Blog
Today we are featuring Jim Silcott, principal extraordinaire and National Bike Challenge rider. Silcott has been an educator for 35 years and is now in his 26th year as principal of Trinity Catholic Elementary school in Columbus, Ohio. He set the impressive goal of riding to school every day no matter what the weather, no matter what he has on his daily schedule and no matter what time he may end his work day. Rain or snow, early arrival or late departure, he is ready to ride and he is recording his miles in the National Bike Challenge for all of us to cheer him on.
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Initiated in 2010, Slow Roll is a mass bicycle ride that takes place every Monday night in Detroit. Last month, I was able to join the Slow Roll, riding through the Motor City with more than 4,000 people, experiencing the bicycle as truly a great equalizer, a device that can bring us together: one gigantic, happy family of humankind.
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What role do physical and digital technology play in expanding access to streets and input into the design process? How can new technologies make bicycling more accessible for more people by revealing and closing gaps in who counts? Those are the questions facing our Future Technology panelists at this Thursday’s Future Bike forum, a half-day conference focused on the intersection of identity and mobility.
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For many bicyclists, a Learn to Ride class or Bicycle Maintenance 101 is an introduction — a gateway — to the bike movement. Ensuring such classes are inviting, inclusive, and a safe space to learn is essential to the getting more diverse riders on bikes. Understanding that effective, culturally-competent education is one path toward achieving equity, we’ll be diving into this discussion at our Future Bike event in Pittsburgh next week.
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In addition to being a part of panel discussions, attendees at Future Bike will have a chance to participate in an urban design workshop led by keynote speaker James Rojas. Here’s James’ recipe for urban design as an engagement tool: Biking is inherently spatial and experiential. For the public, biking is an activity shaped by memories, uses, experiences, and desires. Bike infrastructure is a physical place of reactions, and a mental space of imagination. Through the workshops, participants examine their physical and desired connections with the street to help develop bike projects, plans, and policies.
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This number — 51% — made me think. How much of what we say about women is true and how much is myth? And how much has the bike retail industry bought into, and continued to sell these myths right back to women? I was overwhelmed by how well the webinar was attended. It’s an indicator to me of how invested the industry is in seeking out numbers-based solutions. The other thing that got me excited was how interested folks were in continuing the conversation. We have these numbers that indicate a huge potential for growth in women’s bike retail, but what about solutions to capitalize on that potential? How do we fix it? How do we get more women on bikes?
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The League’s Development Director, Lili Afkhami, shares her transformative cycling story, reflecting on her journey from being unable to walk up a flight of stairs to triumphantly finishing a half-Ironman triathlon — and urging riders of all backgrounds to never allow anyone to steal your joy in biking.
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Early last summer I began to notice some unusual symptoms when I was riding, and a decrease in my racing performance, but I had just had a physical and stress test, so I didn’t think much about it. I figured it was just due to getting older. Finally, after competing in a bike race at the National Senior Games in August I figured something must be wrong with me. I saw my doctor and explained my symptoms. He referred me to a cardiologist. To make a long story short, they found 80% to 90% blockage in two main arteries in my heart (one of which is called the “widow maker”) and I ended up getting 5 stents implanted in those arteries to open them up.
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Chema Hernandez Gil’s background is “in engineering, with a heavy dose of community and media activism.” A perfect mix for bike advocacy, right? Hernandez Gil is a community organization at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, using both his engineering and community skills on campaigns for better infrastructure and on a collaborative program that gets reclaimed bicycles into the hands of low-income community members.
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Last year, at the California By Bike Summit, I was drawn to a session that asked a provocative question: “Who is mainstream?” Led by Miguel Ramos and Laura Torres from Multicultural Communities for Mobility in Los Angeles, the workshop examined the a complex topic: How can we connect the outcomes of bicycle advocacy with the inputs of diverse, previously overlooked communities.
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