Thursday, November 10, 2005

drag races and media watch; all things new york

ever wonder what it is like to be a messenger in NY?

from the NY Times...

November 8, 2005
Proselytizer for Pedaling Acts on His Words
By ANDREW JACOBS

Michael de Jong wants you to take your bike to the plane.

It might seem like a loopy proposition, but Mr. de Jong, a Dutch-born millionaire, real estate developer and cycling maniac, is on a worldwide crusade to get industrialized man out of his car and onto the saddle seat. One prong of that mission is to convince otherwise sensible people that taking two wheels to the airport and back is less daunting than it seems. Cyclists, after all, never get stuck on the Van Wyck Expressway, and they do not have to lug their baggage quite as far as they would if they took the subway to the AirTrain.

As part of his pedal-power mission, Mr. de Jong promotes a 100-day bike race across Africa, sponsors bike ownership in the developing world and invents whimsical biking accouterments, among them a traffic-parting air horn and a tent that overnight travelers can suspend from the trees.

"Imagine how much better the world would be if more people rode bicycles," he said with the dead-on earnestness of someone who regularly cycles from Cairo to Johannesburg and Paris to Geneva.

Go here for the rest of the article

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