The official Bike to Work Week celebration has come to a close. We’ve had non stop fun since Wednesday, and now it’s time to rest for a few days! Here’s a look back at the activities since the last report.
Wednesday Night Social Ride
Wednesday night’s social ride was a big success, with around 50 riders of all ages attending. It was quite a sight to see, a parade of bikes traveling along the quiet west side streets. Dan Turner’s high wheeler was one of the main attractions, and several of us got a chance to ride it. It was one scary ride!
Home Bicycle Maintenance Clinic
On Thursday night Dennis Coyne put on another great clinic at the Bike Habitat. He took a grungy, out of tune bike, and went through the cleaning and tuning process. I think all of us learned some new tricks (I was pleased to find some lemon pledge under the sink when I got home!).
Don’t forget that Dennis will have another Bicycle Commuter Clinic this Thursday. See the Calendar for details.
Bike to Work Day
Bike to Work Day! The biggest bicycle commuting day of the week. Me? I took the day off, and didn’t go anywhere near work! Instead I manned one of the Commuter Stations, the Starbucks on Retail Drive. We had other volunteers working the other Commuter Stations around town, and I hear that Comma Coffee had the most visitors. Once the commuter stations closed, it was time to go prepare for the main event.
After work, the bicycles began arriving at the Firkin and Fox. They reserved a large portion of the patio and 3 parking spaces for bikes. It’s amazing how many bicycles you can fit in the area it takes to park 3 cars!
A few members from Anouaze Beat helped us kick off the party with some fantastic African drumming and dancing. They played a few songs, but left us wanting more! Thankfully they will be performing at the Brewery Arts Center on May 24th with the rest of the group and dancers.
Thanks to many generous donations from local businesses, we had plenty of raffle prizes to hand out. The grand prize commuter bike finally ended up in the the hands of Pete Hansel. A few people had actually “won” the bike ahead of Pete, but the prize was passed along to the next ticket holder due to conflicts of interest or the prize recipient already having too many bikes! Pete just returned from a week long bicycle trip from Carson City to Ely on the east side of Nevada. What a nice prize to come home to! He earned it.
It was great to meet so many new people. I even got to finally meet Scott Schrantz from the Around Carson Blog! It was also remarkable to speak with so many progressive people that share a vision of Carson City as a great cycling town. It seems that we have all the ingredients, and people are starting to come together with many great ideas. These are exciting times!
The only incident we had all night was at the very end. Apparently taking a break from cracking down on gangs and drunk drivers, a police officer visited the Firkin for some real action. Under a nearly full moon, he turned off his cruiser lights and drove slowly down 3rd Street. Thankfully he didn’t run over anyone driving so dangerously. Next he came to the patio and started questioning folks about “what they were doing” and if “these were their bikes”. It was definitely time to go. Keith (who wasn’t even intoxicated) rode back to the patio to let people know we were leaving, and the cop got on him for “riding on the sidewalk”. Then he demanded that Keith park his bike and sober up at the bar instead of slowly riding home a few blocks. He wouldn’t even let him walk his bike home! Totally insane! A group of us decided we’d ride home anyway, and sped off for home at the reckless speed of 6 mph.
Overall I think we had a great week, and it was definitely a learning experience. A big thanks to Jeff Potter for all his hard work. He was the man on the street, knocking on doors and visiting sponsors. Thank you to the rest of the Muscle Powered group that helped coach us and provided their support. We couldn’t have put this together properly without you. Thank you to everyone else that helped us along the way and attended all the events. Also a big thanks to Mrs. P and Mrs. M for being patient through months of planning, and lending so many good ideas! Jeff Potter and I both agreed that we will add more to the BTWW team next year to help divide the workload better (We’re looking at you Jason and Tasha!). Neither of us realized that the corporate challenge would be so popular. Hopefully we can dedicate one full person to this next year. One thing is for sure though, “Biking is Fun” as a theme for this year was the right thing to do!
The celebration may be over, but the commuting to work by bike is not. I hope to see everyone continue what they’ve started, and I hope to see more and more of you out there on your bikes!
Click HERE to see the complete Bike to Work Week 2008 photo collection.