Under a warm and smiling sun, I’ve been pounding pavement to keep up on the all the visits. This year has an amazing group of participants; I’m continually thrilled (and sometimes floored!) to hear stories of people taking up sustainable transportation for the first time. And these are often people with substantial commute distances (15, 20Km+), which makes it even more impressive considering the 50% of vehicle trips we make are 2km or less.

There was the woman coming in from Douro to Fleming college by bike – for the first time. Incroyable! Another group of people have the stunningly beautiful Lakefield – Peterborough trip (or vice versa). The distance is surely made manageable by the fact that it has to be among the most pleasant 15-20km stretches in Canada.

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In other news, you may remember my bicycle framebuilding adventure from a few months back. Recap: in addition to being really keen on sustainable transportation in all its forms, I’m particularly interested in the art/design/craft of bicycle building, and took some time off to learn from master builder Doug Fattic in the states. I built a bicycle frame and brought it back.

I’ve been hemming and hawing about paint a lot, but just this weekend decided to build it up unpainted and start riding. So here it is, in all its naked glory!

Now, I am a lot more interested in utility, day-to-day-get-around-go-shopping-etc cycling than using bikes for fitness, training, or racing, so I immediately put the new bike to work as my Shifting Gears truck! Here it is bearing the famous trailer:

Anyway, it’s a super fun bike to ride, and I look forward to building more in Peterborough (some classic city bikes, perhaps?!), and will be (slowly) blogging about the process here.

But a Shifting Gears Ambassador cannot get by on blogs alone! Time to hit the road and give out prizes to this incredible community.

So far, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting folks at:

• Queen Mary Public School. A friendly group of teachers setting a fabulous example for their students
• Five Counties Childrens’ Centre
  



• Pepsico Plant. Their coordinator, Nanda, is a beaming ray of sunshine, and a great source of energy for their effort in the campaign!
  
• ORCA. Good folks doing great work – and some bike, which is impressive considering they’re at the highest point in the city! It’s also the current place of employment of former SG Ambassador, Erin.
• Peterborough Ortho Lab. I had the pleasure of meeting Gail, who is a lifelong cyclist and happy participant. Enjoy your bikey prizes!
• City of Peterborough. The City has a pretty strong showing this year; which is excellent considering they’re such a large workplace.
• Wild Rock. Needs no introduction! Like a few other select workplaces in town, the folks at Wild Rock show a strong culture of conservation that hardly needs Shifting Gears’ encouragement to keep it up. That being said, I’m sure they appreciate the free coffee gift certificates…
• Pepsico Office. A seemingly quiet contender that surprises me each year with enthusiasm at the workplace. I think I ran out of bike lights after visiting them last year! They also host some committed Shifting Gears-ists who claim the longest bikey commutes.
• Parks Canada. I’m heading there in the next few minutes. They’ve beefed up their participation in a really impressive way this year, and are definitely in the running for most improved.

Onwards!

Yesterday saw the first-ever Peterborough Bikefest.

We had Fontaine’s, Wild Rock, B!KE: The Peterborough Community Bike Shop, Peterborough Fire Fighters, and the Peterborough Cycling Club on hand.

The unexpectedly gorgeous afternoon drew out a good number of people, who received instant prizes, bike safety checks, biking maps, and snacks!

As the crowd grew, with pedestrians, people on bikes, young families all milling around and chatting, I was amazed to get a sense of the strong culture growing in Peterborough.

The visitors on hand were not “Cyclists” (or, they probably wouldn’t identify themselves as such — I don’t even really think of myself as a “Cyclist”). They were regular folks, using a simple, easy and fun way to get around. We all converged around this one idea – sharing knowledge, spreading information, gaining enthusiasm.

I love this city. You’re all doing such great work, and together we’re building something incredible.

Who wants to read an essay every blog post? Not me!

Let’s do some photobloggin’!

We live in such a beautiful city. This is one of my favourite bridges, and I’m totally envious of the people who get to cross it every day as they go about their lives.

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Anyone else notice the fabulous signage that’s gone up recently. It’s a wonderful improvement to the trails system, and a lot of work was put into it to make a coherent, navigable system by bike. I’m thrilled to have played a small part in the project. The best additions of signs are the ‘you are here’ complete maps that are featured at some trail heads. So cool!

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On the plush Monaghan bike lane, as my front tire slices right through the centre of the bike diamonds.

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Here’s the famous Shifting Gears trailer. Hauler of 75+lbs of umbrellas and goodies, I have a love/hate relationship with the thing. It’s marvelous for lugging stuff, but man does it get to be hard work!

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@ the PRHC’s helicopter landing pad. Oh, the places you’ll go by bike! We had a great energizer station in the first week of SG here, and gave away all sorts of goodies to folks coming in the morning.

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And one of my favourite events of the month so far. We had the SG launch at Ontario Public Service (Robinson Place), with a variety of speakers and snacks. Here’s mayor Paul Ayotte sending us off. But note the detail: he’s cradling a bike helmet on the podium! Our man wheeled in to the event by bike. What a champ!

The first week of Shifting Gears is over. On my end, it’s been a wild ride: over eighty-five workplaces signed up, 1200+ participants, media, incentive kits and more. It’s humbling to see the program really take off this year – we’re smashing records in the eight year history of Shifting Gears all over the place. I assembled over seven hundred incentive kits to go out the door, something that is totally unheralded in this program, and may very well be first for any program of its kind.

It’s tremendous to know that Peterborough can be the home of such an event. We’re a strong community, and the thing that really warms my heart is the thought that SG can give folks the opportunity to see more, and be more, public. Something as simple as transportation has a massive impact on the way we view the world, our experience of the environment around us. And every mode that SG supports – walk, bike, bus, rideshare – is about either being with other people, or being outside seeing your community. Eliminating the solitary, stale confinement of driving through space (one space is the same as every space) and replacing it with experiences unique and deeply connected to where we live.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to Chloë Black’s arrival in the next few days – a former pro rider and local cycling celebrity, she’s going to help me out with the overwhelming amount of visits and deliveries that need to be made in the next few days. Yeehaw!

We had a great time recording these. My favourite is the walking ad, which gave me the long-awaited opportunity to record the ‘movie trailer voice’ that I irritate my partner when we’re watching a preview!

Walking ad:

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Biking ad:

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Carpooling ad:

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I spent this morning out’n'about dropping off posters to workplaces who’ve already signed up for Shifting Gears.

The kilometres start racking up on the bike, and I’m thrilled to be out in the sun. It’s a pleasure to greet so many smiling faces: everyone’s keen on the excellent posters we’ve got designed, and when the tv/radio ads start next week, there’ll be a strong sense of participating in a movement in the city.

Here’s something great about Shifting Gears: most images and programs we are bombarded with have to do with people as consumers, not as active agents. Ads suggest buying, but rarely do they target the person on the other side of the cash desk. But with Shifting Gears, the program says “You! Yes, you in the apron, you behind the computer screen, you on the manufacturing line! Let’s get together and do something amazing!”

(Click for a photo slideshow w/descriptions)

Hundreds of bike lights: check

Free 30-day transit passes, coffee cards, bike fenders, bike racks, B!KE memberships, umbrellas, leg bands, ice cream: check

Big posters: check

I hesitate to use the word ‘legendary’, but…ok. Seriously. I’m going to do it: this month will go down in Peterborough History.

You get incredible stuff for free, so long as you do fun, affordable, healthy stuff in return. Tough deal, huh?

We’re giving out useful, quality tools for biking, walking and public transit. This saves you real money, and gives you a damn good reason to try getting to work – even just once – by using one of those methods.

We’ll even pay for your cab ride home if you, say, walk to work and need to get home in an emergency because your kid gets sick.

Shifting Gears is a good program and we try really hard to give you options, tools and incentives to get around in a smart way.

But at the end of the day, what we do here at SG HQ is entirely dependent on you choosing to try something different. Exercise your free will, that exciting unique quality of being human, and leave familiar driving routines at home. We could go on with the tired reasons about how this builds community (it does), repairs air quality (it does), improves your well-being (it does), saves you money (it does), etc.

But all those reasons amount to nothing without a simple choice – your choice – when you walk out the front door.

Enjoy the big picture. Get to work differently.

In May, Shifting Gears goes wild, and the city takes up sustainable transportation en masse.

I frenetically criss-cross the city by bike, pulling a stylish trailer full of giveaways.

Every workplace that participates gets a visit, and most folks are gleefully excited to be recognized for their efforts.

The other upside, of course, is the swag.

I just took shipment of a mondo-sized box of MEC turtle lights. Marvelous glowy LED lights for people travelling by bike or foot. I used one that lasted for roughly a year, with near daily use.

These are one of several useful giveaways that Peterborough Shifting Gears participants get all month long.

And, wait, did I hear something about free bike fenders?

Well, the big email has gone out to the 70+ workplaces that participated in last year’s Shifting Gears — a record-smashing month that took Peterborough by storm! We quickly started drumming up interest in those folks and have around 15 eager workplaces signed up already. Their enthusiasm is infectious, particularly regarding some of our new additions.

Now comes the big job: getting in touch with as many employers in town as we can. The cold call isn’t a particularly ego-boosting way to spend your day, but we’ve got a pretty stellar pitch:

• A Guaranteed Ride Home program for participants who use sustainable transportation to get to work, then need to go home in an emergency (sick kid, rideshare driver suddenly has to work late, etc). The GRH is a tremendously exciting and groundbreaking initiative!
• Amazing free incentive kits to participants who register before May 1st. Seriously, these are going to be talked-about giveaways for years to come. The include complimentary
  • bike rack with installation
  • bike fenders with installation
  • 30 day unlimited transit pass
  • high-quality umbrella
• Workplace visits by SG Ambassadors with instant giveaways (that’s my job!)
• Huge media profile (online, in print, and on tv) for participating workplaces. This is a great reason to sign up especially if you’re a small business!

So ease our work a bit here and reduce our cold call list: Sign up now and reap the benefits!

[This is a sticky post, scroll down for the latest updates to the Shifting Gears blog]

What is it?
The Shifting Gears Peterborough Workplace Transportation Challenge is a month-long competition and campaign in May that encourages people to use sustainable ways to get to work. Participants sign up as workplaces and track their trips at least once a week with the online tool. All month long, the Shifting Gears team puts on events, gives out tons of useful gear and prizes, and visits workplaces to rally the participants.

SIGN ME UP NOW!

Anything new this year?
Well, imaginary questioner, I’m glad you asked! This year, we’re super proud to be initiating a Guaranteed Ride Home program – think of it as insurance for sustainable commuters, where Shifting Gears pays for the cab ride home in case of emergency/sick child/etc. Full details are here.

We’ve also expanded the already generous range of complimentary incentive packages. Eligible Peterborough participants who pledge to improve their use of sustainable transportation can choose kits like complimentary bike fenders + installation, a B!KE membership, a 30 day transit pass, and more.

How do I make this happen at my workplace?
Simply register your workplace here. The Shifting Gears team will be in touch with all the information and promo materials you’ll need to get your co-workers involved. It’s a great way to bring in the summer – for our health, wealth and community.

If this gorgeous weather isn’t enough of an incentive already to walk / bike / bus / carpool to work, how about joining Shifting Gears to sweeten the deal?