There are 50+ images in the gallery.You can see them all by using the page navigation at the bottom of the post. Clicking on a thumbnail will enlarge the photos. I also posted the images on Tucson Velo’s Facebook page. Make sure to tag yourself in the photos.
Update: I’ve added links to photos and slide shows that other people took as well as a snippet of audio from Ken Scoville’s presentation at the bottom of this post. I’ll also add some of the photos to Wild West Ride gallery.
The first annual Wild West Bike Ride is in the books. It was a great crowd with a lot of awesome costumes. Between 30 and 40 people showed up, some with guns and cowboy hats and others with sock puppet steeds.
Check out the gallery for all the photos.
Thanks to all of you who attended the ride. A special thanks to Ken Scoville of Old Pueblo Walking Tours for the wonderful history lesson, Ordinary Bike Shop and PopCycle for the prizes and BICAS and Kylie Walzak for all your help.
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I got this in an email from Pam:
Pam wrote, “I love the fact that I captured that one amazing moment- it’s never gonna happen, ever again. There it is, that lady in her boots, a tall bike with a skull mounted on it and a tandem with smiling people with a sock puppet horse head, right in the middle of downtown Tucson. How freaking awsome is that?”
Awesome indeed! Thanks everyone.
There is only one day left to grab your garb for Saturday’s Wild West Bike Ride.
We’ll leave BICAS (44 West 6th Street) at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 27 and head Downtown.
The route will be about five miles and we’ll stop four times to get a brief historical synopsis of the things we’ll see along the route by historian Ken Scoville, who also does walking tours of Downtown.
We’ll end the ride at Hotel Congress for drinks and food on the patio where our guest judges will award prizes for best dressed guy, best dressed gal and best decorated bike. Prizes will include $50 gift certificates from Ordinary Bike Shop, a bikey plaque from PopCycle and a t-shirt featuring the ride logo. If you buy one of the t-shirts, 25 percent of the proceeds will go to BICAS.
Be sure to head to BICAS after dinner and drinks at Hotel Congress for the Bike In Movie night.
As always donations to BICAS are always appreciated.
See you there!
I took this photo heading home from work the other day:
Yep, that is cake on a bike. How else would you get your cake home?
Anyhow, I wanted to use this photo to remind TucsonVelo readers about the reader submitted gallery. Send in bikey photos from around Tucson and I’ll post them to the site with proper credits.
From Craigslist:
My white Montana sport 10 speed mountain bike was stolen on Feb. 2nd around 8:30AM, near speedway/harrison. It is all white, black handles and black seat. Says Montana Sport down the diagonal middle bar. It’s a woman’s mountain bike. If you have any information about my bike, or see it, please email me.
Thanks!
From Craigslist
Stolen early this week chrome Redline 24″ cruiser. Any info would be helpfull!!! reward if returned. Call ED 850-1052
From Craigslist:
I had a VERY LARGE black Trek 4500 alpha stolen from infront of Walgreens on Speedway and Country Club. The grips were black, but had green masking tape over them. Please help! I am 6’7″ and I think the bike was somewhere around 62cm or 25″, something like that! If you even see it on the streets, please let me know. I WILL find this bike, and its infuriating because I just had my ipod touch stolen as well. Thanks to all help!
From Craislist:
Some misguided soul stole my silver Raleigh mountain bike and left a single speed ( “fixie” style) flat bar bike with a blue Raleigh frame in its place. The blue framed bike might have been stolen too. If you can describe the bike that was left, well enough to prove that it belongs to you, we can arrange to get it back to you. If you just wanted to trade bikes for a while and want to return the mountain bike and get your bike back, fine. Email , leave a phone number and I’ll call you.
For the upcoming year, El Grupo, will be riding with a big name in cycling behind them.
At the beginning of February, Carmichael Training Systems signed on to sponsor the youth cycling team for the year, but Jason Tullous Tucson’s Trainright general manager and head coach said he hopes the sponsorship will continue beyond the year.
“Right now it is setup for the term of the year,” Tullous said. “I hope that it continues to go longer. This is something I would like to see as a long term relationship.”
El Grupo coach, Ignacio Rivera de Rosales, said people are starting to notice what El Grupo is doing and the donations and sponsorships are starting to reflect that.
According to Rivera de Rosales, Carmichael Training Systems have provided the group with indoor trainers. They will also allow the team to use pop-up trailers for events, provide VO2 and lactic threshold testing as well as support the team with training schedules and help out on rides. They may even allow some of the riders to participate in their camps is they have open slots.
Tullous said they also donated a little money to help with tires and entry fees for races.
Carmichael Training Systems moved here two and half years ago, but Tullous said they haven’t been as involved with the community as they would have liked.
“In El Grupo and how their program is going, it offers us as coaches a really good opportunity to be involved not only with the club, but with the growth of younger riders,” Tullous said.
Rivera de Rosales said they will help Carmichael Training in any way they can, including putting their logo on El Grupo’s jerseys and helping out at the grand opening of their new store. But Tullous said they don’t expect a lot in return.
“Really, they are the future of the sport and if we can help develop them in some matter, that is what we see as the greatest benefit,” Tullous said. “El Grupo has been developing over the years. They have grown a lot. I think they are at a good point where our help can help them make the next move in the direction they are going.”
Several BMX riders met with the Tucson Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee’s BMX subcommittee last night to discuss what they want to see happen for BMX riders in Tucson.
According to Mike Hines, who has become a spokesperson for BMX riders, for now, they just want a legal place to ride.
Hines said he is working with the Kory Laos foundation to build a concrete BMX park near the Rillito River and Shannon Road, but that project hinges on funding from a bond measure that will go before the voters in 2011.
Realistically, Hines said, the Kory Laos park won’t be finished for five years or more. “We can wait that long for a place to ride,” he said.
In the meantime, they want to get approval from the city to continue to develop a spot they have been riding near Broadway and Park.
Watch this video about the creator of the dirt jumps:
“We want them to not plow over it,” Hines said. “Just make the zone a legal spot. All we need is a sign. We’ll maintain it ourselves.”
According to Hines, the dirt area has the support of the neighbors with the condition that the riders keep the area clean.
“They are completely 100 percent behind it,” Hines said. “They don’t want it removed.”
“The community there is so positive,” one of the BMX riders that attended the meeting said. “I was totally blown away by how many people were there. A lot of people there were parents who had brought their kids there to ride.”
Currently, the only facility for BMX riders to legally ride on in Pima County is at the Continental Ranch Skate Park in Marana.
According to Hines they were going to build a temporary dirt park at the future Kory Laos memorial BMX park but were shut down.
“We already had the dirt being dumped out there, we had a 300 gallon tank out there, we had people ready with shovels and they shut it down,” Hines said. They want a liscensed architect to do the drawing of dirt jumps.”
“It is like having one of us design a skyscraper,” one of the riders said.
Hines and the BMX subcommittee are planning on meeting with city officials to try to get approval to continue developing the area near Broadway and Park.
“That is our goal right now,” Hines said.
According to Hines, Rocky, the creator of the jumps is getting worried about them.
“As more and more people start going out there and as popular as it is getting, he has really gotten stressed about it,” Hines said.
The BMX subcommittee of the Tucson-Pima County Bicycle Advisroy Committee is having its first meeting since being formed in late 2009.
The meeting will take place at Raging Sage Coffee Roasters tonight at 6:15 p.m.
There is a call to the public on the agenda.
Also included in the agenda;
- General Discussion Topics of interest to the group:
- Ideas to increase BMX parks in Pima County
- Presentation for meeting with the county
- Proposed BMX park “Rocky’s Jumps” at the end of lost Barrio
According to revised numbers, Tucson saw a 26 percent decrease in bike riders during the 2009 bike count.
Ann Chanecka, the Pima Association of Governments planner who is in charge of the bike count, said a mistake in the spreadsheet created a count that was higher that it should have been.
According to the report, 7,722 cyclists were counted at 43 locations in 2008. In 2009 5,696 cyclists were counted at the same locations, which is a loss of 2,026 cyclists 0r 26.4 percent.
Chanecka believes the weather was a factor in the decrease, noting in the report:
The first day of the count, Tuesday Oct. 27th had normal weather for Tucson for late October, However, a cold front came through that night and temperatures dipped to 35 degrees in the morning, which broke record lows for the next two days of the count. The record lows likely affected the data for this annual count.
When the original numbers were released, Chanecka said they had some indications that the weather may have affected the count by about 20 percent. Here is what I wrote originally:
In a phone conversation, Chanecka said they do have some data that suggests the weather may have affected the count by as much as 19 percent.
They compared the counts from Tuesday, Oct. 27 and Thursday, Oct. 29 at Park and University, which was the most trafficked intersection. There were 19 percent more riders that came through that intersection on the pleasant morning than the much colder morning.
According to Chanecka, there were two other sample locations that were recounted on warmer days, which showed jumps of 25 and 50 percent, but she said felt more comfortable with the Park and University count because it had the highest sample size.
Tucson isn’t the only place where ridership declined. Portland saw its first decline in five years. Although, with 5-8 percent declines, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic and it was still higher than their 2007 numbers.
In addition to the weather, lower gas prices may have contributed to this year’s decline.
The rest of the numbers:
In the numbers comparing 2008 to 2009 at the 43 locations that were counted both years, female ridership saw a slight increase from 26.6 percent to 29.2 percent.
Helmet use declined 3 percent, but wrong way riding and sidewalk riding saw slight declines of .08 percent and 1.3 percent respectively.
Fifty six additional locations were counted in 2009 because of extra volunteers. Overall, 9796 cyclists were counted at 99 locations.
Download the preliminary report here.
I ran across this video on twitter.
24 Hours in the Old Pueblo from Vladimir Chaloupka on Vimeo.