Volunteers to Seed Our Route with Points of Interest

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Before we get markers on the ground, we will use the mechanism Ride with GPS has in place to stamp our online maps with what they call Points of Interest (POI). Each of the following POI is associated with an icon –

ATM, aid station, bike parking, bike shop, bike share, bar, camping, caution, coffee, convenience store, ferry, first aid, food, gas station, general info, geocache, hospital, library, lodging, Monument, Museum, park, parking, rest stop, restroom, shopping, shower, summit, swimming, trail head, transit center, viewpoint, water, wine
Fleshing these locations out from one coast to the other along our route is a massive undertaking far beyond our financial reaches. It is here, however, that our being a nonprofit organization will make it possible. We can make use of volunteer placing organizations .

For this, there is a precedent. In the early 90’s, when we first started the National Bicycle Greenway in Santa Cruz, CA, we needed a data base of cyclist serving businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area. Pre-Internet, we gave them free listings in our Cycle America Regional Directories (here is our wine country book). These were small books that did in a very small way what the Internet does in ways we could have never imagined. With four color pull-out maps, they showed cyclists in the various areas they served where to ride, eat, sleep, shop and play.

To get that data base built, we turned to the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz, an amazing organization that matches local nonprofit businesses with volunteers. They have a pool of people looking for ways to give of their time to build their community. They also match people in need of court ordered community service hours with those nonprofit agencies that can make the best use of their skill sets.
It was the Volunteer Center that connected us with Dave Giggy. A computer wizard, Dave built a beautiful FileMaker Pro data base for us with 7000 contacts! With it, by mail and by phone, we were also able to contact businesses throughout the SF Bay Area and the greater area beyond it.

Now that I am here in Indianapolis, I need to find a volunteer placing agency like what I had back in Santa Cruz. A relatively quick Google search and found these organizations –

As we more and more flesh out our route with points of interest, we will be making it more and more familiar to all those people considering a bike ride on it. In giving face to the people and businesses on our route, we will be encouraging cyclists to want to visit them. Instead of a ride on our route looking like a black box filled with strangers and the danger of the unknown, it will look like there is a family waiting to welcome them with open arms.

Add the NBG blogs our riders will keep as well as their own NBG rider profiles, and our cyclists will be honored by not only passing motorists, but by the merchants with whom they do business. Differentiated by their gear-laden bicycles, their presence will compel  storekeepers to give them preferential treatment. Since they are not a threat to children or small animals as they jockey about looking for parking spots, but bring quiet, their visits will not only be welcomed but encouraged.

Filling our route, coast to coast with businesses sympathetic to our cross country cycling efforts, will begin to reunite us as a people. It will reinforce the notion that all of us transcontinental cyclists know, that this America is filled with people who just want to help each other. Instead of this Nation being filled with the dark deeds of strangers, as the news media works to convince us, from ocean to ocean, this is a country held together by one common thread – love.