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11/11/2026:  Austin, Texas Bicycle News Roundup

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

Austin, Texas has a vibrant cultural scene, and bicycle people are one small part of the whole. Here are some recent and upcoming happenings that might interest you to know about, whether you live here or not.

Read more: 11/11/2026:  Austin, Texas Bicycle News Roundup

Ciclovia ATX

This free event just happened November 7, 2026. It was modeled on a movement that started in Bogotá, Colombia in 1970, where cyclists could and still do ride in streets shut down to cars, usually on a weekend day. In the US, it has been more of an open streets type festival event. In Central Texas,

Quoting and paraphrasing from Wikipedia, “Austin’s first Ciclovía took place on May 20, 2012 under the name Viva! Streets Austin. Produced through a partnership between the City of Austin, local businesses, and nonprofits, that inaugural car-free street event closed down a stretch of East 6th Street for cyclists, pedestrians, and community activities. It ran for four years. In 2025, Ghisallo Cycling Initiative renewed the event, and this was its second year.”

GCI says, “Cyclovia ATX is a free open to the public all-ages, all-abilities, family-friendly Living Streets event produced by GCI. While the event has a focus on bicycling, it includes a wide range of activities, performances, and showcases involving mobility, sustainability, and community. Think of it as a festival of human-powered transportation with lots of other fun activities and community focused engagements mixed in… the event includes half a mile of Living Streets (closed to motorized vehicles), a 1 mile Bike Parade, live music, and food trucks.”

Sources say it was well attended and a good time. The list of participating groups was long, about 50, many not bike-related. It included some names that may be familiar to repeat readers of this blog:  ATX Bicycle Meals, Safe Streets Austin, UT Orange Bike Project, Yellow Bike Project, Austin Ghost Bike Project, Bike Story Night.

Basically it’s a huge, free, educational, fun event backed by the weight and money of some corporate entities and government agencies that sponsor it. But anything that leads to putting more butts on bikes is mostly fine with me, though. Look for the third annual repeat of the event early next November.

Learn more at https://CicloviaATX.org

Bike Story Night

This free event just happened tonight, 11/11/2026. Like it sounds, it brings people together to hear stories from bike riders. I enjoyed  the event and hearing from different types of bike riders when I attended. See my review from then: 4/4/2025:  Bike Story Night in Austin, Texas.

Since founding this event in 2021, BNS has happened mostly here and in a few in other cities. They have also held several bike rides to go on camp outs, which are perfect for sitting around the fire and telling… yep, you guessed it! More bike stories!

Learn more at https://www.bikestorynight.com

Safe Streets Austin

This one is Friday, November 13th (ooh — spooky!), from 7:00-9:30 pm, so you may still be able to get your ticket. Safe Streets Austin, the merger of Bike Austin, Walk Austin, and Central Texas Families for Safe Streets will have another fundraiser and party.

Food and drink will be served, music will happen, and there will be schmoozing amongst the bicycle intelligentsia, transportation nerds, government workers, and well-connected allegedly bike-friendly big wigs. The no-doubt rousing keynote speech will be made by City Councilmember Chito Vela. Executive Director Adam Greenfield will give a state of the nonprofit, and maybe talk about how safe it is (or isn’t, if we’re really being honest) to bike in Austin.

Tickets are a mere $100 buckaroos, but you get to bring a guest for nada and did I mention the free food and drink? Dine first though. (Parking not included, natch). If you’re a member of SSA, your ticket is 70% off. Cool factor: It’s on the rooftop of the award-winning Austin Public Library. Hot tip: If you bike there, lock it very, very well, but be forewarned, bikes DO get stolen there.

Learn more at https://SafeStreetsAustin.org

Frankenbikes & a Bike Show

“FrankenBike:  A free bicycle swap meet held once a month in select U.S. cities that is open to anyone who wants to buy, sell or trade bicycles and bicycle related gear or parts. FrankenBike was founded in Austin, Texas in June 2005.”

It is having 3 local shows before the end of the year. The first is in combination with the Tacos & Tires bike show on November 14 from 10am-4pm with the swap meet and sale held next to it. San Antonio also gets a sale.

The second is its usual swap meet and sale on November 28, 10am-2pm at Central Texas Cyclery.

And the third is also a regular swap meet and sale on December 26, 11am – 2pm at the Crown and Anchor Pub. See the images for details.

Learn more at https://frankenbike.net

That’s All, Folks!

Of course there are all the social and club rides, and occasional races nearby. But given how Google et al. are NOT sponsoring A Dude Abikes, it’s time for me to sign off. So, there you have it. I hope you learned some cool stuff about the Austin bike scene. Tune in next time for this once in a while series.

Copyright 2026 A Dude Abikes. All rights reserved.

1/11/2026:  5,011 Miles Bicycled in 2025, 6 Years & 4 Months of Daily Cycling… And I Get Pepper Balled at a Protest for Woman Killed by I.C.E.

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

Renee Nicole Good was killed–apparently unnecessarily–by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) officer at a protest of immigration policy in Minneapolis the other day, reigniting a protest movement with over 1,000 events across the country. Your dude attended one tonight that involved some angry young folks marching around downtown Austin and chanting anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) slogans. At one point, two people set a Department of Justice flag on fire. I thought it was dumb and counterproductive; and should have been my cue to leave. But the Texas Department of Safety–who was kicked out of a joint operation with the City of Austin for aggressive law enforcement actions–again overreacted by firing pepper balls that spew out a gas that causes eyes to water and breathing to become inflamed. This caused the crowd of several hundred to disperse coughing, wheezing, eyes burning. Some were prepared with gas masks and stayed in the smoke, and soon after many marched down Congress Avenue without a permit. Your dude was not too badly affected, and biked home. As I wrote on Strava, my sinuses needed to be cleared out from cedar fever, anyway.

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12/12/2025:  52,000 MILES BICYCLED IN 519 WEEKS!!!

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 14 Comments

A Dude Abikes has done it! I AVERAGED 100 MILES PER WEEK FOR A DECADE! I started tracking my miles on the Strava sports app on 12/19/2015, so I actually completed this monstrous achievement a few weeks early, on 11/28/25. This converts to 9 years, 49 weeks, and 2 days. It was all done on regular bicycles and trainer bikes under my own power (no e-bikes aka motor-cycles here!). My “epic velocimania” has reached its zenith, finally. What a lengthy, weird journey it has been!

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5/5/2025:  Is Bike Month Useful? Or Just Performative Bragging?

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 6 Comments

It’s bike month–again. Oh joy. The usual brouhaha is made over how wonderful bicycles are. How kids should bike to school and workers should bike to work. Everyone should ditch the car and bike to the grocery store, etc. Bike bike bike. There are group rides and media and sponsors and beer and fun and so on ad nauseam. And that’s all well and good. More butts on bikes means less pollution, less traffic, and less overfat people such as this dude. There’s nothing really wrong with having a month dedicated to bikes. I could have used the encouragement to do it years ago myself. I guess it just all feels a little fake. So  this blog is gonna be a bit of a rant. Again. Nothing too crazy. I promise you’ll be alright.

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10 Years Ago Today, I Bicycled 50 Miles in My First Charity Ride

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

Way back in the autumn of 2014, two things that happened that led to me signing up for my first torture I mean fun fest also known as a charity bike ride. First, I was gifted a bike which would come to be known as Sonnie, my 25-pound steel triple triangle GT Arette. Second, I was working for a beneficiary agency of the event when and somebody said, “Hey dude, you ride your bike everywhere, why don’t you do this charity ride?” They tempted me with a shorter distance than when I was riding on the day we spoke. In previous years I had always said “The first word is hill, so no thank you.”  As a fat yet somewhat fit middle-aged dude, I didn’t think I would survive the distance or elevation. I figured I could just back out, but for some reason, this year I didn’t. So, after struggling and suffering on numerous training rides, on April 28, 2015, I joined hundreds of other riders out in the beautiful and terrible Hill Country west of Austin, Texas, and rode my bike half a hundred miles. Which ain’t nuthin’. And as they say, the rest is history. Here’s how it went down.

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4/4/2025: Bike Story Night in Austin, Texas

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 4 Comments

As a dude who’s been telling bits of his bike story here for going on a decade, I was curious to check it out an event called Bike Story Night. The stars aligned, meaning I heard about it in time and wasn’t busy. So, last Saturday I pedaled Soqi the Cannondale over to the University of Texas at Austin, commonly known as UT (you tee). (Check out my post about UT: The University of Texas and Me:  A Short Autobiography.) There I saw a few familiar faces and a few dozen new ones. The premise  is fairly straightforward:  people come together to tell and hear stories about bikes. Here’s a short report.

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Safe Streets Austin Had Another Fundraising Party, So I Went

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

Safe Streets Austin, formed from the merger of Bike Austin, Walk Austin, and Central Texas Families for Safe Streets, had their annual fundraiser back in late November. Yours truly attended their first one a couple of years ago, missed last year (though am not sure they had one), and was invited again this year. I’m filing this belated report. Don’t sue me. I know lawyers.

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How Writing Has Helped My Bicycling

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 8 Comments

It’s Leap Day, 2024. Let’s jump right in. I have kept a journal for most of my life since being a young teen, encouraged by my maternal grandmother. There have been plenty of long gaps and since starting this blog in 2016, many days that I skipped both to work on my bicycle memoir. Writing is a way to express your feelings, and in a journal it’s private. Blogging is sometimes an online extension of that, depending how personal you want to get. Either way, helping to clarify thoughts, process emotions, outline goals, and refine motivation are all good for your health. Which in turn is both what one needs for any sustained exercise habit or practice and a benefit of the same. The fact that I’ve written a whole book (or two, since it’s too long–even as I try to revise it a third time, what it really needs is funding for an editor) is another way I’ve expressed myself, usually about all my biking. Sure, I could still ride a bike without writing, but both are entertwined and part of my daily do’s, and so far as I’m able to continue, I plan to and hope I will.

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2/2/2024: 5 Reasons Why Austin, Texas Is Not as Bicycle-Friendly As It Thinks

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 6 Comments

Austin, Texas. Just the words call up images in the minds of people who have lived here a long time, the recently arrived, and those dreaming of coming here. I know this because I’ve been all three, obviously in reverse order. I’ll stipulate that we’re much better off than Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and most other cities in the state. This isn’t a comparison with them. But compared to the great bike cities of the world, to which Austin can aspire, we are surely lacking. And Austin sure thinks highly about itself. It’s evident in our slogans — The Live Music Capital of the World, Keep Austin Weird, The People’s Republic of Austin, Silicon Hills, The Third Coast (as if–we’re over 200 miles from the Gulf of Mexico).

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BOOK REVIEW:  Bicycle Diaries, by David Byrne

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 6 Comments

Talking Heads were active as an independent pop rock band from 1975-1991. They became world famous in the 80’s, the era of Music Television (MTV), with numerous danceable and singable hits that still get heavy radio play today. A big part of that fame were the whispery to soaring vocal sounds and quirky, herky-jerky dance moves of tall, angular, and gangly frontman, lead singer, guitar player, and co-songwriter, David Byrne, Spoiler alert, he’s also a bicyclist! This post is not a literary critique, but some random thoughts about his book. But stick with me, because as Byrne sings in the “Burning Down the House” lyrics: “Watch out, you might get what you’re after.” One thing is for sure: it’s doubtful such a multi-talented dude is being honest when he sings, “I’m an ordinary guy.”

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