Bike Month and Bike-To-Work Week

May is Bike month and the 11th through 15th is Bike to work week! Here's what's going on: 

Friday the first is a Pedal Patrol event. Patrols are going to start happening the first Friday of every month from now on. When we go on patrol, we basically spread out looking for some specific way to interact with the community and promote bicycling. This upcoming patrol will basically involve posting and handing out the flyer above and telling people that it's bike month. In the future patrols will involve things like administering fake tickets, applying subversive stickers, tagging sexy bikes, or giving kudos to other cyclists.

Friday the 8th will be Half-Masst, only because Friday the 15th is National Bike-To-Work Day.

Details on Half-Masst are here: http://athensbikeco-op.blogspot.com/2008/11/yarr-bike-pirates.html

Monday the 11th will be the first Bike After-Work Beer Ride, in which we'll either ride to our favorite bar for a beer or take some beers with us somewhere to enjoy. The same will occur every day that week, culminating in Friday's Ride, which will be the first annual ATHENS BIKE SHUFFLE. It's the only way to celebrate National Bike-To-Work Day in the Athens style.

Friday the 22nd we will hold the Athens Alleycat Race, which takes place on Fern Street. Tournament-style heats of two will determine the first Alleycat Champion in this town.

Friday the 29th is the last one, so that means a traditional Critical Mass ride, which one can learn about by going to http://criticalmass.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Mass

FOR ALL OF THESE EVENTS the meeting place is the Civil War Monument on the College Green and the meeting time is 5pm.

Have a good Bike Month!

Truckshaw!

Thanks to Mr. Ron Linkers, the Bike Co-op now has use of an authentic rickshaw cargo trike from India. There are also three other rickshaws owned by Ron, one deluxe and two regular passenger models, that may be put to use as well. The truck will be for carrying our mobile workshop to the Farmer's Market, providing delivery services, and carting around bikes when the need arises. We'd like to use the pedicabs to provide chartered rides as part of the Athens Yellow Bike Taxi Service sometime in the future. The biggest obstacle to these endeavors is, of course, the topographical nature of our city. Besides lowering their gear-inches, some electrical input may be necessary if we want to take these beasts up anything over a %5 grade. If anyone in blogland can offer some engineering expertise as far as making an electric assist happen, that would be swell. I already have a solar panel trickle-charger that would be useful for recharging. Ideas for the pedicabs included installing a sound-system like Cory's pedal-powered one, so that passengers could plug in their iPods and bump their tunes while being carted around. But, without major funds to make these improvements, we'll have to keep the rickshaws in the low-lying parts of Athens, mainly the bike path. If you're interested in this project want to make money doing deliveries or driving pedicabs, let us know!

Sign-up Docaments

Links to pdf files of our sign-up sheet, release form, and user guide:

http://www.mediafire.com/?o1oznnhdj3t

http://www.mediafire.com/?ukdgzmfdxe5

http://www.mediafire.com/?lqy0nmmzudd

Now members can view and print these forms at their own convenience, before bringing them into the bike co-op to sign up. (Be prepared for ad bombardment when downloading these files from MediaFire.)

Launch Week

Thanks to everyone who came out to the sign-up and launch party events. We even had the special honor of signing up Paul Wiehl, the mayor, to our program. The poker run was a great time for everyone involved, and we got to thank most of our sponsors in person for their help. The winner, with five kings, received a certificate for a custom-painted frame and decided to give it to a friend of his who recently lost a bike to theft.

At the moment, taxis are still being shuttled back down to the bike co-op garage for some final touches. Half the fleet still needs baskets, a few more ads need to be placed, and some mechanical kinks need to be ironed out. This week I will be getting things going with a "rolling start" by focusing on one bike at a time, and e-mailing our new members in the order that they signed up as each taxi is completed. I'll ask them to come down to the garage, review the manual, get a copy, give their donation if they haven't made one yet, and make their $10 deposit on the key. Then I'll hand over their key and let them ride away on a fully completed bike taxi. This way I can still say the program is underway as promised, but it will be a while before all 25 taxis are out and all members have their key.