Friday, September 15, 2006

bike buddies

In a comment on a previous post we wistfully suggested,

It would be great if we had some volunteers willing to ride with people to show them how to do this and build some confidence. I'd like to support a "riding buddy" list on this website. Even better if a couple of police folks would sign up!

C.I.C.L.E. bike blog reports on the kind of thing we were imagining, matching up bike "students" with volunteer "coaches". Courses, class, and manuals are all great, but nothing beats "expert" advice on your own commuting route.

Maybe this is something that could be organized for Curb Your Car Month. Any volunteers?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems to me I've seen this sort of thing attempted in several places, but I can't remember if I've seen any report on how they've actually worked. I wonder if people use them?

(What's up with the never-updated "recent comments" thing, by the way?)

Unknown said...

I'd be willing to have my name and contact information on a list of 'commuting coaches' people could contact if that's what they thought was the missing ingredient to starting to commute by bicycle some number of days a week, but don't put me down as willing to organize the list.

I'm thinking maybe something along the lines of Running Fit's Running 101 program for beginning runners could be developed by one of the local bike shops. There's group rides leaving out of GLC&F, but they're not really geared towards a truly beginning cyclist who just wants to get comfortable cycling in a quasi-urban setting.

And I'll echo Bruce's question about the updating of the Recent Comments section. I didn't realize until now how very much I really needed to see the comments I make show up on that list ...