Campaigners!
If you want the lowest price on the Tybee-Savannah Trailblazers’ Ride Sunday Nov 8, today is your day! Save yourself a little green and get out for the Greenway. The goal of this 23 mile ride is to raise awareness on the need for safe nonmotorized access between Tybee and Savannah, and proceeds benefit the Coastal Georgia Greenway’s efforts to build trails in the coast, so it’s a win-win!
The Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s 2 Wheels 2 Work commuting event returns on the first Friday in November. As usual, a group ride will leave the Habersham Village shopping center parking lot at 7:30 a.m., bound for Johnson Square. If this route corresponds with your normal commute, please join us. If not, make your own way to Johnson Square and enjoy free coffee from Jittery Joe’s, starting at 8 a.m.
The U.S. Census reports bicycle commuting is up 14 percent since 2007, 36 percent since 2005, and 43 percent since the 2000 Census. So get on your bike and get with the trend! If you’ve never commuted by bike before, check out this Web site for tips to get started.
Did we say 3pm? We meant 4pm this Sunday October 4 for the ride starting and finishing at Forsyth Park in advance of the judging for Picnic in the Park which begins at 5pm. Remember that SBC members who come by the ride or the bike valet will get a free entry to the Dutch Utopia exhibit at the Telfair! We’ll have also have some of Leopold’s new Dutch chocolate ice cream created for the exhibit to give out starting at around 5pm during our ride stop at the Jepson Center!
Bring your friends! Bring your neighbors! Bring your kids! Bring a picnic, but by all means, bring your bike so we can park it for you at our bike valet, even if you don’t do the ride. Our valet attendants will keep a close eye on your ride until the music is done.
We have it up on facebook too, so this seems as good a time as any to suggest becoming our fan!
Earlier this year, League of American Bicyclists President Andy Clarke testified before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming of the U.S. Congress and presented this compelling fact, gleaned from the Department of Transportation’s National Household Travel Survey:
“In our metropolitan areas, more than 40 percent of all trips are two miles or less – a very manageable bike ride – and more than one-quarter are just one mile or less.”
How many such trips are made in Savannah every day? Thousands? Easily. Tens of thousands? Probably. And, with Savannah’s flat terrain and the coming cooler weather, what counts as “a very manageable bike ride” is surely more than two miles. Imagine the positive impact on our community if more of these trips — including commutes — could be made by bicycle instead of by car!
On Oct. 2, Savannahians don’t have to settle for imagining this scenario, they can be a part of it. The SBC’s monthly 2 Wheels 2 Work commuting convoy will depart from Habersham Village Shopping Center at 7:30 a.m., bound for SCAD’s Ex Libris bookstore, where bicycle commuters will enjoy free coffee courtesy of Jittery Joe’s. As always, helmets are strongly encouraged. In the event of heavy rain, the ride will be rescheduled for Oct. 9.
Hello all! Good news on many fronts:
Hot on the heels of all of this, we’re planning another ride — the Tybee to Savannah Trailblazers’ Ride! Often when people start to talk about bicycle facilities in Chatham County, the discussion migrates to the unridabiliy of US-80 between Savannah and Tybee, with 2 narrow bridges and rumble strips filling the shoulders between the Bull River and Lazaretto Creek: see previous posts here and here. We’re in full agreement that something needs to be done, so we thought a ride is in order to kick things off. With the aid of the Tybee and Savannah/Chatham County police for protection, we will ride with the first 150 registrants from Tybee to Savannah on Sunday Nov 8 at 9am. We have a page devoted to it on bicyclecampaign.org, and registration is now open at active.com.
Don’t be left out — join in this fun and important ride for the future of cycling in Chatham County.
It’s fully fall. Savannah Wheelie is back in town to celebrate!
Savannah Wheelie 4pm, Sun 10/4:
We celebrate the Telfair Museums’ opening of Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland (because besides us, who loves bikes more than the Dutch?) and the annual outdoor symphonic tradition of Picnic in the Park together on Sunday, Oct 4 at 4pm. We will start and finish the Picnic in the Park Wheelie at our own Dutch themed utopia on the lawn of Forsyth Park. The FREE, short, family friendly ride is open to all and will wind through downtown including a spin by the Jepson Center — kids are welcome, though it’s a bit far for training wheels. Leopold’s will be providing samples of a special Dutch chocolate truffle ice cream created for the Telfair exhibit at our ride stop — a real Dutch treat!
Savannah Bicycle Campaign members who ride with us or stop by our picnic at Forsyth can pick up a free pass to the Dutch Utopia exhibit at the Telfair.
Picnic in the Park Bike Valet, 4:30pm-9pm, Sun 10/4:
Even if you can’t join us for the ride, we will take care of your wheels as you enjoy the concert at our bike valet in Forsyth Park, so please come by!
And don’t forget the monthly 2Wheels 2Work next Friday, Oct 2, 7:30am. You on a bike with your friends from the Campaign riding downtown to work, from Habersham Village to Ex Libris for Jittery Joe’s coffee — what could be better?
The kids are back in class, the temps are dropping a little, so it’s time to bring your bike out for some fun this fall.
Of course, SBC will be hosting its Picnic in the Park Wheelie on Sunday, October 4 in association with the excellent annual outdoor concert at Forsyth Park. Final details on that are still pending, so look for an announcement early next week.
This Saturday, Sept 19, 8am: Historic Savannah Foundation’s 13th Colony Society hosts a bike tour of several historic districts, with stops for discussion along the way. It should be a great way learn some local history and see our city from a slightly different point of view. The tour leaves from HSF’s offices promptly at 8am.
Saturday, Oct 10: Harvest of Hope Double Metric Century, the brainchild of two-time cancer survivor and beloved member of our Savannah cycling community, Patrick Booton. This event, now the 9th annual, brings together so many in our community to raise money for the Harvest of Hope, a cancer survivor support program for families in Savannah. The ride this year is dedicated as a memorial to our friend and board member Jerry Jaycox, and will again travel from Augusta to Savannah.
Saturday, Oct 17: The American Diabetes Association is raising money and battling diabetes with its Sunsplash Outdoor Fitness Festival. The event includes opportunities for walking and kayaking in addition to the bike ride from the UGA Aquarium on Skidaway Island. Ride distances include 10, 20, and 40 mile options for any skill level through the lovely setting of Skidaway Island. Finish the ride and go for a paddle or a walk to follow!
Last, though not chronologically, we want to mention the Thursday, Oct 8 Rivers Rock! event benefiting the Ogeechee Canoochee Riverkeeper. It’s not a bike event, though it is being held at our bike friendly sponsor and perennial hosts Moon River Brewing Company at 21 W Bay St. It is an evening of foot stomping fun with alt-bluegrass from the Packway Handle Band and supports the Riverkeeper’s ongoing efforts to fight pollution in our rivers. It promises to be a great time, and we’re looking into beefing up Moon River’s bike parking facilities for the night if you want to pedal there.
It wouldn’t be fall without a mini media blitz from the Campaign.
We were thrilled to see Bill Dawers’ City Talk column this past Sunday in which he praised the Midnight Garden Ride and mused on why folks don’t ride at night more often in Savannah: “The streets belong to all of us — that’s true both day and night. The more citizens on the streets, the safer they become.” So true.
We were also pleased to see his support, like ours, for improvements in the draft Long Range Transportation Plan slated for adoption this Thursday at the CORE MPO meeting (10am, 112 E State St), in particular the promise of Complete Streets provisions during the next phase of the plan.
September brings college back to Savannah at SCAD, Savannah State, and Armstrong, and we were fortunate to have the opportunity to address that large mass of bike users of widely varying abilities with a column in Connect Savannah’s college issue this week. It gives some good (of course they’re good, we wrote them!) tips for anyone getting started on a bike in Savannah including basics on driving your bike and general information on preferred routes, so please check it out online or in the print edition.
For your sake, I hope you were there for the first Midnight Garden Ride Saturday night. Just about everything was perfect: the weather with only some wispy clouds occassionally giving the full moon a misty appearance not unlike that demonstrated on our shirts, the crowd which was fun but not overly rowdy, the ride which was pleasant with only an occasional stop to let some stragglers rejoin, and the Good and Evil Party at the Distillery with great costumed antics and prize giveaways. 400 plus riders whooped it up, and we are grateful to our excellent volunteers and the Savannah Chatham Metro Police for making it all run smoothly.
We were very pleased with the outcome of our first try at this. If you missed it, we’ll catch you next year! Thanks to volunteer Susan Laney for lending her photographic skills to the event. Check out the full photo set on our facebook fan page or flickr.
Thank you to board members Ben Allen and Eric Breen and former board member Paul Razza for their excellent work on this motorist focused PSA, released today in the 2Wheels 2Work press conference with Mayor Johnson. We are very excited to have the help of the city as well, and through their generosity will be showing this piece on local cable stations across the dial. Thanks also to our talent: Rob Gibson of the Savannnah Music Festival, local cyclists Kristine Gum and Mike Grabowski, and our own board secretary David Acuff for putting themselves out there, and also to Paul for subjecting himself to unwanted mullet syndrome for the cause.
The goal was to drive home points but keep it from being preachy, all the while pointing out that those people you see on bikes from your car could be your neighbor or co-worker. Hopefully this will make a dent in the excessively high number of car vs. bike crashes in Chatham County.
Watch. Enjoy. Share.