BYKE BYTES: Bike More, Drive Less, Get Active

1. Bicycle-Friendly Tacoma Meeting August 9
2. More Safe Routes to School Trainings
3. Volunteers Still Needed for Tour de Fat
4. Spokane Bike Maps Available
5. Bikely: A Bike Route Mapping Tool and Library
6. IMBA Trail School Coming to Bellingham
7. Volunteer of the Month
8. Eat Your HandleBars!

Bicycle-Friendly Tacoma Meeting

The Bicycle Alliance of Washington and the Tacoma Wheelmen Bicycle Club want to hear from you! We're co-hosting a meeting on Wednesday, August 9 to hear your thoughts on what's good about cycling around Tacoma and where is there room for improvement. This is also an opportunity to meet Diane Wiatr, City of Tacoma's new Commute Trip Reduction Coordinator. Diane promotes bike commuting to 54 Tacoma employers and is interested in your views on bike facilities, movement, connectivity and safety. She will also plan Bike Work and Bike to School events for May 2007 and would appreciate your input! Refreshments will be provided.

Bicycle-Friendly Tacoma Meeting
Wednesday, August 9, 2006, 5:45 - 7:45 pm
Moore Library
215 S 56th Street in Tacoma

More Safe Routes to School Trainings

The Bicycle Alliance and WSDOT are hosting more Safe Routes to School trainings around Washington State in August. Focused on grant application, these 2-hour trainings are targeted for school districts, local public transportation partners and law enforcement. It's easy to Register on line. Additional details about these trainings and Safe Routes to School can be found on our Safe Routes to School website.

Volunteers Still Needed for Tour de Fat

The Bike Alliance still needs a few volunteers for Tour de Fat on Saturday, August 12. Beer servers are still needed from 3-6 pm and tear down assistance is still needed from 5:30-7:30 pm. To volunteer, contact Barb Culp at 206.224.9252 or barbc@bicyclealliance.org.

Tour de Fat, New Belgium Brewery's cycling roadshow, brings together bike enthusiasts and bon vivants of every stripe in an all-out ballyhoo of bikes and beer. Costumes and decorated bikes are the rule as the participants come for a casual ride, good music and entertainment, then stay, of course, for the beer. The Seattle event will be held at Adobe Quadrant in the Fremont neighborhood and proceeds will benefit the Bicycle Alliance and Bike Works.

Spokane Bike Maps Available

The Spokane Regional Bicycle Map has been updated and is now available at the Spokane Regional Transportation Council office and the bike shops listed below. You can also view or download the map from the SRTC website.

In Spokane/Spokane Valley:

Argonne Cycle, 3215 N Argonne Rd
Bicycle Butler, 6520 N Ash
Fitness Fanatics, 12425 E Trent
North Division Bicycle Shop, 10503 N Division
REI, 1125 N Monroe
Spoke 'N Sport, 212 N Division
Two Wheel Transit, 1405 W 1st Ave
Wheel Sport Central, 1711 N Division
Wheel Sport, 606 N Sullivan
Wheel Sport South, 2820 E 29th Ave

In Cheney:

Bicycle Time, 210 C Street

Washington State DOT hopes to release a new version of its statewide bike map in September or October of this year. Pierce County plans to issue an updated bike map in early 2007.

Bikely: A Bike Route Mapping Tool and Library

Thanks to Todd over at Cleverchimp for the heads up on Bikely. Bikely is an online route mapping utility geared towards bicyclists. Anyone can map out a route but the great thing is the routes are stored, shared and searchable. So it's not only a handy tool for mapping your own routes, but as more people use it, the library will become more and more useful.

As of July 31, 2006 there are 71 routes listed for Washington state and people are adding more routes every day.

Also, if you are at all interested in cargo bikes and or electric-assist motors for bikes or just plain general bikey stuff, check out Todd's Cleverchimp blog.

IMBA Trail School Coming to Bellingham

The International Mountain Bicycling Association's (IMBA) Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew will be in Bellingham August 10-13 to talk trails and teach folks proper trail building techniques. For more information and to register for the IMBA Trail Building School contact Darren Clark at Darren@clarkscycle.com.

Volunteer of the Month

Many people find creative and unique ways to support the Bicycle Alliance and help all Washington bicyclists. Steve Keithly has volunteered his time and talent as an electrician improving the Bicycle Alliance offices over the last year. We literally could not see what we are doing without Steve's skills! Steve proudly displays his Share the Road license plate on his Subaru and actively promotes the plate by distributing our flyers and cards to bike shops and at area trailheads.

The Bicycle Alliance is a non-profit VOLUNTEER POWERED organization. We work for you, but also, we NEED you. We have an ongoing need for office volunteers: data entry, filing and other tasks always need to get done. Our annual auction would not happen without over 100 people giving generously of their time. We need advocates in every corner of the state to work with government officials And there are always special tasks for special skills that can help the cause of bicycling throughout Washington.

The easiest way to get involved is to come to our monthly volunteer work PARTY. On the last Thursday of each month from 1pm to 8pm at our office in Seattle we have a workparty with lots and lots of yummy goodies (chocolate is a specialty), socializing and working to further bicycle advocacy in Washington. We would love to have you join us. Drop in on the last Thursday afternoon. We need your help. Call Mark at 206.224.9252 or email him at Mark's email to RSVP, to get directions or to get more information.

Eat Your HandleBars!

Andy Goulding's HandleBar Recipe:

1 huge spoonful of organic peanut butter
1 huge spoonful of organic honey
Dust heavily with organic flax meal
1 cup of dried organic cranberries
1 cup of organic granola

Smash in non-stick organic pan

Over 1100 Share the Road License Plates Sold!