May 2010

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!