"How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action"

How America Can Bike and Grow Rich,

The National Bicycle Greenway in Action

By Martin Krieg

Published by Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Martin Krieg

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword - Sequel to Awake Again

Preface - Lincoln Hwy and the NBG

Introduction – The Route

Chapter One San Jose

Ride mechanics- w/Busycle, BioDiesel Bus, Wow Ride Kept in Real Time On-line, etc

How Mayors’ Rides Build NBG Explained to Press

Why Bike Lanes & Paths Needed in Cities, for Old and Young and Why Trikes

Why San Jose Could Become America’s Top Bike City

CIty Hall Mayor Proclamation and Gift for Washington DC

Chapter Two Palo Alto to San Francisco

Staging for Annual Ride to SF with all the Palo Alto Supporters

Return to Park Automotive Deprivation Training site

Expanded Answer to How Mayors’ Ride build NBG Explained to Press

Pay for Greenway with Parking Fees

Why I Ride the Eagle Backwards Facing HiWheel

Market St. to Ferry Building Bike Parade

Chapter Three Oakland a Beautiful Bike City

Ferry across SF Bay, its Magic, Islands, Bridges & History

Ride to Author/Cyclist Jack London’s Home Turf

Promenade Oakland’s Crown Jewel, Lake Merritt, with Youth Bike Group

Ron Bishop, RIP, Mr. Bike Oakland

NBG Business Plan of Hubs, Stores, Museums, Recycled Bike, etc Described to Kids

NBG Guerilla Marketing Campaign & the Law of Entrainment, Principle of Conspiration

Chapter Four Berkeley to Napa, Calistoga

How Movement Toward Bicycling Aligns with History of Shifts in Consciousness

Eagle HiWheel Explained to Old Man, Grandson

Napa Mayor’s Reception Fun - Vineyard Ride to Calistoga

Calistoga Town Visit and Benefits of Being Car-Free, NBG Drunk Driver Program

Chapter Five Davis, Sacramento - Folsom – Reno

Breakfast Dialogue HiWheel ride up American River Parkway (ARP) Sacto to Folsom

Why American River Parkway is an NBG in its Highest Art Form

The Three Cities that Serve as ARP Guardians

Folsom’s Lynn LePage and his Big Picture View of the NBG

How Mormon Immigrant Trail Opened CA to the East and our Ride Over Sierras on it

Reno History Including its Bike Racing

How Reno native, Greg Lemond, brought about explosion in popularity of cycling

Reno history, Bike Scene and Reception

Chapter Six Loneliest Hwy. to Salt Lake City

Ride America’s Loneliest Road across Nevada with history of its four abandoned towns

Effort of Eagle HiWheeling across most mountainous state in Union

Salt Lake City history including Temple Square, its layout and railroads

Salt Lake City’s Bike Mayor and how his city is coming on for biking

Chapter Seven Wasatch and Rockies to Denver

Ride over Utah’s Wasatch Mtn Range

The Heaven of Steamboat Springs

Ride over Rockies and Trailridge - World’s HIghest Highway

HiWheel legend Steve Stevens and Boulder Reception

Denver History and Reception

Chapter Eight Omaha, Doorway to the West

Riding Historic Hwy 30 - how this corridor settled the West

History of Platte River Basin, from Buffalo shoots, Pony Express, etc to US30 & I-80

Part Omaha played in opening Platte River Basin to stagecoaches, transcon RR, etc

How Omaha opening West again - to People Power with Bob Kerry Bridge to Iowa

Chapter Nine Des Moines, and the Steve Jobs Apple PR Example

Riding the Rolling Terrain of Iowa

Building NBG same way Regis McKenna built Apple & computer industry

Des Moines agricultural past and white collar/recreation future

Des Moines Green Mayor, Frank Cownie, Reception

Chapter Ten, Chicago – Keeping its Rich Bike History Alive 

Beautiful Bike Path riding to Chicago

A National Trend Setter, How Chicago was also once World Bicycle Leader

How Chicago & Mayor Emmanuel Pushing Bicycles to Forefront Once Again

Chicago Mayor & Rapid Transit Cycle Shop Reception

Chapter Eleven Indianapolis, Pro-Bike Mayor Parlays Greenways

A Dying Rust Belt City, how Indy reinvented itself with Greenways

Ray Irvin, Mr Greenway - how make his system National (w/interview in appendix)

Indy History and Home of Father of Lincoln Hwy (in appendix) - Carl Fisher

How Pro-Bicycle Mayor, Greg Ballard, has ushered in a biking renaissance in Indy

Indianapolis reception with Greenway principals and the Mayor

Chapter Twelve, Cincinnati, Sustainable and Beautiful

Cincy History and where name came from

Bike People of Cincy with Rob Currens, Voice of Cincy

Mayor Mallory & Cincy reception

Mayors’ Ride as Survivor TV Series

Chapter Thirteen Columbus

Annual Parade Ride with city officials and bike dignitaries to City Hall

Columbus reception with Councillor/Cyclist Mary Ellen O’Shaugnessey

Why I traded recumbent and decades of gym for HiWheel for the NBG

Bias against recumbents and the Lance Armstrong myth

How the recumbent will help get America back on a bike

Columbus – why it’s a magnet

Chapter Fourteen Pittsburgh

How Pittsburgh shaped the transportation history of the world

Pittsburgh excitement of receiving first ever Mayors’ Ride relay from DC

Flashback: Mayor Tom and Ro Fischer first introduce NBG & Mayors’ Ride to America

Venture Outdoors receives us at their festival

Chapter Fifteen Washington, DC via Mount Rainier, MD

Troy Bogdan leads us down Great Allegheny Passage & C&O Canal Path to DC

DC - how the Cyclist Sees It

Mayors’ Ride History with DC City Leaders

Ride to nearby Mount Rainier, the home of Cycle America 2000

Mount Rainier History

Mayors Fred & Melinda welcome us back to Mount Rainier

Reflections - What We Achieved, What We Hope Will Result

Afterword Greenway 2013 - A Vision for America

(updated fm Awake Again)

Appendix

The San Francisco to Washington, DC Route Explained

Busycle - How it can Save the Planet

Mr. Greenway Interview

Why We do Mayors’ Rides

NBG Biking Cities

Lessons Learned from America's First Coast-to-Coast Highway in Building the NBG

The Petroleum in Our Food, Bicycling and Everything Else

Dedication

To Virginia Krieg, my wife, and to Cayo, a little light from whom we are both learning great life lessons!

Acknowledgements

Jim Spillane | John E Cabrera | Don Armstrong | John & Elma Krieg | Lori Yung | Matthew Mazzotta | Heather Clarke | Chris Krieg | Frank & Kirsten Flynn | Paul Gregg | John Oleary | Gerry Gras | Dana St. George | Manny Garcia | Ron Bishop | Cathy & Wayne Douglass | David Erskine | John Dohner | Lori Yung | Don Looomis | Grey Lowell | Shawn Raymond | David Bijot | Rob Benson | Steve Schnitkner | Jim Thompson | Matt Criste | Mike Vermeulen | Eric Pasimio | Mike Damon | Lynn Lepage | Former Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto | Max Chen | Randy Mitchell | Larry & Kathy Dunne | Tom Schoeniger | Pat Murfee | Brendan Heneghan | Matt Podoli | Robbie Benson | Matt Cristie | Mark Lind | Marcello Luciano | David & Peggy Martin | Jay Thorwaldson | Steve & Emily Branz | Amacker | Jill Cohen | David & Dihuyen Adams | Unwheeldy Dave Hershberger | Sven Thesen | Rich Willits | Former Palo Alto Mayor Judy Kleinberg | John Dohner | Tom Kabat | Johanna Thorn, NC | Jack Baker | Tony Plotkin | Neil Lall | Brett Garret | Freddy Markham | Jobst Brandt | Ellen Fletcher | Tom Sullivan | John Brown | John Hayes | Don Fong | John Cicarrelli | Ron Swenson | Jim Langley | Jack Castor | Bernard Krieg | Karen & Rob Oneto | Supervisor Liz Kniss Rep. Sam Farr | Jason Green | John Shubert | Max Chen | Barry Burr Former Cols Councillor, probable OH Scty State Maryellen Oshaugnessey | Ro Fischer | Mayor Bob Orneleas | Reno Mayor Bob Cashell | Reno Councillor Dave Aizzi | Former Davis Mayor Ruth Asmundson | Former Folsom Mayor Andy Morin | Former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy | Troy Bogdan | Nick Hein | Phil Koopman | Former Mt Rainier Mayor Fred Sissinne | Jason & Jeff Reser | Ray Irvin | Rob Currens | Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie | Gail Robinson | Mary Ann Blackwell | Nancy Poitras | Former Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey | Council Bluffs Mayor Tom Hanafan | Steve Stevens | Clive Buckler | Robert Riley | David Lageschulte | Brian Kennedy | Carl Mueller | Jan Vandertuin | Dick Ryan | Peter Wagner | Jeff Kistler | Ron Rawlinson | Clark Smith | Tim Brummer | Kelvin Clark | Gene Smith | Randy Schlitter | Dale Clark | Scott Campbell | Pam Slocum | Former Denver Mayor, now CO Governor John Hickenlooper | Carey Williams | Dave Toppin | George & Sylvie Pierce | Carla Laser | John Hartin

Foreword

Awake Again, All the way back from head injury, the true story of how I used the bicycle to rebuild my body and my mind after clinical death, a two-month coma and paralysis, closes with the words:

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What would I do when this final leg of my journey was complete? How could I use the energy of a story that had been witnessed by close to forty million people through the various media? Was helping to build a head-injury hospital really consistent with what I was all about? Was that the right way to channel my efforts, for the best return?

Then it hit me. Bike riding had been so beneficial for me in my rehabilitation. Not only was it good for my physical therapy, but my long rides had helped me sort out and process so much information that had overwhelmed me at first. How about a bike trail across the nation that head-injured people and bikers everywhere could use in their physical and mental therapy? On a larger scale, I knew that such a pathway would also improve the well being of our nation in many ways.

The idea was so powerful that I had to stop my bike. I sat down and gazed over a small lake along the way. To reach such a goal, I knew I would have to acquire a lot of business skills and build an organization. And though I was sure that it was an idea whose time was coming, I knew it could take years before the need for such an important right of way would sink into the country’s consciousness.

But the power and beauty of the vision were overwhelming and extremely exciting. Having crossed the country twice on a bike, I knew better than anyone how badly a biking path was needed. And finally, it would give me another challenge. For now, however, I had to finish my ride. I spent the night in an inn at Provincetown.

I resolved that, no matter how many years it took, building a coast-to-coast bicycle greenway would be my next goal. It would be a proper way to honor all of those people. 

And finally, I actually felt grateful for my car wreck. Without it, I would never have grown as much as I had, never have understood myself as well and come to terms with that understanding. I had finally come to love and accept myself, and I had come a long way from the skinny, insecure kid I’d been. I felt like my recovery was complete. I was happy with who I was I knew if I could do what I’d done, beat my head injury with the help of others, I could rally people around something of importance to all of the planet, and its children and its children’s children.  The words of the sixth-century Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu went through my mind: 

"The longest journey begins with but a single step." 

I knew I had already begun. 

This is the story of all the many steps I continue to take; how I have walked and biked the vision (updated from "Awake Again" in this book's Afterword) I foresaw on Cape Cod over 36 years ago (see also my bio and my long Media Journey). This, as I have also watched America and Europe fall in synch with what has become far more than a possibility. As the Internet continues to scale down the size of our world, you will see, in the words ahead, how what I proposed decades ago is becoming a probability that few can deny.

In 1997, I began an on-line campaign to send hundreds of cyclists to Washington, DC. It started in Santa Cruz, CA with two Swing for NBG events and a Lighthouse Party send off. All of which ended at a widely known bike celebration called Cycle America 2000. We brought that excitement back to the West Coast with two huge cross-country Mayors' Rides, both of which ended in the Surf City with huge Festivals (2002 - 2003). During this time, I also personally inspired, coached and consulted on over a dozen other successful transcontinental bikes rides.

Since 2003, from Palo Alto, CA, and now Ireland, we still produce the annual National Mayors' Ride and the Mountain Movers Podcast series. In addition, I have also written How to Bike America and am fine-tuning the business plan I have prepared for the NBG.

In 2006, Matthew Mazzotta and Heather Clarke’s famous15-person Busycle joined the NBG stable and we have given many hundreds of demonstration rides on it all throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. In the words ahead, you will see how we will be using it to build a coast-to-coast community as we rally for the National Bicycle Greenway on a national level.

I took the 2007 Mayors' Ride season off to devise a fully interactive on-line mapping system that runs like a game while building community to let users calculate, request, plan, utilize, store, display and vote on bike routes. Even though it was very well received, none of it came to fruition because Google came out with their own bike mappig service as I was shopping my idea around with Power Point presentations.

It was also in 2007 that I began this book. I started to write How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, before the iPhone revolutionized the smart phone world. As such, the E-Book as we know it today did not exist.

In the summer of 2009, in an attempt to call attention to the NBG, in what now amounts to a test run because of all the horrific weather, I rode the Eagle HiWheel, the only one like it in active use in the world, from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. In 2010, my Mayors' Ride/Author Tour on the amazing Eagle was put on hold by a car that ruined my bike when it turned left in front of us.

At which point I moved to Ireland, married my wife Virginia, had Baby Cayo and have been studying the Greenway successes made possible here by a joint partnership between the National Tourist Bureau and 14 other public and private stakeholders as led by the Irish National Road Authority. It is also here on the Emerald Isle, per our NBG Accomplishments, that I have been fine tuning this book and rebuilding BikeRoute.com as I train on the Eagle for a 3rd TransAm.

Preface

In getting from one coast to the other here in America, as you will see when we talk about Omaha's significance to the opening of the West, as forms of travel evolved, so did the one main route they journeyed upon. By canoe and horseback man first pioneered his way west via the Lewis and Clark expedition. The stagecoaches of those seeking free land or California gold altered it with the Oregon Trail that soon followed. It wasn’t long before the transcontinental railroad closely paralleled the known way West to then rewrite all the rules for coast-to-coast travel. By the time automobiles made the connection to California with the Lincoln Highway, the way to move across this Nation’s lands was then carved in stone.

Of all these connections, none empowered the individual, shifted the collective consciousness or stimulated the nation's imagination more than the Lincoln Highway. No more than ruts in the grass or a red line on a map connecting all the worst mudholes in the Country as it was referred to by many when it began, it was formed by those who dared to think big. This as the courage of its early users was equally as large. And yet it would go on to impact how people lived on this continent in many ways similar to how the Tran Siberia Railroad across Russia as well as the Silk Road across Asia affected the lives of eastern Europeans. In the end, even though it was never one road but made use of many, it still changed our geography, enlarged the scope for what was possible and began to show that strangers are only friends one has yet to meet.

Long is this how I have foreseen the impact that the National Bicycle Greenway can have for America. And we are getting closer to the shift in mass consciousness that will have taken place before we as a Nation begin to demand the NBG. In the not too distant future, it will become plainly evident that this country must be outfitted with the labyrinth of safe bike roads and paths our organization has long envisioned.

Using the early Lincoln Highway as an example, then, in Lessons Learned from America's First Coast-to-Coast Highway in Building the NBG, I show you how we can switch from the car consciousness it brought about to make it very American to put the bicycle in the center of one’s world. And as more of us do, we will saturate all the roads all over this Nation with human power. As we go about creating the heaven on earth we call the National Bicycle Greenway, it will help us to better understand the almost sacred Lincoln Highway. You can learn more about the Lincoln in this book’s appendix.

Introduction

Our coast-to-coast route is now live at BikeRoute.com

Seen in a perfect world, it is described in the appendix.

By combining the work of our NBG Scouts with the crowd-sourced bike route data that Google has on line, the connection you see above is what we will be building around. Toward that end, in mirroring what Carl Fischer did with the Lincoln Highway (America's first coast-to-coast road), as I describe in the appendix with Lessons Learned from America's First Coast-to-Coast Highway in Building the NBG, we no longer have to look for the best route, we have now begun the work of getting cyclists on the one you can see at the link above. And the more it gets used, the more there will be a demand for it to become the perfect world National Bicycle Greenway (described HERE) we long have foreseen! This as it benefits, in innumerable ways, all the communities and businesses it travels through along the way!!

Chapter One - San Jose, Questing to be Top US Bike City

OK let me see if I understand all of this correctly, the reporter said, as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the news release you guys sent out has a picture of you on that bike, and it says you are going to ride it all the way to Washington, DC. What do you call that thing anyway?

Well, they’ve collected a lot of names over the years. You can call it a HiWheel or an Ordinary or a Penny Farthing, I answered. However this one is backwards facing. Called an Eagle, it is the last evolution of the HiWheel, it’s the high performance version.

These things really are amazing, the newsman said as he looked around to the other HiWheel bikes that had begun to assemble, each with their own little fan club of admirers.

Speaking as he wrote, he continued, and I do want to talk about your bike, but what is this about using this year’s Mayors' Ride to promote some kind of book you have written that talks about a coast to coast bike path?

Well first of all let me start by saying it is not a bike path but a coast to coast network of bikeable roads and paths that will in time give way to a dedicated arterial for bikes but for now we will have to share with cars.

As the newspaper reporter scribbled, a TV cameraman squeezed in next to Don Loomis, one of my fellow riders. A tall man, Don had already begun filming our ride across the US for the documentary that would result. However, to keep our ride in present time for our on line audience, I would regularly be sending audio clips to our staff back on the bus. Armed with the recorder on my iPhone, I would regularly be uploading those exchanges I had had with city officials, bike activists and interesting locals along the way.

To keep our ride fresh, as soon as we took them, my crew and I would be sending the video and photos we took with our picture taking devices directly to the web page we had set up for this. Such immediate publication would complement the interviews we would also be doing on the bus in the small room we had built for this. Besides the podcast and slide show pages that would result, if all that weren’t enough to keep our ride at the cutting edge, excerpts from Don’s video would also track our progress.

And who could ignore the Busycle? Our demonstration ride here on the streets surrounding City Hall still had everyone buzzing. In and of itself, our 15- person bicycle was a story about which this whole book and not just a whole chapter could have been written. A reconverted Dodge cargo van, once my ride was complete in Washington, DC, we would be towing it back to Boston.

As you will see in this book’s appendix, the smile invoking vehicle that our eco-friendly, reconverted transit bus would be towing from Mayors' Ride city to Mayors' Ride city, began life in Beantown. While here in the 21st Century the Busycle was recycled from the discards of Bostonians, as we show you in the end matter, in the late 19th Century, the bicycle itself was also first introduced to America in Boston, where it led the Industrial Revolution. Here now as we celebrate the 131 year anniversary of Thomas Stevens’ being the first to ride a bike across America, a ride that ended in Boston on a bike similar to what I was riding, our ride would pass though a lot of the same cities that Stevens did.

As for the Busycle itself, it started out as an art project. However, it became an exciting possibility for the future of transportation as many dozens of people from all walks of life combined their talents to make something of an assortment of once forsaken discards. As they scoured landfills and recycling dumps so that they could spoof their community with something made of junk that performed a useful function, little did they know how much hope they would be producing. And as this book will show you about the bicycle, as it expands our consciousness, a national fleet of Busycles, can also help to heal the planet on lots of levels.

A lot had happened in the world since I had gotten so many headlines with my last bike ride across the US. So much so that we would have to come at the media in as many ways as possible. Besides our handsome bus, the Busycle, and my HiWheel bike, there was also this book and this Author Tour. In fact there were so many things to keep track of, I had to keep reminding myself it was How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, HiWheeling the USA for the NBG (HBGR), the anchor that held it all together, that was why we were even doing any of this to begin with.

Despite the fact that my book signing the day before went well, I knew they would only get better. Even though maybe just fifteen people showed up and I only sold three books, I reminded myself that it still had an impact. After all, the news releases we had sent also got publicity for our ride and for the National Bicycle Greenway vision. When the bookstore owner told me he was happy with the turnout and the exposure it got in the local papers for his place of business, I knew that what we had tried would work in all the bookstores in all the cities ahead of us.

Since he could not justify doing an event that would give access to my on-line book for the small $4.95 price we ask for them, we added my hard cover book, Awake Again. As such, for the $25 his customers paid for a signed copy, they also got the HBGR e-book purchase code. So the books I did sell showed both of us that we had concocted a formula that would work!

People on bikes continued to trickle in.

Taking the newsman’s silence as my cue to give him more to write about, I continued, and yes this year will be about the book I have written that describes how we will overcome some of the same challenges that the builders of the Lincoln, America’s very first highway, overcame. And how, in so doing, we are going to saturate the mass consciousness with our vision, But every year for the last twelve, you have heard us talk about the National Bicycle Greenway with our Mayors' Rides, I said as I looked around to the small crowd of press people that had begun to move closer, now it’s time to start talking about what will happen when this ride locates a funding source for the on line bike mapping system I took a solid Mayors' Ride season to devise. And when this ride also draws out funding for the outside the box business plan I have been working on for the National Bicycle Greenway all these years; all this will combine to start growing what we call the NBG economy.

Nodding, the reporter continued, That’s something I’ve never really quite understood. Maybe you can tell my readers what a Mayors' Ride has to do with biking across America.

Disappointed that none of the reporters wanted to hear how a bike centric world would change the way we exchange and do business with one another, before I answered his question, I looked to my side to make sure Don had his camera on me for my answer. I tapped the recorder icon on my iPhone.

So are you ready for my standard answer? I asked. I’m warning you, it’s ‘‘gonna sound like a training video.

Sure, we’ll just take what we need.

Well, OK, but you ‘‘gotta promise me you will listen to the whole thing, I teased. So here goes, I said, as I watched for a reaction. Seeing that there was interest, I knew the long version was appropriate, "with the biking report cards cities file with us to show us what they have been doing to improve the conditions for their cyclists and that we then celebrate in proclamation form when we visit, we are giving civic leaders all across America a forum they can use to showcase their bicycle infrastructure. In order to improve their standing in relation to other Mayors' Ride cities, this scorecard helps them see the importance of teaming up with their local bike activists; it encourages city staff to work with those with their daily rubber on the streets.

We are also helping public officials show America and their own citizens how much value they place on the bicycle as a part of their transportation mix. And as we do so, we are giving these officials a way to make their city look healthy, vibrant and alive for prospective tourists, employers and other revenue generating concerns thinking about setting up shop in their city.

Happy to see that he and a few other reporters we taking notes, I added more detail, Besides helping cities to see that good bike infrastructure means good quality of life, by placing them in friendly competition with one another, as they make it safe for bike riders to get to their own businesses and attractions, our Mayors' Ride cities, by default, will also become attractive travel destinations for out of the area bike riders. And as  cyclists regularly enjoy the roads and paths  that  connect these cities to one another, when these population centers see how much business  long haul cyclists are bringing their way in the form of hotel stays, restaurant  meals and visits to their sights-to-see, etc,  city leaders will lobby their regional legislators to make it safer and more enjoyable for pedal visitors to reach them. And as this happens, the momentum for a Greenway network that connects our growing network of Mayors' Ride cities to one another will explode into a momentum that cannot be stopped!!!

Hmmm, I thought long distance bike riders like the back roads. Why don’t we just figure out some way to shuttle bikes out there if guys like you want to go bike riding?

I smiled as I could tell that others from our organization wanted to answer the question for me. That’s exactly the point, we’re working to change consciousness. I mean, no offense, but look at what you just did, I said ‘bicycle’ and you only heard that we want cities to make it safe to get to the back roads and not that we are trying to turn cities into worthy biking destinations. Yes there is a large population of cyclists who for fitness or recreation only ride the back roads. And yet making such riding turf more accessible is not part of our mission. The NBG Day at each of our Mayors' Ride cities has the express purpose of showcasing what is being done to make cycling safe and enjoyable INSIDE, I paused to give special emphasis to the word ‘inside’, each of the cities we visit!

Nodding he kept writing.

Think of it this way, where are all these people for whom you’d like to make the back roads more accessible? They are right here in the city. What sense does it make to put a car trip between them and their desire to recreate on a bicycle? That’s just one more car. Traffic. And then you got to build a staging area for them to park their cars, and since road cyclists could be gone for hours, you’d need to get security out there. Otherwise, talk about a breeding ground for theft and vandalism. And you’d also have to get water out there for the bathrooms and landscaping. Wouldn’t that money be better spent retrofitting the roads and paths that already exist here in the city so cyclists and not just cars can also use them? And, as bike trips replace car trips, everybody wins!

You make some good points, the newsman said as kept taking notes.

I mean how silly is it for someone to have to hop in a car to go a few blocks to go get a video or a gallon of milk? You know, something like 80% of all car trips are less than five miles. Perfectly doable on a bike. Might take half an hour to get there on a bicycle, even if you take your time. If you take your car you lose ‘cuz you don’t get exercise and those kind of trips are the hardest on your car and the dirtiest for the planet. And usually by the time you fight traffic and find a parking spot and walk to and from your car you come in tied with a bike rider doing the same errand who parks right at the entrance and whizzed by all the vehicles sitting in traffic. And you know why more people don’t walk, uh bike, the talk of this logic?

I paused to see if I still had their interest before I continued, Because it’s just not safe out there for most. And yet if people could just develop their bike skills on at least one Greenway bike-safe arterial in town, we’d start to see bikes everywhere.

What about old people? They are the ones who vote and if you are going to get any government help you’ve got to convince them that it is good to see all these healthy people zipping in and out of traffic and running red lights, a reporter called out to me from the back of the group. Seeing that he had my attention, he continued, I hear it from my 71 year old mom all the time that she’s worried about hitting someone on a bike. As he finished, I could see microphones pointed at my mouth waiting to record my response. Don was also waiting for my reply with his video camera.

"If you look at old people, they are terrified of losing their license because to them, that is a death sentence. They lose their freedom. All they have left are buses and time and cost prohibitive taxi cabs. Bikes are out of the question because there is nowhere safe for them to ride even a three-wheel bike when they start to lose their balance skills. And I talk to them all the time when I’m on my own adult trike. They are usually the