Bike Hugger 

James Bowthorpe is riding around the world for a cause. He’s doing the whole thing interactively with his followers making use of blog/twitter/flickr. This is a great example of using different social media tools for different, yet coordinated purposes.

His goal is to make the shortest circumnavigation of the globe by bike while raising funds for Parkinson Disease Research.

As for the interesting bike bits - he’s reported that he got 12,000 miles out of a pair of Schwalbe Marathon XR tires which he just replaced at Mike’s Bikes in Sausalito, CA.