High rider

A woman from Los Angeles wants to ride her double-high bicycle (like the one seen above) down Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica later in the summer, with the help of a national magazine.

Melissa Rougeaux yesterday applied for a $10,000 Adventure Grant from Outside magazine. The magazine explained:

In celebration of our 35th anniversary, Outside magazine is seeking proposals for its first annual Adventure Grant, a $10,000 endowment to help fund a smart, creative, and (perhaps) slightly foolhardy project that we’ll feature in an upcoming issue. Examples of the kinds of audacious missions we’re looking for—taken from Outside stories—include sailing a homemade raft down the Hudson River, walking a perfectly straight line across Canada’s Prince Edward Island, and paddling a canoe from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine.

Outside will announce finalists on June 2, and the winner will be chosen by the public through the magazine’s Facebook page.

Here’s Rougeaux’s video application:

In an email, Rougeaux says the bicycle she’s riding in the clip isn’t the one she would use:

The bike I’m riding in the video is actually an electric bike I own. I have built a double high bicycle before but left it in Boulder, CO when I moved out here, so I would have to build another one if I won the contest. Essentially it is one bike welded on top of another bike so its a “double high” bike. They can be a little tricky to get up on when first learning but are fun to ride. It would be challenging though to ride that far, but that’s all part of the adventure, I guess.

(Photo courtesy of Melissa Rougeaux)

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