Picnic in the Park with the Campaign

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?

Fall Fun Rides

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.

SBC Fall Media

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.

Midnight Garden Ride Madness

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.

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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.

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New PSA! Check it out — we’re on TV!

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.

Midnight Garden Ride Late Registration Available

From the press in Connect Savannah and Savannah Morning News this week, we have been getting lots of questions about how late registration will work. All the info is at midnightgardenride.com (sorry Safari and Chrome browser users, a bug in our theme makes the whole site black. Try it in Internet Explorer or Firefox!), but it’s also here if you want to take a look:

Ride weekend regisration is available for $25,

  • 6-9pm on Friday, September 4 at Bicycle Link at 408 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Savannah, GA 31401 and
  • 8-9am on Saturday, September 5 at the Savannah Century ride start in Ellabell and
  • 6-7:30pm at the Distillery on Saturday, September 5.

Current SBC members will still receive the reduced $15 price at late registration.

We’ll see you Saturday for the Midnight Garden Ride!

Chatham County with most car vs bike crashes

2008 data for Georgia indicate that Chatham had the most car vs bike crashes, leaping our county ahead of Fulton.  On a per capita basis, this makes us the leader by far as noted in this article in Saturday’s Savannah Morning News.

Why?  The rate is so much higher there must be an underlying reason.  We would assume there are differences in reporting (maybe we’re doing a better job of that than others?), but clearly there is a problem that we need to address in any case. We’d like to see better enforcement of existing aggressive driving laws, and going forward, a 3 foot passing law for cars as Florida and South Carolina have passed in recent years.  We also need to keep educating cyclists that they are safest when they act (and are therefore more likely to be treated) as operators of vehicles.

Take 2 Wheels 2 Work on Sept. 4

Commuters gathering before last months 2 Wheels 2 Work ride.

You’ve seen other people doing it on your  drive to work. You’ve wondered what it would be like. You’ve pondered trying it yourself. Maybe you just need a little company and encouragement to get started.

Well, we’ve been there and we can show you the way. If you’re ready to have fun, save money and enjoy the health benefits of bicycle commuting, ride along with us on Friday, Sept. 4.

At 7:30 a.m. (returning participants, please note the earlier departure time)  the Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s monthly bicycle commuting convoy will get rolling from the Habersham Village Shopping Center. This month’s 2 Wheels 2 Work destination is Johnson Square, where participants will enjoy fresh coffee from the bike-friendly folks at Jittery Joe’s and tasty eats from the Blue Goose Cafe, new bicycling public service announcements will be debuted and local officials will talk about the positive impact bicycle commuting can have public safety, public health and public life.

Whether you’ve never ridden your bike to work — or you ride every day — please join us in this causally paced ride and stay for the festivities that follow. As always, helmets are strongly encouraged. In the event of heavy rain, the ride will be postponed until Sept. 11.

More Good and Evil Details

If you have not been by the Midnight Garden Ride website lately, check it out for some new updates.

First, we are thrilled to have Bottles & Cans playing live for the Good & Evil Party courtesy of our friends at the Distillery.  While you get your groove on, buy some raffle tickets — there are some great prizes up for grabs including a shiny new bike.

As already mentioned, prizes for the costume contest are also listed — so get your disguise ready to win some great prizes and the admiration of your fellow riders.  Most importantly, preregistration closes at midnight August 31, just one week from now!  So, if you want to be sure you have your very own Midnight Garden Ride shirt, register today!