Cycle Law Blog

Archive for January, 2010

One of the best types of trips is that of a tour of Spain. You will see that there are many exciting adventures to go on including those that will explore the countryside and nature as wellas the Costa Blanca. You will find all of the information that you need to enjoy these trips right on the web. Of course you should compare them and find the best choice and later determine what you need to book for your tour. What options are there? There are many including these.

Cycling Tours

For those that want to get out into nature, a cycling tour of Spain may be jus the thing. You will be able to enjoy the rural areas as well as the smaller villages and the countryside. You will find that the cycling touring companies provide you with a range of choice in these tours. If you have the ability and the right level of fitness, you can enjoy even mountain biking tour options available here.

You can visit a range of different sites if you use a guided tour. Why not visit historical locations or even enjoy a rural town with its fabulous cuisine or Spanish culture?

Ask for an itinerary that will give you the details of the route before you go. This will provide you with a great idea of what to expect. You should also know what the price of the tour is upfront and the cycle is generally included. Some accommodations can be booked with tours included. Find out if this is an option for you.

Cuisine In Spain: Wine and Food Tours

If you came to Spain to taste its food and wine, then a food and wine tour is the best way to do just that. Look for local wines that are available. You will find that there is a range of different cuisines around the country, too. You may find a tour for a one week or even a two week trip. You can learn more about these from your itinerary or by doing some research on the web. You will find that most of the tours will include your meals and entrance into the wineries that you are scheduled to visit. If you do want this, you should stay at a hotel that offers it or stay in the hotels that are spread across the country.

The Outdoors: Wildlife Tours

If nature is your think, then wildlife tours are the way to enjoy it. There are many different types of wildlife to see and enjoy including bird watching tours. Plants and wildlife make for an exciting tour. Most tours are only for one day, but there are some that span over the course of several days.

Another option is the Pyrenees Mountains in which there are various walking tours available. You can look for and enjoy the wildlife that you see including a range of animals and plants. Depending on the time of the year that you visit, you may find some amazing sights.

Peter Wilson
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/come-get-some-spanish-culture-132627.html

 The Small Business Recession Plan “B”: How to Create the Six-Part Contingency Plan That Will Help You Guide Your Business Through the Storm

If you’re a small business owner, your list of worries seems never-ending. For starters, consumer confidence is down and your sales are starting to reflect that reality. And as experts predict a deep recession, it’s doubtful things will start looking up anytime soon. Yes, you’ve been wringing your hands and obsessing over the financial news for months, while simultaneously scrambling to keep your customers happy and your business strong. But action is the best antidote for agonizing—and now is the perfect time to create a recession contingency plan that will help you guide your business through any future rough patches.

Too often, when the economy goes south, a small business owner is paralyzed by anxiety and isn’t able to act quickly enough to save his or her company. Having a well conceived contingency plan in place gives you peace of mind when trouble hits and enables you to act quickly.

For small business owners, contingency planning is one of the best and most effective preventive actions you can take in a down economy.

Contingency planning will allow you to make the best possible decisions for your business if things continue to get worse before they get better. Even if you are an eternal optimist—after all, many of us entrepreneurs are—you’ll be wise to have a contingency plan in place if, say, one of your biggest clients succumbs to the bad economy, or if you have to face the difficult decision of whether or not to lay off an employee.
If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to crafting your contingency plan, here is an explanation of the critical elements you’ll want to include:

A People Plan. For small business owners, employees are often like family. That means the most difficult decisions you’ll have to make will probably pertain to them. That said, it’s important that you remain objective when creating the “People” section of your contingency plan:

1. What people assets are critical for you to keep? Why?

2. Who can “afford” a salary cut?

3. Who could undertake more responsibility?

4. Who are your definite keepers?

5. If you had to cut 10 percent of your workforce, what would your severance policy be?

6. How would you treat departing people so as to engender trust, respect, and loyalty of those remaining?

7. How would you implement a people “cut”?

By answering these questions truthfully and thoroughly, it will be much easier for you to make decisions concerning what to do with your workforce during the slow economy. Sometimes cutting back on your workforce, at least temporarily, is a necessary evil. Knowing that when you do so you are simply following a plan will help you manage some of the guilt that will come if you have to let someone go or reduce employee pay.

A Key Customer Plan. It’s likely that your customers are feeling just as much anxiety as you are right now, so it’s best to handle them with kid gloves. Fail to do so and you risk damaging a relationship that will not only help get you through these hard times but which could prove very profitable when things pick back up. Here are a few things to consider when developing the customer section of your contingency plan:

1. Who are your most profitable customers?

2. Who are the most loyal?

3. Who must you keep long-term at all costs?

4. How is the downturn affecting each of your customers?

5. How can you get closer to them?

6. Which customers have pressures of their own that will force them to ask you to cut prices? And how should you respond? Should you extend credit, put them on an agreed-upon payment plan, etc.?

7. What can you do to attract new customers?

You and your customers are in the same boat. They face the same struggles as you. In your dealings with them, it’s important that you strike a safe balance between managing their best interests and managing your own. The contingency plan will help you do that and help you make decisions that will allow you to strengthen your customer relationships now. When things pick back up, your customers will remember the way you treated them and will want to do even more business with you.

A Cost-Cutting Plan. When deciding where you could cut expenses, it’s important to consider what you could do to cut costs immediately by 10-15 percent. You should also go through your expenses line by line and consider which expenses are not necessary for your survival. Be sure to involve your employees when creating this section of the plan. Because they are on the front lines every day, they may have a better idea of what can be cut. For example, maybe they’ve noticed that you have an incoming paper supply that could be reduced. You should also include in your plan what to do if the amount you pay to lease office or warehouse space becomes unmanageable.

Naturally the decision to cut certain expenses will be easier to make than others. Just remember that now is the time to get back to the basics. You don’t need lots of bells and whistles to run a successful business, and taking a look at your expenses will help you separate the necessities from the frills.

A Cash Flow Plan. Cash flow is key to running any small business, and managing yours is never more important than in a tough economic period. That’s why you should include cash flow management in your contingency plan. There are two specific groups to consider: your customers and your vendors. First, think about how you can get delinquent customers to pay up. Talk with your customers and help them set up a payment plan with you so that you know you will be getting paid when you need it most. Also, consider giving a discount to those customers who agree to pay in cash. You should also think about how you can defer your cash outflows such as payments to vendors. Ask if you can go to a 60- or 90-day payment cycle.

Keeping up a healthy cash flow is vital during a slow economy. You might have to have tough conversations with customers who need to pay up or a vendor who you’d like to defer a payment to, but if these conversations help you keep cash in your business when you need it most, they will be worth it.

A Financial Safety Net Plan. So what do you do when all of your customers have paid up and you’ve extended your payments to vendors, and you are still having cash flow problems? Quite simply, you consider more drastic ways of putting cash into your business. It’s time to fall back on the financial safety net that you’ve created for your company. What will your safety net be? Will you draw on your home equity? Stop taking a salary? Ask friends or family for a cash infusion? Sell off some of the company’s assets? Reduce employee salaries? Apply for a small business loan?

You don’t want to be making these decisions when you are already in desperate need of cash. While you are still in good shape, plan out the first three ways you could immediately increase your cash flow. And do everything to ensure that you are protecting your credit so that if you do need a small business loan you can get one. Make certain to pay your bills on time. Don’t let anything fall through the cracks. If you are having trouble making a payment, let the company or bank know why. If there is a dispute on a payment, get something in writing that says you aren’t to blame. Being turned in to a collection agency will tank your credit score. You absolutely can’t risk it.

An Exit Plan. There are some situations you simply can’t plan for. You can’t know for sure how your industry will be affected by the down economy. It’s possible that no matter what you do the slow economy will make it too difficult for you to keep your doors open or too difficult for you to navigate on your own.

The exit plan is the hardest for any small business owner to put together. No entrepreneur wants to give up on a venture, but sometimes you have to face reality. So, think about what lengths you are willing to go to in order to keep your doors open. If you are open to taking on a partner, what kind of person is going to add the necessary skills to the business to help you keep the doors open? Or if you decide to sell the business, would you want to stay on and keep working for the company or would you want to go your separate ways?

Of course, keep in mind how long these transitions will take to make. As a small business owner you naturally have a strong attachment to your business. When you put so much blood, sweat, and tears into your business, it can be difficult to pull the plug at the right time. If you decide what your exit strategy will be before you are experiencing serious problems, you can take your emotions out of the decision-making process and come up with a clear-headed solution that protects your best interests.

Creating a contingency plan will help you minimize the risk of any surprises that pop up—and they will!—during a slow economy. But keep in mind there are some basic things that you absolutely can’t lose focus on during a recession.

You should be aggressively going after new customers, marketing your business nonstop, and giving your customers world-class service. Yes, these are trying times for small business owners, but the obstacles are not insurmountable. With the right plan in place, you can create strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers and a business that can weather any storm.

# # #

About the Authors:

Ed Hess lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and spent most of his business life advising entrepreneurs and financing their business ventures. He went to college at the University of Florida and to law school at the University of Virginia and graduate law school at New York University. Ed’s professional career was spent with firms like Atlantic Richfield Company, Warburg Paribus Becker, Boettcher and Company, The Robert M. Bass Group, and Andersen Corporate Finance, and he has built three service businesses.

In 1999, Ed began teaching business students part-time at Goizueta Business School, Emory University, during which time he created and taught the entrepreneurship course. In 2002, Ed joined the faculty at Goizueta full-time as an Adjunct Professor where he became the Founder and Executive Director of both the Center for Entrepreneurship and Corporate Growth and the Values-Based Leadership Institute.

Ed has written five other books:

• Hess, Edward D. Make It Happen! 6 Tools for Success (EDHLTD, 2001).

• Hess, Edward. The Successful Family Business: Proactively Managing Both the Family and the Business (Praeger: Westport, Connecticut, 2005).

• Hess and Kazanjian, eds. The Search for Organic Growth (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2006).

• Hess and Cameron, eds. Leading with Values: Positivity, Virtue and High Performance (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2006).

• Hess, Edward. The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare from Within (McGraw-Hill: New York, 2007).

In July 2007, Ed joined the Faculty of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia as a Professor of Business Administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence where he teaches courses on building small businesses and organic growth.

Charlie Goetz earned his college degree at Emory University and holds an MBA from the University of Texas. Charlie is a successful serial entrepreneur. He built several successful businesses, which in total employed over 1,500 people. He sold most of his businesses and made substantial amounts of money their sales. Charlie then began teaching entrepreneurship at Emory University in the Goizueta Business School where he was again successful. His courses are always oversubscribed, and he has earned multiple teaching awards.

Today, Charlie lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is an investor in several new businesses and consults with people starting businesses. His specialties are marketing, customer acquisition, and product development.

About the Book:

So, You Want to Start a Business? 8 Steps to Take Before Making the Leap (FT Press, September 2008, ISBN: 978-0-13-712667-5, $18.99) is available in bookstores nationwide and from all major online booksellers.

For more information, please visit http://www.edhltd.com or http://www.ftpress.com.

C. Hand
http://www.articlesbase.com/entrepreneurship-articles/the-small-business-recession-plan-b-how-to-create-the-sixpart-contingency-plan-that-will-help-you-guide-your-business-through-the-storm-681539.html

Many companies offer leisure cycling tours to locations around the world. This article summarizes how you should prepare for your trip.

There are many ways to enjoy travel in a foreign country. Most people think of renting cars, or taking buses or trains everywhere. But because people are following a different routine and are on vacation – they do tend to pack on the pounds. The way to ensure that you will not need to go on a diet after you return from your vacation is to go on a cycling tour. You’ll be able to sample the local cuisine all you like, because you’ll work off all those calories on your bike!

Cycling tours are offered for every level of bicyclist – from the beginner who might need a “pick up ride” after a while, to the experienced cyclist who can zoom up the hills as if they were weren’t there.

Most European countries are extremely bike friendly. Bikes are expected to be on the roads, drivers are familiar with them and give them a wide berth. So it’s very safe to bike in Europe. A lot of places in the United States seem to resent the very existence of bicycles, which is why it’s always best to go on a cycling tour with like-minded people. You’ll be biking through areas that are used to seeing cyclists.

Leisure cycling tours are designed for all different kinds of terrain – from flat and peaceful rides through the beauties of nature to the fitness challenging of the steepest of mountains.

If you’d like to go on a leisure cycling tour, the place to do your research is on the web.

When you’re looking for a particular tour, you’ll want to compare all the available amenities for each tour.

1) Accommodations. Are you going to be staying in hotels, or in campgrounds?

2) Are meals included? If so, which ones?

3) Will there be free refreshment stops each day?

4) If the tour passes by anything of historical interest, are riders given an opportunity to go look at any sites of interest?

5) Baggage transport. Who handles the luggage?

6) Is their a sag wagon? (This is a car or other vehicle which will come and “rescue” a tired rider or one who has had an accident of any kind.)

7) Do riders receive daily maps and cue sheets that are easy to read and follow?

In the evenings, is there someone around to clean your bikes, or is it up to each cyclist?

Depending on the state or country through which you’re riding, most of these amenities are offered, unless you’re on a budget tour. If you’re going budget, it’s best to be a very experienced cyclist and already know what you’re doing.

Bicycling is a very popular way to see Europe. There are self-guided bike tours as well as the tours offered by companies. It’s important to check out what kind of bikes they offer to ride, however. You’ll want the best quality available.

Types of Tours

WomanTours is a company that focuses solely on offering bike tours for women. Most of the tours offered by this company take place in the United States, but at least once a year they do offer a tour overseas. You can go on an economy cycle tours of Hawaii, cycle through the Outer Banks of North Carolina, experience the majesty of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and much more. Their website even has a tour blog so you can see the fun that past cyclists have had on their tours.

Some of the major bicycle manufactures have a travel and adventure arm for their customers. For example, Trek Bikes has “Trek Travel.” They offer six trip types: classic, explorer, family, family explorer, specialty and weekend tours, in destinations such as Asia-Pacific, Central America, Europe, and North America.

The “classic” tours are designed for riders of all abilities. The “explorer” trips put less of an emphasis on luxury – you’ll be camping out in national parks, for example. Family trips are designed to have activities available for people of all ages. And Trek’s specialty trips include being escorted by professional cyclists – for example “Classic Climbs of France with Kevin Livingston,” or “Texas with Lance Armstrong.”

If you’re planning on taking a leisure-cycling tour, you must do your research. Find out how long the tour company has been in business, and try to contact some people who’ve been on those tours so you can find out if anyone had any bad experiences. It’s always a good idea to contact the Better Business Bureau to see if anyone has lodged any complaints against them

A leisure-cycling tour is one of the best ways to see a particular region. The more you know and the more preparations you make, the more fun you’ll have on your trip.

Alastair Hamilton
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/leisure-bicycle-tours-are-the-way-to-travel-84041.html

 The Small Business Recession Plan “B”: How to Create the Six-Part Contingency Plan That Will Help You Guide Your Business Through the Storm

If you’re a small business owner, your list of worries seems never-ending. For starters, consumer confidence is down and your sales are starting to reflect that reality. And as experts predict a deep recession, it’s doubtful things will start looking up anytime soon. Yes, you’ve been wringing your hands and obsessing over the financial news for months, while simultaneously scrambling to keep your customers happy and your business strong. But action is the best antidote for agonizing—and now is the perfect time to create a recession contingency plan that will help you guide your business through any future rough patches.

Too often, when the economy goes south, a small business owner is paralyzed by anxiety and isn’t able to act quickly enough to save his or her company. Having a well conceived contingency plan in place gives you peace of mind when trouble hits and enables you to act quickly.

For small business owners, contingency planning is one of the best and most effective preventive actions you can take in a down economy.

Contingency planning will allow you to make the best possible decisions for your business if things continue to get worse before they get better. Even if you are an eternal optimist—after all, many of us entrepreneurs are—you’ll be wise to have a contingency plan in place if, say, one of your biggest clients succumbs to the bad economy, or if you have to face the difficult decision of whether or not to lay off an employee.
If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to crafting your contingency plan, here is an explanation of the critical elements you’ll want to include:

A People Plan. For small business owners, employees are often like family. That means the most difficult decisions you’ll have to make will probably pertain to them. That said, it’s important that you remain objective when creating the “People” section of your contingency plan:

1. What people assets are critical for you to keep? Why?

2. Who can “afford” a salary cut?

3. Who could undertake more responsibility?

4. Who are your definite keepers?

5. If you had to cut 10 percent of your workforce, what would your severance policy be?

6. How would you treat departing people so as to engender trust, respect, and loyalty of those remaining?

7. How would you implement a people “cut”?

By answering these questions truthfully and thoroughly, it will be much easier for you to make decisions concerning what to do with your workforce during the slow economy. Sometimes cutting back on your workforce, at least temporarily, is a necessary evil. Knowing that when you do so you are simply following a plan will help you manage some of the guilt that will come if you have to let someone go or reduce employee pay.

A Key Customer Plan. It’s likely that your customers are feeling just as much anxiety as you are right now, so it’s best to handle them with kid gloves. Fail to do so and you risk damaging a relationship that will not only help get you through these hard times but which could prove very profitable when things pick back up. Here are a few things to consider when developing the customer section of your contingency plan:

1. Who are your most profitable customers?

2. Who are the most loyal?

3. Who must you keep long-term at all costs?

4. How is the downturn affecting each of your customers?

5. How can you get closer to them?

6. Which customers have pressures of their own that will force them to ask you to cut prices? And how should you respond? Should you extend credit, put them on an agreed-upon payment plan, etc.?

7. What can you do to attract new customers?

You and your customers are in the same boat. They face the same struggles as you. In your dealings with them, it’s important that you strike a safe balance between managing their best interests and managing your own. The contingency plan will help you do that and help you make decisions that will allow you to strengthen your customer relationships now. When things pick back up, your customers will remember the way you treated them and will want to do even more business with you.

A Cost-Cutting Plan. When deciding where you could cut expenses, it’s important to consider what you could do to cut costs immediately by 10-15 percent. You should also go through your expenses line by line and consider which expenses are not necessary for your survival. Be sure to involve your employees when creating this section of the plan. Because they are on the front lines every day, they may have a better idea of what can be cut. For example, maybe they’ve noticed that you have an incoming paper supply that could be reduced. You should also include in your plan what to do if the amount you pay to lease office or warehouse space becomes unmanageable.

Naturally the decision to cut certain expenses will be easier to make than others. Just remember that now is the time to get back to the basics. You don’t need lots of bells and whistles to run a successful business, and taking a look at your expenses will help you separate the necessities from the frills.

A Cash Flow Plan. Cash flow is key to running any small business, and managing yours is never more important than in a tough economic period. That’s why you should include cash flow management in your contingency plan. There are two specific groups to consider: your customers and your vendors. First, think about how you can get delinquent customers to pay up. Talk with your customers and help them set up a payment plan with you so that you know you will be getting paid when you need it most. Also, consider giving a discount to those customers who agree to pay in cash. You should also think about how you can defer your cash outflows such as payments to vendors. Ask if you can go to a 60- or 90-day payment cycle.

Keeping up a healthy cash flow is vital during a slow economy. You might have to have tough conversations with customers who need to pay up or a vendor who you’d like to defer a payment to, but if these conversations help you keep cash in your business when you need it most, they will be worth it.

A Financial Safety Net Plan. So what do you do when all of your customers have paid up and you’ve extended your payments to vendors, and you are still having cash flow problems? Quite simply, you consider more drastic ways of putting cash into your business. It’s time to fall back on the financial safety net that you’ve created for your company. What will your safety net be? Will you draw on your home equity? Stop taking a salary? Ask friends or family for a cash infusion? Sell off some of the company’s assets? Reduce employee salaries? Apply for a small business loan?

You don’t want to be making these decisions when you are already in desperate need of cash. While you are still in good shape, plan out the first three ways you could immediately increase your cash flow. And do everything to ensure that you are protecting your credit so that if you do need a small business loan you can get one. Make certain to pay your bills on time. Don’t let anything fall through the cracks. If you are having trouble making a payment, let the company or bank know why. If there is a dispute on a payment, get something in writing that says you aren’t to blame. Being turned in to a collection agency will tank your credit score. You absolutely can’t risk it.

An Exit Plan. There are some situations you simply can’t plan for. You can’t know for sure how your industry will be affected by the down economy. It’s possible that no matter what you do the slow economy will make it too difficult for you to keep your doors open or too difficult for you to navigate on your own.

The exit plan is the hardest for any small business owner to put together. No entrepreneur wants to give up on a venture, but sometimes you have to face reality. So, think about what lengths you are willing to go to in order to keep your doors open. If you are open to taking on a partner, what kind of person is going to add the necessary skills to the business to help you keep the doors open? Or if you decide to sell the business, would you want to stay on and keep working for the company or would you want to go your separate ways?

Of course, keep in mind how long these transitions will take to make. As a small business owner you naturally have a strong attachment to your business. When you put so much blood, sweat, and tears into your business, it can be difficult to pull the plug at the right time. If you decide what your exit strategy will be before you are experiencing serious problems, you can take your emotions out of the decision-making process and come up with a clear-headed solution that protects your best interests.

Creating a contingency plan will help you minimize the risk of any surprises that pop up—and they will!—during a slow economy. But keep in mind there are some basic things that you absolutely can’t lose focus on during a recession.

You should be aggressively going after new customers, marketing your business nonstop, and giving your customers world-class service. Yes, these are trying times for small business owners, but the obstacles are not insurmountable. With the right plan in place, you can create strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers and a business that can weather any storm.

# # #

About the Authors:

Ed Hess lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and spent most of his business life advising entrepreneurs and financing their business ventures. He went to college at the University of Florida and to law school at the University of Virginia and graduate law school at New York University. Ed’s professional career was spent with firms like Atlantic Richfield Company, Warburg Paribus Becker, Boettcher and Company, The Robert M. Bass Group, and Andersen Corporate Finance, and he has built three service businesses.

In 1999, Ed began teaching business students part-time at Goizueta Business School, Emory University, during which time he created and taught the entrepreneurship course. In 2002, Ed joined the faculty at Goizueta full-time as an Adjunct Professor where he became the Founder and Executive Director of both the Center for Entrepreneurship and Corporate Growth and the Values-Based Leadership Institute.

Ed has written five other books:

• Hess, Edward D. Make It Happen! 6 Tools for Success (EDHLTD, 2001).

• Hess, Edward. The Successful Family Business: Proactively Managing Both the Family and the Business (Praeger: Westport, Connecticut, 2005).

• Hess and Kazanjian, eds. The Search for Organic Growth (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2006).

• Hess and Cameron, eds. Leading with Values: Positivity, Virtue and High Performance (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2006).

• Hess, Edward. The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare from Within (McGraw-Hill: New York, 2007).

In July 2007, Ed joined the Faculty of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia as a Professor of Business Administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence where he teaches courses on building small businesses and organic growth.

Charlie Goetz earned his college degree at Emory University and holds an MBA from the University of Texas. Charlie is a successful serial entrepreneur. He built several successful businesses, which in total employed over 1,500 people. He sold most of his businesses and made substantial amounts of money their sales. Charlie then began teaching entrepreneurship at Emory University in the Goizueta Business School where he was again successful. His courses are always oversubscribed, and he has earned multiple teaching awards.

Today, Charlie lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is an investor in several new businesses and consults with people starting businesses. His specialties are marketing, customer acquisition, and product development.

About the Book:

So, You Want to Start a Business? 8 Steps to Take Before Making the Leap (FT Press, September 2008, ISBN: 978-0-13-712667-5, $18.99) is available in bookstores nationwide and from all major online booksellers.

For more information, please visit http://www.edhltd.com or http://www.ftpress.com.

C. Hand
http://www.articlesbase.com/entrepreneurship-articles/the-small-business-recession-plan-b-how-to-create-the-sixpart-contingency-plan-that-will-help-you-guide-your-business-through-the-storm-681539.html

Confirmation required — is it Wheel diameter or age that determines cycling on footpaths. As I understood it, in my youth, it was cycles with wheels under 14" diameter were legal on the footpath. I ask this question as a mobility scooter user who is limited to 4mph on the footpath and as it is a class 3 vehicle the law requires me to have a rear view mirror, a warning device(ie. a hooter) and a tax disc, yet cyclists have no speed limit and are capable of riding at speeds in the low 20mph or even greater

The primary legislation which makes cycling on a footway an offence is section 72 of the 1835 Highways Act, this provides that a person shall be guilty of an offence if he "shall wilfully ride upon any footpath or causeway by the side of any road made or set apart for the use or accommodation of foot-passengers or shall wilfully lead or drive any carriage of any description upon any such footpath or causeway."

Pedal cyclists have a right to use bridleways, restricted byways and byways open to all traffic, but on bridleways they must give way to walkers and riders. Like horse riders, they have no right to use footpaths and if they do so they are committing a trespass against the owner of the land, unless use is by permission As with horse-riding use of any right of way by cyclists can be controlled by traffic regulation orders and byelaws imposed by local authorities. Infringement of byelaws or orders is a criminal offence. Under the Highways Act 1835, it is an offence to ride a bicycle on the pavement at the side of a road, and under the Fixed Penalty Offences Order 1999 a person who rides on a pavement can be fined on the spot by a police officer.

This is punishable by a fixed penalty notice of £30 under Section 51 and Schedule 3 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988.

This prohibition does not extend to country footpaths where no road. Similarly it does not apply to anyone under 16, who in practice tend to be riders of children’s bikes.

Section 85 of the Local Government Act 1888 extended the definition of "carriage" to include "bicycles, tricycles, velocipedes and other similar machines."

The object of Section 72 Highways Act 1835 was intended not to protect all footpaths, but only footpaths or causeways by the side of a road, and that this is still the case has been ruled in the high court. The legislation makes no exceptions for small wheeled or children’s cycles, so even a child riding on a footway is breaking the law. However, if they are under the age of criminal responsibility they cannot, of course, face prosecution.

On 1st August 1999, new legislation came into force to allow a fixed penalty notice to be served on anyone who is guilty of cycling on a footway. However the Home Office issued guidance on how the new legislation should be applied, indicating that they should only be used where a cyclist is riding in a manner that may endanger others. At the time Home Office Minister Paul Boateng issued a letter stating that:

"The introduction of the fixed penalty is not aimed at responsible cyclists who sometimes feel obliged to use the pavement out of fear of traffic and who show consideration to other pavement users when doing so. Chief police officers, who are responsible for enforcement, acknowledge that many cyclists, particularly children and young people, are afraid to cycle on the road, sensitivity and careful use of police discretion is required."

Describe the process of matter cycling and explain in detail one specific cycle.

Let’s take the example of the Carbon Dioxide cycle. Carbon dioxide is flushed to the ground by rain. It then runs into the oceans where it combines with basalt to form rock. It then, through plate tectonics, is absorbed into the mantle and outgassed as Carbon Dioxide through volcanoes.

Sharpton says 80% of blacks are born out of wedlock and 50% drop out of school. He didn’t give figures for whites.
Madd,

MS and AL have a high proportion of blacks in case you didn’t know.

Actually the Republicans can take their share of the blame. Billions of dollars that could have gone into education have instead gone into spending on fulfilling the paperwork requirements of No Child Left Behind, and without the depression the Bush administration dumped us into, there would be a lot more people working rather than starving and living on the streets. ?°)

In 3 weeks time, my son and 3 of his mates are doing a sponsored cycle ride. LEJOG ( Lands End to John O,Groats )
His sponsors would like to follow their daily progress. Any ideas how you go about it ?

Your son and his friends can get a free membership to bikejournal.com. They can also create a club for the 4 of them to join. Sponsors can see their mileage totals by just knowing their screen names. If they want to make the individual journals accessible, then they need to join the web site for $20 / year, but that’s optional.

HTH

Can a Canadian citizen purchase a used 2 cycle boat motor and bring it into Canada or is there a law against 2 cycle motors in Canada?

There is no law against two cycle outboards in Canada per se. There is legislation on the emissions from outboards in Canada and the US. This applies equally to 2 cycle and 4 cycle motors. The proposed maximum allowable emission limits for marine engines and recreational vehicles are up to 96% lower than typical unregulated emission levels. There is not a commercially available 2 stroke outboard that will meet these new emission standards, so the only acceptable outboard is the 4 cycle.

The new legislation is there to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and to improve the air quality for all Canadians. It’s not any more acceptable for individuals to pollute than it is for corporations. Make a responsible choice. Do your part for present and future generations. Get a cleaner burning 4 cycle motor!

We are leaving the Beaver Bar reading to ride through the City of Myrtle Beach.

This was a ride that was put together by local bikers in protest of new helmet law. Myrtle Beach passed 15 different new laws Feb 28th, 2009. The mandatory helmet law is the one most people are not agreeing with since the state of SC doesn’t require one unless under the age of 21.

Duration : 0:4:53

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