Wheels

It may seem nuts to many people, but cold-weather riding is one of the fastest-growing segments of bicycling. Recent mild winters and advances in cycling technology have people out riding like never before."

Thank heaven for little wheels.These days, you'll find them on everything from backpacks to duffel bags, as well as those ubiquitous boxy suitcases no well-equipped business traveler seems to leave the office without. Increasingly, traveling families -- including mine -- swear by them too."With the kids holding on to their own luggage, I've got a hand free to hold on to a kid," explains Brian Beihl, a New Hampshire dad of three who checked out more than a dozen kinds for his new Family on Board travel products catalog.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- His red cap is the first thing you see.The next thing is his red wheels.Then swoosh, the young man disappears, 12 cars down, carrying a red tray with two bags and two drinks. Seconds later, swoosh, he's up the sidewalk and through the door again, empty tray in hand.At Sonic, the speed of the carhops isn't the only thing getting attention.The speed of this company's growth -- in 1998, sales rose 17 percent to $1.3 billion and the company added 170 restaurants -- is turning heads, too.The company built its brand image by abandoning commercials featuring Frankie Avalon and switching to ads that emphasize the Sonic name and experience.

Maybe Bucky Lasek should thank whoever stole his bike 12 years ago. If not for the theft, Lasek wouldn't have gotten a different set of wheels -- a skateboard -- for Christmas.And then he never would have ridden those wheels around the world.His skateboard will take him to San Diego this weekend for the third X Games, but it all started when at the age of 12, Lasek began using his Christmas present in Baltimore.He learned a trick here, another there. He hit the street. He hit the ramp. He hit the air, and he never came down.

Isn't that your suitcase on the luggage carousel?The one with the yards of duct tape holding it together and the handle that's half torn off?Looks as though it's time for a new one.Though packing a suitcase is a grim but unavoidable part of traveling, shopping for that suitcase can be fun.You've no doubt noticed those confident travelers who breeze through airports wheeling neat black bags that glide smoothly over tile floors, asphalt parking lots, even...

Any airplane landing you can walk away from is a good one, an old saying goes.Gerry L. Brewster and five friends did just that Sunday -- walked away unhurt after a plane made a scary belly landing at Martin State Airport in Middle River."

The University of Maryland Baltimore County has eliminated Shakespeare on Wheels, its popular, free summer theater touring program that performed for a quarter-million people throughout the mid-Atlantic over its 10-year history.Closing the program was strictly a budgetary decision, said Sheldon Caplis, UMBC's vice president for institutional advancement. In recent seasons, the university had often contributed more than a third of Shakespeare on Wheels' $150,000 annual budget, Caplis said.

TO MOST of us, summer just wouldn't be summer without a dose of neighborhood carnival. Not the carefully orchestrated theme park atmosphere that we have all come to expect, but an old-fashioned community event mixing young and old for an evening of excitement and fun.It's all there, just waiting for you: the flashing lights and the noise of the midway, the aroma of fries and funnel cakes, the squeals of happy winners, tiny tots with wide eyes and faces full...

POLICE LOG* Glen Burnie: Someone stole four wheels from a 1995 green Acura Integra early Saturday while it was on the Griffith Acura lot on Holsum Way. The tires and wheels were valued at $1,600.* Glen Burnie: Someone broke through a window on the north side of Court Yard Cafe in the 7400 block of Baltimore-Annapolis Blvd. Sunday and stole a safe that contained $1,800 in cash and a loaded .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Damage is estimated at $560.

Shakespeare on Wheels is going up on blocks for the summer while the 10-year-old troupe tries to tune its financial engine.The University of Maryland Baltimore County has announced its roving players will not be taking the Bard to dozens of outdoor sites across Maryland this year. Instead, the troupe will be on hiatus to pursue funding for operation next year and into the future."It was an extremely difficult decision . . . but I try to look at it in an optimistic way," said William T. Brown, former chair of the UMBC Theatre Department and founder and producer of Shakespeare on Wheels.

The current shutdown of half of Baltimore's light rail line likely could have been prevented had Maryland Transit Administration engineers decided in 2000 to spend about $4 million on an electronic system designed to prevent trains from sliding on slippery tracks, according to a top MTA official. Henry Kay, the MTA's deputy administrator for planning and engineering, said that as a result of the decision, Maryland's light rail is one of the few in the country without the so-called "slip-slide protection" to protect the wheels of its cars.

Thousands of Baltimore-area commuters were forced to abandon trains and board buses yesterday, the first workday disrupted by a light rail shutdown that closed the northern half of the system. State officials were unable to say how long service would be curtailed by a problem caused in part by the fall of autumn leaves. Commuters attempting to take light rail between North Avenue and Hunt Valley were diverted to shuttle buses, which passengers said added as much as 90 minutes to the trip.

Light rail service has been discontinued indefinitely between the North Avenue and Hunt Valley stations because a large number of trains are out of service for wheel maintenance, the Maryland Transit Administration has announced. The disruption in service began yesterday. The Penn Station-Camden Station shuttle trains also will not be in service, the MTA announced Friday. Bus service will be provided between the discontinued stops. Single-car trains will serve commuters south of North Avenue, which could lead to crowding at the beginning of the week.

Little generosity in Bush's budget The column "Treatment, not talk" (Opinion Commentary, Feb. 3) expresses the logical view that President Bush's "personal struggles against alcohol addiction" would lead him to advocate "generous and caring policies." Unfortunately, as the column points out, that hasn't been Mr. Bush's record. To understand this point, you need only turn to page three of the same paper to learn of Mr. Bush's proposed 2009 budget, which squeezes funding for education, health, housing and anti-poverty programs while maintaining tax cuts for big business and the wealthy ("President's budget comes under fire," Feb. 3)

A Baltimore man who interrupted a thief trying to steal the wheels off his Mercedes and then shot and killed him was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in prison with half of it suspended after having pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Baltimore Circuit Judge Kaye A. Allison also sentenced Charles E. Brockington Jr. to a concurrent five years without parole for a handgun violation. Brockington, 48, is a convicted felon and prohibited from carrying a gun. Assistant State's Attorney Mark P. Cohen, head of the homicide unit, said Brockington heard noises outside his home on Wabash Avenue in Northwest Baltimore's East Arlington neighborhood as he was getting ready for work in June.

"This really is the perfect ride for this thing," says Stuart Blum as he and six friends pedal his bike along the Light Street side of the Inner Harbor. Yes, that math is correct: Seven cyclists are pumping away on one, single, not-so-solitary "Conference Bike." Sometimes whimsy can be the mother of invention. A Dutch sculptor/wannabe mechanical engineer created the Conference Bike. There are about 150 in circulation worldwide. Blum, a 47-year-old lawyer who collects exotic bikes, teamed with a friend to buy a used one on eBay last year for $9,000.

As reported Feb. 11, 1888, in The Sun: A freight wreck, attended with considerable damage to cars and freight and delay to passenger trains, occurred near Hollifield's Station, on the Main Stem of the B and O. Railroad, three miles above Ellicott City, about half past six o'clock this morning. Just as the east-bound train, heavily laden with miscellaneous freight and drawn by engine No. 420, was passing the switch at that place, a flange on one of the rear wheels of the car attached to the tender broke in consequence of which the wheel ran off and the axle fell upon the track.

When my assignment editor, Chuck Weiss, called to tell me I would be visiting X Games and AMA Motocross Champion Travis Pastrana's home in Davidsonville to photograph him in advance of this year's X Games, I was pretty excited. If it is dangerous and on wheels, Pastrana does it - from motocross and rally car racing to launching motorcycles 30 feet into the air to perform daring flips and twists. I arrived a few minutes early and pulled up to an enormous garage. When I asked about Travis, the people there said he had gone to the hospital that morning, and wasn't at the garage.

Welcome to trauma-and-accident season. This summer, American children age 14 and younger will be rushed to emergency rooms nearly 3 million times for serious injuries - everything from car accidents to falls from skateboards to near drownings - according to the National Safe Kids Campaign, an international association dedicated to preventing childhood injury. More kids get hurt in summer than any other time of the year, pediatricians say. "You've got to anticipate the risks as much as you can," said Dr. Gary Smith of Ohio State University, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee for Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention.

The bicycles ridden by the racers in the Tour de France bear as much resemblance to your childhood Schwinn as a Piper Cub does to an F-16: Only the basics are the same. But the high-tech, multithousand-dollar bikes zipping through the French countryside are based on a 125-year-old design that remains stubbornly resilient - a simple, profound piece of engineering that continues to have a hold on the human spirit. "It is one of those inventions that stirs passions," says Roger White, a specialist in transportation history at the Smithsonian Institution.