Thank you to everyone who Joined us for Spokane Pride this year. We all had a really great time. The turn out for the event was amazing. It was reported to have doubled since last year! Pedals 2 People won 2nd place for our entry in the Parade this year….$50 prize. Great job Bikers!
Here is a link to a video with some of the photos (most of which were taken by Beth…thank you): http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn61/Pedals2P/?action=view¤t=P2Pvideo.flv
This parade is special for P2P. This parade was sort of our official outing as an organization last year. I’m pretty sure it was our first official P2P event. And it was a huge success. I think we had about 25 cyclists show up get gussied up and ride. It’s a fun event.
You don’t have to be gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered to ride. I waxed philosophic on this event a while back.
We really want to blow the roof off the sucka this year with participation. I think doubling the number to 50 cyclists would be a huge success, but what if we could get 100?
Here’s how it works:
June 14th, Saturday.
9:00 AM: show up in the Civic Theater (Howard and Dean — across from the arena) parking lot to decorate your bike. You MUST bring some decorations to share with others. This is what makes it work. Crepe paper, streamers, colorful fabrics, whatever. Just find stuff in your house that’s colorful and can be taped and zip-tied to a bike. Tape, zip ties, and pipe cleaners are handy too.
10:30 AM: we move, en mass,through Riverfront Park,to the staging area on Post. Or Wall.
11-12: hang out and enjoy the entertainment. My favorite part of the parade last year was the hanging around before it started. There’s a ton of activity and craziness.
12: do the parade. Bring some candy or other goodies to toss out to the kids.
Speaking of kids: this is a family event.
It’s BTW week. This morning’s breakfast in Riverfront Park was a huge success. At least 200 people on a cold, damp morning. As soon as we figure out what’s going on with pictures on our blog here, we’ll get some photos up.
Upcoming P2P BTW events:
— P2Pers will be roaming the streets looking for bike commuters. We’ll have a Bumble Bar to give away to each person we meet. And if they need minor adjustment/air or whatver, we’ll try to help.
— Weds night at REI. 7pm. Dave Peckham, from Village Bike Project, will be showing a free screening of Ayamye. We’ll have a trailer there to take donated bikes.
— Friday afternoon: 4:30-6:30 — Steam Plant BTW wrap up party. P2P will not have an official deal at this event, but we’ll all be there enjoying a local beer from CdA brewing co.
Thanks to Kathrine Horecny, a grad student at EWU for a great design and implementation of the new P2P website. It looks great. When you get work for free, you take what you can get when you can get it. In this case however, Kathrine delivered and delivered quickly. We’re so thrilled with the site. Thanks again Kathrine. And thanks to professors Mindy Breen and Anthony Flinn out at EWU for getting the P2P website project in the pipeline and helping us out.
An important part of the project was the blog integration work, so that the frist 250 characters of each blog post shows up on the home page and on the “blog” page of the site. This work was done by my friend Alex Wetmore, whose selfless generosity truly knows no bounds. He also hosts the Pedals2People site and blog, CyclingSpokane forum, and JohnDogFood.com on a server in his basement for me…not to mention bikelist.org, and many other sites. He does this all for free.
The P2P mobile bike shop was at AM Cannon on Saturday for the West Central Neighbor Days doing Free Bike Tune-Ups. I wasn’t there, but it sounded like a success. We fixed up about 40 bikes and even got a few donations.
The volunteers: Stuart, Mike, Ben, Beth, Noah, Hank, Jeff, and Charlie.
Mr FBC blogged about here. And Mr Gigowiz blogged on it here.
Hank took a bunch of pics. I put a few here.
This is the first free bike tune-up that I was not at. We were also missing Ken and Liza.
As we build this organization, it’s stuff like this that is really satisfying — to pull off a good event like this while a core chunk of our volunteers are away — and still have it be a success.
Next up. BTW week in mid-May. We need to schedule out our June and July Free Bike Tune-Ups too.
You can see our other up-coming events at our projects page.
(Photos: Michael Conely)
This was banner weekend for P2P.
On Saturday, our superhero volunteer Ken masterminded a garage sale. I doubted him. I shall never doubt again. We started with about 20 bikes: all of them single speeds or 3-speeds. Over the last couple weeks our volunteers have been learning how to clean and repack bearings on these bikes. Therefore, most of the adult bikes had fresh bottom brackets, hubs, and headsets. Our garage sale opened at 10 am. By 10:30, all but 3 or 4 of the bikes were gone. Crazy.
(photos: Superhero)
Sunday, we had the Paris-Roubaix celebration. It was crazy wonderful. We absolutely packed Benniditos to the gills. There were many bikes and many bike people. It was really great. I also got to have my first beer since New Year’s Eve. That was really great too.
Klay took some nice pics and posted them here. She also posted some of Micheal Conely’s pics here.
(crappy phone photos: John)
I don’t know what we ended up raising for the Paris-Roubaix thing yet, but between the two, I think we’ll come out with a good chunk of change.
This will go straight to our 501(c)(3) fund. In fact, Liza officially registered P2P’s articles of incorporation with the State of WA today. Next step: hand over our huge pile of 1023 paperwork to our lawyers. If all goes well we should have it off to the IRS by mid-May.
We’re having a quick garage sale this Saturday.
When: Sat, April 19th
Time: from 10 am to 2 PM
Where: at our donated garage space on the south hill. The detached garage is located in the alley behind the house at 4218 S Garfield.
PLEASE – Don’t go knocking on the door of the house. Go through the alley between Scott and Garfield: this is a donated space. We don’t want to disturb the owners of the house.
*******************
We have a bunch of vintage single speed, 3-speed, and kid bikes (think ape-hangers and banana seats) that we need to clear out. None of these are super sweet collectors, but they’re great for tooling around the neighborhood and cruising the Centennial Trail.
On many of the adult bikes, and a few of the kid bikes, we’ve cleaned and repacked the bottom brackets, headsets, and hubs.
All bikes sold as-is.
Our goal is to get you riding, so we’re selling these cheap: $5-$40. And half-price on most at 1pm. All offers considered. Cash only.
Rain or shine we’ll be there at 10 AM.
Please don’t show up early. There is no ebay fodder here.
(Go here to open pdf/printable version of this picture in a new window. Print a flyer and hang one in your neighborhood!)
This is an idea we’ve been thinking about for a while: how do we get a bunch of cyclists to go and hang out on a Sunday afternoon.
The idea struck when Taylor posted a YouTube video of Paris-Roubaix 1986 finish at the EPM blog.
While we’re not big race fans, the idea of Paris-Roubaix has always had a draw: it’s a one-day race along the cobblestone back roads of France. It’s a brutal race. Something like 135 cyclists started the race last year and around 40 ended up finishing. It’s often muddy, lots of flat tires, and the finish is always exciting.
Chris, up at Benniditos, has agreed to show this race for us on his fancy new big TVs on April 20th, when the race airs.
The idea is to get as many people on bikes to Benniditos as we can. The pizza, beer, and race is a generic draw to get cyclist there. But really, we’re looking forward to hanging out with the wide variety of bike folks that we run into. Think of it as a Bike Summit.
There’s no cover charge or any fee. Just order lots of beer and pizza and if Chris does well, he’ll donate a chunk to P2P.
You are encouraged to gather your friends and take a ride along some cobble stone (from downtown, take Jefferson,then Adams up the south hill to meet this requirement) and be at Benniditos by 1PM.
When that’s done,go home and take a nap, or save some energy for the monthly FBC ride, which is also happening on April 20th.
A great bike day through and through.
This bike is a Bruce Gordon. On the quality bike scale, Bruce Gordon bikes are way up there. This bike was donated to to P2P about a week ago.
If you know bikes and you know how special Bruce Gordon bikes are, you’d probably assume that the guy who donated this to us was an eccentric millionaire that just got tired of his bike. The fact is, this bike was donated to us by a bike mechanic from REI. He’s one of those monk-type dudes that just live super simply. This was his main ride for the last couple years. He recently picked up a Marin. He moved all the parts that were on this bike onto the Marin, and put all the Marin parts onto the Bruce Gordon.
We’ll likely strip the bike down and sell the frame set + front Bruce Gordon rack (likely the best production front low rider rack around) as a set. The components don’t really match the frame quality-wise, so a person that would buy the frame would likely ditch the components anyway. We can use the new components on other bikes in our shop.
To the guy the donated this bike: thanks.
Hopefully this bike will help pay for a good chunk of our 501(c)(3) application process, which may not sound so sexy, but it is the most important short term step to P2P’s long-term financial security.
