Since I haven’t posted in a while (because I’ve been busy with projects on my recently-purchased house), I thought it would be a good idea to give Poky Pedalers a few Bike Fun updates.

Remaining 2013 Poky Pedals
Later in August, we’ll be sharing Bike Fun on two Poky Pedals. The last Poky Pedaling Potluck Picnic for 2013 will be on Tuesday August 20. Then on Saturday August 24, we’ll explore a scenic yet infrequently-bicycled region of Stevens Point on the Poke Around Ride – East of I-39. It will be hard to top last year’s Poke Around Ride which gave us the opportunity to sing the Sesame Street theme song, but we should enjoy lots of Bike Fun nonetheless. More info is available here, and there will be more detailed blog posts a couple of days in advance of each Poky Pedal.

Once September arrives and fall gets underway, the 2013 Bike Fun Calendar still has a couple of Poky Pedals remaining. Check it out so you can reserve those dates for Bike Fun.

Video slideshow from last month’s Influential Citizen Ride
Karen Hoffman, one of the Poky Pedalers on July’s Influential Citizen Ride, created a 3-minute video slideshow from the ride. This contains numerous photographs taken from the ride and is set to a musical background. I want to thank Karen for her efforts in capturing and sharing our Bike Fun in such a wonderful artistic manner.

I am happy to provide a copy of this video slideshow to any Poky Pedaler who wants one. (Karen did give me permission to do so.) Contact me using the feedback form below and we’ll figure out a way to get a copy to you.

Advocacy
September should also provide lots of advocacy activity. I anticipate that during that month, there will be steering committee meetings for the Portage County Bike/Ped Planning Project as well as a public meeting on the Division/Church Corridor Study. As usual, I’ll keep Poky Pedalers informed of when these meetings take place. For those unable to attend, I’ll write up summaries of what takes place.

The Division/Church meeting should be particularly interesting as there has been a great deal of misinformation spreading word that houses will be destroyed specifically for creating bike lanes. It is unfortunate that such uninformed opinions have propagated. My most recent letter to project staff makes numerous suggestions for how to use the existing right-of-way to meet project goals and create quality bicycle infrastructure without destroying homes along that corridor.

The next public meeting held by project staff should provide detailed block-by-block options of possible implementations for the corridor. This should be the first opportunity to get actual ideas (as opposed to general highly-modifiable guidelines) of what project staff wants to implement along the corridor. Regardless of what they propose, that public meeting is likely to be highly spirited.

Twitter
Although I haven’t written any new posts in a few weeks, I have been regularly posting new Tweets to my Twitter feed. These have covered a variety of bikey topics with links to interesting posts written by numerous bloggers from both within and outside the US. Here is a sample of topics from my Twitter feed over the past few weeks (click the highlighted text to access the source linked in my Tweet):

• a review of an inspirational book written by someone returning to bicycling after a 30 year absence,
• a Kickstarter proposal for a tricycle with solar-electric assist, a weatherproof shell, headlights, taillights, and turn signals (I believe the fund-raising goal has been met and they have started production),
• some yoga pose suggestions for urban bicycle riders,
• advice from a certified police instructor trainer to police officers about how to ride bicycles safely on public streets and how to enforce traffic laws in these situations,
• for those who bicycle to work or are considering bicycling to work, it is encouraging to learn that even Beyonce bicycles to work, where work is a sold-out show in Brooklyn,
• an article entitled “The Rise of the North American Protected Bike Lane” gives an excellent overview of their history in order to create context for describing the current status of protected bike lanes in cities across the continent.

I hope Poky Pedalers find a few of these topics interesting enough to click through to the source in order to learn more.

On my Twitter feed, I typically post a new Tweet every few days highlighting some sort of bikey news. I’ve been doing this for the past year and a half, and my Twitter feed now has 400 Tweets. The list above is a good sample of the variety of topics I usually Tweet about. I encourage Poky Pedalers to follow my Twitter feed and click through to the posts I link to in order to learn more about bicycle-oriented happenings in our state, in our nation, and around the world.

Twitter is free and there is no need to signup for anything in order to read my feed or to access the items I link to in my Tweets. You can access my Tweets either directly from the PPSP webpage, or by going to my feed via the Tweets link on my webpage, or by otherwise opening Twitter and looking for me at @PokyPedalingSP.

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