Road I Cycling Class

[Mr. Bloom]

Friday night, SilverSon stopped one foot short of an adolescent tantrum over not wanting to do the Road I Cycling class in Bloomington yesterday. After about 30 minutes of adolescent posturing, he agreed to participate.

Last night, at dinner, he said "Thanks for making me go"

Here's the plug:

ROAD I is a great refresher for experienced cyclists on the evolving place that bikes play on the road, the rights that cyclists have...and the RESPONSIBILITY we have for our safety and that of the folks around us. We have to MAKE SAFETY HAPPEN!

I'm very comfortable in traffic...but after comfort comes cockiness. I know I occasssionally need a "back to basics" kick in the pants to keep me straight My guess is that many of you need that too...or avoid traffic at all costs.

Here's a list of classes offered by the League of American Bicyclists:
http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/e...on/courses.php

Seek out an LCI in your area and see if you can help organize and participate in the these classes.

The one that happened here occurred because I contacted local LCI's from this list...and asked them for the course:
http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/e...e_schedule.php

My fear is that these programs don't get the notoriety they deserve and not enough folks know that they're even happening. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the League does a very great job of getting all the course events on their own website.

I encourage each of your to seek this out and make it happen in your area.

[KnottedYet]

There is a grand total of ONE class being offered in the state of Washington this month, according to the LAB site. And it's offered tomorrow.

Mr. Silver, how did you get the class started? Do I just pick an instructor at random and ask them to teach Road 1 somewhere in Seattle? Do I need to rent a facility to hold the class or arrange a location?

ETA: these videos aren't LAB, but they are bike stuff: http://bicycling.511.org/traffic.htm

[malkin]

Road I is definitely on my to do list. Since most of my riding is stoking the tandem, my bike handling skills have gotten worse and worse. It is to the point where I find myself wondering "When are we going to stop?" and I realize that there is no we, and I will stop when I apply the brakes.

[Mr. Bloom]

I emailed all the guys in our area in one email so they'd know what I was doing and could collaberate on a response.

I don't think that the one we did yesterday was on the schedule (for reasons I don't fully understand), but it happened...

[Melalvai]

I hope you got a good turnout despite it not being on the list. I think I told my sister about it but she hasn't mentioned it so I'm guessing she didn't do it. I know she's doing an internship this summer, not quite as insanely busy as before the semester was over, but her kitty died a couple weeks ago and that was a bit of a distraction.

Did Silver teach it? By herself or with another LCI, or a non-LCI helper? How did it go? Cyclists taking the course can get awfully argumentative.

Keep passing the dates of these along to me, and I'll keep pestering my sister about taking the class. Her boyfriend would benefit too, they both bike a lot to save money and not use gas.

[Geonz]

Around here they are few and far between because it's really hard to get any kind of turnout. However, it looks like we'll be having one in mid July (So if you're near CHampoo-Banana, c'mon over!) I've done it before but I'll do it again. You can *always * learn somehting.

[Mr. Bloom]

Did Silver teach it? By herself or with another LCI, or a non-LCI helper? How did it go? Cyclists taking the course can get awfully argumentative.

Silver assisted one of the local LCI's. It went well. The group was varied from SilverSon to a self professed "Little Old Lady" (who wasn't).

Around here they are few and far between because it's really hard to get any kind of turnout. However, it looks like we'll be having one in mid July (So if you're near CHampoo-Banana, c'mon over!) I've done it before but I'll do it again. You can *always * learn somehting.

Sue, one of the participants here came from C-U. He lives in Monticello; his name was Tim. He wants to get LCI certified so that he can support programs locally.