Made by Hand / No 5 The Bike Maker from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

For those of you at all tuned into bike advocacy in the United States, Jonathan Maus needs no introduction. Founder, editor, publisher and primary content creator at BikePortland, Jonathan’s been covering all things Portland, Oregon bike community for nearly 10 years. Depending on who you ask, he is the gold standard of bike advocacy reporting or a firebrand in the movement. The truth is, of course, a whole lot more nuanced. In this interview, Jonathan discusses his struggle to find that balance between advocate and journalist, the origins of BikePortland, the growth of bicycling in his city, and much more.

 What was your life pre-BikePortland?

Before BikePortland my life was, well, simpler and less stressful. I only had one child at the time and she was just two years old. Now that child is 10 years old and she has a sister (7) and a brother (2)! As for work pre-BikePortland, I was growing my marketing and media relations business. I used to work with businesses, entrepreneurs, authors, and so on to help market themselves better, get publicity in magazines, TV, and basically help them figure out their stories and how to tell them in a compelling way. It’s funny because I was the annoying PR guy hassling editors and writers to feature my clients — now I’m the guy who gets hassled by PR people. It’s been interesting, not to mention very enlightening, to be on the other side of that media relationship.

Photo from bikeportland.org flickr.

How did you end up in Portland and what inspired you to launch your site?

My wife Juli and I wanted to live in a community where middle-class families could survive, own a home, and feel like we were part of a neighborhood. That was not possible in Santa Barbara, California (one of the most expensive places to live in America). We had some college friends that had moved to Portland and had visited a few times. We decided it would be right for us, we flew up here one weekend, looked at a bunch of houses, made an offer, and up we came.

I was inspired to launch the site simply because of the amazing people and things going on around bicycling up here. I knew it was special and I wanted to share it with the world. I was also really intrigued by how the Internet and blogs were changing the media and marketing world. Once I got a taste of blogging about the local bike scene (thanks to an invitation to do it on The Oregonian’s website) I was hooked and it just sort of took off. Three months after starting the “Bike Fun” blog on OregonLive.com I ended that partnership, purchased the BikePortland.org domain name, uploaded a free WordPress theme, kept writing every day, and never looked back.

How long did it take before you could support yourself and your family solely with Bike Portland?

I don’t recall the exact dates, but I do remember working my ass off for about two full years before I made any real money. The first year I could say I supported my family solely with BikePortland revenue (my wife does not work outside the home for money) was probably 2008 or so. Since then, revenue has increased each year. I am very grateful to companies who support the site and they are truly an important part of making BikePortland possible.

Bike Portland is a good example of advocacy journalism. How do you balance journalistic objectivity with your desire to advance bike advocacy? Do you consider yourself an advocate or a journalist first?

That’s the 64 million dollar question. And the answer is very complicated. Balance, whether it’s the work/life balance or the advocacy/journalism balance, is the hardest thing about this job. As for advocacy/journalism, I still haven’t completely figured it out. Last week I went through the toughest week of my life on the site. Much of it was caused by getting too involved emotionally in a story, which led me to make a bad journalistic decision. Then the decision was compounded by the fact that people of color were involved in the story and I wasn’t sensitive enough to use extra caution. When the story went bad and public criticism started coming in, I got defensive when I shouldn’t have (I was still too attached to the story to think clearly), and my defensiveness only made things worse. It was very humbling and educational experience on many levels and it has forced me to reassess, once again, the question about what I am and how I can do it most effectively.

In the end, I am an advocate first and a journalist second. I have struggled to define my relationship to those two roles for many years, but the events of last week clarified for me that I care more about community building and pushing bicycling forward than I do about being a traditional journalist in the mold of newspaper reporters.

Another tough thing about my role is that many people involved in the “bike movement” — which includes advocates, city bureaucrats, and politicians — see me as being “part of the team.” So, when I take a critical eye to something, or question something “the team” does (or wants to do), it is sometimes met with anger, frustration, fear, or all of the above. I have a lot of experience managing this dynamic but it’s still always a difficult balance. It takes time to build up trust and respect from people who are simultaneously friends/acquaintances, fellow advocates working to move bicycling forward, and sources. It has been a rocky road an emotional roller coaster to say the least.

As for what I consider myself to be, my first instinct is to avoid any label and just let people think whatever they’d like. I realize my role in this community is unique and I don’t feel the need to define myself. I recently posted a photo of myself with Congressman Earl Blumenauer at the National Bike Summit and a local reporter thought it was crazy that I, as a self-described “independent journalist,” would share a photo of myself being “chummy” with such a powerful person. In many ways, that little moment with Blumenauer is symbolic of what I’ve tried to describe above.

In the end, I think my work and my record speaks for itself. I have this saying that “I am not a robot,” which is to say that I, like every other human being, have feelings and things I care about. So, when I type words about those things, it’s natural for those feelings to come through. I don’t prevent that from happening, but I’m aware of it and I choose my words very carefully (at least most of the time ).  As you can tell by this verbose response, this whole advocacy/journalism thing is complicated and murky. But that’s OK. Simply because something is hard to define, doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.

Jonathan in Washington DC. Photo by Joel Gwadz.

Portland is heralded as the best bike city in America, and deservedly so. Yet biking is still under 10 percent of the mode share. Do you think bike ridership can ever equal that of transit or car use? What will it take to make that happen?

The numbers are misleading. It’s important to look at the central city/downtown mode split numbers instead of the citywide numbers. When you do that, bike use is comfortably in the teens and from some neighborhoods over 20% of commuters take a bike to work (And yes, that’s only close-in neighborhoods, we’ve got to see those numbers spread to all corners of the city). That being said, transit and driving are still tops; but not for long! Biking will very soon surpass transit in mode share. I won’t be surprised if in 10 years more people bike than drive alone. It’s simple math. We can’t continue to grow and handle traffic with the current mix of users. We also can’t continue to fund transit and auto-centric projects like we used to. That will leave bicycling as the last mode standing — and it also happens to have the best ROI of any mode (including walking!).

It’s obvious what it takes to grow bike usage rates. Discourage and regulate auto use (through policy and road design) and make the streets more efficient and pleasant to bike on. On a bus or rail car or in an automobile, I’m assured a safe journey pretty much door-to-door. However on a bike there are many gaps in the system where I face real safety risks. If bike access was respected and served at the same level as transit and driving a car — and I believe it should be — I have no doubt we’d see a massive spike in bicycling rates.

It seems like there’s constantly a next big thing in advocacy–family biking, cycle chic, bike tourism, etc. What do you think the next trend will be?

Well, it was clear from this year’s National Bike Summit that the next big thing — that’s already happening in a big way — is broadening the conversation about bicycling to include women, people of color, and all groups that have not been at the table around bicycle policy and activism historically. That shift has huge consequences. It will not only make the case for bicycling even stronger (who in their right mind could be against something that is loved by such a diverse swath of the American public?), but it will also lead to a greater focus on fashion, separated facilities, bottom-up policymaking, and so on. That’s because as the face of bicycle advocacy leaders change, the issues they represent will become more powerful and influential.

Obviously there’s no silver bullet trend or movement in advocacy, but what would you like to see in the coming years from advocates around the US to help increase and improve biking as transportation?

Stop marginalizing yourself by using unnecessary labels. It pains me whenever I heard the League of American Bicyclists or other advocacy groups proclaim “We are bicyclists!” It’s time to stop allowing ourselves to be so conveniently defined, stereotyped, and scapegoated. It’s awesome to celebrate your love of bicycling, but don’t make it seem like we’re all on the “same team” or that we somehow all act in unison and have the same beliefs. Biking has matured to the point where people do it for many different reasons and they advocate for it in many different ways. And that’s OK. It’s hard for advocacy groups to break away from this self-labeling cycle because they rely on a strong “bicyclist” identification in order to drive memberships, but shedding exclusive labels wherever possible is imperative for us to reach beyond the usual suspects and ultimately make bicycling attractive to a broader swath of the population.

A lot of people love cycling. For one reason or another, it’s a sport that lends itself to obsession. Mike Kuhn has been showing his love and obsession with over two decades of riding, racing, race promotion, and advocacy. He’s perhaps best known for putting on the Transylvania Epic, a seven day mountain bike stage race in the heart of Pennsylvania. He’s also the man behind IronCross, an endurance cyclocross race, along with many more road, cross, and mountain bike races through the years. And though two decades of race promoting is inarguably an example of giving back to the bike community, Mike is also heavily involved in trail advocacy. He and Transylvania Epic co-founder Ray Adams launched a nonprofit The Outdoor Experience Organization in 2009 to raise funds for mountain bike trail building, maintenance, documentation and outreach in Pennsylvania. I had the chance to speak with Mike about his history in bike racing, the rapid growth of the Transylvania Epic and endurance racing, his vision to revive a small PA mining town with a high-quality trail network, and more.

What’s your background in riding and racing?

I got into riding just before college, so about 23 years ago. I raced for the Bucknell cycling team in school. After college I didn’t know what to do, so I raced more and more. I got pretty good and got to tour around and race in different parts of the country. I was more road focused at the time, but was still mountain biking.

It was in college that I promoted my first event. I enjoyed that experience and had the opportunity to hold some races on my in-laws’ farm. We’ve got a 100 acre farm and we’ve been putting on events for 15 years out there. I just love this sport; I love all the parts of the sport.

It was maybe 15 years ago that I heard about Trans-Germany, one of the first mountain bike stage races. That planted a seed for me that very slowly germinated into the Transylvania Epic.

Were you organizing mountain bike races on the family farm?

Yeah, we were doing mountain bike races. Through the years I’ve done a little bit of everything with promoting and racing. Cross, road, mountain bike. The farm has been a spot for both mountain biking and cyclocross racing.

One of the first mid-Atlantic cyclocross events was held there. That’s going back 10 years. We’ve had a stage race there. Now we have the International Intergalactic Global Open Mountain Biking Relay Championship of the Multiverse. And we have a cross version of that too. You’re pretty much allowed to call yourself whatever kind of championship you want and I think we’ve covered all the bases. I believe it makes the winners of the event the undisputed champions of everything. So we’re stoked to have that at the farm in little Marysville, Pennsylvania.

Tell me about getting Transylvania Epic off the ground. You mentioned you were inspired 15 years ago to create a stage race, how did it go from there to reality?

I’d seen some of those very early endurance races. I think there was a Tour VTT. Trans Germany was one of the early one. I know how good the riding is in Pennsylvania.

The East Coast gets a little shortchanged sometimes, but I knew we have thousands and thousands of miles of trails and dirt roads that are world class.

Over the intervening years we started a team called Visit PA. It was sponsored by the Department of Tourism. It was a pretty successful team for a while. I got into that with a good friend of mine Ray Adams. We ran the team and as the team was running out its course, we got to talking about trying to launch this multi-day stage adventure in PA.

We obviously had pretty good contacts with the Department of Tourism. And they expressed some interest in it. The original idea and approach was going to be much different than what we have right now. This was the year before the economy crashed and we were in talks with the State to have a more standard-model mountain bike stage race. You have tent cities and you move from place to place each stage. The economy fells apart, the impetus dried up very quickly for that kind of race, and we had to reevaluate where we were.

It took a bit of scrambling to figure out how to do the race. We looked around the state to figure out the best place to hold the race. State College has, since the dawn of mountain biking, been an integral place in PA for the sport. The early Coburn races, the first 100 mile races with the Wilderness 101. Those style events have been going on there for a really long time and there’s a wonderful network. There’s an incredible club up there, the Nittany Mountain Bike Association.

So we found this scout camp outside of State College, called the Seven Mountains Scout Camp from the Juniata Boy Scout Council. It is right smack-dab in the middle of amazing trails. We’ve been able to stretch the race to seven days, returning to the camp every night. The stages are 25-45 miles, with very little repetition throughout the week. It’s a real wonderful resource to have all that stuff in one place.

The event is great. People love coming to camp there. They love the camaraderie that a week of mountain bike adventures brings. They say it’s kind of like the summer camp experience they remember from their early teenage years, translated to mountain biking plus with beer. It’s just really fun.

You sort of just hit on why Transylvania Epic is succeeding. But, it’s been impressive how much its grown over the course of just a few years, from a relatively-small event with mostly regional-level pros to one with an international draw. Why do you think the race has grown so quickly?

We work hard at it and that’s part of it. It’s a year-long process to pull the thing together, or more. I’m already working on 2014 and we’re still a few months out from the 2013 race.

We’ve developed some wonderful relationships with out partners. NoTubes has been incredible right from the get go. Dirt Rag has been a big supporter. PacTimo, too. All these guys who came on board early. Hammer Nutrition have been wonderful. It’s evident the kind of support they’re giving when you come to the event and see the things we’re doing.

BMC came on board this year. SRAM and Answer Products did too. Having that kind of support from the industry has been huge. We’ve also developed some great press relationships, in addition to Dirt Rag. We push that hard and it develops the exposure for the event, but also the participants. These guys come, they love what they’re doing. The word of mouth has been really good. But also, for someone like Jeremiah Bishop or Amanda Carey who come out and do the event, they’re getting eight or nine days of national and international level coverage for themselves and their sponsors.

It’s kind of all built on itself. Those guys want to come and get that exposure. It helps us produce press for the event that people want to read, that helps us tell the story of the event. And people think its fun. They come out and enjoy themselves. Even the international caliber pros, they love to ride their bikes and that’s what they’re doing and the story spreads.

I think the key to our success is that it’s really, really fun. I keep coming back to it, but it’s the fun you have in a week of mountain biking on great trails.

Mike with a racer at the 2010 TSE. Photo via thesecretlifeofadirtdiva.com

Endurance racing in general seems to be blowing up these days, with lots of former cross country racers focusing on longer events. What’s so appealing about 100+ miles days of offroad racing?

I think it’s the adventure. The word’s been overused, but it’s the epic feeling you get from being out there for four hours or 24 hours or a few weeks if you’re doing a race like the Great Divide. There’s a different atmosphere around the events that lends to their success. There are people there for the experience and the adventure and that makes the atmosphere a little more fun perhaps. People are more willing to hang out afterwards. It’s not just come in, race for an hour or two, go home. It’s more culture, it’s more tribe, it’s more soul; however you want to say it, that’s a really appealing part to the endurance stuff.

It’s suffering just like anything. If you go hard and you go long it’s going to hurt, and that appeals to people. All of us doing endurance sports are a little strange that way.

Also, the challenge is there. If you’ve been racing, and especially if you’ve been racing cross country for a long time, you get to the point of wondering what else you can do with your bike. We’re seeing the same thing happen with cyclocross, too. People have these bikes that are awesome. It’s really fun to do cyclocross, it’s a wonderful sport. But you race for a while and you start wanting to see what else is out there. That’s why the gravel-style events are taking off. That’s why the ultracross series and our event Iron Cross are picking up. It’s the next step for a lot of people.

I understand you’re involved in an effort to build a new trail network near Harrisburg. Tell me about that project.

When we founded Transylvania, we founded it to raise funds for nonprofit the Outdoor Experience Organization to do trail enhancements and creation in Pennsylvania. Everyone who’s coming to TSE, sponsors who support it; they are helping with this mission of making more and better trails in PA. One area we’re particularly interested in working on is outside of a town called Lykens. Lykens is an old mining town, coal mining. The extraction companies left in the early 80s. The town has survived, but doesn’t have the feel that it once did.

There is an IMBA Epic trail called the Rattling Creek Trail Network outside of Lykens. It’s got about 30 miles of really great stuff. We put on the Rattling Offroad Weekend there in August. A lot of people consider it the best endurance course on the east coast. I think that speaks very highly to its appeal.

The problem is, it’s not connected to Lychens or the other towns in this valley. It’s not connected to the town and there’s a lot of people in the town that don’t even maybe realize there’s this wonderful resource there. We see a lot of potential to help the town of Lykens and the Lykens Valley move into a recreation based economy, or at least have an economic engine from outdoor rec. So that’s our goal, to make the trail connections in the Valley; hopefully have some other towns come on board.

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) is excited about this. They have several tracts of land that they’re interested in having us use to expand the network. We think we can at least double the mileage of trails and create green and blue level cross country trails. A lot of what’s up there right now I’d consider blue to black XC. There’s potential for some flow trails. There’s a lot of elevation there that hasn’t been utilized that we can do some really cool things with.

Hopefully we can create a major East Coast destination out of this. There’s a possibility here to connect these towns in such a way that you could start in one, ride to the next one for lunch. There’s a rail-trail going in so that family can come out and you can do some riding with them. It’s a major goal of ours to do everything we can to make this happen. We’re working with Lykens to do a feasibility study for them. We’ve had a professional trail builder come in and take a look. We’re starting to get input from different user groups about what they would like to see.

It seems like this sort of conversation about the economic impact of cyclists is happening more and more these days. It’s mostly been in the context of long-distance bike tourists who ride through small towns and spend money. Have you heard about other trail network projects having an impact on rural towns?

It’s certainly been proven in a few places. In Colorado, Leadville is good example of a place that’s had a lot of success with event-based recreation. It’s helped to attract other users. The events they hold there bring in thousands of people a year, which has done a wonderful job of driving that economy. There’s the Bailey Hundo in Pine, Colorado. They are working really hard in a similar mode. These Colorado towns and some others out west have a similar story. It was an extraction economy for a long time and so what’s there may not be developable.

In Lychens, much of the land is tied up in watershed property, DCNR property, and PA State Gamelands property, so it’s not going to be developed. It’s old coal mining so it’s maybe not great for a whole lot of other uses. You drive into this valley and there’s nothing but these two ridges on either side of it. It could be a playground for outdoor recreation.

Raystown, which is about two hours up the road from Lychens, was a very successful project. It’s kind of unique in that those trails sit by themselves. There is no town next door to it. But the studies being done are showing that within one to two years, the project, which cost three-quarters of a million dollars has paid for itself in increased revenue in the area from recreational spending. And it’s primarily mountain bike use on those trails at Allegripis.

I think the evidence is out there that this works. It’s more than just putting in the trails. There has to be a plan for the trails, a plan for the marketing, a plan for the maintenance. Unfortunately it’s not just build it and they’ll come. But as you go down that road and you put on some events there and get the marketing, it can work really, really well.

Is there anything else you want to say about your work, your racing, your mountain biking?

I don’t know if there’s a whole lot to add there, but I will tell you about one thing we’re getting ready to do with Transylvania. As I mentioned, we brought BMC in as a sponsor this year. They’re doing some very cool stuff for the event. The thing I’m most excited about is they’re donating a bike we’re going to raffle off. You’ll be able to buy tickets at events throughout the year and on the website, TSEpic.com. It’s going to be a 2014 model, same level that the team’s riding, which is the TE02 or FS02 model. And we’re going to couple that with entry to the 2014 Transylvania Epic. And proceeds are all going back into trail networks. It’s an opportunity to come do a fantastic event, maybe get a really cool bike out of it, and contribute to some really good things happening with mountain biking here in the state.

If you were asked right now to imagine a bike commuter, who would you picture? For most of you, it’s probably of a white man (who’s probably in bike shorts and a neon jacket) enroute to his middle or upper-middle class office job. It’s a reasonable image to have. A 2009 report found that 79 percent of trips by bike in the US were taken by white people and 73 percent of all those trips were done by men. But those same studies show that people of color accounted for about 21 percent of trips and 31 percent of trips were taken by people in the lowest quartile income bracket.

The sometimes-overlooked fact that biking is not just for well-to-do white guys is central to the work Adonia Lugo does as a bike advocate, activist, and anthropologist. She co-founded Los Angeles’ CicLAvia and Ciudad de Luces, an outreach project with day laborer bicyclists. After moving moved to Seattle in 2011 to complete her dissertation, she started the Seattle Bike Justice Project, an ethnographic project focused on bicycling and Seattle’s communities of color. We recently sat down to discuss her Bike Justice Project, equity in bicycling, the sometimes-narrow focus of American bike advocates, her own activism, and much more.

What is the Seattle Bike Justice Project?

The Seattle Bike Justice Project came out of my ongoing interest in considering the problem of different communities having different images of bicycling. I’ve been doing bike research and bike advocacy since 2008. I’m an anthropology student doing my dissertation about the bike movement in Los Angeles. My research was basically being involved in activist projects and advocacy.

One of the things I’d been doing in LA was outreach with day laborer cyclists. There were a lot of people using bikes down there because it’s the cheapest way to get around. Some collaborators and I were interested in connecting the interests of that population with the bike movement. There’s an organized bike movement; bike advocates who were going to city hall and lobbying. But they were not necessarily representing the concerns of this other group of bicycle people.

I came to Seattle to write my dissertation and get a little distance from LA. When I moved up here I thought I was going to be able to continue that kind of work. But I realized that this is a very different city. There isn’t that same large population of people using bikes just because it’s the cheapest way to get around.  Partially because there are a lot of other impediments here like the hills and the rain that make bicycling not as approachable, as it was in LA. Ironically, because people don’t think of LA as a bike city.

I started volunteering at Bike Works down in Columbia City and it was drawing me more and more to South Seattle. I started thinking about the tensions between Rainier Valley and the rest of the city. I could see quite a contrast between Columbia City and further south like Rainier Beach and the kind of different public spaces that people are creating. They’re so close together, but they can be really far apart in terms of safety, in terms of what’s there to draw people to the streets. I decided maybe I could do this ethnography thing that I know how to do and help out somehow with this issue in Seattle.

There’s obviously a really strong bike movement in Seattle, a lot of support for bicycling in the city. But there’s a pretty clear divide between people who think bicycling is a good idea and people who don’t think bicycling is a good idea. Lots of people think bicycling is bad for different reasons, but here it seems like that perception also corresponded to some kind of older racial tensions and issues of who lived where and what kind of areas are bike friendly versus what areas are more high traffic and that kind of thing. And that’s where the low-income housing is.

I got support for the Seattle Bike Justice Project from Bike Works and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington. I interviewed leaders at different organizations. Man on the street interviews are interesting in their own way, but I wanted to hear from people who occupied a position of respect in the community. I interviewed executive directors of organizations and people who worked at nonprofits. It was really interesting. I only did nine interviews; it was a really small-scale project. But I got to talk to people in the east African community, African American, Mexican American, and Filipino American. I got a kind of crosscut of different views on bicycling from these different activists.

Overall, the thing I got out of it was people have very nuanced views about bicycling. People can totally articulate why bicycling is good. They know it’s good for the environment, it’s got health benefits. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to see it as something for them or their community. The project became about just documenting that some people have images about bicycling that are not positive. Or some people have images of bicycling that connect with a certain childhood experience. Or a certain population they imagine will use bicycles.

I’ve realized that if I’m really concerned about bringing social justice into bicycling, we need to consider other issues of urban development. The cost of housing, infrastructure, how bike projects and other pro-public space elements impact these things. Because in the U.S., there’s an image that bicycling is about gentrification, an image that developing bicycling is about getting existing community members out of a neighborhood.

Personally I really don’t see bicycling as being about those things. So it’s really important for me to figure out how to build better images of bicycling that take people’s concerns into account, because people have valid concerns about this issue. But if we just throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, we’re missing out on a lot. Bicycling really does have a lot of positive impacts for urban communities.

Adonia and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. photo via urbanadonia.com

Clearly equity is an important part of your project and your work. What does it mean to have equity in the bicycling community?

I’m coming from a perspective of doing community-based, participatory research and the core idea of that is that as a researcher you don’t come into a place with an idea in mind of what you’re going to do, then use research to support that idea. It’s about building research projects through participation with people in order to be able to address their concerns. So, I experienced that bicycling is a community-building tool.

CicLAvia is a really great example of how people riding their bikes in the street can feel really good doing it. And they feel better about their city. It’s been really amazing hearing people say they never thought they could feel this good in LA or experience LA like this.

My work is to try and promote the idea of bicycling as a community-building tool. Bicycling is not just health, it’s not just recreation, it’s not just about improving some neighborhood or other. It’s about bringing together different types of people. And right now bicycling is dividing people rather than bringing them together. For me equity means taking multiple perspectives into consideration and working with a coalition of people to define what bicycling is going to mean for America.

Based on your experience with your project, how would you say Seattle could do better creating a better bicycling community, or create more diversity in its bicycling community?

Based on what I’ve seen, I feel like the Rainier Valley Greenways project is a good example of good work in that direction. At first I thought it seems kind of great for communities that already have committed bicyclists who know about routes and can make recommendations. But what about communities or neighborhoods who don’t have a bunch of people who are already empowered in that way? How are they going to provide that great feedback and recommendations to the city?

But from what I’ve witnessed of their organizing they’ve been trying to work from within the community and use existing resources. They didn’t just come in and say “hey now we’re bringing in this project from the north part of the city and this is how it’s going to be done.” They’re a good example of cool work being done that’s more inclusive.

Do you think that has been a problem in American bike advocacy? Advocates going to communities and saying “here’s what we can do” rather than advocates coming to communities and asking “how can we help?”

Yes. I’ve done a lot of traveling and talked to bike advocates in different cities. And I’ve seen that when people get into biking they really get into it and think it’s really great. And they don’t necessarily understand why other people don’t like it. Or they’re not taking the time to grasp that other people might not like it. And, a lot of the people who’ve gotten into bike advocacy tend to be more empowered people in our culture. People who have more privilege because of race and class and education and things like that. I think that that has had an effect where unintentionally, without any ill intent, it has created an idea that it’s empowered people who rides bikes. Those empower people always get what they want from the city and now they want bike infrastructure, so of course they’re going to get it. And who’s going to pay the cost? The communities who aren’t even using bikes.

I don’t really think that the bike advocacy community has done the footwork of showing why bicycling is for everyone. There’s just kind of this assumed goodness about it. And I’m one of those people, I think bicycling is really awesome and sometimes I have to stop and think, why do I think biking is so great?

It would be super awesome if we could figure out ways to connect with existing, positive projects in different communities. A lot of struggling neighborhoods have existing community-based organizations. Churches, nonprofits of different sorts, all kinds of immigrant support groups that are already trying to improve life for people. We have an opportunity to talk to the people running those organizations and say “hey we want to improve life for people too.” Find out what they think about what bike advocates are trying to do and have a conversation about the reasons we think bicycling is so good for people. Unfortunately, conversations like that aren’t easy to make happen. That’s my ideal, figuring out ways to facilitate that meeting of the mind between bike advocates and other community organizations doing good work.

Photo courtesy of Anne-Marije Rook.

More on the personal side of things, how did you get into bike advocacy originally?

I went to college in Portland, OR. I had a bike that I rode on campus. But I didn’t ride it off campus. It didn’t occur to me that I could ride it around the city. Then, after I graduated, my boyfriend at the time was like “I’ve been riding a bike, you really need to get a bike, it’s the cool thing to do.” So I got one. I really hated it at first. I thought it was really scary. But then it became awesome. I felt super empowered and riding felt really, really good. Tension with other road users aside, biking for me was really good.

I left Portland in 2007 to go to grad school in southern California. We moved from Portland to Long Beach. It’s a very similar size to Portland and has a similar gridded layout, lots of old apartment buildings downtown, lightrail. All these things that made it seem like we could have a similar lifestyle.

At that point I didn’t think about bicycling as a political act. It was just how I got to work. I didn’t always ride. I sometimes drove. But that all changed when I moved to Long Beach. I was getting harassed by motorists. It was really scary. I realized people really don’t want me to be here. It made me think about bicycling a lot more and think about people’s attitudes towards transportation and the streets.

I had originally planned to do a different project for grad school, but two really important things happened that made bicycling take hold. I grew up in Southern California in a very suburban place called San Juan Capistrano. In October 2007, there was a guy biking home late at night from his job as a dishwasher at a Denny’s. He worked on this curvy, high-speed suburban road and was biking home on the sidewalk. A woman was driving drunk, lost control of the car, and hit and killed him. When I read about that, it just made me realize that while I am challenged riding my bike, other people are much more vulnerable than I am.

I started thinking about how I grew up with this. All these distinctions about transportation and how the second I was able to stop riding the bus, I did. And I never rode a bike growing up. There’s a lot going on with how we chose to get around. So that was one thing that really brought race and class to my mind around bicycling.

The second thing was going to a city hearing. Long Beach now is all about being a great bike city and having great bike stuff, but this was right before they started that big push. I got to go to a city hearing where they were talking about putting in a bike boulevard in the neighborhood I lived in. There were all these low traffic neighborhood streets so it totally made sense to put up some signage and some bollards and make it a bike route. My boyfriend and I were psyched to go find out about it. These homeowners at the meeting were absolutely not OK with there being bike infrastructure in their neighborhood. They said it was going to “bring people who were going to camp out, bring in crime, drive down property values.” They were fine with people riding on their street, but they did not want it to be a designated bike route on a map. They had a perception that people who use bikes are low lives; people you don’t want around.

That summer, my boyfriend and I went to Bogotá Colombia to see the ciclovia and meet the guy who had come up with the idea back in the 70s. That was really cool. We got back and moved to Korea Town in central LA. And from there things just fell into place super fast. Within a week of moving to LA we were part of a ciclovia committee and started organizing to make a ciclovia happen in LA. I had already started collaborating on another bike outreach project, too. I didn’t take time to stop and think. It was just like “this is what needs to happen now. This is how things are going to go.”

How did you get involved in getting CicLAvia off the ground?

Right before we took that trip to Bogotá, we had visited this place called the LA Ecovillage, which is an intentional community in Korea Town. It’s just these two old apartment buildings that have been retrofitted as a commune. It seemed like a really good place to live if you wanted to be surrounded by car free people. In a city like LA, it really really helps to have a local community. You can feel super alienated and super disconnected from other people in the city. It’s a really, really big place, and people are driving two hours each way every day, and it’s really discombobulated. So we really wanted to move into this eco village. In order to become a member, you had to go through the membership process, which was to essentially date everyone who lived there for six months and get to know them and prove that you’re into eco stuff and you’re not just trying to get really cheap rent.

When we got back from Colombia, we went to a potluck at the Ecovillage. We met the founders of the LA County Bicycle Coalition because they lived there. We were telling everyone about how great the civlovia was and how exciting it had been. This woman Arisha, who worked at the Coalition suggested we go to their board meeting that was happening in three days.

We went and found out they were starting a ciclovia committee and we joined. We had a core group of six or eight people who were meeting monthly. It was just really fun. I’d never done committee work like that before, so I didn’t know what I was doing. But I became secretary and was taking all the notes and thinking “this is good field work, too” so it had a duel role.

It was a really fascinating process to be a part of. At first everyone we talked to said “yeah right, you’re never going to close a bunch of streets in LA.” And then gradually over time it became more and more real. A lot of that had to do with the fact that one of our committee members was a traffic engineer, so he was able to do really nice route studies for our proposed routes and grapple with these logistical issues so it seemed possible. We had a graphic designer on the team, so she made us a design scheme and a logo early on, so that made it look more professional. For me, it was an education in how political will gets constructed. A few of our committee members were really well connected in politics and philanthropy in LA. They knew who to talk to and had the clout to get meetings with people to pitch this idea. Things just sort of shifted.

From my perspective, the thing that made CicLAvia really possible was it happened at the right time and emerged from all these different movements. The bike movement and the environmental movement and others. There were the right people with the right expertise that made it seem like a viable thing. Also the mayor was getting involved. One really key moment for us happened when he went to the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. He was surrounded there by world leaders talking about environmental issues. Some radio show interviewed him and they asked, “Mayor Villaraigosa, what are you doing to make bicycling in LA better?”

At that point we’d been meeting with his staff for several months, but we hadn’t gotten any kind of firm support. In the interview he said, “we want to do this thing where we close streets and let people come out and ride their bikes.” For us that was a coup. He was being public about the event possibly happening. It still took a year from that point for it to actually happen. It was interesting seeing the momentum build and the contingent things.

The bulk of my dissertation is about being involved in CicLAvia and City of Lights. What I’m hoping to do now is look more at this question of political will and where it comes from and how people, through their social relationships and networks create the conditions of possibility for things people say are impossible. The core theoretical concept for my dissertation is human infrastructure. Bike people, we love to talk about bike infrastructure, but there’s also this human element that’s very important.

My parents recently moved to Doha, Qatar. They happened to arrive just before the start of the Tour of Qatar and were able to catch the final stage of the race this morning. Stage 6 began a little over 100 km outside of Doha and ended with a few laps around the Corniche, a waterfront promenade in the capital city. All photos by Jeremy Cohen. Enjoy.

Backdrop for the finish. Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

Winding up for the final sprint. Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

Long after the action, Doha at night. Photo by Jeremy Cohen.

My First Bike explores the life and work of professional frame builders by going back to the start and looking at the first bike they ever built. Today’s My First Bike features Jim Kish of Kish Fabrication.

Give me the short rundown of your first frame: when was it built, where, materials, any special details about it, etc.

I moved from Vermont to Talent, Oregon in 1991 in order to be close to United Bicycle Institute. I was looking for an alternative to my current career being a tour leader and mechanic and I had heard that UBI had recently started teaching frame building in addition to mechanics. I was sold. I signed up for every class I could afford and one of those was a brazed and lugged steel frame class.

I chose to rip off a bike design I loved at the time, from the Ibis Mt Trials, which was a great trail bike with a 24″ rear wheel and 26″ front. It was not the most lug-friendly design, lots of weird angles, but I managed to make it happen with the help and patience of Ron Sutphin and the rest of the UBI staff.

I couldn’t tell you what tubing was used–that was a long time ago–I’d guess True Temper AVR given the vintage. I rode the trails around Ashland, OR nearly every day then and that bike served me well for a couple years until I replaced it with a titanium version I built.

Why did you choose to build the Ibis-style bike for your first one?

Even though I did a lot of touring in the late 80′s – early 90′s, enough of it was on dirt and gravel that I always used a mountain bike. So that’s what I was used to. I chose the Mt Trials version because it seemed well suited to the trails in the area and it was a fun bike to just ride around town on, which I spent a lot of time doing before I had an actual job.

What attracted you to frame building and how did you learn the craft?

I’ve spent my whole life involved with bikes, from BMX racing to road to touring, so I knew I wanted to stay in the bike industry after leaving my bike touring job. I’m relatively competent working with my hands so frame building seemed like a logical next step.

I imposed myself on UBI by moving down the road from their campus, taking all their classes and then more or less refusing to leave. They let me use their shop to build my next several bikes while I was the service manager at a local shop. A few months later they hired me to help in their classes.

Did you go into it planning to make frame building a career, or did that come later?

I went into it planning that frame building would be my career. I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do.

My first customer bought the second frame I ever built and it’s still on the road 20+ years later. Same with the first titanium bike I built.

Another newer Kish.

What career would you want to have if you weren’t working as a frame builder?

I would love to have the time to do more woodworking and lutherie. In a parallel universe I’d be building fiddles and banjos right now.

If the Internet (or perhaps all of human history) has taught us anything, it’s that trends are very important to follow. And there is no more prevalent year-end trend than Top 10 lists. Newspapers give you their most popular stories of the year. Buzzfeed gives you the 40 most influential corgis of 2012 (it was probably difficult to narrow it to 10 influential pups).  And on the final day of 2012, The Bicycle Story gives you its top 10 most read posts of 2012.

The Most Popular Stories of 2012

1) Jacquie Phelan: The Godmother of Women’s Mountain Biking: Given her important role in both mountain bike history and introducing women to mountain biking, it is unsurprising that Jacquie tops the list. If you read just one interview from these 10, make it this one.

2) Tom Hopper: Rapha-Focus’ Master Mechanic: Tom is personal mechanic to America’s best cyclocross racer. Learn about his road to the professional pits and what it takes to succeed at the highest level of the job.

3) Presidents on Bicycles: A collection of photos from Presidents Day 2012 highlighting the long history of our Commanders in Chief riding (or at least posing) on bikes!

4) Ted King: Racing with the PROs, Advocating for Bikes: Ted King is an international pro tour domestique with the Liquigas-Cannondale squad. In addition to being one of the fastest American racers, he’s a proud advocate for cycling and the environment.

5) Steve Garro: Arizona’s Mountain Biking, Trouble Making, Frame Building Legend: Steve is another important figure in mountain bike history. The insightful interview covers the days of riding with his mountain bike crew The Mutants, his frame building, the accident that nearly took his life, and a whole lot more.

6) Colin Reuter: The Cyclocross Obsession Behind Crossresults.com: As the title suggests, Colin founded Cross Results, the awesome and nerdy website that compiles cyclocross race results and stats and basically turns them into a season-long game.

7) My First Bike: Tony Pereira: My First Bike looks at professional frame builders in light of the first bike they ever built. Popular Oregon builder Tony Pereira kicked off the feature with this interview back in March.

8) Max Kullaway: Building Bikes Behind the Big-Name Builders: Max’s history in frame building run deep. He got his start at Merlin, spent nearly a decade at Seven, launched his own company 333 Fabrications, and welds bikes for Davidson and Hampsten.

9) Barry Wicks: Cyclocross, Mountain Bikes, and the Adventures They’ve Brought, Part 1: Barry Wicks is one of the most popular US cyclocross racers thanks in no small part to his approachable, affable personality. Learn about his history in the sport, his new fascination with endurance/adventure mountain bike racing, and his thoughts on the future of American cross.

10) Reveal the Path: Good Adventure Porn, Decent Film: Mountain bikers Matthew Lee and Kurt Refsnider joined filmmakers Mike Dion and Hunter Weeks for a round-the-world bike packing adventure. Though it has its shortcomings, the resulting film is nonetheless entertaining and exciting.

Happy New Year, everyone! Hears to a great 2013 filled with bikes and the people that ride them, build them, advocate for them, race them, and have amazing adventures on them!

Mechanics are unsung heroes of bike racing. Most people recognize the critical role they play in a rider’s success (it’s tough to win if your bike falls apart on your breakaway). But how many of us could name the mechanic supporting Andy Hampsten the day he attacked over Gavia Pass or the guy working the pits for Jonathan Page when he took Silver at Worlds? Good mechanics are perhaps most critical in cyclocross where harsh conditions and hard racing frequently result in destroyed derailleurs, flat tires, and worse. Tom Hopper is a mechanic for the Rapha Focus cyclocross team. In this interview he discusses what it takes to be a successful pro-team mechanic, his history in cycling, innovations in cyclocross technology, and more.

How did you get your start in cycling and as a bike mechanic?
Growing up in New England, my dad had some pretty nice Schwinn mountain bikes. This was back when Schwinn made higher end bikes. He did his fair share of riding, nothing super crazy but that really sparked my interest in the world of cycling.  A bike was always part of my youth, whether it was to get around town, back and forth from school or just to head out and explore the dirt roads with friends. Through high school I played football and basketball though, so didn’t really get into racing and working on bikes until the end high school and into college.  From then on, I knew I wanted to be involved with cycling and try to make a career out of it.

How did you break into working as a professional mechanic?
My start as a mechanic at the professional level was with Adam Myerson and his Nerac road team during the 2006 road season. It was a great experience and a confirmation for me that this was what I wanted to pursue. In Fall of 2006, I moved to Colorado and spent the winter living in the mountains. At the beginning of the 2007 season I got a call from Ben Turner, the Operations Manager for Slipstream Sports the management company for what is now the Garmin-Sharp Pro Cycling Team. They needed a second mechanic to help at the Tour de Georgia and I jumped at the opportunity. I had the chance to work with Daimeon Shanks, their mechanic at the time, and he really showed me the ropes that first year I worked for the team. We had some great times working the US circuit together. That following year I moved to Europe with the team and was based in Girona, Spain for 3 seasons working on the ProTour circuit. From there the rest is pretty much history.

On the job at a USGP race. Photo from Bike Radar.

Take me through a typical big race weekend. What’s your schedule, what work are you doing, etc?
For a domestic race, I generally fly in on a Friday–mid-day or evening time, have team dinner, and then get a good night sleep. Saturday mornings start at 7:30am with staff breakfast at the best local spot we can find. I’m a breakfast fanatic and traveling around the country we get a great chance to find some seriously good breakfast gems. After breakfast, we head over to the venue for 8:30-9 arrival. We finish setting up camp and then dive into prepping bikes for the first of two course previews.

Jeremy and the rest of the riders usually show up around 11 and get kitted up. Around noon, Jeremy and I have a discussion about tire selection and what pressure choice he is thinking about running that day. Over the past two years of working with Rapha-Focus, I’ve complied a spreadsheet of what the conditions have been at all of the US venues as well as what tires/pressures we went with. This information gives me a good starting point for equipment choices.

After a preview of the course and depending on how much time J has gotten on the bike, we have a quick debrief and schedule a few more laps right before the women’s race.  By now, the women are getting ready to start, Jeremy is getting into his pre-race routine and I’m going over last minute prep work on two or three race bikes depending on the conditions. 15 minutes before the race, I head up to the starting grid with a spare bike, wheels, and air gun just in case we need to make any last minute adjustments. I’ll usually map out my route to the pits from there. This gives me plenty of time to get there before the riders arrive on the first lap.

Once the gun goes off and the race is on, this is where you really earn your pay check. Especially if the conditions are bad (cold, muddy, rainy, etc). Bike changes and washing are all part of the job during the next hour of racing. And also communicating time gaps if need be. After the race, its straight back to the camp to wash and prep for the next day.  Sunday’s start is pretty much the same with less work in the morning but more work at night packing the truck after the weekend of racing. It is key to make sure all equipment is packed in the truck clean and bikes/wheels are addressed before their next race. The worst thing you can do is leave bikes and wheels dirty in the truck. Number one rule. Prepare now, not later.

Similarly, what does a pro mechanic during the weeks between races?
I’m lucky enough to be able to fly home to my family. My wife and I had a beautiful daughter last August so its really a blessing to be able to spend time with them between races. The team has a few mechanics that take turns driving the rig around the country. Hands down I think Rapha-Focus has one of the best support staffs domestically. During the week I also have a full time job working for a great bike shop in Boulder, Colorado.  Colorado Multisport has given me amazing flexibility during the fall and winter to work for Rapha-Focus. Most of the work I need to do for the team and Jeremy is done when I’m on the road, but if new bikes need to be built or wheels need to be glued, that’s all done at my home in Colorado between races. It’s important to get things sorted during the week and have your focus on the racing during the weekend.

Tom and Jeremy. Photo from Podium Insight.

Racers always get asked about US vs Euro cross. What about for a mechanic? Is life in a European race pit vastly different than in the US?
I think the biggest differences are resources and familiar faces when we work races in Europe. In the US, we have our full truck and trailer and everything we might need. When we travel to Europe we have to be smart about what we’re traveling with and make sure to pack efficiently. It’s also good to communicate with the rider about the possible course conditions and what he or she might need to be successful. Thats the key, having everything within reason for your rider. Keeping the stress level as low as possible. I don’t think the travel affects mechanics as much as it does the athletes. Its still all the same to me. If anything, I get less looks when power washing bikes in a self serve car wash in Belgium then I do washing a bike in front of my garage the US.  Cycling is more common in Europe then the US, its everywhere there.

Bike racing has allowed you to see a lot of the world. Do you have a favorite race you’ve worked?
Hands down it was Paris-Roubaix.  There isn’t anything else like it in pro cycling. When you work a classic like that in the ProTour its all hands on deck. That is the one race a year where all the staff are needed to work. You have 6-10 team cars all leapfrogging cobble sections just in case there are any mishaps. It’s truly amazing, so much history on those cobbles. Domestically I have such a soft spot in my heart for the Gloucester Cyclocross Grand Prix. Growing up in New England, that was always my favorite race to work and to race.

Disc brakes were the newest thing in cross this year, but it seems like they’ll be standard equipment within another season or two. What do you think is going to be the next revolution in cyclocross technology? 
Disc ‘cross bikes are definitely trending right now. And now with SRAM’s new HydroR, I don’t see disc brakes going away anytime soon. But for the next big thing in cross, I think SRAM’s new XX1 can fill that slot. It would basically eliminate the concern of shifting in the front all together. It’s not a totally new concept though, because about 6 years ago, Todd Wells used this set up and was probably a bit ahead of his time.  He made it cool and practical to run a 42 single with a guard. It was lighter and just simpler altogether.  A 1 by 11 can field the same range as a 2 by 10 and makes a lot of sense for ‘cross.

A little over a decade ago, a coworker convinced Elizabeth Kiker that her 10 mile commute was doable by bike. And in doing so, an advocate was born. Her informal advocacy eventually led her to work for the national bike advocacy organization the League of American Bicyclists, based in Washington, DC. She is now the League’s Executive Vice President, in charge of operations and fundraising. She also runs Every Bicyclist Counts, a side-project that memorializes and compiles data about cyclist deaths in the U.S. I spoke to Elizabeth about her inroads to advocacy, the League’s work, growing bicycling sustainably in the U.S., underdog biking cities, and more.

Let’s start with the personal. What’s your background as a cyclist, either for recreation or transportation?

I grew up in Houston, Texas, which isn’t that great for biking. But I did bike to school there and I loved it. And I crossed some really big intersections! This was long before Safe Routes to School transformed everything (though I’m not sure Safe Routes to School has transformed Houston yet). I just loved the freedom of it.

But, like most Texas children, I moved away from biking when I got my driver’s license. Then in college I started riding again. I kept riding for fun my whole life. At my last job, which was 10 years ago now, someone told me that I could commute to work. I said “you’re crazy. It’s 10 miles away, there’s no way you can commute on your bike.” He met me the next morning and showed me that you could. It turned out there was a trail literally from my door to the door of the office. I don’t know how I didn’t know that.

I just became obsessed. I started making everyone in the office ride. I bought a map and would meet them in Maryland or way out in Virginia and show them how they could drive their car to the trail then ride in, or ride on the road. Then we started a little bike club and I saw the listing for the League communications director. I wrote Andy (Clarke, League President) a very passionate letter saying “please (ITALICS), you must hire me!” and he did.

What about advocacy attracted you?

At first, I was more a passionate cyclist than I was an advocate, but when I joined the League I quickly learned. Also, I was a member of the Washington Area Bicycle Association and Potomac Pedalers, but I would just write a check and assume they were doing great work.

Honestly, it was the feeling of biking and the knowledge that I would be working on programs that would allow more people to bike; that would allow more people to have the transformative, “you can get there from here!” experience that I did. It was a really compelling reason. It still is a really compelling reason to get up and come to work.

Elizabeth, her son, and her pink Waterford. Photo from the Car Free American blog.

Bike advocacy is a broad term that means a lot of things to a lot of different people. What is the League of American Bicyclist’s version of advocacy and how would you describe the League’s work in general?

The League is working to make sure that everyone in the United States who wants to bike can bike and that it’s easy for them to. So if you’re feeling like you want to bike, but it’s scary, we want to have the solutions to that problem. That might be working to make sure people are able to ride their bike on trails or on roads that are wide enough with drivers that are used to seeing cyclists. We’re working through our programs.

We’ve got the National Bike Summit, which is coming up, so it’s first on my mind. We go to Congress and talk about how bicycling is transportation and it does matter and it solves so many of America’s problems from obesity to climate change. Our Bicycle Friendly America program has 242 communities nationally certified as Bicycle Friendly communities and working to be even better. We’re even launching a Diamond certification for communities that are already Platinum and want to do better.

Our education program is teaching people how to ride. We just did some starter videos on starting and stopping and signaling. Our whole work is to make it so people think they can go for a ride and use it to get where they want to go easily and without fear.

There seems to be very solid momentum for bikes-as-transportation right now in the US, even though it works out to about 1/2 of 1 percent of the population using bikes as transportation.

Yeah, if you look at the growth it’s amazing. 47 percent growth nationally. 80 percent in Bicycle Friendly communities! But yeah, if you look at it as a whole (of the mode share) it’s .5 percent. But the growth is there and we believe it will continue to grow and we’ll get to a bigger percent soon.

**What do advocates–formal or otherwise–need to do around the country to ensure that this is sustainable growth and not just another bike boom and bust like it was in the 70s?

Growing sustainably matters. And I think the most important thing that anyone that rides a bike needs to do is say to a friend, a neighbor, a partner “hey we can go by bike, let’s go together.” That kind of leading by example can show someone that you don’t have to take Interstate 66–the way that person did for me. There are lots of ways to get around and it’s usually more fun by bike.

The next thing people really need to do is get involved locally. Go to your local bike advisory committee meetings. If there isn’t one, go to your city council and ask for a bicycle advisory committee to be formed. It’s a small thing. It’s one night a month, but it really matters. I’m lucky enough to live in Arlington, Virginia where there’s a lot of staff dedicated to bicycling and they all show up to the advisory committee and have lots of great ideas and they’re great listeners.

And because I’m obsessed with the National Bike Summit right now, the other thing to do is to meet with your Representatives when they’re in town. Tell them that bicycling matters, it matters to you, it matters to your family and their work on bicycling will make a difference to you at home. It’s not just about meeting in DC, though we think you should come to the National Bike Summit, but also meeting locally. Take them on a bike ride. Show them an amazing trail that was put in, or a bike line, or a facility that helps you get where you want to go. It can’t be overstated how important those kind of connections are.

Elizabeth with advocates, athletes, writers and industry reps at the National Women Cycling Forum. Photo from the League’s blog.

In the same vein as the National Bike Summit, does the recent election present a good opportunity for bike advocates in the US and how does the League plan to capitalize on the opportunity?

It certainly presents a great opportunity. Right now we’re watching to see if Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will step down. He showed some real commitment and we’re not certain he’s going to retire and we’d love for him to stay. But who will be the next transportation secretary will really have a big influence.

We have some momentum because we were included in the last transportation bill, even though several leading republicans writing the bill said bicycling would not be in it. But other republicans stepped in and said “no, this is really important to my constituents” and made sure it stayed in the bill.

The next transportation bill is only 22 months away. It was a very short bill, just two years. So, having that kind of momentum will be really important. We’ll need to stay in touch with Republicans and Democrats on the Hill, Senators and Representatives and tell them how much we appreciate them including us in the last bill and how much we need them to include bicycling in the next transportation bill to really continue transforming America.

Cities like Portland, Minneapolis, and perhaps New York are seen as the gold standard of American bike cities because of their advocacy and infrastructure. What are some examples of other lesser known cities doing good things for bikes?

A few good examples come to mind. Long Beach, California is really transforming in a short time. Highlights are their downtown cycle tracks, public bike sharing, and strong partnership between local advocates and city leadership.

Arlington, Virginia. (my hometown) has a public bike share, is building a new bike park for kids to learn to ride (with a painted and signed loop), and has the most high tech and thorough bicyclist counting system in the country.

Rock Hill, South Carolina has a velodrome they built two years ago, and has based mixed-use development in the middle of single-track mountain biking trails and a world-class BMX track.

Omaha, Nebraska. does outreach to the business community to get more commuters riding (with incentives), offers lots of bicycling education classes, and is rapidly expanding their bicycle network.

Any final thoughts on bike advocacy in America?

I really would just encourage everyone who’s reading your site, who’s working as a frame builder, who’s taking pictures to get involved. Transforming America really does start with you telling your friend “let’s ride our bikes together.” Helping them get back on their bike, helping them pump up their tires and get going. It’s amazing what difference that will make. The League is working to give you the tools to do that. But on the most local level it’s up to all of us.

In 2010, BBC produced an hour long documentary about Simpson called Death on the Mountain. It not only looks at the fateful 1967 tour, but Simpson’s escape from poverty through cycling, his rise to fame, and the circumstances that lead to his unfortunate death. The program is filled with interviews with Simpson’s teammates and competitors and excellent footage of professional races from that era.