Hop on the contest cycle! First up is a two-pronged international design competition for bike parking in New York City, sponsored by the city's Department of Transportation along with our friends at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The goal of the so-called "CityRacks" competition is to develop attractive, functional, and well-designed sidewalk bike racks (that's contest #1) and to improve bicycle parking inside commercial and residential buildings (designing an in-building parking facility is contest #2). The city will use the winning sidewalk rack as its new standard for bicycle parking (and award $5,000 to the winning designer) and Google plans to install the in-building facility in its Manhattan offices (the winner gets $10,000). And get this, among the contest jurors are the city's transportation commissioner, deputy mayor, and avid bicyclist David Byrne. Register here to receive full contest details.

Continuing with the cycle theme, the sustainability crusaders over at Tricycle are again encouraging you to repurpose sample materials (specifically, carpet samples) in their 2008 Ample Sample contest. The contest deadline is May 10, and if a glance through recent entries is any indication, we advise you to steer clear of cat scratching posts, as that category looks to have been exhausted. Of course, the real question for you multi-tasking UnBeige readers is: how cool of a bike rack can you make out of carpet samples?