Exactly one week ago today I attended the West Virginia Cycling Symposium, well at least one day of it. Saturday, myself and Mike "Diesel" Boyes attended this event at the Charleston Civic Center. You may have read about it here or here.
Yes I know I'm writing about it late, but it's taken me a week to go thru the seventeen hundred pieces of free literature that I picked up there. Actually I picked up:
- 21 pieces of literature
- two stickers
- one luggage ID holder
- one pack of Jelly Belly Sport Beans
- Some Gu (actually I picked up some more that someone gladly gave me... thanks)
Great Schwag
BTW, I don't know what happened to my silly picture of literature, the thing rotated on me, and I didn't realize it. I'm too lazy to fix it, but if it grabbed your attention well then it did its job.
The Symposium was held in part because last year West Virginia was ranked .... I'm sure you can guess.... 50th. Yes that's right it's only 50th because they didn't count US territories like Guam and Puerto Rico. Anyhow the League of American Bicyclist ranked our fine state last. Hey, I'm sure when this study was going on we were still "Open For Business" and not Open To Bicycling.
I would have never suspected our backward state as being last in the bicycle rankings, maybe not first or even in the top ten, but last??
Why is this? I've been part of the Mountain Bike culture in the state for several years I used to race in the local series in the mid 1990's through early 2003. That was a pretty popular thing at the time, the West Virginia Mountain Bike Association (WVMBA) did bike advocacy, trail maintenance. Tried to get high schools involved. There was all sorts of things going on back then and those are just the few that I knew about.
We had the 24hours of Canaan/Timberline/Snowshoe putting W.Va and Mountain Biking on the forefront of tourism during early June.
We started seeing more and more of the Share The Road signs pop up. As my time as the Design Engineer for the Division of Highways in Charleston, I installed several of these in and throughout the Charleston area.
I even liked to say District One was ahead of the times as far as paving shoulders on roadways. As our district did it on several roads prior to the publication of the Shoulder Widening Guidance Memo of 2007. We were doing that.
So how the hell did we get last?
We have several rail trail projects in the state and are getting more and more it seems.
To understand last, you have to understand what the Bicycle League looked at when they did their study. They looked at access issues for everyday people, not the experienced cyclist. Why do kids not ride their bikes to school any more? Are there any bike racks at school. Does the state have a mandatory helmet law? What about allowing bicycles on state roads? Did you know that as a cyclist riding on the road it is currently against the law to ride the bike on the shoulder portion of the roadway? I didn't until Saturday. I couldn't believe it, I tried looking it up and couldn't find it but they say it's there.
They also took into effect what is the general perception of cycling in West Virginia? I give you the great picture here. Thanks Mike, that's twice I've used it now. How many times have you had something thrown at you while on a bike? Or had someone yell out the window at you.
It's not just that but how many people ride a bike to work? I know several people that work within just a few miles of the Capitol Complex.. do they ride? Nope, Do they Walk? Nope.
That's what the symposium was about... Raising Awareness of bicycling issues in West Virginia.
You can read some about it on the West Virginia Cycling Foundation's site here, or Dave Pray's blog here.
Other things to check out:
www.midlandtrail.com - you should really check this one out.
www.laurellodge.com- this place is evidently friendly to cyclist (well they better be because their brochure was in my schwag bag)
