whoo-hoo!!! what a fun party hosted by Fresh Abundance! the steet fair celebrated homegrown talent and brought local farmers, artists, and non-profits together. and because it happened in our neighborhood, it felt like a huge block party : ,,)

by our estimates, we talked to 50 people about pedals2people: some folks from out of town (deer park, chewelah, colville), some old, some young, some cyclists (a husband and wife on a recumbent tandem and their daughter and granddaughter on a santana tandem), some not into biking at all. this was a great oppurtunity for us to hone our mission statement, or at least fine-tune the delivery of our group’s mission. it went something like this…”we want to get more people on bikes. we’re doing mellow weekly rides, teaching classes, and going around the community to fix up bikes for free. we also collect old bikes, fix and donate them to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford them.”

we also set up a booth for the first time. by chance, we placed ourselves next to ingrid. ingrid is from sweden, and she’s also one of our neighbors who is a year-round bike commuter. it was nice to finally meet the woman we often see riding by on her way to wilson elementary with her daughter and pedaling to the corner grocery store. anyhoo, we had more than enough info to pass out, more than enough accessories and tshirts to sell. having the family tandem and mixte on display was a nice conversation starter. the floor pump came in handy airing up tires. i think a good thing to have that we forgot was contact infomation for people that were interested in advocacy. next time we will have a list of web addresses for the Bicycle Advisory Board and maybe a few other local orgs.

Last night I spent 3 hours at the SAC Center with 50 individuals with concerns like mine. The Bicycle Advisory Board was well represented, as was the City Council (Mary Verner and Joe Shogan were in attendance). The city planning department, the engineering department, the State Health Board, The Department of Transportation and many many others were in attendance. It was great to see so many different representatives with different viewpoints discuss ways to make Spokane a more Bike Friendly town.

There were a few major themes and ideas that came out of each and every group as reports were made back from small groups to the group as a whole. I will touch on a few of these that make the most sense to communicate to others. Howard Street from Riverfront Park up to Five Mile needs to be marked with bike lanes the entire way. There is currently construction being done on SE Blvd., it would be easy at this point for the city to make SE Blvd entirely marked with bike lanes. I think a mass email / phone campaign to our Mayor right now would possibly get stripes put on SE Blvd!!!!!

In addition to bike lanes it was agreed upon by a significant majority of people that there is a need for a connection from Sprague to the Riverpoint campus non motorized vehicles. Also a topic of discussion was connecting the Ben Burr trail to the Centennial Trail. An interesting discussion arose around lack of sidewalks in Spokane. A map on the wall showed how development in the 1960’s stopped requiring sidewalks and this has disjointed entire neighborhoods.There were many more great topics discussed but the above are just a few of the items. There are future meetings that will hopefully lead to action and my next post will be focused on what “you can do” to make Spokane and safer and more friendly bike town.Happy Riding!!!!! Ben…….

Hi all, my name is Ben and am having an excellent time being involved with Pedals2People.

The parade was very fun and we are all looking forward to many more cool events. A few of us will be at an event on Thursday titled “Connecting the City”. This is a community workshop designed to discuss pedestrian and bicycle mobility in our community. It is taking place this Thursday (June 14th) from 5pm to 8pm at Riverpoint. I was just informed that there are a few more slots available (capacity is 60 people) so if you would like to attend email Melissa Eadie at meadie@spokanecity.org and tell her you are interested. She will provide you with the rest of the information.

Happy Riding :,,)

my thanks goes out to Outspokane for organizing an amazing pride parade! the week’s worth of community-building, awareness-raising, pride-boosting events that they hosted before the parade were great too. hopefully, we can collaborate more with these folks next year and get a pride ride on the schedule of events for pride week. for now, i’m just happy we were able to get an awesome bunch of people together to ride in the parade with us. thanks to everyone who joined us. i had a great time :,,)

john’s photos

mike’s photos

one male pheasant hiding

one canadian goose family grazing

one pink bike laying in the river

one can of coors sitting

one old guy fishing for trout

one california quail perched on a railing

one cat hunting a tasty morsel

one public pool filled and ready for action

one carousel twirling

one downtown fountain gushing

one thursday nite rider riding

When I decided to take up the task of getting the t-shirts screenprinted, I knew nothing about the actual act itself but felt like my overall excitement to find out would get me through. I found the world of screenprinting full of quirky-chic folk with incredible artistic talent and an intimidating cool persona that made me, the somewhat clutsy wanna-be bike commuter, look like a real nerd trying to talk printing with the pros. Thanks almost entirely to my dear friend – Ryan-Maiden Coleman captain of the “Pedal Pirates” (another bad-ass bike gang) – I was quickly schooled in the fine art of screenprinting. Ryan was a real trooper considering he had to put up with my unrelenting questioning…. lets just say that he is a very, very tolerant man. The rest of the thanks goes to the hospitable and gracious Jason Abrahamson of Landmark – www.landmark-it.com – a screenprinting/skate/graphic design shop (and oh so much more). Needless to say, I am ready for round two! We are about to embark on a second printing process that should be equally exhilirating!

our first thursday night ride was on may 17. four people showed up (thanks dena, mike, ken and shioban!), and we were on the trail by 6:45. what a great night for a ride! i love cruising by the river and taking in all the fertile smells of spring, all the trees leafing out. we rode east for a half an hour, then headed back. on the way, we passed two kids with super-stylin bikes. the girl had a purple chopper with silver stars, and the boy had a black chopper with flames–so cool. they inspired me to ride my banana seat bike on the next ride.

we stopped at riverview thai for beers and spring rolls. love this place. we sat outside by the river and enjoyed the evening.

mike made the suggestion that we should have themed rides. hmm? i like it but that would mean staying on top of things and posting ahead of time, so people know what’s up. don’t know if i can commit to that at this point.

liza

the picnic went well. 13 people showed up with food and bikes. the forestry pavillion will be our new meeting spot for gatherings: bathrooms right there, room for the kiddos to run and play, water and sink area, covered for inclement weather, centrally located in riverfront park, awesome views of downtown spokane. we took some pictures and will post them soon. mostly pics of the group and the new shirts were taken. the screenprinting turned out so fantastic! so simple and sharp. they’re visually pretty stunning; i wouldn’t be surprised if they get lots of attention…

thanks to ryan for printing them!

i’m not really sure what i’m doing, so i’ll just post some info about our first event:
Potluck at the Foresty Pavillion (NE of the clocktower) in Riverfront Park, this saturday, May 12th at 12 o’clock. here’s a map: http://www.spokaneriverfrontpark.com/content.php?id=146

come and talk about biking, eat some food, share some food, and see if you want to be a part of what we’re doing. we love to meet other cyclists, and we never tire of talking about bikes. and bring a yellow or orange t-shirt so you can get it screenprinted by a local artist with our pedals2people logo.

next up…OutSpokane Pride Parade, June 9th, at noon, downtown Spokane