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| As we get closer and closer to the start of our 2nd Annual National Mayor's Ride on May 2nd (~ 3 months away) from Washington DC, I am turning the notch up for the fires I burn even higher. As such then, here at 6 months away from our Grand Finale, the 2nd Annual Santa Cruz NBG Bike Fest, you will start seeing newsletters in your box on a weekly basis. This time however, I won't send the whole thing but an outline and enough copy to hopefully get your interest before I send you off to website to read the rest. There is so much excitement in my mailbox on a daily basis, I just can't keep it all to myself any longer. Fasten your seat belts folks as we power full force into overdrive: A) Jim Wetherell gets Parkinson's Foundation involved in his ride and ours B) S&B donates the Mailbu 2 for NBG raffle C) Car Free Jim Redd offers to oversee raffle D) Jim Redd, Jody Fitch, Andrew Morton, etc power NationalBicycleGreenway.com E) Real time Mayor's Ride edits: Follow Riders on a map forthcoming!! F) PocketMail reports to be webbed in real time! G) Mayor's Ride Overview Nears Completion H) Why - What Mayor's Ride I) Mayor's Ride Checklist webbed J) Rapid Transit joins Wicks Aircraft to co-sponsor Chicago ride link K) Sacramento Wheelmen slates me for March speaking engagement L) Now being edited: "How to Bike America" M) Grand Island, NE may come on board c/o Wayne Cyclery N) Reno may come on board c/o College Cyclery and/or Deux Gros Nez O) Build your own bike bike at Fest - from misc junk bikes? P) Include a Swap Meet at Fest? Q) Ro Fischer advancing in the ranks R) Elvis Presley look alike poses with me and Penninger trike A) Celebrity Parkinson's survivor, Jim Wetherell, who rides his Penninger trike all over CA to advance understanding about the disease he refuses to surrender to, started last week off with this great news: >Good morning Martin, >I have gotten the ball rolling with the PD organizations, & support groups from SF to SC, & the >response has been great. They will be posting the event in their newsletters. Jim, who will be riding the SF Bay Area cities of our relay ride, just also found his story in yet another newspaper, the Riverside Press Enterprise . If you want to see this remarkable man's web site go HERE B) S&B Recumbents is using this year's raffle to introduce their all new Malibu 2 recumbent. Speedy and ultra light light, it will be the flagship prize for this year's drawing. And you can even take a chance on winning this bike right from the comfort of your computer screen via this PAGE. And do bookmark this location as we add more exciting prizes to it in the months ahead. The reason this is even more important is that since we don't charge admission and the booth fees we collect barely pay just the insurance fee that is required of us, this is how we pay for the event. There is the expense for the park and all the associated permits, not to mention the cost of the sound system, the stage, security, the porta-potties, volunteer food and drink, the special bike parking area, signage, the children's play area, and etc, etc. Last year our raffle, put a pretty good dent in all of this, but we still find ourselves in significant debt. Since we now have the raffle on line, maybe you can help us throw a bigger amount at the monthly payments I am personally making right now. With a bank card or a credit card -- for as little as 5 bux!! C) As if he doesn't have enough on his plate already, as you will soon see below, Car Free cyclist Jim Redd , the man who took over for Andrew Heckman when a car pulverized him on his way from Chicago to Des Moines last summer and the driving force behind the widely respected Chicago Critical Mass (CCM) movement, offered to help us organize the raffle. From the procurement of prizes to the organization of the drawing itself and the the discharge of raffle receipts, Jim will be bringing the same kind of administrative excellence that he brings to the CCM web page -- WoW! D) NationalBicycleGreenway.com is starting to take form. Spearheaded by the razor sharp mind of Jody Fitch, this new web page is being powered into form by the equally capable Jim Redd and Andrew Morton not to mention the others who come and go!! With myself as the bottle neck that is slowing down its completion, Jody had wanted to have it all up and running by some time this month. Hopefully, however, we'll have the bulk of it complete before our relay leaves Washington DC on May 2!! E) A cutting edge digital representation of our effort, NationalBicycleGreenway.com, will THX to Jim Redd allow anyone armed with a password to make changes and/or additions to our Mayor's Ride, in real time, as it unfolds. Jim is also working on a map that will allow us to track riders as they move along as well as will let us pull up the mayoral city descriptions that Andrew Heckman (that's right Andrew Heckman has returned from the dead to offer the research and writing services from which he derives his livelihood at Bellwether Communications) is working on! F) Also at NationalBicycleGreenway.com, THX to Andrew Morton, the west coast star of last year's Mayor's Ride (in case you missed it, here is a slide show from that ride), is creating a web interlink that will allow our cyclists to upload their Pocket Mail reports in real time, right from their ride wherever they may happen to be. WoW WoW!! G) The Mayor's Ride Overview FAQ that we have been working on is nearing completion. Ro Fischer over in the Pittsburgh mayor's office and Jody Fitch and Don Fong and Faye Saunders, have all moved this page along so that we can answer the questions that prospective riders and sponsors have about our ride. It should be finalized and webbed by the first of this week. I will keep you posted. H) Before the Overview gets put on line, I can at least answer, in draft form still, a couple of the questions that always get asked about our Mayor's Ride: Why Mayors Rides? By underscoring the fun of bicycling before local decision makers all across America, we are reminding them of the two wheel solution to many of the woes that car centered planning has brought upon them. As our riders also use their Pocket Mailers to daily chronicle the conditions of the roads they travel to reach these celebrations, a real face is given to the efforts of the cyclist in each of these areas. The efforts of those bicycle activists working to make two wheel transit safer and thereby more attractive in these areas for all will also be showcased. What is the Mayor's Ride? Starting May 2 in Washington DC, a group of riders will leave for Pittsburgh, PA from the DC Bike to Work Day celebration. They will begin their 300 mile journey armed with a proclamation supporting the National Bicycle Greenway from DC Mayor Anthony Williams (the 2002 decree ) . Upon reaching Pittsburgh, our riders will be brought to City Hall by a "velocade" (the police are all on bikes!) where a brief ceremony witnessed by the local media will find them in receipt of yet another proclamation expressing support for the NBG. This process will repeat itself in 20 more big cities all the way across the US, where each of the chosen population centers will add its own unique flavor to this summer long ride to the annual Santa Cruz NBG Bike Fest held on August 17. I) Also at the above FAQ, if you want to get an idea of how we are asking our Mayor's offices to help us, here is the Mayor's Ride Checklist that Ro Fischer helped us to create J) As testimony to the kind of excitement we are creating for Chicago, not only will our reception once again be a part of the several thousand strong Chicago Critical Mass ride, but besides Wicks Aircraft sponsoring the lndy to Chicago link that Jerome Hediger is the lead rider for, the people at Rapid Transit Cycles have also offered to pick up some of the freight. They will serve as a staging area to send NBG cyclists to Daley Plaza where our reception takes place as well as act as an information clearing house well before we get there! K) John Hockenbury of the Sacramento Wheelmen has been working with me and Carol Stubbs of the Sacramento Mayor's Office about my coming up for an end of March speaking engagement to promote their involvement in our ride. Toward that end, he has also been in contact with the Sacramento Bike Hikers and the Davis, CA bike clubs as well as Rick Steele of Cold Country Cyclery. I may take the train up and back, as Carol has suggested, just so I can keep our newsletters current as well as let you know all of what took place!! L) Our on line book "How to Bike America" is now in the process of being edited. Even tho it is still a draft and there is clean up work that needs to be done, I still heartily recommend that you get a look at it as you prepare for for next summer's (only a few months away) riding. I say this because a lot of the work that needs to be done is in your mind. Toward the end of making this collection of words as tight as possible for you, I am beginning the first 30 to 45 minutes of each of my days with the pruning job this book needs. I also plan to add a section on how to read a regular car road map for safe cycling. For "How to Bike America", the URL is: http://www.bikeroute.com/S2KNewsletter User Id: nbg Password: transam Your input and/or comments are much appreciated!! btw: This book is normally only seen by those who join the NBG as per http://bikeroute.com/NBGMember.html M) I've been ins discussion with John Wayne of Wayne Cyclery in Grand Island, NE. We'd like to have them replace Omaha, NE for a few reasons. We need to get our rider or riders closer to Boulder so that the distance they have to make up (590 miles vs 450 miles) is not so great. And the distance from Des Moines (135 miles vs 284 miles) is not so short. And John's shop at 6000 square feet and 600 bikes servicing a one hundred mile radius, sounds like the true heart of Nebraska cycling. I will keep up posted! N) Reno is another candidate city for our ride. And based on my discussions with College Cyclery and Deux Gros Nez a legendary coffee shop that is a long time sponsor of bike races up that way, it does sound like there is a there there as well. What's more is that we can take advantage of Andrew Morton's work in connecting that city with both Salt Lake and Sacramento. These are ride connections of which he already rode and documented for us in '99 and 2000!! Will keep up posted here as well! O) Here in Santa Cruz, a touring band name Signal Path was stopped in front of the Catalyst night club in their huge school bus. Curious about my Penninger trike, they also asked about the NBG decal that adorns the bike's front fairing. When I told them about our Fest, they proudly told me about the bike efforts in their own home town, Missoula, MT. In particular they told me about the Free Cycles Missoula program and the Bike Pit that is now a yearly phenomena up there. In essence, every year the Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transportation (MIST) goes out into the community and collects old bikes and bike parts and then on a summer day throws them all into what they call the Bike Pit. Whereupon, with he help of bike shops and other volunteers in the area, those in need of bikes are able to build one for themselves that is then theirs to keep! Here is their program and I'm thinking we can do something like this at our next Fest! Already Jay Dravich of Goodwill tells me he still stands ready with bikes. I have yet to contact any of the shops in the area or the Bike Church but I am sure we can create a lot of excitement for all of this. Stay tuned! P) Heck, while we're at it we can even hold a Swap Meet! Anyone interested in administering such a thing? Maybe the Santa Cruz Bike Club might like to conduct one as a benefit for themselves or ?? Q) Ro Fischer, Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy's long time scheduler, has been promoted much to her consternation. A woman with a heart of gold, she was more interested in maintaining all the relationships she had formed than in the significant raise in pay her new position calls for. Called upon to oversee a handful of the mayor's programs. she tells me that she still has our ride on the front burner and will do what she can to make sure it is a success!! And from a higher more influential position (my assessment not hers)!! R) Met an excellent Elvis Presley look alike out on West Cliff last week as per this photo: From St Louis, his name is Bobby Wayne Smith and he was out our way on vacation from his work as a musician back in Missouri where the people he was with tell me he is in much demand as a guitar playing imposter for the King. What's more is that Bobby tells me he may even play our August 17th second annual Santa Cruz NBG Bike Fest (for those of U who missed it, here is last year's Fest: http://www.bikeroute.com/SCNBGFest/8-11Report.html) as an excuse to get out to California. I'll keep U posted!! ********* Yahooooo -- Two Wheel Rock & Roll *********** |
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