Vineyard bike shop owners report rentals are down, but sales are booming during the pandemic.

The blitz of bike sales on the Vineyard described in this week’s edition portends a busy season for cyclists on Island roads, so extra caution is critical.

The state has doled out some $7.2 million in federal and state aid for pedestrian and bicycle paths between Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven, as part of a transportation grant package announced last month.

Clint Slone and Nick Slone are the founders of Spurcycle, a high-end bicycle accessory company in San Francisco. An Edgartown School and regional high school graduate, Clint began working at Edgartown Bicycles, owned by his stepfather, at the age of seven.

The Island Children’s School in West Tisbury will help solve the age-old dilemma of what to do when your kids outgrow their bicycles.

A proposal to rent electric bicycles at an Edgartown rental car shop met a cool reception Monday from the town selectmen, who voiced concerns about the safety of the two-wheeled vehicles.

Bryan Nelson, who operates A-A Island Auto Rental, already rents his low-speed electric bikes to customers in Vineyard Haven.

As a cyclist, I am sadly accustomed to abuse, including ignorant and aggressive drivers (thankfully rare on the Vineyard), so-called bike paths that are substandard in design and upkeep, and the overall attitude (despite law to the contrary) that I’m a second-class road user. Even here in Edgartown, the town has put up illegal stop signs on the bike paths (and ignored pleas to remove them), and illegally tries to exclude cyclists from a section of Pease’s Point Way (a ham-fisted response to a fatality some years back).