You have until March 31 to nominate your bike hero for an Alice Award, but why wait? Read about the people and groups who have already been nominated, and get inspired to nominate someone (or several someones) today.
List as of March 2, 2010:
Alix Land
Bend’s Community BikeShed
Bike Temple
Bud Rice
Ian Stude
Jim “K’Tesh” Parsons
Jonathan Maus, BikePortland.org*
Lake Strongheart McTighe
Matt Arnold
Michael Wetter
Michelle Poyourow
Nan Stark
Paul Adkins
Portland Sunday Parkways Team (Linda Ginenthal, Rich Cassidy and Janis McDonald)
* Former winner – not eligible to win again.
Alix Land had always been a recreational bike rider, but she really got into the sport when she saw her friend and neighbor, Brian Reynolds, training for Reach the Beach back in 2003. As it turned out, Brian had a very rare form of cancer that had gone to his lungs. She was so impressed by his positive attitude and what appeared to be his effortless, but substantial, fundraising that she took it as a personal challenge to do the same. Alix has been riding in Reach the Beach ever since, and has raised over $10,000 in the years she’s been riding. Last year she was the top fundraiser for Reach the Beach.
A little over a year ago, Bend’s Community BikeShed (BCB) began as a service-learning project for the Heart of Oregon Corps. The BCB has now developed into a community-wide program that serves the needs of the homeless, low-income individuals, and anyone who wants to learn how to repair and maintain their own bicycle. The program is staffed entirely by dedicated volunteers and operates under the umbrella of Bend’s nonprofit Community Center. The BCB provides bike valet services for local events, provides skills training for youth, maintains the fleet of bikes used for Safe Routes to School education, resells refurbished bikes and provides free bike vouchers to partner agencies, and conducts repairs on-site at area homeless shelters in addition to accepting walk-in clients three days a week.
We have Shift for bike fun, BikePortland for news, and the BTA for activism – the Bike Temple blends all three in an accepting, constructive, positive, and belief-based group that can bring in old and young, funnists and activists, fierce believers and the bike-curious. The Bike Temple has grown from an idea to a ride and now to a physical space where people gather for Thanksgiving dinner, indoor minibike cyclocross, and a free wrenchit shop. These folks really want to make biking a better place. With their fingers in the alternative activism of transcon PDX and huge support to the BTA’s Build It rally, their money is where their mouth is and where the rubber meets the road.
Bud Rice has spent thousands of hours leading hundreds of bike rides around the Portland Metro area. He has done this consistently, over many years, under the auspices of the Portland Wheelmen Touring Club, although membership in the club has never been a prerequisite to join any of the rides. His routes vary, and he seems to have an internal GPS for figuring the best way to get somewhere by bike. The rides therefore attract a lot of new riders, or people getting back into the activity. He deserves to be recognized for his many years of service, helping ease riders into the sport.
Ian is the guiding hand behind PSU’s bike program, which has seen massive success in the past couple years in cutting the number of students who drive alone to campus from from 44 percent in 1997 to 25 percent in 2009. Stude pushed the university to invest in biking, leading to the unveiling of a new, much-expanded campus bike co-op this year and $200,000 in new bike parking. Plus, he’s an awesome, diligent guy and a good story teller.
Jim lives in Beaverton and is passionately involved in bike advocacy work throughout the region, including Beaverton, Tigard, Tualatin and Portland. He is a reliable attendee of Bicycle Advisory Committee and city meetings in each of the above-mentioned cities, providing important input to policy makers about bike safety issues and bringing attention to troublesome spots along bike routes. City maintenance crews can count on Jim to let them know when an unsafe storm grate or pothole is likely to eat a bike wheel, when an overgrown tree needs pruning, or when a section of the road needs repainting or repaving.
Bikeportland.org is nationally and internationally relevant and powerful in the active transportation environment that continues to see an increase in the number of groups and movements. While it is unifying, the online blog has enhanced the cycling community and has created a forum where everyone can join in and voice their opinion too.
Lake spearheads the Active Transportation program at Metro. She has worked tirelessly to raise the awareness of active transportation as an important component of the overall transportation system. She has taken the Blue Ribbon Committee for Trails and built it into a strong advocacy group of business and community leaders. In 2009, Lake was the project lead for Metro’s TIGER grant program, which sought $98 million in federal funding to build bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in Hillsboro, N/NE Portland, Clackamas County, and a trail that will someday reach Mt. Hood.
A mother of one who has not owned a car for years, Lake is a passionate advocate for healthier communities and for a more balanced transportation system.
Matt has been a member of the City’s Bicycle Advisory Committee for a number of years and currently serves as chair. In his professional work as an urban planner, he travels throughout Oregon and the US to make sure his projects respect the unique needs of bicyclists and pedestrians. He has been part of critical transportation projects throughout the City of Portland, Of course, he is also a committed bicycle commuter, bicycling into work througout the year – rain or shine. In the year he organized the Bicycle Commute Challenge at SERA Architects, the organization had over 90% participation and logged more than 75% of their daily commute trips by bike. Not bad for an organization of over 90 people!
Mike conceived of the Metro Council’s Blue Ribbon Committee for trails and wrote the successful grant applications to the Marshall Fund Trans-Atlantic Partnership and the Oregon Community Foundation, which enabled a team of Portland area officials to make an inspection trip of bike facilities in Copenhagen and Amsterdam and then a reciprocal team of Europeans to visit Portland to coach us. Mike is also the prime mover behind the Intertwine, the new organizational coalition promoting the region’s system of parks, trails and natural areas. Without his inspiration and steady effort, these two significant Metro Council initiatives would not have gotten going.
Michelle is a talented and charismatic advocate whose work as an advocate and educator at the BTA has had a sweeping impact on the bike community in Portland and in Oregon. Over the past five years, Michelle has shared her collaborative spirit and passion for bicycling and bike-friendly communities, her extensive and unmatched knowledge about bike advocacy issues ranging from infastructure to safety and enforcement to education and encouragement, and her unique grasp of the political landscape to become a credible and convincing presence with any audience. In February, at Michelle’s urging, hundreds of grassroots advocates, business leaders, families, daily commuters, mildly curious commuteres, engineers, police officers even people who “don’t care about bikes” rallied City Council to adopt and fund the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030. She was also recently recognized as Honorary Portland Police Officer!
Nan Stark has used her bike as her main means of transportation fromt SE 54th to her job as a city planner in downtown Portland for the past 15 years (at least). Along with her full-time job at the City she is an active member of CISPES, (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador). She has lived and worked in El Salvador ensuring the people a fair election. Every week she rides her bike to take care of her two granddaughters. Nan walks the walk of sustainability.
Over the past three years Paul has helped to redefine the bike advocacy movement in Eugene. Paul served as GEARs Board President during a transition that could have been very contentious as Eugene Bicycle Coalition and the Greater Eugene Area Riders club merged into one. His strong vision of what an advocacy and recreational organization could do with greater strength in numbers and better effectiveness with vision and goals brought an important energy to the effort.
In 2008, Linda Ginenthal, Rich Cassidy and Janis McDonald brought the first successful Sunday Parkways to the United States. In conjunction with the International Car Free Conference, 15,000 north Portland residents walked, strolled, rollerbladed and, of course, biked 6 miles of streets open to people and closed to cars. Following this outstanding success, three Sunday Parkways in north, northeast and southeast Portland neighborhoods with 15,000, 22,000, and 25,000 fun-loving, active participants were planned and executed in 2009. The program continues to grow with five events planned in 2010. Ginenthal, Cassidy and McDonald work with the City of Portland Transportation Options Division.
