?” asked a shoeless man wandering along strumming his guitar for pocket change. Maybe he felt a sense of kinship with the 35 cyclists who had gathered at the corner of Lincoln Road and Washington Avenue for a politically charged, alley cat bike race to benefit Take Back the Land, the local organization that advocates squatter’s rights and affordable housing. The all day drizzle had thinned out the group to only the most dedicated activists and/or bicycle enthusiast.

“I think it’s a celebration of bikes, and I love that,” said Fiz, one of the organizers.

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Last week, Miami lost Abraham “Al” Chasser, who built the oft-mentioned and little-understood “Farm” in Little Haiti (usually referenced in terms of the gigantic tree-house on the property), now owned by Chasser’s son Ray. Al was ninety-one when he passed away.

Chasser lived an exciting and supremely independent life – you can read all about it in last Saturday’s Herald article.

But one salient detail the Bike Blog could not fail to notice was that Chasser arrived in Miami by bicycle. He rode the bike – a friggin’ three-speed– all the way from New York.

There’s another, slightly more personal Bike Blog connection. The Farm, as it’s known, was briefly my home in Miami. I moved there just a few months after coming here to work for New Times, and stayed for about half a year. Al Chasser was in poor health then, and no longer staying at home, so I never met him. An ex-Navy, his Veterans Affairs ID card hung on a little peg in the kitchen. And, for what it’s worth, the Bike Blog started while I was living there.

So the Bike Blog wishes condolences to Al Chasser’s family, and a big Rest in Peace to the man himself – an independent liver, an great landscaper, and a helluva bicyclist.

- Isaiah Thompson

Well, it happened: last week, we wrote that Miami mayor Manny Diaz was expected to announce the formation of a bicycling committee at last Thursday’s City Commission meeting. He did: from high on the dais, the mayor announced the formation of the Miami Bicycle Action Committee, a subcommittee of the city Green Commission, to advise the mayor on bicycle issues and to help promote and guide bike initiatives. He called the move “long overdue.”

Cynical as the Bike Blog often is when it comes to bike progress, there’s no two ways about it this time – this is a good thing for all Miami bikers.

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Last week a group of bicycling advocates, including members of the Green Mobility Network, Emerge Miami, and others, met with Miami Mayor Manny Diaz to lobby for the city to take a stronger stand on biking.

Although there had been several mass emails about the meeting before it took place, the Bike Blog found some of the attendees to be surprisingly excited -- and surprisingly tight-lipped about it afterwards.

John Hopkins, one of the founders of the Green Mobility Network - a group dedicated to improving conditions for bikers and pedestrians - would say little more than that "it went very well - [the mayor] is really very supportive of what we want to do; he wants Miami to become a bicycle-friendly city, but I think he recognizes that it's not going to happen overnight."

"Very soon," Hopkins added. "He's going to make a general statement, but that general statement will not have all the details. . . it's exciting - it's very exciting."

Most of the people the Bike Blog talked with explained their reluctance to talk by saying that they didn't want to spoil a long-sought-after objective: "We just don't want to jinx it," said one person who had attended the meeting. "Just wait until next Thursday."

Well, next Thursday is today, and it's time for the scoop. Here it is:

At this morning's City Commission meeting, Mayor Diaz is expected (and, indeed, it's on the agenda) to proclaim March to be Miami Bicycle Month.

Yes, it was already Florida Bicycle Month, but now it will also be Miami Bicycle Month.

More than that, he's expected to announce the formation of a Bicycle Advisory Committee for the city, that would advise the mayor and the commission on biking.

"The first meeting of the committee was today," confirmed bike advocate Mike Lydon yesterday evening, "and that's huge." Lydon's recent op-ed in the Miami Herald helped generate new buzz about getting the city to take a more systemic approach to biking - namely, to create a bicycle master plan.

Neither Lydon nor anyone else expects Diaz' announcement to be heavy on specifics, but what it lacks in nitty gritty it may make up for in symbolic star-power: apparently, Diaz plans to make the announcement alongside former Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñalosa (please excuse the absence of an , who has presided over one of the most forward-thinking bicycle initiatives of any city anywhere in the world. Under Peñalosa, Bogota installed over three hundred miles of "ciclo-rutas" -bike paths - throughout the city. Every Sunday and holiday is "Ciclovia" - an event in which the city center is blocked off from all automotive traffic and bicyclists, roller-bladers, and walkers are encouraged to come out and enjoy life without cars for a few hours.

Will Diaz call for a Miami Ciclovia? Let's hope so!

Today's meeting begins at 9:00 A.M. If you can't get out of work but are just dying to watch it, you can tune in via webcast.

If you do watch or you don't, leave a comment and tell us what you think.

-- Isaiah Thompson

Flotsam:

Behind the times, that’s what I’ve been. Toiling away, rummaging through my drawers for long-lost, outdated maps of vague bike routes that I got from the county when I first moved here a year ago – and the answer was before me all along: the internet, man – it’s all on the internet.

Recently, the Bike Blog was made aware, largely through the postings of Spokes N’ Folks blogger John Hopkins, of some pretty decent resources for the lonely long-distance biker.

There are a couple of places you can go to find good bike routes, posted by your compatriots. It’s a great idea: if you find a ride you like, you post it online so everybody else can do it, too. Routeslip is a good site; it’s got several nice routes posted for Miami, including the charmingly-named “Lonely Morning Route.” Map My Ride is pretty decent, too, although so far it’s got less content.

Both sites utilize Google maps, and that brings up an interesting little tidbit: there’s a petition going around asking Google to include bike routes on its maps. Good idea, no?

Jetsam:

Here we are, seven days into Florida Bike Month, and my own ride is – there’s just no denying it – a piece of shit at the moment. Last weekend, having no functioning brakes to speak of, I assembled a new front brake with parts cannibalized from my last (also shitty) bike . Then, realizing my spokes were as loose as spaghetti in the rear, I pulled off an ambitious drunken trueing after getting home from the bar. Recently, though, I discovered that my other wheel is even worse, and trueing a wheel - even sober - is a pain and a half. Then I got one of these tires that you need a team of ninjas or something to pry back onto the rim without ripping up the tube, even with the big yellow plastic tire irons (which we endorse - those little blue and black plastic ones are no good, and forget about metal).

But enough about me: What kind of shape is your bike in this month? What mechanical heroics have you performed lately?

Comment below, and let us know.

-- Isaiah Thompson