Editor’s note: Freelance writer Scott Lunt spends his cycling time piecing together impromptu loop rides and running occasional errands. Soaking in the Tucson sun since 1994, he can be found two-wheeling around town on his Bacchetta Giro 20 recumbent.

Photo: Mark Doumas

The wide open spaces of the Southwest are perfect for a cyclist like Susan Reed who loves to go the distance. Reed and her husband recently moved to Tucson after living in the Midwest for about 40 years, and she’s thoroughly enjoying the area’s diverse cycling opportunities.

“After riding in Chicago, this is heaven,” she said, noting that the distance between intersections in Tucson makes it easier to get in an actual ride instead of the stop-and-go urban riding in Chicago.

“I wake up in the morning and say ‘How far do I want to go and how many feet do I want to climb today.’ Then I choose one of a gazillion routes I can do based on the answers to those two questions.”

Reed also likes the fact that if she wants to ride with other people, she can almost always find a group or organized ride happening somewhere in the area.

Reed does some commuting and errand-running, but she really enjoys riding long distance and has racked up about 12,000 miles annually for the past few years. Among her list of long rides, she’s completed two transcontinental Pacific-Atlantic-Cycling tours and several brevets and permanents. Most recently, she completed the Owl Buttes 200k, the Gila Bend 200k and the Lost Dutchman Twin 200′s.

She also placed first in the 111-mile women’s recumbent category in the 2011 El Tour de Tucson.

“I’ve been doing a lot more brevet activity down here and that’s been a lot of fun,” she said.

Reed rides a Bacchetta Ti Aero recumbent. After enduring multiple back surgeries in the ’90s, she found that upright bikes wouldn’t work for her anymore. The Ti Aero is her fourth recumbent.

So with 365 days of blissful weather and hundreds of miles of varied riding opportunities, is there anything she does not like about riding in Tucson?

“Can you do something about thorns?” she joked, adding “I’m a happy camper. It’s hard to come up with anything I would want to see different.”

The City of Tucson restarted the hiring process to fill the vacant transportation director position after the candidates that applied did not meet their standards.

This time around, the city created a hiring brochure being sent to candidates around the country detailing the position and its requirements.

The brochure includes several references to the importance of bicycles.

Ironically, one of the main images on the front page of the brochure features road racers rather than transportation bicyclists.

Here’s the image:

The first paragraph references bicycles several times.

With a population of 520,000, the City of Tucson is Arizona’s second largest city located approximately 100 miles south of Phoenix and 60 miles from the Mexico border. Tucson’s metropolitan area exceeds one million people. With sunny days nearly all year, Tucson is the ideal location for the outdoor enthusiast. The Sonoran Desert and five surrounding mountain ranges offer hiking, biking, horseback riding, bird watching, spelunking, hot-air ballooning, camping, championship golfing, skiing, and countless other recreational opportunities in breathtaking scenery. Tucson is a pedestrian and bicycle friendly community. Due to the temperate climate, the region is a bicycle enthusiast’s paradise and has been designated a Gold Level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists.

Bicycles are mentioned yet again in the breakdown of the Department of Transportation.

Our City is one of the friendliest bicycle communities in the country and has applied for platinum status (one of three in the country) through the League of American Bicyclists. Bicycle ridership increased 58% from 2009 to 2010 in Tucson, moving us from #12th in the country for bicycle commuting to #5th ranked.

Pedestrians were also mentioned in the brochure:

Our pedestrian network is also increasing with a new task force formed to highlight and improve pedestrian safety and connectivity.

Download the entire brochure here.

I show John and Jonathan the pavement fix the city implemented on Fourth Avenue. Photo by John Greenfield GridChicago.com

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of showing John Greenfield, a blogger for GridChicago.com, and his friend Jonathan some of Tucson’s bike amenities.

We kept the ride relatively short. You can see the route below. We started at 4th Avenue and University and finished their 2o miles or so later.

What struck me while riding around with the out-of-towners was this: Tucson is better than I give it credit for and we don’t have a national reputation.

John mentioned several times how surprised and impressed he was by our infrastructure and the number of people he saw out on bikes. Here is what he wrote in his post on GridChicago.com

Earlier this month my buddy Jonathan and I spent a week visiting our friend Lauren in Tucson, Arizona, and I was a little surprised by just how bicycle-friendly a town it is. This college town of 520,000 people (roughly one million metro) was recently rated the 9th best city for biking by Bicycling magazine, one notch above Chicago, so I knew it was a good place to pedal. But this city in the Sonoran desert, surrounded by saguaro cactus-covered mountains has more going for it than just cloudless skies and inspiring nearby destinations for road and mountain bike excursions. Central Tucson has a blossoming bike culture and some excellent infrastructure, including a great network of bicycle boulevards, which our city would do well to emulate.

I’m not sure why Tucson isn’t on people’s radar much these days. Perhaps it has to do with cities like Chicago, New York and Minneapolis investing more money in cycling and having more outspoken political leadership than Tucson. Or perhaps it’s that Tucson is still viewed as the wild west where people continue to use a horse and buggy to  get around on dirt roads.

Maybe that will change if the League of American Bicyclists decides to rank Tucson as a platinum city in May. It will be really interesting to see what the LAB decides and how persuasive the report writers are in making a case that our larger number of recreational riders should push us over the edge.

If the LAB remains committed to cycling for transportation and remains concerned about our bicycle crash data, it will be difficult for them to award us platinum.

Another encounter solidified the fact that Tucson is not seen as a cycling city my many. I was being interviewed by a reporter for a story. The reporter was in Ohio and was shocked that Tucson boasted such a robust cycling community.

I really enjoyed hearing John and Jonathan’s perspective on our city’s cycling community and infrastructure. It’s good once in a while to have someone remind you about all the great things our community has done for cycling as opposed to what we could be doing better.

Be sure to read the entire post on GridChicago.com

Tucson gained a sixth bicycle friendly business yesterday when the League of American Bicyclists updated their list of businesses that support bicyclists.

Tucson’s Spoke 6, a co-working space, received a bronze ranking by the LAB.

Spoke 6 owner Tim Bowen said he was excited to recognized and hopes more businesses will consider applying for the designation.

Bowen said the fact that they provide indoor bike parking, lockers, showers, participate in bike to work breakfasts, host events to watch pro cycling events and encourage people to use bicycles for transportation all contributed to their rankings.

Check out the list of Tucson’s bike friendly businesses below.

• Law Office of Eric Post  (Silver)
• TriSports.com (Silver)
• Ordinary Bike Shop (Bronze)
• Sanofi Aventis Tucson Research Center (Bronze)
• Spoke6 (Bronze)
• Van Amburg Law Firm, PLLC (Bronze)

Editor’s note: This article is authored by Kylie Walzak, Janet K. Miller and Greta Anderson, original members of the Tucson Bicycle Belles. The Tucson Bicycle Belles are a diverse group of female bicycle enthusiasts who aim to share the joy of cycling with other Tucson women by hosting low-stress rides coupled with fun events and short educational workshops. Find us on Facebook.

After the rainy weather left us feeling shorted after Tucson’s Cyclovia earlier this spring, we decided to join the fun in Los Angeles for CicLAvia. We rolled by train to the big city and joined 100,000 other participants on Sunday, April 15. The route, which has remained mostly unchanged over the last four events, covers ten miles of the city and connects many interesting neighborhoods into one huge block party.

The train trip was an adventure in itself and it’s a great way to travel with bikes. For a small fee you can box up your bike and load it on the train like luggage, and only a few small bits of disassembly are necessary (pedal wrench and allen wrench will do!). We left around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday after a drink at Maynard’s and slept (or not) on the train. We awoke to day break in the Palm Desert with snow-capped mountains in the background.

Upon arrival in LA, we were eager to reassemble our bikes and ride! We were met at the station by Ann Chanecka, a Tucson Belle, and Amy Turnbull from Los Angeles. CicLAvia started just a few pushes from the train station and we got there just in time to watch Mayor Villaraigosa start his ride.

Unfortunately, we just missed the big news announcement of the day that almost upstaged CicLAvia itself. Villaraigosa had just announced that Los Angeles will receive the country’s largest bike share program in the next 18-24 months with 4,000 bikes spread out over 400 stations at a cost of $16 million funded entirely by a private company. There were lots of camera crews around for that and we managed to crash the LA times newscast (Check us out at 1:46-1:49. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0416-ciclavia-20120416,0,375790.story ) Because we wore our homemade “Tucson Bicycle Belles” T-shirts, lots of people welcomed us to LA and asked if we had biked there. (Our beaux Troy and Paulus wore dapper threads and a “Tucson Bicycle Balls” shirt made its appearance. Those gentlemen looked good!)

There is so much to say about the ride itself and the fun stuff on the route. There were intersection art installations, food truck hubs (yum!), solar-powered DJ stations with music pumping, lowrider bikes, games, bunny costumes, rollerblading dancing fashion savants, a minister blessing bikes, bubbles, kids on skates and tricycles, hipsters on fixies, dogs on bikes, people lounging on astroturf in the middle of roundabouts, tall bikes, bike clubs, bike traffic (bumper-to-bumper!), and new and old friends along the route. The TBB added to the quirkiness by spoonbombing, putting some fresh BICAS stickers at key locations, and keeping up the vibe with our monster grins and out-of-towner giddiness.

Late in the afternoon the central hub of the ride was gridlocked with bike traffic. It took three light changes to get through the intersections, but it had a celebratory vibe unlike any automotive traffic jam. Overheard was the cutest, freckly-faced little girl proclaim “Us bikes RULE this place today! I LIKE this kind of traffic!”

Not surprisingly, but worth mentioning, not one of us witnessed any collisions during our four-hour long bike ride and many beginners were out struggling to gain momentum with that first, wobbly pedal stroke up a steep hill. The CicLAvia event organizers had great signage reminding people to take it slow. There was a real sense of how important it was to look out for your neighbor and take care riding around slower riders and pedestrians.

In that crowd of 100,000 cyclists in a far off city, we were amazed to casually bump into at least four people we knew. Coincidence? Not really; when we’re out on our bikes riding together and talking to one another we realize how interconnected we are.

Alas, after four short hours of riding that flew by like 45 minutes, we scurried back to the station, reboxed our bikes, and boarded the train home to Tucson.

We watched the sunset over the Mojave desert from the observation car on the train, sipping delicious adult beverages and reminiscing fondly about the art, bikes, and people we shared the day with. We returned inspired to spread the joy and make Tucson’s future Cyclovias even better and more frequent! There really is nothing better than car-free streets, good friends, a bicycle, and glorious sunny weather.

Check out more images from the trip.