Four Wheels Suck, Two Wheels Better

As an obsessive...I mean avid, cyclist, this brings me great joy:

Obama has finally won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. So how did he celebrate? According to the Associated Press, the Senator took the weekend off and "joined family and neighbors for a bicycle ride along the shores of Lake Michigan on Sunday."

This bit of news should erase any doubt left that Obama would be sympathetic to cause of cyclists. Then again, President Bush is known to be an avid cyclist, yet to our knowledge he hasn't gone out of his way to promote cycling for recreation or transportation. And while Obama still has to defeat John McCain in November, it's hard to resist imagining what it would be like to not only have a president that is a cyclist, but one that is also a bicycle advocate. When oil costs $130 a barrel, and given the desire for change in politics, that may no longer be an outlandish idea.

And from early in the year:

According to C.I.C.L.E. (it stands for Cyclists Inciting Change Thru Live Exchange), the Portland bicycle community has unearthed a quote from Barack Obama's energy platform in which he expresses his support for cycling and mass transit. And It turns out that Obama is "the only one of the Democratic presidential candidates who explicitly encourages bicycle transportation in his platform."