bikers vs. mosquitos

Today the Daily Illini featured an article about two UIUC students working as "mosquito abatement bikers" for the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District:

As mosquito abatement bikers for the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (CUPHD), Kathleen Doran, recent graduate of ACES and Claire Keating, a senior in Fine and Applied Arts and Illini Media employee, travel around Champaign County to spread mosquito larvicide to help prevent the coming of West Nile Virus, a disease of the brain transmitted through infected mosquitoes. The CUPHD hired the two students as part of the district’s special program to reduce Culex mosquitos, the insects that cause the disease, said Jim Roberts, director of environmental health for the CUPHD.

Doran and Keating bike around C-U dumping larvacide into stagnant water, thus totally refudiating moquito breeding grounds and helping to fight mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile Virus.  Check out the article!

c-u fruit map

I already wrote about this here yesterday, but in an article about tomorrow's Tour de Fruit, Smile Politely featured a really great Champaign-Urbana fruit map, made collaboratively using Google Maps.  Here's what it looks like:

Here's a link to the interactive, reality-augmenting C-U Fruit Map.  Even if you can't make Saturday's group ride, the map's a good guide for other, well, fruitful bike rides around town!

tomorrow: ride of silence

Tomorrow night -- 19 May at 7pm to be precise! -- C-U will play host to the annual Ride of Silence.  The Ride of Silence aims both to honor cyclists who have been hurt or killed and to raise awareness that cyclists are by-right users of the roads, or, as the slogan goes, that "we are traffic!"

Here's some details from an email to The Bike Project's member listserv:

We start at the parking lot near the assembly hall at First and St. Mary's. The route will be N on first to Stadium Drive, then across 45 (Neil Street) to Randolph and through downtown Champaign, then South on First and then down Green Street, then a bit North on Busey to Main and through downtown Urbana, then South on Vine to ILlinois, then Goodwin, then Pennsylvania, Fourth and back to the lot. It's about 9 miles and we'll be going less than 12 MPH and regrouping whenever we get spread out.  (Note:  this is pending me looking at this on the map -- it's changed a tad from last year so we can ride a little on new bike lanes on Goodwin).

In the past we've had about 35 riders; if riders wear black armbands (a garbage bag cut into strips works) or have a sign on bikes indicating who they're riding for, then it communicates what we're doing to passersby.

The purpose of this ride is

• To HONOR those who have been injured or killed
• To RAISE AWARENESS that we are here
• To ask that we all SHARE THE ROAD; that drivers recognize that there’s room for all of us out here, and that a bicyclist may be around the next corner and has every right to be. 

We are looking for respect, not retaliation; for visibility, not vengeance. Let us show how to share the road by a positive example. Please follow the rules of the road. Ride as you would in a funeral procession; ride predictably.

Point out potholes and road hazards; signal turns and if you slow down. Momentary inattention is the number one cause of accidents -Be aware of what is in front of and BEHIND you, watch your line, and keep your hands near your brakes. 

We are riding as a group, silently but use your judgement regarding both. Allow for breaks in the group when it makes sense.

tuesday, 4 may: c-u's very own bike to work day

If you're not already biking to work -- and, really, it's been so nice out that you should be -- next week's C-U Bike to Work Day might be just the motivation you need to get started.  Next Tuesday, 4 May, a generous group of sponsors (including The Bike Project) will hold our micro-urban shangri-la's celebration of car- and carbon-free commuting.

From 7-10am, C-U Bike to Work Day will have four stations set up around town featuring coffee and other treats for old and new bike commuters.  The stations will be located at

• Downtown Champaign - Neil Street & Main Street
• Downtown Urbana - Main Street & Vine Street
• University of Illinois - Engineering Plaza (Green Street across from the Illini Union)
• Savoy - Savoy Recreation Center (Prospect Avenue and Graham)

You can register for C-U Bike to Work Day here.  You can find out about the third and last in a series of classes on Bike Commuting 101 here.  And if you'd like to volunteer to help staff one of the Bike to Work Day stations, you can sign-up here.

...and you can click here for a great website all about commuting by bicycle!