These two tots belong to a good friend of mine who incorporated the 1world2wheels art into the jersey design.  The kids are sporting the “Support Global Cooling” and “Weigh less, Wait less” jerseys in kiddly sizes.   Word is they’ve not taken the jerseys off for days and they want to ride their bikes all the time.

I haven’t convinced the buyers that either jersey would sell for kids.  Any thoughts on that?

So last weeks winners in the Go By Bike Challenge are:

August 18 – Jane Rogers

August 19 – John Fossett

August 20 – Lindsay Stonebrook

August 21 – Tom Duvall

August 22 – Rita Shorba

August 23 – Kyle McGinnis

August 24 – Maria Novilla

Here’s a question for all of you Challenge takers: how is it going? Are you replacing your car trips by bike and what’s it been like?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Another week has gone by in the Go By Bike pledge drive.   The photo above is a “commuter shot” sent in by a 1w2w reader, David Wilkins.  Wilkins had no idea how much his photos would be useful in making the case for complete streets.  More on that in a minute.

 David lives in a lovely area of Alabama and what a great reason to make it more bike friendly.   Looking at the photos you can see the potential for becoming bike friendly.  

I’ve been wanting to write about complete streets for awhile and this is a great entree.  Complete Streets does exactly what it sounds like it would: helps communities remake it streets to accocommodate multiple modes of transport; cars, bikes, pedestrians.   This brilliant program is making waves around the country with its simple, economical street redesign.  Find more here: www.completestreets.org.

Back to David.  Here’s his ride, waiting at the YMCA at the bright hour of 5am.

After David gets through the first bit of highway (seen in the top photo) he comes to this:

 This is a lovely scene but note the lack of striped bike lanes.  

 His commute takes him through a newer looking subdivision, also lacking striped bike lanes.

 And here’s the finishing stretch.  Let’s give it up for a bike lane!

Thanks for sending the photos, David.   You’ve got one of the tougher commutes I’ve seen and good for you for going to work on two wheels.  

And the winners from last week are:

August 11: Sara Myers

August 12: Julie Bower

August 13: Manuel Margine

August 14: Linda Mason

August 15: John Sutter

August 16: James Hagen

August 17: Henry Ma

Btw, I have to say that the boxes of postcards I get everyday are a side benefit of the Challenge I didn’t anticipate.  Leading the “most commonly received postcard” is none other than Gumby.  I am not kidding.  The second most popular card is a hotel from Vegas.  Third most popular, Florida.   After winners are drawn from the postcards and on line, I go through and save the wackiest postcards.  That’s a whole ‘nuther blog entry!

It’s Wednesday and I’m just now posting last week’s Go By Bike Challenge winners.  Apologies for the delay but it’s Trek World this week, our annual reveal of new bikes and riding said new bikes with 5,000 of our best friends from all over the world.  Trek retailers descend on Waterloo and Madison, Wisconsin and it’s a week long love-of-all-things-bike celebration.   The best part about Trek World is being amongst like-minded people who’ve not forgotten how to play.  And there’s no better playing than riding a bicycle with other grownups.

Speaking of grownups, last week a reader from Tucson sent me her commute pics.  Amy Grey has an interesting commute and the photo above is of her vehicle, ready for duty.   Here’s Amy’s ride:

My name is Amy and this is my four mile daily commute. Although we live just a quarter mile from the Santa Cruz River Park, the various builders of the Tucson neighborhoods along the river apparently did not envision people wanting access to the river path and they surrounded our suburbs with walls. The first part of my commute is along a back alleyway.

To cross the drainage ditches between neighborhoods I use the utility access ramps. It is invigorating to do a little off-road riding first thing in the morning. The only other people I see back here are dog walkers and gangs of Junior High boys on dirt bikes.

The Santa Cruz river used to have water most of the year, now, except for the August and September rainy season, it is mostly dry. When the water runs it is rapid enough to sweep cars and people down river. As you can see, no traffic jam here. 

I cross three major grid streets, but each time the bike path goes under the street and I never have to stop for cars. I do see the traffic backed up on the bridge and I am always glad that I don’t have to hurry up and wait like the poor car drivers. The city very kindly put in several elegant little bridges, like this one below, along the several miles of the path. A handful of us enjoy them very much. The park staff have nurtured mesquite trees and dozens of different flowering bushes along the path. There are always lizards dozing in the sun and bunnies in the shady places. When the cicadas or frogs are singing, I can’t even hear the far-off traffic.

I take this third underpass and then a tiny paved path, through a parking lot, and up the street to my office building. I rarely see another set of bike tracks in the sand that drifts across this path. I think kind thoughts about this company that clearly paved a path to the river just for me.

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The campus does have a large bike rack neatly tucked away in a spot shady and private enough to attract all the passing bike thieves. I am lucky to be able to park in my office.

Thanks, Amy, for sending your Tucson area commute.

So back to our winners.  As usual, we have seven winners from Aug. 4 – Aug. 10.

August 4: Larry Horton

August 5: Karen Ruth

August 6: Betty Swain

August 7: Jonathan Sawn

August 8: Josh Minix

August 9: Craig Shryock

August 10: Shirley Chamberlain

Congrats, winners! You’ll get a phone call or email any day to get the prize wheels in motion (pun intended).  Stay tuned for more winners, more commute pics and pcitures of the CRAZY postcards I’m getting as entries for the Go By Bike challenge.  Yesterday’s box of postcards featrued a stuffed doggie card.  For real.

We are up to 6.5 million miles and counting in the challenge with 19,900 people pledging to replace some car trips by bike! The theme of last week’s barrage of email was “where can I get a “Support Global Cooling” jersey? I’m happy to announce that the jerseys will be available later this month on this very site or at your local Trek retailer. Men’s and women’s sizes too and if I can convince the bean counters they will sell, we’ll get some kids jerseys in the line up.

Before I give the names of last week’s bike winners, I want to explain the photo above. That’s my uber pink bike and my backpack waiting for me to hop aboard for my ride to work. I got a great idea while riding to work one day: “Show and Tell your Bike Commute!” The idea is to get you all to take some photos of your ride and send them to me with some brief narration. I’ll post the best ones for all of us to enjoy and/or get inspiration from. Send your commute pics to me at info@1world2wheels.org and try to keep your photos small so my laptop doesn’t crash.

My commute to Trek is 8 miles. When I turn out of my driveway I see this scene. Buccolic, non?

Being in THE dairy state it’s quite common to see a bunch of dairy cows lazing in the grass, nibbling on flowers. Unlike California where the cows are watered by sprinklers to keep them alive in the summer, our Wisco cows are laying in knee deep grass. Real grass. I have a photo of my neighbors –the Brown Swiss variety– but I’ll have to post that tomorrow as I seem to have
left that photo off the thumb drive. Trust me, they are very nice neighbors and only smell now and then when the wind is from the east.

So after the cows I make a right turn at Hwy I, and see evidence of hay and straw making. We had perfect hay making weather last week and as the saying goes, “make hay when the sun shines.” The other part of the saying you don’t hear unless you live amongst farmers is “otherwise you get bricks.” What that means is if it rains on your hay after you cut it, it probably won’t be worth keeping. That’s a bummer if you bale hay.

Just up the road from the hay field is the town of Waterloo sign. Being a former bike racer a town sign means “sprint” but with no one to sprint against I took a photo of the sign I would have sprinted for if there was anyone around to sprint with. Someone needs to weed whack the sign.

After that it’s another 1.5 miles to Trek where we have a room to store our bikes, showers, and it’s A-OK to walk around the office with helmet head. It’s the norm, actually.

Alrighty, here are week 3 winners of the Trek 7.2 FX:
July 28: Henrik Lind
July 29: John Wright
July 30: Heather Walker
July 31st: Catrina Hare
Aug. 1: Lynn Vanderloop
Aug. 2: Jeannine Sweet
Aug. 3: Randy Phetteplace

Stay tuned for that photo of the Brown Swiss.

Not until I worked at Trek did I get to know an incredibly nice bunch of people at a company called Sram. Sram is out of Chicago and they make parts for bikes, with a speciality in componentry for mountain and road bikes.

F.K.Day was Vice President of Sram and in that role he co-founded an organization called “World Bicycle Relief.”   WBR is now his full time vocation.

WBR got started in response to the 2005 tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean. Sram and Trek Bicycle partnered with World Vision Sri Lanka to provide 24,000 locally produced bicycles to people in extreme need. The result of this simple gesture was an accelerated recovery for the region. Where cars could not go because the roads were destroyed, people could use bicycles to restart their businesses. Sram kept WBR an independent agency to monitor results and the results –2 years after the disaster–were incredible:

- 88% of recipients depended on bicycles for livelihood activities
- Bicycles can save a household up to 30% of its annual income for transportation costs
- The bicycle program enabled households to resume livelihood, education and service activities

The program was so successful that WBR turned its sights to another area in need, Zambia. The goal is to get 23,000 bikes to this nation that is reeling from aids. The bikes will take aids workers into remote villages with necessary medicine and education.
Without the bikes, healthcare information would not reach these people. Simply put, World Bicycle Relief works. For about $134 a person can “buy” a bike that will get shipped to Zambia. WBR works to document the impact of the bikes which in turn can impact other areas.

A bicycle: a simple solution to complex problems. Bravo, F.K. and to all of Sram and the WBR team. Thanks for the inspiration and showing that tough problems can be handled effectively with good team work and a great vision.

You can find stories and wonderful photos of the program here: www.worldbicyclerelief.org.