I’ve been on the road the past few weeks, playing music and riding in New York and Portland. Since biking is my business, I know lots of biking people in lots of towns. I often have the good fortune of having a fellow biker or few who can show me the ins and outs of two-wheeled travel in her town. Whether I want fast, pretty, safe or best-burrito routes, or need to know the friendliest bike shop, or where the cruiser ride meets, or whether the cops will bust me for running a stop sign, it’s great to have a local to show/tell me. (In NYC I had trouble following the bike map and later that day got to make a suggestion to my friend Paul White who runs Transportation Alternatives, the group that helps make the maps.) That makes the cycling experience broad and deep, and more likely fun or even wonderful.

But what about where I don’t know anyone? And what about everyone else who doesn’t know bike riders in a new town? In Denver, some friends of ours started a company that will show you around the bike paths, even take you mountain biking. What about a network of bikers who will in some way host other bikers? My buddy Jonathan, of the hip blog bikeportland, said it could be like the couchsurfing web site.

I wasn’t thinking anything that elaborate, yet. But I do want to re-invigorate the Xtracycle roots radical group, with the partial intention of creating a network of friendly bikers. If you’d like to offer your bike services in some way in your town, please join the list. We’ll figure out details as we go. In the beginning, I’m hoping it can serve as a place for potential new Xtracycle riders to find someone locally who can give them a test ride on their Xtracycle.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Bicycles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.