There's a bit of BikeSage wisdom that says if some of the people in Los Angeles made some of their short trips some of the time by bicycling instead of driving, then there would be bicyclists everywhere. Imagine that.  As we all know, this is easier said than done.  Our friends at C.I.C.L.E.  published a fantastic "Bicycle Lifestyle Guide" that a real resource for anyone considering bicycling.  Check it out and pass it on.  Enjoy your ride!

A good facilitator brings some important materials to a meeting including an easel, markers, a small clock and most challenging of all to carry on a bicycle, a full sized posterboard to scribe notes to capture everyone’s good thoughts. Up until now, I have always asked clients to bring the posterboard because it was too challenging to secure on my small bike rack.



For a recent peer learning session I led for the Liberty Hill Foundation, one of the leading funders of social change movements in Los Angeles, I decided I would incorporate a little social change in my own lifestyle and bring everything to the training by bicycle.  Knowing I couldn't fit everyone on my existing bike, I remembered one of my neighbors here at the LA Eco-Village has an XtraCycle I could borrow, which is a bicycle trailer device designed to carry heavy loads.

What GOOD ideas do you have to improve the physical environment in LA? Bike Boulevards? Bike Parking? Bike Lanes? Check out Ron Milam's post about the subject and please share any thoughts you have.

These folks sound like BikeSages...

> For our second service project, the Global Debate Team will be donating 
> trees to schools around LA by bicycle.  Beginning Friday the 4th, we will 
> transport some of the trees. This will promote two ways of reversing climate 
> change: planting CO2-converting trees, and using alternatives to 
> CO2-emitting cars. We hope the schools we visit with our trees will agree to 
> replant and take care of them. We also hope they will feature us in their 
> newspapers and blogs, as Venice High School has already agreed to do. 
> 
> Venice High School is 14 and a half miles from Santee Education Complex. 
>  We invite anyone who wants a little exercise to join us on the ride to the 
> school along Venice Blvd. on Friday, December 4th, leaving Santee at 11am. 
> 
>
> LA Times article: 
> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-santee29-2009nov29,0,5774015.story 

Our next BikeSage ride is this Saturday, June 20^th at 11am, leaving from the Hollywood entrance to Barnsdall Art Park in Los Feliz (just west of Vermont Blvd).    This low-key, slow, and short ride will explore quiet streets in and around Los Feliz, making some stops at interesting sites along the way.   These rides are small and are a mix of experienced riders and their friends who haven't biked as much lately.  Should be fun!
 

Our next BikeSage exploration is Saturday, July 18^th at 11am, leaving from the 3131 Arizona Ave. in Santa Monica, led by BikeSage Rosa   This low-key, slow, and short bicycle ride will explore quiet streets in and around Santa Monica, making some stops at interesting sites along the way.   Every BikeSage has learned the most pleasant places to ride through trial and error - these rides are designed for BikeSages to share their local wisdom of great places to ride with you.  These rides are small and are a mix of experienced riders and their friends who haven't biked as much lately.  Please email BikeSageif you plan on attending.  If you're experienced cyclist, this is also a good opportuntiy to invite a friend of yours who hasn't biked much, but is interested in joining a relaxed ride.

Re: "Driving on the L.A.'s Westside"

Dear Editor,

I wanted to follow up with readers of the Times on a point made by Ms.
Glueck about her attempts to bicycle as a means for avoiding traffic.
In my opinion it is excellent that she made the effort.  Especially
with kids in tow, however, shifting to a bicycle-based transportation
on the west side can be intimidating.  Her reasons for abandoning the
efforts, and reverting to automobile transportation were also
reasonable: she felt that cars were "too scary," especially as they
pulled in and out of driveways.

I can offer a connection to the many readers who have similar desires
to bicycle, but also share the fears that Ms. Glueck expressed.  An
organization I am part of, Bike Sage <http://www.bikesage.com/>, is
specifically designed for cases such as this.  For no charge they
offer to anyone interested in bicycling the chance to ride with an
experienced cyclist who can offer safe routing advice and how to
safely deal with cars.  Our research has found that fear is the single
biggest factor in keeping people off bicycles, but we have also
discovered that much of that fear is unfounded.  We can help parse out
which fears are related to perceived danger, which fears are related
to real danger, and how to avoid the real dangers so that more of us
can contribute to reducing traffic throughout the city.

Sincerely,
Nicholas Bauch
BikeSage

The following blogpost is from Nick, who's been part of the BikeSage community for several months:

Hello Sages,
I ran across this book that I though the Sage community may be interested in.

Rosen, Paul, Peter Cox, and David Horton, eds. 2007. Cycling and Society. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

"The book brings together, for the first time, analyses of cycling from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including history, sociology, geography, planning, engineering and technology. The book redresses the past neglect of cycling as a topic for sustained analysis by treating it as a varied and complex practice which matters greatly to contemporary social, cultural and political theory and action. Cycling and Society demonstrates the incredible diversity of contemporary cycling, both within and across cultures. With cycling increasingly promoted as a solution to numerous social problems across a wide range of policy areas in car-dominated societies, this book helps to open up a new field of cycling studies."

Now you too can follow BikeSage on Twitter.  These occassional updates will share informatoin about the work BikeSages are doing, widsom we've learned along the way as well as notices for upcoming BikeSage rides and events. We look forward to having you be part of the BikeSage community.

Recently, a Canadian reporter was in L.A. doing a travel story on bicycling in L.A.  He met with a BikeSage who gave some tips on riding in and around town.  Good news is this reporter had a fantastic time riding bikes in Los Angeles, which may wind up inspiring some other Canadians to give our streets a whirl on two wheels.  Here's a link to the article.  Enjoy!

Everyone who currently rides a bike in Los Angeles has mapped out a network of streets that are pleasant to bicycle on. Imagine if we could easily map out this network and have it be easily accessible to people who may not yet know where these good spots are to ride.  

Also, if we could visually see the routes that cyclists actually ride on a regular basis, we could target those streets for more strategic infrastructure improvements like transforming a residential street with a lot of stop signs into a bicycle boulevard that has traffic circles at intersections instead.

A few months back, I ran into some researchers at UCLA Center for Embedded Networking Systems working on developing a technology called Biketastic that uses cell phones to track bicycle rides.  Excited about the potential of this being a tool, I volunteered to help test this new program in its development stage.

Nearly 150 rides later, I’ve mapped out all of the routes I ride on a regular basis.  Below is a snapshot of one section of the overall map.  As you can see, the streets I bicycle on are sometimes streets with a lot of traffic, but often quieter side streets with less traffic. 

The researchers at Biketastic are almost ready to launch a test run where more folks track their rides.  If you are interested in helping launch this and track your rides, please email me.










 

BikeSages inspire folks to ride.  Sometimes, BikeSages inspire entire offices to ride! The following is an update from Nicole, who's been a BikeSage for several months now:

"One of the people I took on a Bike Sage ride rode her bike to work by herself today! We are celebrating bike to work week here at the Registry/Reserve by feeding anyone who bikes to work at least once this week homemade waffles on Friday morning. It is proving to be good incentive for people. This particular coworker lives in Universal City, which is pretty far, so she took the red line over the hill then biked from Hollywood & Highland, which is like 7 or 8 miles. I'm so proud of her! I also got another coworker to pump up her tires for the first time in a long time in preparation for our 8+ mile ride in together Friday morning. And another coworker tuned up her bike at the Bicycle Kitchen and bought a helmet last weekend. I am still working on 1 more to get a helmet and try riding to work (she only lives a couple miles away). And there are a couple others who are biking to work for the first time this week. All together we have 14 or 15 out of 36 staff participating, which is a huge improvement over last year when I was the only one of 24 employees to participate. AND we got our building to install bike racks in the valet area of the garage, so the bikes are in a place where someone is always keeping watch. Also, I helped get management to change our commuting reimbursement policy so that we all get paid the same amount each month, instead of more money going to people who pay to park their cars, so now people have more money to spend on bike stuff, and there is actual incentive to NOT pay for parking in order to get the money. Strides are being made!"

It's Bike to Work Week and many BikeSages across the Southland are riding into work.  Some of them are riding in with their coworkers who are trying bicycling into work for the very first time.  Others are riding with friends in their local neighborhoods for non-work related trips such as to the local farmers market, brunch or their local park. 

For those of you bicycling to work, you should officially register so we can get an accurate count for those that participate in the event.  For those of you who are not yet ready to start riding to work, no worries! There are lots of other rides for you to do, including an upcoming BikeSage group ride in Los Feliz scheduled for June (date TBD).

For those that want to ride tomorrow, May 13th, there's a ride that will explore downtown Los Angeles leaving from the Civic Center Red Line Station at Temple at 8am.  On May 14th, Bike to Work Day, there are several pit stops planned around town.

For those that want to get invovled with BikeSage, we will have our monthly planning meeting at 7pm at the Los Angeles Eco-Village on May 13th (near 1st and Vermont).  Email Ron if you are interseted in attending. 

Thanks and enjoy your ride.

Last Sunday, we had a fantastic 1^st BikeSage Group Ride – 5 BikeSages and four of their friends participated in a laid back, fun, social ride .   We took our time, biked mostly on side quiet streets and had plenty of time to socialize.   We started at the Bike Kitchen, stopped to visit a thriving community garden, made another stop at a beautiful mural and then lunched on the sidewalk at the Larchmont Farmers Market. We finished up by climbing the hill at Barnsdale Art Park and enjoying a brilliant view of our local mountains to the north and city to the west. 

Every BikeSage knows safe and pleasant streets to ride on in Los Angeles. Each BikeSage has discovered this  network of bike-friendly streets through trial and error.  Someone who doesn't bicycle on a regular basis may not even know where these streets are in their own neigbhorhood.   The point of these rides is to have BikeSages share some of their wisdom of the best local places to ride with folks they know, turning this experience into a fun social event.

What was most pleasant about the ride on Sunday was its intimacy - nine riders gave everyone the opportunity to get to meet each other.  BikeSages got to meet other BikeSages.  And folks new to riding got to meet each other and BikeSages as well.  Much fun!

After the ride, everyone agreed that this was a good idea and we should do some more of them.  One BikeSage on the ride volunteered to plan another ride in June which will take place in Los Feliz.  If you're an experienced rider, you can be a BikeSage by inviting someone you know to this ride who doesn't currently bike much to the ride, especially someone who lives in the local neighborhood.

If you’re interested in organizing a future ride where you show off your neighborhood, your favorite local routes and visit a couple of cool destinations, please email Ron Milam.  Imagine if we had rides like this in every neighborhood every weekend everywhere...it just might inspire some more folks to start riding.

For the last several months, a core group of people have been working on developing the BikeSage concept, which centers on existing cyclists encouraging folks within their own networks to go on a fun, short, safe, easy ride with them.

At our last BikeSage brainstorm, we thought of a twist to this idea – why not have multiple BikeSages each invite a friend to go on a joint group ride with each other?  That way, BikeSages get to meet other BikeSages as well as friends of other BikeSages. If successful, this is something that BikeSages could do on a regular basis across the city and show neighbors local streets that are great to ride on.

We’re planning on doing our first one of these rides this Sunday, May 3^rd. We all meet in front of the Bike Kitchen at 11am, go for a laid back, short, fun, easy ride together to an interesting destination where we have a chance to hang out some, get to know each other, and discuss the ride.  Then we return and have ice-cream at Scoops.  

It should be fun! Please email Ron if you’re interested attending and in inviting someone you know who currently doesn't bicycle, but who might be intersted in joining a ride like this.  

For a long time, when people asked me what the biggest problems about bicycling were in Los Angeles, I said there were not enough bike lanes, paths and other bicycle related infrastructure.  While I still feel this is an important barrier, I now feel the biggest barrier preventing people from bicycling is their own perceptions of bicycling. 

I hear this most often with statements such as “I’d get killed riding”, "Cycling isn't safe" and "You must be really brave to bike on the streets of Los Angeles".  I categorize all of these as fear of riding. 

While bicycling can occassionaly be scary for even seasoned bicyclists, the majority of us who ride on a regular basis do so without injury and instead enjoy enormous benefits. One of the root cause of people’s fear who do not bicylce is that they lack awareness of safe and enjoyable routes for bicycling (which is something that most existing bicyclists have acquired through trial and error). 

The streets people drive on in LA are not necessarily the same streets a first time rider will feel comfortable riding.

Because the majority of people who are afraid to ride a bicycle will not decide to ride a bicycle on their own, each BikeSage initiates the first trip with someone they already know and plans a ride that is short, fun, easy and safe.  These rides intentionally occur on quiet side streets with less automobile traffic to show that there are safe places to ride where they would actually feel comfortable riding at.

BikeSage hopes to inspire people to overcome their fears and discover the many joys of bicycling. The more people start bicycling, the more comfortable they become riding on streets with more automobile traffic, even if they still wind up choosing quieter streets to ride on.

I just found about a competition to reduce carbon emissions and submitted the BikeSage idea to it.  I’m hoping all of you can take some time TODAY and vote for BikeSage: http://www.justmeans.com/competitionidea/10684/promoteidea.html.  Thanks!