NBG's 2008 Mayors' Ride Heating Up!!

A) Outgoing Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko to ride/kick off 2008 Mayors' Ride
B) Palo Alto to San Francisco ride registration opens - FREE
C) Coast to coast Mayors' Ride map routing help needed all over the US
D) Christy Wolf Creates New Map Banner for BikeRoute.com
E) Christy Wolf's New Banner now flies on the Busycle
F) State Capitol to the American River Jed Smith Trail now on line
G) Wai Chong gets Sacto to Folsom route on line
H) Beauty of Sacto to Folsom ride now much easier to enjoy - 1/2 as long!
I) Sacto to Folsom excerpt from my book
J) Randy Mitchell to HiWheel Sacto to Folsom River again
K) Marty Wilson to HiWheel Sacto to Folsom River again
L) Mike Damon submits Folsom to Reno route
M) Mike Damon to ride Folsom to Reno again - in O N E day!!
N) Annual Oakland to Berkeley ride opens for registration
O) Riders/Routes Needed for Berkeley to Napa, Napa to Sacto - Go all the way, get a video?
P) “How America can Bike and Grow Rich, The NBG Manifesto” Description now on line
Q) Boston and SF top 3 Greenest cities in America
R) Amazing Bike Acrobat Ines Brunn may perform for us
S) Busycle Community Ride w/Paul Gregg Horn and UltraStar, A-ooga horn
T) Wai Chong on the known knowns & unknown unknowns


A) Outgoing Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto, the two wheel power house who moved a lot of mountains for cyclists here and on the SF peninsula during her one year term, is going to help lead the charge from Palo Alto City Hall to San Francisco City Hall on Sunday April 27th. She will be helping us kick off our 6th Annual National Mayors' Ride.

B) If you want to join Yoriko and the rest of us on this flat 34 mile ride from Palo Alto to San Francisco, you can read all about it at our Evite - while you're there, sign up to join us!!

C) If you are out there on the east coast, we still need your help getting our coast to coast Mayors' Ride route mapped. This is also true for a fair amount of the Midwest and Far West. Come on fellow NBG Giants. Own a piece of the NBG Rock. Go to http://www.bikeroute.com/brdc and please help us connect the Mayors' Ride cities you see at our schedule/scorecard..

D) Christy Wolf of yourbrandhere.com created a beautiful banner that now flies proud across the top of all of our BikeRoute.com pages

E) It also now stretches across the top of our Busycle!! Christy, gave us the art work for free! WOW!!

F) Our route from the CA State Capitol to the American River and the world class Jedediah Smith Recreation Trail is now on line. See it HERE . Many THX to Bruce Morrical of the Sacramento Bike Hikers for helping me figure it out with the very detailed cue sheet he emailed to me.

G) Not only is Wai Chong riding the river with us again, but he plotted the route we will be using along the American River from Sacramento to Folsom. See it HERE!!

H) The biggest news about the route Wai plotted for us is the fact that it is now half as long! This is particularly important to those HiWheel cyclists who have stayed away because they are not sure if their fitness or their antique machines are up to the task. Now instead of being tortured in the hot July sun for what was 66 miles our first two years when we stopped in Davis and 51 miles last year, we now have a shorter relay in the cool of Spring that far more people can participate in. As such we will be able to show a greater number of cyclists the consummate, unparalleled river trail beauty that cyclists along this part of American River get to revel in every day!

I) Here is how I describe it in my book, “How America can Bike and Grow Rich, The National Bicycle Greenway Manifesto” :

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And it was easy to understand why. A true bicycle heaven indeed, we all looked forward to doing that ride. Nor did it matter which way we rode, While most years, we did the slight downhill direction from Folsom, we were going this way because of our ride ended in Boston this year.

Even though the surface of the trail was city like asphalt, we still looked forward to the escape it would provide. Soon we would all be on a path that felt miles from nowhere even though the life of busy cities lay just beyond the river bluffs. We would look out on a peaceful summer-time river that gently poured over the rocky bottom it often exposed.

Along the way, we would ride through a few lawn covered parks, cross this, the American River, on a historic metal bridge and be entertained by all the people frolicking in the many different swimming holes along the way. As the trail neared the base of the Sierras we would find ourselves passing through miles and miles of untouched open space where even the occasional tell tale sign of human life, such as a far away building or road, had completely disappeared from sight.
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J) Randy Mitchell who you see pictured here doing his coffin trick during our 2006 San Jose to Palo Alto relay is coming back for more of the river. A college professor and former professional stunt man, Randy would have been on the river ride no matter how long we ran it, He is bringing his recumbent trike buddies with him this year.

K) To give you an idea how much people enjoy their American River trail ride experience, Marty Wilson is coming back once again for his fourth time! What's more is the fact that as one of the bicycle highlights of his year, he was this year's first Mayors' Ride sign up -- for any of our relays. A powerful cyclist, like Randy above, he is loved by everyone who meets him.

L) In between his fast moving job and the MBA program that eats up the rest of his time, Mike Damon found time to draw up a beautiful Folsom to Reno route. He even fleshed it out with a lot of detail for any of those daring enough to undertake this challenge. 164 miles, it is what Don Loomis rode for us in 2004 and what I plan to "ride" in 2009. I qualify the word ride with quotes because I do not know how much of this stretch I will be walking. I plan to run the excerpt from my book at our schedule/scorecard that discusses the history of an important part of this relay link - the Mormon Emigrant trail, once an important doorway to the west,. See the epic route Mike drew up HERE.

M) What's especially important to note about the route Mike Damon plotted for us above is the fact that he once again plans to cross the Sierras on it in ONE day. Compare that to the several weeks it used to take back in 1846 and the three to four days I have planed for this stretch when I ride it in 2009. Besides the 164 mile distance, there are many, many thousands of feet of climbing, while on one uphill ascent, there is no water or services of any kind for 35 miles.

N) This year's eight mile Oakland to Berkeley ride is now open for registration. A fun ride that showcases some landmark bicycle infrastructure and even has us riding along the edge of the San Francisco bay at one point, we expect to be joined for part of the ride by Oakland councillor Nancy Nadel and Car Free Berkeley councillor Kris Worthinton. To se the route and/or to sign up, go to the ride Evite

O) Once our ride reaches Berkeley, we need a cyclist(s) to carry the figurative NBG torch to Napa. Ditto for Napa to Sacto. As well, we need the route for this connection. Who can go to http://www.bikeroute.com/brdc and help us out with a route?

Who can go to http://NationalBicycleGreenway.com/Forms/newriders.php and let us see if they are qualified to ride any of those relay connections for us? Maybe even ride from coast to coast like Scott Campbell did for us in 2006? If that person is you, we'll even produce a video/slide show for you like this one that we have on line for Scott: Scott Coast to Coast 2006

P) If you want to see what my book, “How America can Bike and Grow Rich, The National Bicycle Greenway Manifesto” is all about, I finally put the description on line. See it HERE

Q) Boston, the birthplace of American cycling and our National Mayors' Ride destination city is ranked number three in terms of green by "Popular Science" magazine. Mayor Tom Menino has been the driving force behind how Beantown is now becoming seen by the rest of America. Number one is Portland, OR while San Francisco, the start of this year's Mayors' Ride is Number 2. Read about this excitement HERE

R) I just heard from artistic celebrity cyclist, Ines Brunn! I had asked her if she would like to perform at our 2009 ride send off and she tells me she is very interested! And she says may even get out here, from China where she lives, to ride the Busycle if she has any business trips to the US to make in the interim.

Do get a look at her web, what she can do on a bike will take your breath away. There is not a man alive, that I know of, who can do more than a few of her tricks, much less a fully choreographed show full of them. You don't want to miss this: http://trick-bike.com

S) Read about our most recent Busycle ride HERE, A Community Ride to help kick off the Tour of California bike race it was made all the more official by Paul Gregg and his escorts, Nathan, Benjamin and Nick. At every intersection, Paul and his team could be seen stopping all the traffic so we could get through, And they do so with with skill and a growing arsenal of tools.

First there was the UltraStar, the kind of flashing yellow beacon you see on forklifts and city vehicles. It is powered by the motorcycle battery he carries in his panniers. To this reflective safety vests began to appear on our ride chauffeurs. An Aooga horn that gets it power also from the motorcycle battery is the most recent addition. When cars encounter Paul and his team, they don't mind yielding as they watch us parade by!! Indeed Paul has taken the term escort to a whole new level. Now all he needs is an amplified megaphone.......

T) I'd like to close this newsletter with some wisdom from former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It was in Wai Chong's .sig:

"...there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also
know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some
things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we
don't know we don't know."