New Year Bike Quiz 1 of 2

We spent New Year's Eve with friends in Cambridge. Everyone there was a cyclist, so part of the entertainment was this bike quiz I put together. Here are the first ten questions; remaining ten tomorrow. Answers at the bottom.

Rebecca and Jane's team won, with 14 out of 20.

QUESTIONS...

1 What is special about the 35km long cycle path (top right) started in 2007 along the coast of Doha, Qatar?
A Solar-powered fans provide tailwinds
B It's air-conditioned
C Magnets underneath track propel special cycles
D Only place in UAE you are actually allowed to cycle


2 According to the sign at its bottom, the B6138 (Cragg Vale, right) in Mytholmroyd, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, is England's longest what??

3 The world's longest cycle trail, which will be 21,500km long when complete, is currently 70 per cent there. Where does it go?
A Newfoundland to Vancouver
B Moscow to Kamchatka
C Seattle to Panama City
D All around Japan's Honshu coast

4 In June 1904, something happened to 47-year-old English composer Edward Elgar (below right) that was so exciting, he cycled round to tell all his friends and relatives, including a 50 mile round trip to his dad's house. What?

5 Whose last words, in a landmark 1968 film, were 'a bicycle built for two', from the song Daisy Bell?

6 Bicycles feature prominently in which magic-realist Irish novel, written in 1940 but not published till 1967, including the theory that interchange of atoms between machines and their owners over time turn people into bicycles?

7 Who was the last US President to have a cycling accident?

8 There are approximately 500 million cars in the world. How many bicycles?

9 At the 1974 West Coast Cyclocross championships in Marin County, California, Russ Mahon competed using what's now considered to be one of the world's first what?

10 Which of the following happened to Conservative leader and cyclist David Cameron in 2008?
A The Daily Mirror filmed him going the wrong way up a one-way street en route to Parliament
B The Guardian revealed that a van driver tried to push him off his bike
C His bike was stolen outside Tesco's in Portobello Road
D He apologised for his unintended centre parting in Parliament, caused by his helmet

...ANSWERS
1. B. Solar-powered panels provide a mist of cooled water. More
2. The longest continuous gradient - in other words, the longest road freewheel downhill (or longest uphill). More
3. A. It's the Trans Canada Trail. More
4. He had just received news of his knighthood. He cycled from his home at Craeg Lea, Malvern, to his dad's house in Bromsgrove. See Allen, K.: Elgar the Cyclist (Malvern: Aldine Press, 1997), pp.39-41
5. HAL9000, the maverick computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. More
6. Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. More
7. As of January 2009, it was George W Bush, who crashed into a policeman at the G8 summit in Scotland in July 2005. More
8. One billion is the figure quoted by Wikipedia, though there are no reliable sources for it. More
9. Mountain bike. More
10. All of them. More: A, B, C, D

Questions 11-20 tomorrow.