Ever since I left the tri-county I feel like we've lost our spark.
I think about you all often, especially when I'm driving around the Iowa City Beltway at 25mph, empty bike lanes taking up enough concrete for 2 more lanes of car traffic. You'd be happy to know the city just throttled down the Gilbert Street as well from four lanes to two, adding bike lanes in each direction, dedicated bike path 300 yards to the west not withstanding.
Two E bike rides died in the last week or so, one in Marion, the other on an on/off ramp to a 4 lane Cedar Rapids arterial, ( Highway 100, speed limit 65 mph )...
Then just tonight on Eyeball 69 News, nationally...
HAMPTON, Tenn. (AP) — Two members of a university
cycling team were killed and seven others were injured Wednesday when a car collided with a group of riders in northeastern Tennessee, state officials said.
Milligan University, a private Christian school with just over 1,200 students, said 11 of its cyclists were out together on a morning training ride when they were struck by a driver in Hampton, about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the campus in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
The county’s district attorney, Steve Finney, said a 69-year-old man from North Carolina had been arrested and faced two counts of reckless vehicular homicide and five counts of aggravated assault by vehicle with recklessness.
Milligan sophomores Haylan Engdahl, of Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, and Brayden Rogers, of Huntsville, Alabama, were killed in the crash, university President Stephen Waers said. The other student-athletes were transported to the nearby Johnson City Medical Center, he said.
As of Wednesday evening, four students were in critical condition, two others were stable but remained in the hospital, and one student had been discharged, said the hospital’s trauma medical director, Dr. Bracken Burns.
Earlier this year, the Milligan University men’s cycling team won a team time trial national championship at the USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals in Wisconsin.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol was still investigating the circumstances of the crash, said Maj. Roy Brown. The speed limit on the section of Highway 19 where the the crash occurred is 50 miles per hour (about 80 kilometers per hour), officials said.
Look out for those White Mountain Hillbillys...