A perfect day in Albuquerque to enjoy with a ride! Check out the events, and consider treating yourself with a new outfit to make your cycling go smoother: Team CSP-SBI kits available
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Bike to work day 2018
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Category Archives: Bike Org of the Month
Uniting the community, USA Cycling
I ride because it makes me happy. –Stephen, from USA Cycling, on why he rides
I ride because it’s awesome. –Emmett, who started riding at age 2 1/2 with his mom
I’ve built so many relationships on the bike…that’s a really sacred thing for me. –Kristin on cycling
USA Cycling has traditionally been a competition-focused organization, but now they’re expanding their membership inviting everyone to come “ride with us”. With a USA Cycling Ride Membership, you get networked with an active and passionate cycling community, a “nation of cyclists at your side”. I’m super stoked to see this, because my cycling life weaves together so many reasons to ride–affordable & healthy transport, making social connections, exploring nature, the love of cycling–and racing is a part of that larger whole. I started cycling in 1997, but I didn’t join USA Cycling until 2003, when the Reno Wheelmen turned me on to cycle sport.
Now USA Cycling is embracing this convergence of the everyday part of cycling with the sporting aspect, recognizing that out of many cycling loves we are all one. It’s a brilliant move because there are so many people who have the desire to bicycle for so many good reasons (health, wellness, independence, environment, community, social connections, accessibility). Uniting the community of aspirational cyclists with experienced ones will quicken the acquisition of knowledge and skills, making cycling a habit in more people’s lives, and a growing part of our toolkit for making our communities 21st century successes. The spirit of cycling is good for us, one that keeps growing in our lives the more we keep sharing it and enjoying it together.
Check out USA Cycling’s welcoming video, come ride with us–
“We ride for adventure. We ride for stories. We ride for fitness. For relationships and community. For rhythm. For competition and for our country. Whatever your reasons for riding, joining the USA Cycling community will help you to get the most from your riding and support the sport you love.”
—Join USA Cycling
Go USA Cycling! Keep on developing excellence! And embracing everyone!
A Complete Ride
We’ve all heard how sports such as cycling can be more mental than physically challenging. Virginia Commonwealth University embraced the UCI Road World Championships in 2015 in Richmond, VA with a cross-disciplinary campus-wide effort to engage faculty and students in experiential learning. Their work became “part of the university’s intellectual and cultural heritage”. Studying cycling helps you realize it transcends any fixed categories such as transportation, identity, or even sport. It is an integral part of the fabric of our lives.
VCU English Professor Gardner Campbell explained: “The project was not just the experience of a sporting event. It represented something more, having to do with the possibilities of human accomplishment and the commitment it takes to get to your goals. Our students saw around them, as they were pushing themselves in the context of their own intensive courses, world-class athletes who were committing their hearts and minds and bodies to excellence.”
The Great VCU Bike Race Book project gave students an opportunity to learn by doing and a chance to become “authors,” producing content curated into a virtual “book.” –photo from the article linked below
Read the full article here: How a Bike Race Led to Experiential, Personalized Learning ,or,
This video of the final 5 kilometers of the UCI Road World Championships in Richmond, VA shows an exhausted peloton. The echo chamber of fans lining the cobbled streets, cheering in global tongues. The winding course highlights city features, the 50 mile pedestrian trail to Williamsburg, Libby Hill, Governor Street, world culture shining in America, and Sagan’s all around cycling skills. He only had a couple bike length’s lead over the last cobbled climb, but opened the gap zipping through the twisty turns, and extended it further with unrelenting commitment across the flats. And the way his competitors great him after the race!
An incredible ride by Sagan, steadfastness, control and skill in the midst of seeming chaos. The discipline of saving energy, then unleashing his heart’s desires at just the right moment. Cycling is a global sport and a spiritual journey. Sagan used the microphone after the race to call attention to the plight of refugees, and articulate a vision for shared prosperity for all humanity. He won the road world championships again in 2016 to continue his reign. We keep learning!
Virginia Commonwealth University is our Bike Org of the Month for November, 2016.
Detail on the course in Richmond here: https://www.usacycling.org/richmond-2015-unveils-courses-for-2015-uci-road-world-championships.htm
A previous blog post on Sagan’s Richmond victory: Achieve World Peace Through Bicycling
Points of Light
Mai and I made our annual pilgrimage to the towering trees at Aspen Vista above Santa Fe. The cyclical chemistry of life comes to the forefront as leaves drop down, their fiery glory fading to a golden luminescence. A sense of renewal drifts in the air as petals fold slowly into the soil.
A cross section of the community walked the trail, beholding this symphony of color. Envoys of beauty, these aspen groves, at once crooked and upright. Imagine them at night like hands and spindly fingers reaching up from the earth towards the night sky’s starry points of light sprent across the universe. A map seen by cultures everywhere continuous from ancient times.
Walking in aspen forests during Fall is special, but we don’t have to save walking for seasonal occasions. Practical and social walking integrates exercise into our everyday routines so we get that essential, natural movement that renews our bodies and nourishes our spirits.
Walking strengthens us. America Walks recognizes this and is elevating the respect we have for walking in our communities. Walking tends to be hard where we need it the most, in cities. America Walks designs health-promoting environments attuned to human sensitivities.
Walking, cycling and nature are pillars of an American renaissance. They are key to understanding the land, urban environs and our common heritage. Everything is inextricably interconnected. America Walks is our organization of the month for October, 2016.
“The pedestrian is a social being: he is also a transportation unit, and a marvelously complex and efficient one…Transportation engineers are spending millions on developing automated people-mover systems. But the best, by far, is a person.”
– William H. Whyte, City: Rediscovering the Center (1988)
Land of Peace and Light
Mai and I visited White Sands National Monument on National Public Lands Day. We walked in the pale afternoon on the gypsum sand dunes. I was awestruck by the land and light.
With free admission as part of the celebration, the parking area and picnic grounds were bustling with activity. Families were barbequing, taking photos, and children and adults alike were sledding down the slippery gypsum sands. What a marvelous, festive scene.
If you want silence and solitude, all you have to do is walk westward over the first dune, then another, further yet, new horizons of endless sand appearing over each ridgecrest, and in minutes the white sands have swallowed up all but a few intrepid people. Silence rules.
Walking is great in the park, and so is cycling. White Sands offers full moon bike rides twice a year. Bring the whole family. Catering to cycling and walking like this, the National Park Service is my bike organization of the month for June, 2016 (a little catching up to do). Peace.
Resources: White Sands full moon bike rides
https://www.nps.gov/whsa/planyourvisit/full-moon-bike-ride.htm
Building Lasting Partnerships
A big thank you to my friends at Conservation Science Partners and the Landscape Conservation Initiative for supporting the Southwest Bike Initiative. They also brought their friends at Live Oak Associates, Inc., an ecological consulting firm, to strengthen our network. Because of the team CSP put together, they are my bike org. of the month for May 2016. Check out the article here announcing our collaboration promoting the role of cycling in conservation.
When I was choosing “categories” for this blog post, I started clicking every one. This partnerships embodies all that I’ve been doing up to this point, and connects a series of journeys that began long ago. I’m enthused to be working with such classy organizations and bright people. LCI’s philosophy of mobilizing science through collaborative planning, education and practical experiences has been influential in instigating new approaches for solving environmental challenges. CSP’s innovative structure and novel science applications has created a paradigm shift in how we do conservation. LOA’s ecological expertise delivers practical solutions fostering environmental sustainability throughout California and the Western United States. Together their collaboration is raising the bar for conservation science.
Cycling is a great practical exercise for improving health, the environment, and building lasting partnerships. Our cycling team builds grassroots coalitions, and increases collaboration between diverse communities around common objectives to achieve new vistas on what is possible. Please follow SBI’s website and media to keep in touch with our development.
SimWorks Custom Bicycles
“Has the Japanese bicycle industry lost not only their production power but imagination as well?” –SimWorks custom bicycles, Imagination and Creation of Your Quality of Life
“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve been busy, so I’m catching up on designating my bike org. of the month for April 2016. I read about SimWorks in an article on handcrafted bicycles. I checked out their website and was impressed by their narrative. I’ve been wanting to write about them for months.
SimWorks suggests bicycles create a kind of social fabric between craftspeople and customers. They think a quality handbuilt bicycle can “guide the next generation” into being a more conscientious consumer. It’s bicycle manufacturing with personality and an intentional continuity between the manufacturing process and the user of the product.
The English translation on the website is not perfect, but the essence of the story still comes through. SimWorks taps into the cycling roots of Japan and builds products that communicate history and meaning with their style. As a sustainable enterprise it makes a lot of sense, with product quality and distinctness helping people be happier with what they have. Craftsmanship like this takes time and cultivates highly valued and skilled artisans.
The diversity and variety custom bikes offer make the world more interesting and exciting, and they seem to generate a virtuous cycle between the maker and the consumer. Cycling creates bridges to the future in a lot of ways, from rebuilding bonds between people and the environment, to connecting us to the integrity and identity of a manufactured product.
SimWorks sees themselves “changing the system”, encouraging us to look with precision and make decisions with care. Their products are imaginative, dreams on wheels, and humanely empower the life they carry forward. It’s never too late to build the kind of world we want.
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pictures from recent travels–
Bicycles and Reading are both grand adventures
the New Mexico sky up close, in person, is definitely worth seeing
the Sandia Crest road is great cycling
CenterLines, the Active Transportation Digest
CenterLines, the National Center for Bicycling and Walking’s biweekly news bulletin, covers current developments in the world of active transportation in North America. It’s a one stop source for all things bicycling and walking and more. If you’re just beginning to investigate active transportation, an experienced professional, or somewhere in between, CenterLines is a smorgasbord of opportunities, ideas, and ways to make new connections. It covers research, policies, events, conferences, job listings, trainings, news and ways to get involved. Here are a couple content examples from the most recent CenterLines issue published on March 23.
* Health Impacts of Active Transportation in Europe
This study measured the health impact of increased bicycling and walking in six European cities. Increases in cycling to 35% of all trips improved health the most of all the scenarios analyzed in the study. The research team concluded that “Increased collaboration between health practitioners, transport specialists and urban planners will help to introduce the health perspective in transport policies and promote active transportation” for substantial benefits.
* The International Mtn. Biking Assocation (IMBA) World Summit is in Bentonville, AR
November 10-12, 2016 Arkansas welcomes the IMBA summit, which gathers together mountain bikers, public land stewards, the business community and advocates of all kinds. I was just in Arkansas visiting my grandmother and it is an incredible place to bicycle (blog posts here). When IMBA came to Santa Fe in 2012 the local scene “got discovered.” Certainly Northwest Arkansas will experience a similar recognition for their beautiful countryside and the way local communities have wholeheartedly embraced cycling as a way to explore the Natural State.
*CenterLines has a Quotes R Us section. “Our ultimate goal is to improve the economic and environmental health of American communities and the personal health of the people who live there. To achieve this, we will reconnect America with trails in the same way that railroads once connected people and places.” –Keith Laughlin, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy President
CenterLines is free, published online and open to the general public. It is a good place to start and come back to when you want to grow your understanding of the quickly expanding frontiers of the active transportation world. The presentation is not flashy, but the content is deep, diverse, and leading edge. The National Center for Bicycling and Walking is my Bike Org. of the Month for March 2016. Keep up the important work that you are doing. Arigato.
Spring bloom outside of Mesa Vista Hall on the main campus of UNM in central Albuquerque
Dances with Cranes
Watching Sandhill Cranes in their favorite habitat always feeds you. There is a tactile sense of being in touch with the birds. They are all around you, like great music playing. When we go to the wildlife reserves south of Albuquerque we find something new every time. We went down again on February 21st and it was as fresh and convincing as ever. A world swimming with life.
The first two photos are from Mai at Sansai Studio. I’m lucky enough to be married to her. Here she is in the fields photographing Cranes. Mai also does bicycle photography and has been a strong partner in promoting bicycling. Her ability to communicate about bicycling through art is a gift. For February 2016 Sansai Studio is my bike org of the month.
There is something renewing about getting outside of the human sphere and being amidst the lives of thousands of Cranes. The peaceful silhouettes of so many Cranes flowing like ink through the sky. An upsidedown ocean of life. The vivid afternoon light slowly rolling away.
The Cranes place us in the landscape. You don’t feel elevated above a place, such as when you are in tall building downtown, or on google earth taking in a satellite view. Instead you are immersed in it and the birds are the masters moving between the land, water and air worlds.
We watched the moonrise and the sun go down, liquid light slipping away. The blackening shadows revealing the folded mountains. A purple sheath of light haloing the horizon.
Every trip we observe things completely new to us. Reefs of light bouncing off the water, the fading firelight on the Western horizon. The cranes are dancing. Cranes are dancing.
Credits and References:
Check out Mai’s art and photography at Sansai Studio http://sansai.photoshelter.com/
The Natural Capital Project works to improve human well being by valuing nature, and is led by Gretchen C. Daily’s initiatives including research on harmonizing agriculture and biodiversity.
Check out Alex Shoumatoff’s colorful account, 500 Cranes Are Headed to Nebraska in One of Earth’s Greatest Migrations in Smithsonian Magazine. The Crane migrations graphic is from here
Loving Land from the City
“This is our world, where our health is woven together with biotic communities in a shared environment, and it is so clearly evident at Tahoe.”
–Peter Goin, Using Lake Tahoe photographs to blend art and science, UNR Nevada Today news
Living in the American West makes noticing the unique characteristics of place inescapable. There are usually mountains rimming town and in most places piercing sun and deep blue sky. The air is dry and water is rare and valuable. In Phoenix, Arizona there is a bicycle club with a long tradition of sewing together people’s health with the lay of the Sonoran Desert lands. They’re putting on a great race next weekend called the Valley of the Sun (VOS) stage race.
It is amazing how deep racing goes. Included in the festivities is a Hand Cycling race. “VOS has been chosen by the United States Olympic Committee, U.S. Paralympics Cycling as one of six events in the US to complete a U.S. Paralympics Cycling Series. The goal of this series is to provide public awareness of health benefits and sport opportunities for those with spinal cord injury.” VOS also has a kids bike race, rodeo, and safety clinic. More information here:
Kids Bike Race, Rodeo, and Safety Clinic
Hand Cycle Race and Learn to Ride Clinic
All the events can be viewed at wmrc.org/
Every year volunteers from the White Mtn. Road Club put on the VOS series and it draws racers and spectators from all over the country. The level of community involvement and deep knowledge of the growth of bicycling in the Phoenix metro region in that organization is phenomenal. I was a fortunate enough to be a member for a couple of years and now I stay interlinked through strong bonds even from 500 miles away. Bicycling makes one big family.
The White Mountain Road Club is my bike org of the month for January 2016. Thanks for the work that you do!
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Here are a few photos from rides in the Sandia and Manzano ranges this weekend. The strong El Niño is ebbing for now and the sun is out and the high country is becoming more accessible. I start and end all my ABQ rides from home. I am looking forward to the season.
Bike Yogi 