The Bike Wins Flight Vs. Bike Showdown

Congratulations to Wolfpack Hustle's Team A for besting airline/cab passengers on a JetBlue flight from Burbank to Long Beach this past Saturday! Dubbed "Flight vs. Bike," this challenge first gained momentum via the Twitterverse when JetBlue offered $4 flights from Burbank to Long Beach last week for Carmageddon weekend and Tom Vanderbilt wondered aloud if bicyclists could take on the plane. On Saturday morning, the challenge turned into a bike vs. transit vs. flight vs. surprise inline skater race that one could follow via the #flightVSbike hashtag or GPS tracking system on Streetsblog!

The airline passengers didn't really stand a chance with the bicyclists departing from a location in Burbank and taking the LA River bike path for most of the ride down to Long Beach. According to Bike Commute News, the cyclists arrived in 1 hour, 34 minutes. LACBC and Santa Monica Spoke Member Gary Kavanagh rode transit and walked for a close second (if he had taken a bike on rail with him, he may have won!) at 1 hour, 54 minutes. Inline skater Jenni Armstrong came out of nowhere for a surprise third at 2 hours, 34 minutes. The airline passengers, Joe Anthony and Ezra Horne, finished last with the check-in wait time and a taxi driver who couldn't locate the lighthouse finish line all adding up to their time of 2 hours, 52 minutes.

We would also like to thank local skateboard company Santa Monica Airlines for pledging to donate to LACBC for every minute the cyclists beat the plane. You all rock! Thanks to Wolfpack Hustle for winning us that donation. Thanks to all the organizers and people who covered this awesome event!

Several media outlets from around the world covered the race, and you can check out some great links on the BikingInLA blog. We suggest you check them out. And now we'll leave you with a few lessons learned from Flight vs. Bike:

1. Bikes win. They won on Saturday. They win every day.
2. Carmageddon should happen more often. Between Flight Vs. Bike and the Eat Real Fest, we had a lot of fun this weekend. We can't wait until the 405 closes again in 11 months!
3. With all the Twitter/blog/Facebook planning and coverage, this showdown was essentially brought to you by the Interweb. Thank you, Interweb and the #bikeLA community!
4. Of course we're going to brag about the bike victory, but let's give it up for mass transit and inline skating!
5. It was fun following this all, and now let's get on our bikes and ride!