Ripon College, a small liberal arts joint in Southern Wisconsin, is giving away a bike, helmet, and lock to every incoming freshman next fall. In exchange, students only have to agree not to bring a car to campus.

For your reading pleasure we offer the following FAQ:

What’s the free ride going to be? A Trek 820 mountain bike, like this one right here.

“Free.” Ha ha. You just tacked $500 onto my tuition, right? No. Alumni, trustees, and friends of the College donated $60,000 for this program.

Can I get a fixie conversion kit and a cool haircut with that? Talk to your R.A.

How about a free Twelve of Fat Tire Ale? Don’t push your luck, young scholar. You’re not even legal yet.

The baddest executive-branch shredder may be the Prez. But the bikingest mayor in the nation appears to be Chicago’s Richard Daley. Last summer, he was in Paris checking out the Velib program, and proposing a similar free-bike scheme for the Windy City.

Now he’s announced legislation that would fine car drivers up to $500 for actions that result in a bike crash. Ticketable offenses include the right hook, sudden dooring, and unnecessary crowding.

This encouraging development, by the way, caught the attention of the hardest working pundit in bicycling, Steve Madden, who wrote a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times, arguing that Chicago is good, but New York is better.

Photo (cc) by http://flickr.com/photos/littlebabyjesus/

Bikes are hip these days, anyone can tell you that. So it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise that DKNY rolled out a bunch of bikes on the streets of Manhattan for Fashion Week. Bikes are cool, right? So companies that celebrate bikes are cool too, right?

Problem is, DKNY bought a bunch of clunkers and painted them orange. Needless to say, the “campaign” looked like a tasteless re-appropriation of the ghost-bike movement.

Yes, it’s hard to find a way to piss off the real cycling community, but DKNY found a way to do it.

Photo (cc) by http://flickr.com/photos/mattcarman/

The Hoya, Georgetown University’s student newspaper, has a nice interview with Santiago Gonzalez — President Bush’s bike mechanic. And although “Pinkey” has never actually ridden with the Prez (there’s a little unpleasant business having to do with Pinkey’s immigration status), he assures the Good People of the United States:

My partner has gone with him for a few rides. Some have the misconception [about] the president ‘yeah, he rides.’ He rides hard, he’s an avid cyclist; he likes the good stuff — very serious. He rides very, very hard on the bike.

Gonzalez is co-owner of Revolution Bicycles, a small chain in the Washington D.C. area, that has also handled repairs and special orders for John Kerry and Bill Clinton.

And even though I can be pretty ornery about politics myself, I guess I have to say I like my bike shops to be nonpartisan. Or at least, you know, bilateral.

Word up from EWR Land. This is a new blog that the kind folks at Dirt Rag have asked me to write. From here forward you will see my musings and thoughts. We can sit with coffee and talk of the old days, eat Fiddle Faddle and type with sticky fingers, and wax philosophical about all the realm of stuff cycling. Quite an upgrade from the Trials Section days when I used to send Elaine hand-written articles by fax for her to translate. I know she loved that! (you know, I don’t think I ever once made a deadline with her, either. Seriously…) My writing has not improved much since then, but at least you can read it. So, a big THANK YOU to the Dirt Rag staff for the privilege, and to you for reading. I will look forward to your comments and slings of arrows.

Thus it begins, sitting in my favorite coffee shop on the Delaware River (Peaberry Cafe in Reigelsville, PA). This place has saved my ass on many a frigid fixed-gear ride. It is positively frigid outside right now, and I feel all guilty being cozy and warm and not on my bike pushing tough guy miles up and down the river. Just as well, got to recover from the bike swap in Westminster, MD this past weekend. It was like the the Motorama days — spending all day walking around on a concrete floor in a cold arena building, looking at all kinds of bike stuff with all kinds of bike people. It was great, and I got to see sooooo many people from my riding past and future. Y’all kept dropping by the EWR booth and we sold quite a few t-shirts. I got to see old friends from the Balto Scene like Ron Bayne, Big Sexy Marvin, Megan Bilodeau, and the OC Racing/Suburban Cycles crew. I got to meet Carey Jones, a new EWR owner from the historic EWR Bikes first production run, and he got to ride my personal bike to see what his’ll feel like. So nice.

My head has been buried in EWR stuff as of late, and my mind is certainly up north dreaming of big powder days and Nordic race skiing, but spring riding is all too close around the corner. This weekend brought that reality. Plans were made to dirt jump with the OC/Suburban guys at 495 trails, XC with Dave Weaver and Dave Grant, and to repair Hilary Elgert’s shoulder. Dry dirt is just around the corner.

Thanks for reading — Jay de Jesus

When test bikes come in to DRHQ, our esteemed editor is usually the one making the call of who gets to test which bike. This was the case a few weeks ago when Karen came to my office and asked if I would be interested in testing a custom Lynskey Performance Pro29. The only difference was that the bike doesn’t exist yet. They’re going to build it for me.

For those of you not familiar with Lynskey, the short-and-sweet of it is that they are the titanium bicycle pioneers who founded Litespeed in 1986 and later sold the company in 1999. They’re back in the bicycle building business now making some really sweet looking stock and custom bikes. But I digress…I’m not writing about Lynskey now. I’m writing about what it’s like to be presented with a blank slate and to be told, “Pick whatever you want. Anything goes.”

Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Well, yes, it is. I’ve been told that the sky’s the limit as far as components go. And I know pretty much exactly what I want. But when it comes to bike fit, that’s where my assignment gets a little intimidating. Coming from outside the bicycle industry I never really had much knowledge of bicycle geometry and fit. I’d throw a leg over a bike and take it for a spin. If it felt right, the bike fit me.

Now, having been at Dirt Rag for almost 2 years, I’ve learned a lot more about frame design than I ever imagined and I think I can actually have an intelligent conversation about bicycle geometry. That said, talk is cheap. I need to decide what head tube angle is right for me on this dream bike – not to mention all the other critical measurements.

Luckily Jamie Pillsbury at Lynskey Performance has been working with me to help figure out all the important details. He says their goal is to not only build a bike that fits me, but also fits my riding style and where I ride. My bike only exists on paper now, and I’m told that once we hammer out all the details it should be ready in a month or so. Just in time for prime riding season! I’ll be checking in with updates on our blog and keep your eyes open later on this summer for my review of the Lynskey Performance Pro29.