Hand-to-hand help for hand-to-mouth times

Here's an idea, leave the greedy bankers stewing in their own juice. Peer-to-peer or P2P websites link private lenders with people who need a loan but don't want to grovel to the greedheads. Prosper and Lending Club are two leading sites. Basically you set the amount you need and the rate you want and lenders bid on your proposal.

New bike social network

Check out Pedal Movement, a social site for Long Beach area bicyclists. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with CSULB Cyclists or Long Beach Cyclists, which seems kind of odd. After all, why not capitalize al the work those two active and activating groups have already done? No sense in reinventing the bicycle wheel!

I signed up but I haven't posted anything there yet. They've started a project where people are posting their favorite bike routes. Some of them measure 19 miles. Whoa! That's way out of my league

Biking Buddies and Pedaling Pals

Is it just me, or has the world gone mad for bicycles? Cruising around the web, there are almost too many bike communities to keep track of. Take 1 World 2 Wheels, for instance. They’ve got a Go by Bike Challenge going one with a nifty calculator to help you estimate how many of the small trips around town you could take by bike. Once you’ve pledged miles it’s added to the community total (almost 33,000 last time I checked) and you can see cumulative benefits too—like the amount of carbon dioxide reduction or the number of calories burned.

Bikes Belong Coalition is a little harder to figure out. Put together by a conglomeration of bicycle companies about 10 years ago, the group is aligned with the League of American Bicyclists and offers grants for communities to plan and build bike friendly projects. It has links to other groups like the Alliance for Biking and Walking and an assortment of bike-related photos.

The League of American Bicyclists like the big kahuna, at least at first glance, with safe biking tips, a gadget for finding local bike groups and bike shops, a smart cycling online course and a roster of instructors. They run National Bicycle Month (which happens to be May) and feature a colorful tile ad for a tantalizing site called Bicycle City. Too much chewy goodness to encapsulate, so I’ll have to do a whole blog sometime next month.