Week Three: Visits and New (sort of) Bike!

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!