Foreword
Preface

1. San Jose, Questing to be Top US Bike City
with Why we do Mayor’s Rides, Why Eagle
2. Palo Alto to San Francisco
with Why bikes are good business for cities, Benefits of HiWheel bike
3. The Amazing San Francisco Bay to Beautiful Oakland
with NBG Hubs, Recycled bike industry
4. Berkeley to Wine Country, Napa, Calistoga
with Biking Program for Drunks
5. Davis To Gold Country, Sacramento, Folsom
with The American River Parkway - World’s top bikeway
6. Reno, an Excellent Biking City
with Where Greg Lemond Grew his Greatness
7. Loneliest Hwy to Salt Lake City
with When its boom towns boomed
8. Wasatch and Rockies to Denver
With climbing the highest continuous highway in USA, Trailridge Road,
at 12,193 feet
9. Omaha, Important Doorway to California
with How Platte River Basin settled West
10. Des Moines
with Angel Investors and the Steve Jobs Apple PR Example
11. Chicago – Keeping its Rich Bike History Alive
with Bicycle king when Schwinn was king
12. Indianapolis, Most Bikeable Downtown in World
with Home of NBG, Greenway Capital of America
13. Cincinnati, Sustainable/Beautiful
with Mayors’ Rides as Survivor TV
14. Columbus, a Green Leader
with Trading Gym for HiWheel Leadership
15. Pittsburgh, Surreal Beauty, Steep Streets
with Humiliation of Geo Washington, Birth of Oil Industry & Richest Men
of all time
16. Washington, DC
with End of the Ride, Symbolic TransAm Destination

Appendix

Revised HBGR Afterword, NBG 10 yr Plan. 12/2025
Lincoln Highway

Back Cover -

1 Why the National Bicycle Greenway Follows the Path it Does Chris Katt *
2 Why our SF - DC Connection is Important to Cyclists Everywhere Larry Varney*
3 NBG Anchor Cities and why these population centers will want Bicycle visitors Tom Ayres *
4 Why the NBG Moved to Indianapolis Tim & Lisa Coop Pfeiffer *
5 Rebranding Indianapolis Chassidy King, Kings Landing Real Estate *
6 Indianapolis Cultural Trail (only Downtown Greenway in World) Don and Dolly Craft *
6A Downtown Greenways Bicycle Garage *
6B How Indianapolis NBG Hub will Bring About SF to DC Network of Hubs Greg Lightfoot *
7 NBG Hubs CindyThornberry Bushey *
8 How Virtual Tours & NBG Hubs will Create our Downtown Greenways
9 POI (Point of Interest) Maps Susan Goodbear Rumsey *
10 NBG Membership Campaign
11 NBG Lodging Discount Program and How it Will Stimulate Downtown Cycling
12 NBG Merchant Discount Program and How it Will Make the Streets Safer for Cycling 1 of 2
13 NBG Merchant Discount Program and How it Will Make the Streets Safer for Cycling 2 of 2
13 Anchor City Biking Report Cards (w/Making Airports Accessible)
14 The Importance of a PR Firm for the NBG and for Cyclists Everywhere (25 pgs)
15 How PR Firms Built Computer Industry Dialogue - HBGR excerpt
16 National Mayors Rides as a Survivor-like TV series

Appendix

Martin Krieg NBG Story - Marking Time for a Result
If Money Were No Object - if someone gave me a blank check
Positions to be filled
Revenue streams
Book Two Overview
NBG Hall of Fame & pre-cell phone Coast to Coast TransAm cyclists
Acknowledgments - 40 Years of Authority
Dream Weavers
Possibility Thinkers

* Chapter Sponsors

Once our PR firm establishes interest in the rides people are doing to our Anchor Cities, it will engage the interest of a screenwriter(s) who will turn bike trips across America on our route into a weekly television show on a par with the Survivor series. Here we can even resurrect our annual National Mayors’ Rides. They are a perfect forum for such a television broadcast. Here for example is the piece I wrote for my book, “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich”.

Later in the afternoon, another round of Busycle rides was held at the nearby, stunning Millennium Hotel. There, almost a hundred more people joined in the fun as Queen City Bike, an organization committed to making Cincinnati as bike friendly as possible, let their membership know. The laughter was non-stop before another NBG Day came to an end.

As we gave our last demonstration ride, several of the people who had climbed aboard were talking about their wanting to get home so they could catch the latest episode of Survivor. According to them, it was supposed to come on right after a pro football game that was supposed to be ending pretty soon. Even though none of us were regular TV watchers, this was one show all of us were familiar with.

As soon as we got back out to our bikes, Skot remarked, “Those Survivor guys ‘otta be watching our ride on their TV sets.”

“Yea, I was kinda thinking the same thing,” Don added. “I watched that show one time. Seemed kind of silly for them to create these fake movie sets in those far away places when there’s all kinds of people doing adventure all around us. Guess it just would be a lot harder for them to package it for a TV Show.”

“Hey, we make the nightly news after most of our Mayor’s receptions and people always seem interested in what we’re doing. I mean we’re colorful with all these different bikes. And look at us. It looks like we came in from the jungle as we meet with all these people who come out of climate controlled cars and buildings. I wonder if we really can make our annual Mayors’ Ride into one of them reality TV shows?” I asked.

“We could begin by showing these guys going to a bike shop and getting the application for the Mayors’ Ride. And they could be talking about which relay legs they hope they get picked for,” Virginia offered.

“Yeah, well I’ll tell ya, every time I get new riders to join me I gotta hold their hand when they fill out your application form,” Skot began. “You’d laugh if you saw how they wanted to answer some of your questions. The Paschal must know what you want to hear because you always pick my guys. We could have this big build up with dese guys filling out questionnaires to see if they get picked.”

“I don’t know, I think a good picture helps. I was at the NBG office one time when they had this one applicant putting his bike in the back of a Humvee. I don’t think he got picked,” Don said.

“Yeah we could do a scene where they go out and do practice shots and talk about which picture they should send in or something,” Bill added as he used his bungee cords to tie a loaf of bread on to the top of the small load he was carrying.

“I think a cool scene would be for them to go into a library to print out a new map from our on-line map interface,” Virginia suggested. “And then..”

“Hey wait a sec, what’s supposed to be wrong with their old one?” Skot interrupted.

“Oh, we’d have to have a scene where it fell in the cameire the night before.” I volunteered, “or it got all sticky and stained from eating the blackberries they picked from the bushes along the roadside. We could come up with something. But no, we could have them going over the route they want to take as one of them jokes about the days not so very long ago where they had to ask car drivers what the roads they wanted to use were like. We could have them marveling at how all the roads at our site are now specced out for cyclists with traffic volumes and hill profiles and shoulder conditions. It’d be really great if we could figure out some way to plug at least some of the advertisers they’d be seeing on the map banners too.”

“They wouldn’t do that on reality TV. Then it’s not real. From what I’ve seen you have to wait until the commercial until they remind you that the story you are watching is a promotion for advertisers,” Don said.

Busy trying to get my trail mix to fit in one bag, I rolled my eyes as a couple of noisy motorcycle engines fired up. “Man is nothing sacred to those guys? I thought when I got out of Santa Cruz I was done listening to them. But they love terrorizing nice places, I mean what’s wrong with quiet?”

I could see that everyone agreed with me when Bill kept our TV fantasy alive, “I think the mornings are important to show. If the camera crew is awake enough, they can show us getting up and out of our tents and slogging through our morning chores of getting the little village we made the night before broken down, and oh yeah, we should show how we set up camp too. But I’ve always thought it would be funny to see what I look like when I’m half awake and scrunching things up so they’ll fit on my bike again. We could even show the delegation of duties. You know one of us could be getting the water for oatmeal, one of us could be firing up the stove and one of us could be studying the maps. And on NBG Day we could show the meeting we have right before we leave where we talk about the towns we gotta hit and when we gotta hit em so we are not late in the big cities.”

“Hmmm, maybe on NBG Day they could interview some of the younger riders so they can show what they are going through before they are in the spotlight and all the TV cameras and reporters want to know about them and their ride. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to show the nervousness some of them experience before meeting the Mayors,” Don said with a smile in his voice.

“Heck if we’re gonna show detail like that, we should also show them passing out their NBG business cards. And we could have them talking about the NBG when they visit certain stores and stuff. We could even have them stop and tour an advertiser of ours,” I said, always keeping in mind how we could support our sponsors to get such a possibility paid for.

On a roll, I kept introducing new possibilities from the business plan I had spent many years writing. “You know how they shift scenes in movies and stuff, we could even bring the NBG Hubs into this. We could show how everyone at the NBG Hub each Mayors’ Ride city has is going around cleaning up and getting their operation ready for our visit. And then we could tour each Hub’s bike museum and visit them when they are getting their meeting hall ready for some kind of community event they are hosting there that night.”

“Didn’t I see that you wanted to hold the Mayor’s press conferences at the Hubs? Why don’t we hold the one for each city’s NBG Day there and film that?” Don offered.

“That’s only gonna happen if they have something else going on at City Hall. We do our NBG Days at City Halls to give them a sense of place; to associate them with the symbolic center of the city.”

“Good point but hey if we’re gonna cover more than just the NBG Day reception, since the cities know they are going to be on TV, we could show how they are making the routes we’ll be on look all pretty before we get to City Hall. We could have one of the photographer guys go ahead of us by a few weeks or months and catch some of these city workers in action while they are restriping a bike lane or something, That should be pretty easy to coordinate with their Public Works department,” Don said as he scratched his head. “How ‘bout filming them filling a pot hole or fixing a traffic light sensor?”

“Whoaa,” I began, “if we’re gonna go that far, if we can get one of the Mayor’s offices to cooperate, why don’t we see if they’ll let us talk to their staff. The TV guys can interview them and ask them what all they are doing to get ready. We can show the Mayor’s staff alerting their contacts at the newspapers and TV stations and going through the checklist we send them. Besides the basic stuff of making sure they have a digital camera and podium there, we could show them talking about how involved they want to get. Whether they want to do a police escort for us. Which organizations they are going to invite to speak and for how long. Whether they are going to have storyboards to talk about the bike projects they are working on. We could even show them worrying if the riders are going to be on time or if they’ll find the staging area they are supposed to be meeting everyone at for the couple blocks long ride into City Hall. In a perfect world, we could do one of the cities where the Mayor rides in with us.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Skot called out. “Why don’t we get ‘em to film us as we queue up for our ride from dem parks they have us wait at until those news guys and the Mayor are all ready at City Hall. Sometimes we’re there for a long time. You know we could be talking to dem bike cops that are gonna give us a police escort while we’re waiting. They could like listen in on our group leader when he’s talking to the Mayor’s staff on his cell phone. Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be wild if we had a woman ride leader?”

“What do you mean,” Virginia teased, “I thought I was your leader. “

“No offense,” Bill began “but we’re lucky if we get women on any of these relays. But I’ll tell ya what I like about these Mayors’ Rides,” Bill continued, pausing for a moment to make sure everyone was listening. “I really think it would be great if they could film us going past those banners that welcome us.”

“You mean ones that say this city or that city NBG Day, the ones that that hang on lamp posts?” Don asked.

“Hmmm, how about bus stops that read, ‘We support the National Bicycle Greenway”. And hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could get our message on to the side of a few trains?” I offered.

“You mean like those railroad cars that are painted all gawdy like for Walmart or something? I don’t think so,” said Skot.

“They don’t have to be all these bright colors and busy looking,” I began, “we could be classy. We could paint each car different. One could be cyclists riding by a mountain lake with the words ‘National Bicycle Greenway’ tastefully inscribed in the corners. We could have ‘em riding in a city scene in another. And maybe across a bike bridge like that suspension Bike Bridge they just built over the Missouri River in Omaha...”

100 miles more to Columbus, Ohio...

One of the biggest component pieces to making a coast-to-coast National Bicycle Greenway a reality, is for our organization to retain the services of a top-flight Public Relations Firm. It is rare the person who does not agree with me that a National Bicycle Greenway would be a great thing for America. In fact, over the last 40+ years of my pushing for the NBG, people from all walks of life are always happy when they hear that I am working on such a thing.

But it has not become an actuality because there are no dollars pushing it. And yet if we can get a Public Relations Firm saturating the media with why such a bicycle arterial is important, and how it can revitalize America, a groundswell of businesses and people will wonder what can be done to make it real. Learning that there is a plan in place, this book, to bring it about, they will open up their checkbooks to help usher it into form.

In my book “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich” (HBGR), I talk about Chiat Day, BBDO and Regis McKenna. Three high profile Public Relations Firms, they promoted Apple Computer so strategically precise that they helped usher the computer industry into form. Because I was in Europe when I wrote HBGR and it got so little play here, this book closes with a fun dialogue excerpt about PR Firms from that publication.

With regard to the PR Firms it talks about that so successfully pushed the Apple, and thereby computers in general, into the mainstream, one of their tactics was to build the human element into it. They lionized its two founders, the two Steves. They turned two regular, working class guys into modern day folk heroes who could do no wrong.

For the National Bicycle Greenway we need a similar game plan. The heroes we can point to are the scouts who helped us to establish our route across America (complete with pictures, names and bios, HERE is the complete list of our 2003 NBG Scouts). In the top right, in the partial representation of our riders, for example, is Bob Ornelas. As Mayor of Arcata, CA, armed with his city’s NBG Day proclamation, he visited with other California Mayors on our behalf, as he rode 300 miles to our 7 San Francisco Bay Mayors’ Ride receptions.

A PR Firm can even use my story, a story that, before it became a book, reached 40 million people on my last bike ride across America in 1986. They can rebrand, “Awake Again, all the Way Back from Head Injury”, the book my ride gave authority to.

They can re-package it in such a way that it communicates the story it really tells. How I feel so indebted to bicycling that I have given the energy of the comeback it made possible to a bike way that connects the coasts.

In showing how the regular every day person will benefit from the bikeway we foresee, there are other heroes they can point to. There are the individuals who will have used our roads and paths to lose epic amounts of weight, stabilize a heart condition or address issues such as Parkinson’s disease which bicycling is known to keep to a minimum.

And even before we consider all the benefits of biking on the NBG, a publicist operation can help us just celebrate how the individual is benefited from the virtue of bicycling. They can help us give the garden variety cyclist on the street a voice for the peace and tranquility that has come into their lives by making the bicycle their choice of recreation and transportation. They can circulate human interest stories to show how the bicycle has improved the sense of well-being for all those who have adopted the two wheel lifestyle. By saturating the airwaves with all of the many ways many different types of people are benefited by the pedal machine, all those who tune in will see how the bicycle is a universal tool we can all use to live more complete and fulfilling lives.

It is here that by extension a critical mass of people will push for safe places to move about under their own power. By default, the universal mindset that results for worthy biking turf will add urgency to the genuine need for our National Bicycle Greenway.

Inside, a growing cross-section of people will know that a National Bicycle Greenway will raise the profile of cycling in general and more specifically for all those who use it. They know this attitude will find its way into the minds of motorists. They know o that the NBG will confer respect upon them as cyclists from all those who choose to move about in cars and trucks. This is so, because our PR Firm will have established biking as an honorable activity that deserves the highest of regard, esteem and appreciation.

We need for people to be shown the colossal benefits of outfitting our Anchor Cities between the coasts with adult bicycle playgrounds. We need for people to see how all the major cities we have designated will all massively benefit from the Downtown Greenways we will be building in them. These are the stories that our publicists need to get into the news pages and not the rampant violence people do to one another. If news editors had a steady diet of positive NBG narratives to choose from, such light and joy would displace much of the low vibration darkness that monopolizes the airwaves.

And then there are the severe climate catastrophes that are becoming a regular occurrence thanks in large part to how we choose to move about. We hear in the news media about all the horrible weather events caused by climate change. But we hear very little about ways we can address its torturous inevitability, an inevitability that will knock the planet off its axis. In his documentary, “Planet of the Humans”, Michael Moore was labeled a pariah because he had the audacity to infer that the use of electric energy is not reducing our use of fossil fuel.

We are fooling ourselves, as Moore states, to think we are doing our part by driving electric cars, scooters or motorized bicycles. All of which have their basis in oil. Even our supposedly clean sources of fuel such as wind, biomass and solar energy, etc. are not possible, as he shows in his film, without fossil fuel. All of which brings me to a point. We have to return to the simple pedal machine.

It is here that a Public Relations Firm can help bring this about. And we can do that in a way that is fun. In showing how we plan to turn the Anchor Cities that stand between San Francisco and Washington DC into bicycle playgrounds, a skilled PR Firm can hold Indianapolis up as an example. They can show how downtown Indianapolis has been revitalized by the world renowned Cultural Trail around which this book is epicentered. Ten miles in length, it is the only Downtown Greenway in the world.

Nor are we just talking about the health of the planet, we are also talking about the health of the individual. We need to put the message of fitness that bicycling brings before a very sick Nation (America is rated #35 out of 169 countries in terms of overall citizen health and ranks 26th in terms of life expectancy). Sadly, ours is a Nation made up of men and women who do not use their bodies to get places. We need a PR Firm to make it cool to use our legs once again. In the same way that US President, John Kennedy’s Presidents Council on Physical Fitness made physical conditioning the dominant mantra in the early 1960’s - we need an image management company to make vibrant health the dominant desire for a country that has lost its way.

The many billionaires there are on the planet now, more often than not are looking for a way to spend their money in a way that will make a difference for humankind. What better way could there be to do so than to underwrite a Public Relations Firm that will celebrate the bicycle/exercise?

Instead of using a Public Relations Firm to sell war, even cigarette smoking, as has sadly been the case in the past, they can be used to help people learn that exercise will help them feel better about themselves and the world around them.

If a PR Firm hammers away at the importance of being fit, people will realize that they can satisfy this need by just moving about under their own power When this happens, their body’s will demand better fuel, by default people will begin eating better. Not only will using their muscles to get places reduce the tension life brings, because it betters their performance in all that they do, as it makes them feel more alive and at peace, they will feel drawn to healthier foods. When a fast food diet is minimized, people will feel less agitated. Combined with the endorphins of exercise, it is this that will help speak to the violence problems and mass shootings that have become commonplace.

Beyond relying only on seed money to get the exercise message out there for a season, or a few seasons, we have devised ways that we can do so on a year-round basis. Instead of only having this communication out there for a short period of time, our programs will make it profitable to drive this consciousness deep into the American psyche from one day to the next. Such repetition will also turn into consistent cash flow for us and for all those who help us with financial support.

If we can get a Public Relations Firm to saturate the media with human interest stories about cycling, it will build a firestorm of interest in our many programs. They will have the leverage they need to convince print, web, TV and radio venues to accept their non-paid promotional stories because of the advertising buys we will have made it possible for them to make. We will have built this cost into the budget we create for their service. Here are some of the ways a Public Relations Firm can do that/help us.

NBG Membership

It is the buzz our PR Firm will create that will make having an NBG Membership (see the NBG Membership chapter) the next level of cool. All bike riders will want to be able to say they are aligned with us because it will represent them as legitimate card-carrying cyclists. Cyclists who will also know they are accepted by the local business communities they ride through because of all the discounts these purveyors of goods and services offer to them. The honor and support these merchants feel for the cyclists who use their roads will be driven in part by the electricity generated by our PR firm.

By lending its muscle to our NBG Merchant Discount program, a PR Firm will broaden the influence of our message. In doing so, they will add the merchant community to our family. This is so because, as we said in the chapter we wrote about this program, it will give as many businesses as possible a stake in our safely being able to get to their front door.

With the help of our PR Firm, NBG Member cyclists will also be seen as pedal enthusiasts governed by big thoughts, who think nationally as they ride locally. Because signposts along the roads and paths our pedalers use will be marked conspicuously with the words, National Bicycle Greenway, their efforts will always be associated with the big picture of our coast-to-coast connection.

Because being a part of our juggernaut will say that our members are also doing something for the environment, large numbers of people, including merchants, whether they ride or not, will feel even more of the push to be a part of our mission. It will feel like being a part of a household where everyone is just helping each other clean up the planet so they can get down the two and three wheel road a little bit easier.

Toward the end of joining our movement, our PR Firm can use the media to get narratives out there about the benefits of having an NBG Membership. In addition to the every day cyclist on the street, a PR Firm can strategically place stories about select NBG Members and touch on their backgrounds in such a way that it builds prestige and honor for those who come into our fold. They can, for example, take sports stars and/or celebrities and communicate how biking on our roads and paths is an important part of their lives.

A creative news alerting agency can spend a summer with an NBG family doing a coast-to-coast vacation on our route. The cities they visit, the sites they see, the hotels they stay in, the restaurants they eat at, etc., can all be made a part of the summer series our publicists make newsworthy on a weekly basis. The American public will take an interest in these travelers and feel compelled to support the same businesses that they patronized. As all the other merchants in these areas benefit, the businesses this family chooses will be ones that our sales teams will have organized with in advance.

The following year, the publicists can use a few college kids who have chosen to ride across the USA on our route. Also a weekly series, they can show the route being studied. Little cameos can find them buying the gear they need, outfitting their bikes and figuring out what goes where when they pack them, etc. And then when they are actually on the road, a film crew can accompany them as they shoot pictures of all the various sites they see (that we select, including businesses that we organize with) in our Anchor Cities.

Once our PR Firm establishes interest in such activity, it will engage the interest of a screenwriter who will turn bike trips across America on our route into a weekly television show on a par with the Survivor TV series. Here they can use our annual National Mayors’ Rides as we show at the end of this chapter as well as at the end of this book. Since our Mayors’ Ride campaigns are a perfect forum for such a television broadcast., we may deliberate upon resurrecting them in Book Two.

Once Transamerica rides on our route and through our NBG cities become a TV documented phenomena, NBG Membership will grow even more. It will add to the prestige of having an NBG membership. “As seen on TV” will take on new meaning for cyclists on our route in and between our Anchor Cities.

A PR Firm can help us show that we are a diverse and fast growing family. They can disseminate copy about the power of numbers and how we are relying on that concept by pricing our memberships as low as we can. Within the news releases they circulate, our PR Firm can include some of the pictures of our members that will appear on the exciting web that will be an expanded version of the web we are building for people who help ed us get this book written.

When, because of our PR Firm, people see they get a free online copy of this book, they will see that there is a plan in place. And because there is, they will want to get aboard the train. As a function of human nature, people want to be a part of any force for good that knows where it’s going.

As a PR Firm helps our numbers grow, merchants along the way of our Downtown Greenway and corporations from all over America will take added notice. Growing membership counts will make it easier for us to sell shopkeepers into our program with, in addition to discounts for our members, advertising positions on our maps. The name recognition a large associateship will guarantee for us, will also make it easier for us to sell higher priced business memberships. And as we will show you in Book Two in the chapter we will have written called “Owning a Part of the Greenway”, a large membership body will also make it easier for us to sell corporate sponsorship of Greenway Miles, Donor Bricks, Benches, Kiosks and all the other ideas we have for how large enterprises can support us with a physical presence on our right of way..

Once we get beyond the initial stages of causing our membership to swell, we hope to have 200,000 members by 2028, a PR Firm will take a different approach when we have to raise our rates. So that we can activate the lodging discount program (to hostel rates) discussed above, we will have to increase the price of membership. As a result, a PR Firm will then sell the public on how lower priced lodging for NBG Members will make our NBG Anchor Cities better places to be.

When they point out that our lodging discount program will cause bicycles to displace the number of cars on the road within the downtown city confines, it will give purpose to those who have not yet joined. When our PR Firm circulates stories about how because of the prevalence of cyclists, violence and car accidents have decreased, while city tax coffers have increased (because of the increase in sales tax revenues from a busier downtown) becoming an NBG member will feel like exercising one’s duty as a responsible citizen. As our program unfolds, when our PR Firm reminds people that a different city has become the result of making it possible for more bicyclists to be downtown, there will be a palpable feeling of pride amongst the local citizenry. As such, it will be proud NBG Anchor City residents who make it easier for us to advance our agenda on many levels.

Our PR Firm can use our lodging program to show families that visiting our cities on a bike is an affordable way to escape the limits of the familiar while they learn about all that is new and exciting in their own country. Instead of feeling called to visit those vacation paradises found in travel magazines, our PR Firm will have made them aware of the wonder that can be found here in America, here in our NBG Anchor Cities.

Because this will cause Americans to take an interest in their fellow countrymen, it will be our PR Firm that will have helped to heal some of the divisions that presently keep us apart. As a growing number of NBG Members learn about their fellow American brothers and sisters, there will be a greater understanding and empathy for those whose geography is different from their own. As a critical mass of NBG Members move about under their own power to slow down the pace of our cities, we will get to know one another. And as we do, we will come to realize our own needs, wants and desires are all so similar.

NBG Lodging

Our PR Firm will make the discounts our hotels offer our NBG Members newsworthy. They can draw up press releases that point out how hotels are experiencing an increase in bicycle visitors because of our lodging discount program. Other such submissions can be pictures of the growing numbers of bikes that are parked at the shopkeepers’ places of business that support these accommodation purveyors with food, drink and entertainment.. They can caption these photos with the words ‘made possible by NBG lodging purveyors’. In the form of quotes, favorable reactions from the hoteliers can also be included.

The news influencers can also be direct. They can create press releases that are headlined to read -

Bicycle organization offers massively discounted
lodging as a way to induce memberships

With such an opening, they can continue to tell our lodging story. To give it added color, they can talk about how cyclists from near and far are benefiting from our program. And how the Anchor Cities themselves are also experiencing many benefits.

NBG Anchor Cities

For the national media, the PR Firm we contract with will celebrate the cities we have chosen (see the Anchor Cities chapter) to hold our route together. They will tell news agencies what makes these cities unique and why cyclists would want to visit them. When these stories get picked up on by the media local to these cities, it will instill even more pride in the citizenry.

And as these local populations see they are being celebrated as worthy of a two-wheel visit, the businesses will take notice. As a result, local merchants will feel they’re helping to sell their city by being a part of our program.

PR Firms can also use infrastructure developments as a way to get the coast coast-to-coast NBG message out there. They can use a new bike lane, bike bridge or an improved intersection, etc. as a way to announce the part these improvements will play in making it easier for long distance cyclists to get through their city.

When city mothers and fathers realize they are part of a national/bigger plan, they will feel called to push for better and more exceptional infrastructure for their own cyclists. This will encourage these cities to build our coast-to-coast plan as we build them.

Downtown Greenways

A PR Firm can whet the appetite of Anchor City residents for the Downtown Greenways that are forthcoming as a way to help us get them built.

They can create news stories about the successes our Point of Interest Maps are bringing about in other Anchor Cities. As a form of education, they can use these accounts to explain why our online maps are important. Among a host of other reasons, they will show how they will bring about an increase in the amount of money that is being spent by the cycle tourists they will attract.

In all the communication they manage to get out, a PR Firm will explain how our maps will, in not too long a period of time, give way to Downtown Greenways. They will use our Point of Interest Maps/Downptown Greenways as a reminder to the Anchor Cities that host them, that they are on the national radar, a part of something much bigger, a part of a coast-to-coast bicycle highway. A chest thumping exercise, these cities can use the Downtown Greenways that are coming their way in many ways.

They can use such publicity to make themselves look appealing to business concerns who may want to locate there. By making noise about the value of a Downtown Greenway, our PR Firm will be helping city officials show large employers that by locating in any one of our Anchor Cities, they can attract and keep the best employees. Our PR Firm will have shown them this is so because they will be able to offer the playground that our Downtown Greenways really are. A PR Firm will show the value of this powerful amenity. They will show the family activity that can take place on it as well as the transportation benefits, etc.

Our PR Firm will show Anchor Cities how their having a Downtown Greenway will also make them look attractive to conventions looking to possibly hold their events there. In doing so, they will work to establish them as places their attendees will want to visit. By telling stories about all the fun people are having on our Downtown Greenways, a PR Firm will add its voice in reminding the local populace that they are part of a bigger mission. They will be reminded that they have been chosen as a city to help us anchor our coast-to-coast bicycle route.

This will give reason and purpose to all the streets that may have to be torn up and inconvenience that may result while our Downtown Greenwayss are in the building phase. When shovels are being turned and news accounts are being circulated about what can be expected from it, the merchants along the way will see its imminent reality. And when they do, they will be far more receptive to becoming a part of the excitement at hand by enrolling in our Merchant Discount program or with an ad buy on our Point Of Interest maps.

POI Map Sales

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the promotion work our PR Firm will be doing for the money making programs (Biking Report Cards, Merchant Discounts and NBG Membership, etc.) we have built around our Anchor Cities, will be our Points Of Interest maps (see the POI chapter). The buzz that our publicists create will compel the merchants along the way of our route through their town to want to be involved with a presence. It is here that the online form we will have devised will be much used by storekeepers to get themselves highlighted on our map, as it brings us a steady stream of currency.

And to additionally empower our POI map sales teams, our Public Relations firm will make advertising buys that promote our maps at supportive websites. On 1/4 page (on average) announcements, bullet items will highlight some of the ways cyclists and the businesses that use them are benefitted.

Because we are spending money with them, many online sites will regularly publish the news releases we create that bring attention to our maps. Smaller display ads with teaser copy will also appear at sites all throughout the web. Associated with links to the map in question, type can be designed with little teasers to say things like -

“See your city on two wheels here”

“_______ supports (city) biking - find them here”

“Building the National Bicycle Greenway”

We can even offer co-op money as a way to get the businesses themselves to place more and even bigger ads for our maps all throughout the web. We can help them pay for such a presence if they say things like -

“More cyclists are finding the safe roads to us on BikeRoute.com“

“Our customers tell us they enjoyed the BikeRoute.com way to our front door”

“Since BikeRoute.com started suggesting a route to us, our business has greatly increased”

Such ubiquitousness will not only drive traffic to our maps and our website, it will also much publicize the mission of the National Bicycle Greenway and make it easier for all of our other programs to do their work. This as it makes it easier for us to attract the best talent to not only get these maps built, but to maintain them. Seeing our map teasers will cause other advertisers, and not just those on our route, to inquire about how they can also get involved.

The all pervasive presence of our map teasers will cause the collective theater of the mind to see the National Bicycle Greenway as as an expected occurrence, a done deal that cannot be stopped. It will be like a freight train that everyone wants to jump on board, to be a part of. The prevalence of our little reminders will stimulate water cooler talk at the office and dinner table talk on the home front. Seeing messages about our maps everywhere will cause an avalanche of people to push for the National Bicycle Greenway they suggest. Making it real will feel like an involuntary, reflexive action for many of the people of this land.

Landscape Developers (Urbanists) Help with Design Contests

As the PR Firm we ultimately contract with bombards the Americans psyche with visions of cyclists rolling along on Downtown Greenways, the public will feel called to make their own suggestions for certain parts of it. For each of our Anchor Cities, our publicists will design contests to bring these possibilities forward. There will be public workshops where these designs can be aired. They will solicit the interest of art schools and college art programs.

Figuratively speaking, lines will form made up of artists trying to get what they propose accepted. This is so because they will know whoever wins will have a very high credential they can point to. The winning design(s) the public brings forward will serve as exciting idea food our developers will then build around.

The messaging from our PR Firm will confer nobility upon the company chosen to build what the public has suggested. Once the local community finally votes on its chosen design(s), they will feel like they have been made a part of the process. And they will applaud the urbanists chosen to bring their ideas to fruition.

As they entrust our urbanists to celebrate the character of the anchor population center at hand with their ideas, they will feel that the Downtown Greenway running through their city is their own. And once it is complete, the ultimate result will fill the hearts of all those of all ages who ultimately get to experience the adult playgrounds our landscape developers will have devised.

PR Firm Can Helps us get the Best out of Landscape Developers

By getting the public involved, this will make our Downtown Greenways a much anticipated resource. Getting the job of building each one will be embraced as an honor and cause landscape developing firms to offer us the best proposals they can find within their capacity to produce. As a result of the excitement our PR Firm will have created for our vision, these urbanists will offer us many different designs to choose from. What we ultimately select will be much celebrated even while it is being proposed.

Aware of this, the developer artists themselves will scour their industry for solutions that may exist as they plumb the deepest reserves of their inner design mastery to match their skills with what the public wants. There will be a healthy back and forth until the final result is satisfactory to both parties. It is this that will not make this work feel like a job, but a calling, the result of which will make each of our Anchor City travel ways unique as well as attractive.

NBG Biking Report Cards

From 2003 until 2017, as the time and resources allowed, for our California cities we produced NBG Biking Report Cards. We also produced reports for Reno and Salt Lake City. None of them, however, anywhere near achieved any measure of the approbation they deserved. This was so because with our energy spread over many different fronts, we were greatly limited in the data we were then able to collect. If the people responsible for collecting this information for us had thought that these reports would be widely circulated, it would not have been such a struggle to pull together the ones that we did.

As we worked to promote our Anchor Cities from one Mayors’ Ride season to the next with these registers, we often ran out of time getting the information we needed to create and/or update them. With limited manpower or other resources, what we did accumulate often fell off the back of everything else that needed our attention. In the end, that is a tragic development because merchandised appropriately (with also the addition of strong graphics), they have tremendous power. They have so much potential, in fact, that we devoted a whole chapter to them here in this book. Getting these reports known about would be huge. If we had a PR Firm extolling their worth, the bike-ability in the cities they showcase would get national and international attention.

If city transportation officials knew, for example, that what we were asking of them would appear in publications large in scope, they would have been on the lookout for our request. It would have been a priority item for them. They would have felt compelled to get the facts, details, particulars, statistics and other figures we needed together in a timely manner.

With the help of a PR Firm promoting these reports, not only will those responsible feel pushed to get the information we need together, but the data they assemble will be of huge value to a wide variety of interests. People wanting to know what these municipalities are like, will study our Biking Report Cards with great interest. They will draw scrutiny from far more than cyclists alone. Employers looking to locate in these cities, car drivers planning to visit, even Event Planners, etc., will all want to be made aware of the information these reports contain.

Once their value is understood, they will become a year in, year out public document that our Anchor Cities will strive to be seen in in the best possible light. In pushing them, it will be our PR Firm that will have been responsible for their presence as a Wikipedia type resource for all tourists considering a visit.

Because our PR Firm will make them an annual topic in magazines both on and off the web, cities will have a scorecard they can show off nationally. This will have the effect of fostering friendly competition with other Anchor Cities. This as it instills pride in the Public Works departments of each of these population centers.

When, because of our PR Firm, they start appearing in travel guides such as “Fodors” and the “Let’s Go” series, advertisers will take notice. They will want to be seen in them with display ads. With such support, our Biking Report Cards will also become moneymakers for us.

Merchant Discounts

At the end of the 19th century, the bicycle dominated the stream of thought that existed at the time. In the late 1800s the two-wheel pedal machine was a miracle that consumed the creativity of the best minds. In the same way, the computer fostered the business start ups that transformed the world at the end of the 1900’s, one hundred years before, the preponderance of enterprise was busy inventing something for the revolutionary pedal machine.

It changed the way people dressed. In empowering the individual, it also gave women freedom. It brought about the first roads in America. The bicycle was one of the key players in the Industrial Revolution. It was everywhere. It stood at the center of the Gay 90s that it brought about, a point in history unlike any other, an era that was quite possibly the happiest, freest time this country has ever known.

A PR firm can return America to the simplicity of that more cheerful and innocent time. By bombarding the mainstream media and the social media with happy stories about bicycling, people will realize that we have the solution to all of the woes that afflict us right here, right now. By belaboring the pedal machine’s capacity to cure emotional, physical and planetary woes, the thought shapers we hire will make it seem that to support its use, as we keep saying, is the logical next step on our path of evolution .

Everyone will want to be a part of the bicycle way. And the way business can be a part of it is to offer NBG Merchant discounts (see the NBG Merchant Discounts chapter) on their merchandise and services. In such a way, the shopkeeping community will become a part of our family.

To add to the bicycle burn they will build, our PR Firm can also circulate stories about the increased cash register activity that bike riders are bringing business purveyors. They can talk about how these merchants do not have to create parking for them. They can talk about how the pedal community also tends to have a higher amount of discretionary dollars they can expend.

By making the bicycle riding public look like a community of people with money to spend that business proprietors will want to get in the door, they will be sure to offer discounts for such privilege. As they do, our PR Firm will alert the public that this is so with news alerts about such offerings. This will have the added benefit of making these merchants look like community minded, green purveyors of commerce.

A PR Firm can go one step further. They can create news stories and the like that suggest that because of all the businesses joining our discount program, that bicycle riding in the city is becoming safer. They can plant the seed for the idea that the merchants in our discount program are also beginning to pay attention to the needs of the cyclist when he or she is on the road with them. Nor will the businesses offering discounts to get us to their doorstep be the only ones tuned into this message. Not in the least.

It will cause greater numbers of people to become more aware of our needs wherever they come in contact with our pedaling efforts. Our public relations people can talk about the fact that this has become so because this way of thinking trickles down from the businesses we patronize, from management to staff and to the customers who all want to make the way easier for us. This as greater numbers of motorists become more and more aware of the need to share the road with all of its users.

Fund Raising, including Check Out Charity

With a PR firm fully saturating the ethers with bicycles and the National Bicycle Greenway opportunity, the way will be easier for us to raise funds on the street itself. One such example is Check Out Charity. When a cashier asks if we would like to round our purchase up to the nearest dollar as a benefit for the NBG, the decision will be easier to make because all the good we’re doing we will be a known commodity.

Being known about will also make it easier for the public to support us when stores donate a percentage of sales (commercial co-venture or cause marketing) to nonprofit organizations. Four times a year, Whole Foods, for example, has 5% Community Giving Days. On such days, Whole Foods singles out a local charity that will receive 5% of the sales it makes. It is here our PR firm can help to drive traffic to Whole Foods on these days.

A PR Firm can also let people know they can link to us at the Kroger’s Plus Card. This is a card that every time you use it, a donation is made to the charity that you register it with.

Not many people know this, and our PR firm can help to make this a widespread notion, but since 2004 there has been a charity in place that allows you to donate unused portions of a gift card (e.g., Starbucks, Walmart, North Face) to the nonprofit of your choice. Called CharityChoice, they also have an Honor Card program that our PR Firm can bring attention to. Referred to as the CharityChoice Gift Card, with it you can send a message you can customize with graphics they supply and in your own wording in the name of the National Bicycle Greenway to honor any of these occasions:

Anniversary | Award | Birthday | Celebration | Environment - show your green | Father’s Day | Gift | Graduation. | Holiday | Mother’s Day | New Year’s | Seasons, greetings | Stocking stuffers | Sympathy | Thank You | Valentine’s Day | Wedding

For as little as two dollars through PayPal or a credit card, you can make a donation to us and have the greeting sent in our name to your recipient’s Facebook or email address! This is such a great idea and it makes it possible for most anyone to be able to give to our cause and yet so few people know such a charity option even exists. A PR Firm can bring a lot of attention to this way of giving!

Coming full circle, a PR Firm can even promote Apple Computer as the computer giant helps us. As I touched on in the beginning of this chapter and deliberate upon with an entire chapter of its own, just as three different PR Firms made the Apple a part of our daily lives, our publicists can bring attention to them in a different light. They can talk about how for every dollar an Apple employee donates, Apple matches it with a monetary donation to the same organization.

There are many organizations that have employer matching gift programs that our PR Firm is likely to already have a working relationship with. Patagonia is most likely one of those. Patagonia goes the extra mile by giving one percent of its annual sales to grassroots organizations working to protect our air water and soil.

National Mayors’ Rides
A PR firm can also help us publicize the annual National Mayors’ Rides we will talk about in Book Two. At this link, you can see that from 2002, until 2018, when we moved our operation to Indianapolis, we ran a relay ride that went from San Francisco to Washington DC. The route it followed, passed through the 18 other NBG Anchor Cities that stand between the coasts. On an annual basis, these rides created a lot of excitement for these cities, their Mayors and their administrations.

Even with our limited staff, because it was so easy to get media attention for these rides, especially on the NBG days we staged at City Halls, a PR Firm can easily turn these into events of great national significance. Because mayoral staffs are often made up of young people who want to make a difference, they are excited we have included their city in our vision. It is this that will make it easier for our PR Firm to also get Council members to show off the infrastructure improvements in their jurisdictions. Always looking for a way to get in front of their constituents, for them this is also a great way for these aldermen to honor the Public Works departments that have made this possible for them.

I hope you can see cyclists are the real winners here. When the Mayor, his or her Council and Public Works are publicly acknowledged for the work they have done for bike riders, there will be incentive on a yearly basis for them to build upon this. As we get better cycling conditions, we will take comfort in the fact that not only is the city a better place to be, but those who made that possible are also honored accordingly.

I hope with this chapter I have been able to show you how a top flight PR Firm can make all of the words in this book a reality!

“Man I keep getting passed by a lot of the same cars and trucks. What’s that?” Skot demanded.

“That happened to me when I came through Iowa in ’79,” I replied. “I asked lots of questions and I can’t remember if someone told me or what, but if you’ll notice when that happens, it’s when there’s a lot of towns bunched up 10 to 15 miles apart. And what happens is they’re running errands and stuff between them. Hardware store in one town, soccer practice in another, church stuff, etc.”

“That makes sense I guess,” answered Skot as he shrugged his shoulders. “So they do know where they are going after all.”

“Well, at least they got a plan. Kind of like us you know.” I said.“We got two plans,” Skot shot back.

“That’s right and good point Skot. We got the Mayors’ Ride and we got the business plan for the National Bicycle Greenway.”

“But I’m a little worried about da second plan,” Skot said as leaned back against the railing. “I mean we’re halfway through Plan A right now. You know we got us out here on all dese fancy bikes and riding da Mayors’ Ride cities and dey get all excited about us every year,” he said. And as his words got faster and faster, he finished the thought with “and then it all goes away, boom.” After a pause, he slowed down and started again, “but how you gonna get everyone first off even knowing about Plan B and den sticking with da NBG year round?”

“I’m glad you’re worried about that Skot but you know how they say ‘everything has a price’?

“Yeah but hey we’re talking bicycles here. How you gonna get all dese heavyweight bubbas outta der cars or off der couches or out from in front of der TV sets? Money’s how dey got dat way to begin with. It made ‘em lazy. How you gonna unlazy dem??”

“We’re gonna brainwash them. You know the same way that the beer companies make it look athletic to drink beer by saturating the sports ethers. Whether you go to the games or you see them on TV, everywhere you look there’s an ad for beer. They’re on the signs, on the programs, on the tickets, on the commercials, on the scoreboard, they get their name mentioned for every little break the players take. They’re part of the culture. It’s kinda like if you’re not having a cold one, you’re an outsider, you’re not part of the game.

“They got the same thing going on with all these cars and trucks. It’s like they’re targeting all these 20 somethings who are just getting started with their lives and they make it look like driving is a given. Like there’s no other option. I mean how can young people be expected to think otherwise? Have you ever watched a football game on TV lately? I used to love that stuff. Then there were too many games to watch and now I know why. It’s just one big infomercial for driving and drinking.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Don who had tuned in offered. “I saw a few Viagra ads when I was over a friend’s house one time.”

“How about Taco Bell?” Jenifer added.

“OK, OK, I forgot the fast food needed to make you fat and add to your unhealthiness. And then they gotta pimp pills so you can get it up after they kill all your life force with all the crap they want you to eat and drink and forget exercise to burn it off, they want you to drive,” said Don.

“I know, It’s all so sick,” I began, “the Ad Man makes them think they are real men and women and no longer kids when they can own a car. Like it’s some kind of rite of passage. That’s why a lot of kids who first start to drive, look down on cyclists as less thans..”

“Didn’t I hear you say that when you go to Critical Mass that that is the cool ting to do now; that a lot of the kids are starting to get it?” Bill who had been listening to us interjected.

“That’s right,” I said, “They’re playing all this major loud music. And it’s one huge rolling party with kazoos and boom boxes and everyone is laughing and taking their time and most of the riders are in their 20’s. And there’s even children and a few old people. And most of the people stuck in cars or eating at the restaurants or just walking on the sidewalks are all cheering us on. But hey that’s San Francisco. We’ve always been ahead of the curve. And yet there again, that’s only one day of the month. And then every other day, the young people got to go out and contend with all this car propaganda. And who do you think pays for all these ads the young people see?” Not waiting for an answer I continued, “we do, because they just charge more for their cars, and everyone else charges more for the stuff they sell so they can buy them.”

“Dat’s what I mean. We bike dudes don’t got a chance. I mean we’re talkin’ major do, re, me here. We’re talkin’ major millions. And dose guys buy de major advertising. And dey don’t just buy it once or twice, dey buy it day in, day out.” Skot said. “Where you gonna get dat kind of money? I mean we are talking bicycles now remember. Even if you got some rich benefactor dude to will his whole estate to you when he dies, that’s only one time. But dose beer and oil guys got something we don’t.

“You can’t drink bikes and when de beer is gone, hey, you gotta buy more. And you know as soon as we get to Des Moines, I’m gonna find me a bar and dat’s what I’m gonna do - I’m gonna buy me an ice cold draught. And those truck guys also got something they use that we don’t use either. Oil.”

“Skot that’s what got us into this mess to begin with. People taking from the planet and not putting any thing back in. And yet, like I was telling those kids back in Oakland, there’s a whole new breed of people who want to make a difference with how their riches are spent. They’re not trying to grow their investment portfolio by investing in companies that promote those things that take from our health or take from the planet. They want to know that what they are investing in will not only solve a need now but lighten the load for future generations. We’re gonna find those angel investors who want for their lives to be remembered as having saved human kind from spiraling down the dark hole which we are digging for ourselves.”

“What investor is going to keep throwin’ money at a bunch of outlaws?” Skot began. “I mean if you think about it, most cyclists like their independence, that’s why dey ride. That’s why I ride. But you get all dese car people an der always waiting in lines wherever dey go. But we don’t do dat so that makes us fringe players dat dese money guys can’t control.” Skot observed.”

“That’s what they said about computer nerds. The money guys couldn’t see how they could make money off a bunch of long hairs who smelled bad who gave all their ideas away. Back then the only real intellectual property you had belonged to authors and lawyers and that was easy to control. But building a whole company around thoughts that you had to hide from the competition and doing so with a bunch of renegades required the same kind of out of the box kind of thinkers we’re gonna find for our vision.

“You look at these guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and all these millionaire tech guys that are out there now and a lot of them used to be outcasts in the same way people who don’t own a car are viewed in many parts of the country today. Ever heard of Mike Markkula?” I asked.

“Nopers,” Skot answered as we looked around to see if anyone else knew.

“I know,” Jenifer volunteered.

“You can’t answer,” I teased.

Jenifer had heard me talk about this many times before.

When everyone else seemed dumbfounded, I continued, “Markula to me is the reason we have personal computers. He was the moneyman who took a chance on the two Steves, Wozniak and Jobs back in the late 70’s. Initially most of the money he invested in these guys was on image on two levels. For this he relied on the massive public relations firm, Regis McKenna,

“When they first came out,” I raised my voice as a farm tractor roared by, “computers were no more than these ugly boxes that made a bunch of noise that only the more advanced tech nerds could get any benefit from. Something as simple now as word processing, took a lot of specialized skill back then. Words like ‘spread sheet’ and ‘data base’ were not a part of the regular person’s vocabulary. So in order to make computers attractive to the masses, as they more and more simplified them, they also had to make it cool to use them. Besides making them look like something you would want to have in your home, they had to make them look sexy from the ground floor up. And that included making the early pioneers who had before seemed like such a bunch of outcasts appear like the trendsetters of the day.

“And it was here that McKenna, then went to work remaking their two Golden Boys, Steve and Steve. They got a lot of investors to take a chance on their new technology, then they made rock stars out of them. By getting their faces on the covers of the leading magazines of the day and pushing for the innumerable magazine articles that chronicled what they viewed as newsworthy successes, soon, almost what seemed like overnight, the American dream was alive and well. Their journeys from working class beginnings to riches inspired hope among the regular Joe consumer. By carefully planting stories every where they could, it was Regis McKenna’s marketing muscle that helped to create soaring demand for the Apple Computer, the hands down leader of a brand new industry.

“And it was this new face that Mckenna carefully sculpted for Apple that turned wild eyed fringe members of society into executives who people suddenly began to listen to and take seriously. The effect of which was to attract those who sought to imitate Apple’s success and has become the computer industry which has so much changed the world as we know it today.”

“So are you saying they’re gonna make Wonder Kids out of you and I?” Skot teased.

Skot had successfully overcome what was thought to be an incurable cancer to be able to do this ride.

“Maybe they can do something with your story, I’m done talking about mine. And along with that, what I foresee is having enough money to get these huge old PR firms to use our Mayors’ Rides to celebrate the every day cyclist who is out there on the roads.

That’s who’s usually out here visiting these Mayors. You know, really having the resources to turn the volume up for the reports our Scouts send in from out here and getting their bio pages and the Podcast interviews we do with them all over the media. And year in, year out, we get a fresh new set of celebrities to keep the public excited for the human interest part of these things.”

“I guess anything’s possible with money,” Skot shrugged.

“With just our Mayors’ Rides, for example, if we had just one national office with one or two really good PR people, bombarding the media with news releases, pictures, stories and other copy these news people can easily slip into their papers and TV shows, even radio, then something’s gonna stick. And as the press starts picking this stuff up, it starts to take on a momentum that can’t help but hit the wire services. And we’ll also be able to rely on that to alert the smaller cities and towns along the way who will want to get into the fun by doing stories of their own. They’ll be contacting us and asking us to stop for an interview on our way through.

“And when cities big and small interview our riders you know that when they ask them why they are doing the ride, they’re gonna get a healthy dose of Greenway information. And how those tuned in can help and etc.”

“People forget though. Dat’s what I mean, even if we have a great summer, it’s still gonna start raining and it gets cold and de people don’t do de bikes,” Skot said.

“That’s what exciting about these Mayors’ Rides. Once we get money, we’ll really be able to use these rides for NBG recognition to make it a lot easier to advance all of the year round programs we foresee. Granted we’re not out of the gate yet, but we are going to keep using these rides and this year my book until we find those big thinkers that will help us get our business plan under written. Then we’ll be able to use a fully funded version of our Mayors’ Ride to bring even more people and resources to all the other Greenway programs we’ll be able to get off the drawing board.

“You’ve heard me talk about all these huge NBG Hubs we’re gonna have in all our Mayors’ Ride cities and all the activities that will be going on in them. You know, like the bicycle visitor’s bureau, all the bike recycling, the bike repair classes, the museum, the rentals, the swap meets, the bike rentals, the community bike repair and all the community events like mixers, booksignings, lectures, dances and youth activities and stuff.

“Then there’s the regional festivals we foresee. And the guest home program and our on line bike route directory. And we’ll really be cooking when we can even give away free email addresses at nbg.bikeroute.com”.

“I never got that one, how’s free email gonna build anything?” Skot asked. “What are we just gonna be these goody goodies that give away free email just to be nice?”

“That’s what Yahoo and Google do. And you know they don’t give away free anything just to be nice. It’s all about getting their name out there so they can generate more advertising dollars. But in addition to that, once we get people using NBG.Bikeroute.com, they just might want to nose around a bit and visit some of the other links we will have running very subtly in the background. And the beauty is they don’t even have to be cyclists to use our free email so we are planting a seed there aswell...”

By the time, I had poured my gut out on everyone, we were ready to leave. More up and down riding followed. A few hours later, we made it to City Hall!

————————————

Note: Our understanding of what is needed for the National Bicycle Greenway to get out of the clouds has evolved significantly in the ten years since HBGR was written. As we said above, because few resources and even fewer people will feel called to our vision, unless it can generate notable revenue, with Downtown Greenways at their center, here are the main money generating programs that Anchor Cities will spawn:

NBG Membership/Downtown Lodging Discount Program
NBG Merchant Discount Program

Points of Interest Maps (POI)

Biking Report Cards

The other sources of revenue that we foresee, some that will be talked about in this edition, others in Book Two, will come from:

NBG Passport Sales | Marking our Route (adoption of sections, benches, mile markers, etc.) | Route Signage Sales, e.g., History Placard Sponsorships | NBG Hubs | Website Monetization to include Google AdSense | Map Display Ad Sales for system-wide national ads | TransAm Rider Blog Display Ads | Ride/event licensure of our route | Sleeping Centers | Fundraising Programs with Point of Sale Campaigns to include NBG Day at Whole Foods, etc. | National Mayors’ Ride Festival/Gateway Fest at the National Bike Capital | Checkout Charity

Brought to you by
CindyThornberry Bushey

Before we can turn our Anchor Cities into the bicycle villages we need to be able to connect the coasts with a TransAm Bikeway, we need first to establish NBG Hubs in each of them. As the nucleus for the National Bicycle Greenway, the NBG Hubs will serve as the catalyst for the Indy like Downtown Greenways that will define our population centers. This is largely so because the roads and paths our downtown bicycle rights-of-way use will all easily access our NBG Hubs.

In the words ahead, you will see how our Hubs will be configured, By structuring them in such a way, this is how we will get the support of both the cyclists and non cyclists along the way. It will be this alliance that will supercharge our mission to interconnect the USA with the 20 pedal playgrounds we foresee,

Each of our Hubs will be designed to serve the local transportational cyclists in our Anchor Cities. The people they attract, as well as their energy, ideas, connections and other enthusiasm will establish them as two-wheel travel destination centers. As beacons calling out to one another, then this will give irrepressible authority to the NBG message of interconnecting all 20 of our Hubs to one another with a network of bikeable roads and paths. As the much talked about bike central for each of the regions they serve, the excitement these bike centers create will also bring a plethora of new resources from the great numbers of non-cyclists who will have returned to bicycling because of them.

Our NBG Hubs, an average of 5000 square feet in size, will occupy warehouses or be renovated inside of existing two-story meeting halls. Because they will be designed to serve the public at large, by hosting dances, lectures, conditioning classes and conferences, etc, this is how our bike centers will bring the cycling and non-cycling communities together under one roof.

And as we are soon embraced as an important part of the community, our NBG vision will set the lead in other areas as well. By building our business model around the recycling of two wheel pedal machines, making older bikes worthy and rideable, more of America will realize it’s not what or how we ride but that that we pedal places to replace car trips (genuinely lighten the footprint all of us leave on the planet).

The bike industry that makes new products will benefit because our affordable offerings will help people stop worrying about whether they have the latest and greatest when they get back on a bike - they will feel less intimidated As a result, more people will be cycling and increasing numbers of them will also seek out the closest bike shop for the higher quality bikes and higher profit margin accessories and upgrades they will soon desire.

Inside each hub, one will find (click for more info about each):

NBG Coffee Shop/Juice Bar | Meeting/Activity Halls | Bike Repair Shop (w/bike repair classes) | Recycled Bike Sales | Bike Rentals Bike Taxi Service | Bike Visitors Bureau (NBG-BVB) | Library/Computer/Yoga Room | NBG Ped Ex | Museum/Show Bikes | Services for bike travelers | Home for other Bike Organizations | Human powered power plant | NBG Recharge Rooms | Lockers

Our NBG hubs will let us function locally as we think nationally. It will make it easier for us to scale our operation to meet the needs at the local level as we plant the seed for our national vision. It will also give area business interests a way to associate their message with us in front of the market (we can sell naming rights to the various departments) in which they serve.

We can resurrect our yearly National Mayors Rides and base them from our Hubs. In doing so, we will be showcasing the big picture mission of our vision as we also celebrate the bicycle infrastructure developments that will have accrued locally in our Anchor Cities from one year to the next. This will have the effect of allowing the local Public Works, to show off what they have accomplished. While at the same time we will be giving public officials a way they can take credit for the work that has been done for their bicycling constituents.

NBG Coffee Shop/Juice Bar

On the street, the main entrance to our building will be built around our NBG Coffee Shop/Juice Bar. The coffee concessionnaire we will have contracted with, will build this 800 square foot space out to serve their own needs. Besides their being able to cater to the traffic that will come to them from our meeting halls, during the days of the week, it will become a hang out for cyclists. While during the weekend, it will be a meeting spot for club rides.

Cyclists like to be around other cyclists to exchange ideas, learn about the cycling conditions in various areas, as well as find out about new hardware and tips and tricks, etc. This is why group rides will be popular and why our refreshment center willl be such a powerful magnet.

A comfortable place does not exist where bike riders can put their feet up and relax around other cyclists. Especially when the weather is too hot or too cold. This is why our warm in the winter and air-conditioned in the summer, coffee shop/juice bar will stir up a buzz that will give added purpose to coming to our Hub. This as they mix in with the general public who will also feel called to know more about our facility as they themselves get caught up in the bicycle energy at hand.

Our NBG coffee shop/juice bar will look out upon the antique bikes and other pedal machines our volunteers, staff and youth in training will have restored as well as built for the adjacent show bike area.

For those who can’t afford coffee, there will be a scholarship program where they can earn coffee shop credits by working in our bike shop. They can do simple tasks such as breaking down bikes that have been designated as parts bikes, sorting the stock that results into separate bins for derailleurs, brakes, seats and handlebar stems, etc., doing cleanup work or working the phones to schedule the pick up of bike donations. They can even patch tubes.

Coffee shop staff will also maintain a busy and active bulletin board. On it, NBG Members will post rooms for rent, bicycles and bike parts for sale, even services they perform such as gardening, massage and moving help, etc. By limiting the ad placements to NBG Members only, it will help its users get to meet and become familiar with one another.

Meeting/Activity Halls

Since downtown America is where all the young adults are locating to, our NBG Hubs will, besides all of our NBG directed activity, serve as activity and entertainment centers for the general public. As community centers that serve cyclists and non-cyclists, all of them will be set up to interest people from many different walks of life. In order to achieve this, they will be built around one very large room. A sizable space, our community halls (a minimum of 60 x 40 - 2400 square feet), will be capable of holding as many as 400 people.

An Activity Director will be brought on full time to book and oversee activities such as yoga, tai chi, aerobic and other exercise groups as well as wedding receptions, business mixers, booksignings and lectures by adventurers and youth activities such as dances and the like. Live music and speaking events will take place on the stage which will stand four feet above the main floor. It will also be in the Meeting Halls that NBG Day Mayoral ceremonies will take place.

Priority will be given to bike clubs, bike organizations and other planet benefiting organizations. A twice yearly bicycle swap meet will be held here. It will feature offerings from the general public as well as from our Recycled Bike Sales department and the NBG Bike Repair Shop.

When people come to us, as they roam the halls and entryways, it will be hard for them not to want to support our mission. Everywhere they look, they will see our TransAm maps with the NBG Hubs on them. They will see our moniker -

“Connecting the Coasts

with a Nationwide Network of NBG Hubs”.

When the events themselves advertise, they will be promoting us when they announce where they are held. The repetition of our NBG Hubs regularly being called out by many different groups will give us the kind of name recognition that will make it easy for us to sell the many programs we talk about in this book. In the theater of the public mind, being seen on the web and being heard on radio and TV, will make the coast-to-coast National Bicycle Greenway an expected occurrence.

Each hub will be the same size as most of the unused American Legion centers, Vets Halls and/or Moose Lodges and other service clubs found in cities and towns across America. Here, for example, are the meeting hall specs for the Santa Cruz, CA Vets Hall pictured above.

425 standing plus balcony
335 seated theatre style
160 table seating floor only Floor: 60 x 40
Floor to Ceiling: 24 feet
Stage: 17 x 24 feet
Balcony: 40 X 15 feet with 85 fixed seats

Warehouses are another option. However, because of the need to build out their insides, retrofitting them to our needs will typically be more expensive.

Bike Repair Shop

A full shop capable of servicing four bikes at once will be staffed 40 hours a week by 3 professional bike mechanics ¹. Joined by a volunteer staff on weeknights and weekends (made up of a team of 5-10 such qualified mechanics who donate 4 hours each per week), they will be responsible for:

Bicycle rebuilds

Besides building bikes for sale to bike shops as well as individually to visitors to the Hub, bikes will also be built for our bike rental division. Instead of relying on the newest and latest machines for this application, in keeping with our theme of recycle and reuse, as the NBG also shows that recycled bikes are desirable, the Hub rental fleet that we will talk about later, will only be made up of used two wheelers.

Community bike repair

A weeknight and Saturday bike shop schedule will also be maintained by the Hub Activity Director (described in the Meeting Hall section above) so that the community can also participate. Besides bike repair classes. this schedule will also show volunteers when they can help with bike rebuilds, stocking of parts and the shipping of excess stock overseas to third world countries. It will also be during this time that local NBG Members can use the hub facilities and tools to work on their own bikes.

Bike parts warehouse

A used parts station will be maintained where designated bikes are broken down and the components are filed for later use on other bikes. Inventory will be tracked by a computer program.

New Parts

Items that regularly wear out on bikes will also be purchased at wholesale and kept on hand for sale at a discount to NBG Hub member cyclists. This stock will include basic level tubes, tires, spokes, brake pads, brake and derailleur cables and housing, chains, derailleur pulleys, etc, as well as those new accessories that are often purchased to improve the functionality of the bike. Examples of the latter include basic quality bike bells, racks, baskets, locks, lights, flashers, grease, chain lube, and frame pumps, etc.

Bike Shipping

Community members will be able to come to the Hubs to get their bikes packaged up for air shipment whether for traveling or to fulfill a sale. The Hubs will also regularly ship excess stock overseas to third world countries.

Maintenance of rental, taxi and museum bikes

The rental, taxi and museum bikes that the Hub circulates in the community will all be maintained by the Hub Bike Shop

Hardware Needed

Truing stand, vise, workstands (4), headset wrenches, etc. See
http://www.parktool.com

¹ Such mechanics will, of course, be granted member privileges as well as the same discounts on parts as the bike couriers. They will have bike shop experience and can be joined by inexperienced mechanics who have demonstrated a willingness and capacity to learn quickly. These prospects can also apprentice with more experienced volunteers

Recycled Bike Sales

Rebuilt used bikes will be made available for the bike shops so they have something in the price range that will compete with the cheap Walmart, Target and Costco bikes that are built of such low quality that they have a very limited life cycle.

It is here that bikes donated from the community (of which there is a plethora in most big cities, so much so that most police departments are always looking for places to store abandoned bikes) will serve as much of the engine for hands-on youth education.

Qualified volunteer mechanics from the bike shop will be on hand to show them how to break these machines down. As they show young people as well as retirees how to connect and disconnect chains, unpack and repack bottom brackets and headsets and adjust derailleurs and brakes, etc., they will also be suggesting the best ways to rebuild them.

Sales of rebuilt machines, as we have a said, will be geared to bike shops and to the local community, so that most everyone can be in possession of an affordable bike (the truly needy can help build a predetermined number of bikes for sale or they can patch a set number of tubes as payment for a pedal machine of their own). Excess or unsalable goods will be regularly shipped to third world country recipients.

Those bikes that are missing components not available from existing parts stock, and deemed not worthy of a rebuild, will be broken down for their parts. The inventory that results will be catalogued for use on future bike rebuilds as well as for sale to the public. Garbage, low quality componentry will be set aside as junk that enters the scrap metal stream from which which we will derive a small income.

Tires that are not too worn down will also be filed by size and made available for sale at $1-5 apiece. Unlike most bike shops, punctured tubes will also not be thrown away. They will be patched by volunteers and made available for sale at two to three dollars per tube.

The stock of bikes and bike parts available for sale will be regularly posted and kept current on the Hub’s web page. In such a way, area cyclists shopping for such items can see whether or not a trip to the Hub is worth their while.

Bike Rentals for business & recreation traveler members

During the summer, Hub rental bikes will be shuttled back and forth to popular hotels and other downtown locations (so that they do not have to be warehoused by these businesses and so we can keep them maintained) by PedEx cyclists in special bike transport carts. This will be a part of the PedEx job description as special bike carts will be used for this purpose.

Tastefully designed brochures on light card stock with rental rates that also explain our philosophy will be left at hotels, convention/visitors bureaus and select public gathering places. They will show how our customers are helping us lighten the planet’s load by riding one of the bikes we have rebuilt,

Bike Taxi Service

In a fenced off, covered area behind our building, where we will also hang our rental bikes and bikes for sale, we will park 3 - 10 bike taxis. These will be ridden by summer PedEx cyclists (where there will be a waiting list of “cab” drivers anxious to do sub-contract work for the NBG for tips, a small wage and exercise). This small fleet of people carriers (number will vary on a hub by hub basis) will move tourists around in popular areas such as along waterfronts, in old town areas, in historic business districts and in large city parks, etc. They will also be used as shuttles to get event goers to and from their cars and those staging areas that service sporting events, beaches, concerts and the like.

The charge to ride in these taxis will be nominal as there will be two revenue streams utilized to help these people carriers do their work as they also help to spread the NBG word:

1 - City governments and business districts looking for ways to lessen the impact of traffic and noise and to increase tourist or other visitor pleasure and safety, will pay a monthly fee to have our drivers and two and four passenger taxis present.

2 - Another source of income will be the advertising that will occupy the small billboards mounted on the back of the covered canopy in which the passengers sit. The business message will accompany the words:

“Connecting the Coasts
with a Nationwide Network of NBG Hubs”.

The sides of the canopy will be handsomely decorated with our logo and website, phone and address. They will also be outfitted with literature dispensers for NBG information that people can take when the vehicles are waiting for new patrons or switching existing ones.

Bike Visitors Bureau (NBG-BVB)

A small display area with brochure racks (stocked with the offerings of local merchants and kept orderly by NBG Sales & Marketing) will augment our on-line maps to also show the touring cyclist, for example, where to ride, eat, sleep, shop and play once he or she arrives in town. Here, two wheel tourists can sort through handsome brochures which explain the goods, services or places of interest each Anchor City area has to offer.

Library/Computer/Yoga Room

All NBG hubs will have a 300-500 square foot room where local as well as traveling NBG member cyclists can just hang out. A large couch will overlook enough floor space for as many as five people to do any stretching they may want to do comfortably. Along one wall will be books about bikes and biking. While along another will be a bank of five computers.

The PCs themselves will give those bike riders passing through a way to stay connected to their on line worlds with a large screen and big keyboard. They will give these long haul cyclists a way to more quickly offload photos, keep their blogs current or just stay in touch with family and friends, etc. Local cyclists will be able to use our computers as a way for them to join the NBG mapping community working out of their homes, offices or on the road in building our maps as well as in keeping them current.

NBG Ped Ex

At each of our hubs, one person will administer our Ped Ex operation. a local delivery service for parcels, small packages, other next or same day errands and for loads of up to 300 lbs per bike and trailer (larger loads can be arranged). Besides managing our messengers with scheduling details and the like, they will also be responsible for developing business. Toward that end, our clients will include restaurants, bakeries, wholesalers, publishers, printers, realtors and law firms, etc. Along with ferrying rental bikes back to the Hub for maintenance, other service applications will include:

Bank deposits
Bakery Deliveries
Blueprint Deliveries
Food & Beverage to Business Mixers, Meetings and other events
Publisher and Printer Deliveries
P.O. Mail Pickup and Delivery
Realtor to title company bank transactions
Legal Filings
Certified Process Service
Local On Call Service
A.S.A.P. and Next Day Service
Produce to Restaurant Delivery
Bank deposits | Architectural drawings | Hard drives | Sandwiches | Flowers | Jewelry | Contracts | Clothing | Keys | Tool boxes | Publications | Cakes | Kegs for a party | Pet food, etc

In Indianapolis, rates for pick up and delivery will be charged according to a zone map for parcels under 21 inches and under 20 pounds. Surcharges will apply for oversized items, items up to 750 pounds, wrong addresses, attempted pick-ups, and last-minute cancellations.

Hardware:

The bikes themselves will be supplied by the individual messengers. Delivery cyclists will be given free access to the NBG hub shop and tools for maintenance of their machines. Replacement parts that come from most all of the hub’s recycled stock (some exceptions may apply as determined by the shop manager) will also be free to bike couriers while they will get large discounts on any upgraded or new parts they may want to order (as the Hubs will be able to buy new bike parts at wholesale).

The trailers (4-6 heavy duty trailers with the words National Bicycle Greenway, its logo and web address silkscreened on to the side panels) themselves will be supplied by each of the Hubs. Besides trailers, NBG PedEx will also have cargo bikes that will keep loads waterproof and/or secure in extreme conditions as well as the for loads up to 750 lbs.

Museum/Show Bikes

A small 500 square foot museum will be established to display bikes and other memorabilia representative of each of the decades from 1880 to the present. Here everything from velocipedes, Penny Farthings and the early two wheel push bikes to 3-speeds and ten-speeds, load carriers, bike trailers, fully loaded tour bikes, army bikes, folding bikes, mountain bikes and recumbents, etc, will all be on display. Voice recorded tours will explain each of the exhibits and stress the importance of cycling to the needs of the people in the day in age in which they served as well as for a healthy planet and full, complete and more stress free life today.

The bikes themselves will be donated for this purpose from the local community. Such bikes will be on loan to the hubs on a contract basis in exchange for free membership privileges and/or a tax deduction. Those worthy pieces gifted on a permanent basis for the collection will be annually cycled throughout the national NBG Hub system.

The bikes themselves will be regularly cleaned by the Hub mechanics and their display will include photos and other memorabilia from the time they roamed the streets. Handsome placards, set on wooden easels, describing the bike, will define each machine.

This museum will be regularly visited by school children in each of the cities they serve and there will be an admission charge for people over 18 (free to NBG Members). These museums will add to the value of each our Hubs as important destination centers for touring cyclists as well as for local two wheelers.

Services for bike travelers

Long distance cyclists will also be able to use hub facilities, if they have a membership, to get a $2 shower and use the Recharge Room facilities.. There will also be beater bikes they can rent to explore the city if they don’t want to lug their gear around with them or use their own bicycles oftentimes made practical only for the open road.

NBG members will also be able to use hub addresses to receive mail while on the road. Packaging materials and postage will also be on hand so they can also send unneeded items back home. Directions and rates to the:

Closest camping

• NBG member lodging providers such as select hotels

• YMCAs

• Hostels

• NBG Warm Showers Guest homes

will also be provided.

If they want to use public transportation to explore NBG Hub cities. such as their museums and points of interest, or go for a cable car ride, if in San Francisco, for example, etc, they can secure their bikes and gear in a bike locker at the Hub free for a day..

Home for other Bike Organizations

The NBG Hub will make office space available to local bike organizations at below market rental rates. This will serve to concentrate the amount of bike energy in one place adding the perception of number strength to each of the separate groups. It will establish the NBG Hub address as bicycle central, bring traffic to our operation, firmly establish us as a leader in bicycle advocacy and encourage those groups involved to help us advance our vision of an interconnected two wheel America..

Human Powered Power Plants

20-40 exercises bikes will occupy one entire room. They will be open for anyone to use as a way to buy energy credits (the Hubs themselves will sell such energy to the the local utilities) they can use to buy bike parts from from the recycled bikes store and promotional items from the NBG store (located off site). The stationary bikes will also find themselves in use during the morning and evening community spin classes that will take place at the Hubs. The pedal machines will be hooked up to a battery grid that will store the energy to run the lights and power the steam, jacuzzi and sauna rooms featured at the Hubs.

NBG Recharge Rooms

All Hub facilities will have male and female locker rooms, complete with the all important shower stall for weary road travelers. They will be attached to a skylit community hot area in which a large jacuzzi sits in the center. Other doors that look out on the soaking pool will include steam and sauna rooms. There will also be a small room where massage can be scheduled.

Lockers

At our hubs, bike lockers will be available for traveling cyclists to use to secure their bikes and gear should they desire to go and explore the city on foot or with public transportation.

Those who have ridden a bicycle across America, need to be honored. Because they do not stand out or have a way to call attention to their accomplishment, we need to recognize them. We need to know they are walking amongst us.

Far more than the sports stars and movie actors whose opinions we seek when our communities or the Nation seek answers, we need to have a way we can call upon TransAm cycling veterans. Blessed with an outsized accomplishment few can equal, they understand America and its people at a core level that goes deep beyond what can be taught in traditional learning environments. Like a journey to the mountaintop, the lead instructor for them has been the actual experience of interfacing with the people along the way.

They have learned, first hand, how our brothers and sisters all just want to help each other get to our next destination. Unlike the motorist who needs to minimize their contact with other humans to get to where they are going, people are a huge part of a long distance bicycle ride. For their very survival, those out for the long-haul have come to understand how much we need each other no matter the role any of us may happen to play. As anchors for an expectation of the best, in situations that present difficulty, it is the presence of TransAm cycling vets amongst us that can have the potential to bring comfort.

This is especially important as the nation struggles to once again place a premium on truth, a truth that has been marginalized by the nation’s media in recent years. George Orwell warned against this when he wrote –

The further a society drifts from the truth
the more it will hate those who speak it

By celebrating TransAm vets, making them honorable parts of our society, the same way we do for our professional athletes and Hollywood personalities, we are assigning worth to those who genuinely walk (bicycle) their talk.

By giving TransAm vets a way to stand tall, we are using their example to remind us that talk does not move one’s own body from one coast to the other. We are affirming the fact that, in any endeavor, no matter how often we repeat it, mere words do not get us the results we desire. We are acknowledging the importance of building grit, goal setting, inner strength, belief, trust and hope into any winning formula.

As attributes that have come into possession of these gentle warriors, it was the long distance road that brought out the best in them. It was connecting the coasts with their own two legs that gave them a blue print they could use for the rest of their lives. As such, it has built the mix of humility and pride they have needed to go forward in life with love, purpose, inner peace and a greater ease. It is this we need to promote.

As a right of passage, we need to encourage TransAmerica cycling. Especially amongst our youth. We need to make this something they aspire to. When they leave college, for example, instead of traveling to Europe as a way to broaden their horizons, they need to have the TransAm cycling option before them.

We need to be able for them to put NBG TransAm Hall of Fame Member on their job resume. In trying to understand why we have made this such an honor, potential employers will quickly learn the value a TransAm cycling vet can bring to their place of employment. They will see that these are prospects who can work with a lot of variables and people to get a very large job done. They will know that these job candidates do not substitute excuses for accomplishment.

In the game of life, coast-to-coast pedal veterans are a better different for many reasons as well. When on the long distance road, stuck in a desert with headwinds and no services for miles around, they have learned they can go inside for the strength to continue. When the mountain ascent in front of them cannot be conquered in a few minutes time, but requires much exertion for hours on end, a deep understanding of perseverance has become their very nature. When forced to drink warm water, put on the same clothes day in day out or wipe their face with a dirty rag, instead of complaining, they have acquired a profound appreciation for the simplest of things.

When the next camping is miles away, it is getting dark, and before they can sleep, they have to make camp, make a meal and and tend to their many nighttime chores, they resolve to become better planners. As a skill they perfect with each new riding day, away from the road they feel called to spend a few moments thinking through any of the challenges that lie ahead. This as they become more fulfilled and productive human beings.

Armed with a working knowledge of the principals of success, these are people who have come to know themselves pretty well. Comfortable in their own skin, this is who we need leading us. We need to be shown the way by those who know that whatever they can do, is possible for anyone willing to do the work required to build themselves. We also need to be reminded by their example that any accomplishment is measured one day at a time.

As a society, we win when we place the TransAm cycling vet on an equal footing with our movie actors and sports stars. With the NBG TransAm Hall of Fame on our web site and as a large room at our main Indianapolis office, the National Bicycle Greenway can make that possible!

NBG Anchor Cities

Brought to you by:
Tom Ayres

Read more

Read more

How Indianapolis Can
Make Coast-to-Coast
Greenway Real

HERE is the rest of the story

The first business we have any record of here is the Salisbury Vinton Paper Mill of 1862. It was taken over by Beveridge paper which did business at this location untill until the mid 1990’s.

HERE is the rest of the story

[..]

In the end, the Pan Am Games brought about $175 million to Indianapolis’s economy. This as the cost to produce them was $30 million - a huge windfall for the city and a powerful endorsement of Hudnut’s vision.

In their aftermath, it was the relationship they formed with the NCAA that would see the NCAA move its headquarters to Indianapolis in 1998. Nor has the Indiana Sports Corporation stopped. By adding professional sports teams, stadiums, arenas and other state-of-the-art facilities, Indianapolis is now recognized as the Sports Capital of the World.

In addition to Hudnut’s amateur sports initiative, city leaders had also begun to think that the manufacture of information and not hard goods was the future. For this they knew that would require a different work force of well educated, younger people. But how could they make their city attractive to them? How could they interest them in all the parks the city was busy overhauling?

It was here that landscape developer, Ray Irvin, saw a solution. His thinking was shaped by famed urban studies author/theorist, Richard Florida, who maintained that the kind of people Indianapolis was looking to attract honored the bicycle. They saw it as a potent symbol of identity and status.

In having his listening turned up for what Florida called the ‘young creatives’, he was learning what the needs were of these future drivers of the city he and other city leaders, wanted to attract. It was here that he shared Florida’s vision that they would become less reliant on the car in their transportation decisions. He started to learn how their mobility needs were different from those who drove automobiles.

Irvin knew if he could get infrastructure for cyclists built, the smart young people he wanted to bring to Indianapolis would come. He began to wonder what he could do along the edges of the polluted river too shallow for freight carrying vessels that ran through the center of town. Or if there was anything he could do with the many streams that fed it that were strewn with litter, car tires and other debris.

In daring to see a radical new Indianapolis that could reverse the slide it had taken to its being a worn out, contaminated waste land, besides serving the travel needs of young people, he also knew it had to be beautified. It was here that Ray’s thinking was also influenced by George Kessler, the world famous city planner, talked about above. Kessler was celebrated for being able to blend natural landscapes with transportation corridors and places where large numbers of people congregate. In fact, Kessler’s projects can be found in 23 states, Mexico, China and in 100 different cities.

With the city’s broad expanse of parks as his canvas, as a real life expression of Goethe’s words -

Irvin drew up the Indy Greenway Master Plan. It would not only access all the new sports facilities (gymnasiums, ballfields, disc golf, swimming pools, etc.) in the parks, but also serve the transportation needs of the new workforce he and other city fathers foresaw. It was here that he interconnected the learning centers, libraries, parks, all the public places people can go on their bikes, with greenways. To help him achieve this, he turned the blight of the undeveloped flood plains needed to control runoff from storm events into even more greenway travel corridors.

Ambitious and massive, his plan required bridges, underpasses, earth moving, building renovation and a gargantuan amount of engineering work. Then his enthusiasm began to find money for it. Irvin set the city of Indianapolis on fire with his vision. Soon, toward the end of making it real, he had many different businesses and people from many walks of life contributing to what he foresaw.

He even had a handful of the local colleges and universities plugged into his excitement (Indianapolis is home to 40 institutions of higher learning, and 31 percent of the city’s residents hold a bachelor’s degree which is above the U.S. average). Their students were doing a lot of the study and research he needed to be able to prove greenways did not induce crime and other trouble. Their work instead helped him prove greenways united communities and increased property values as they made the turf all along them desirable places to live, work and play.

Through endless meetings with the public at large, local government organizations, property owners and businesses, Ray sold his vision of a greenway filled Indianapolis. Tirelessly, he also worked to get residents interested in reclaiming their waterways. He even went out on many of the countless litter pick up missions he organized.

Being a former politician, Ray was in line to become the Mayor of the City when he chose to build the Greenway plan he felt called to devise instead. Armed with a deep understanding of city bureaucracy, he also knew he had to position the plan he would draw up in such a way that it would take maximum advantage of all of the opportunity in Indy city planning architecture. For example, because of Ray, Greenway alignments are also part of the permitting process in Indianapolis, any future road building has to take them into account.

To keep it funded, growing and maintained, Irvin also called for the building of the very active nonprofit, Greenway Foundation of Indianapolis. Soon, infected by the desire to build Greenways for themselves, other parts of the state found themselves needing a way to be able to receive donations. As a result, the name of Irvin’s charitable organization was changed to the Greenway Foundation of Indiana..

As more and more locals got infected by Irvin’s passion, Indianapolis became more and more of a bicycle playground. The 250-acre White River State Park (WRSP) paradise, for example, now epicentered around the pedal machine, was the result of a total and complete facelift to a blighted landscape as I document in my book “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild It with the National Bicycle Greenway.” A charge led by Ray, the public was much involved through many meetings as they helped public officials and landscape developers design the park that resulted.

A world-class state park, recognized as one of America’s top city parks, several blocks from the dead center of the city, White River State Park extends for almost a mile on both sides of the now 600-foot wide (for flood prevention, its width was doubled by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1917) White River. To create it, as many as 50 businesses were eviscerated and 14 streets were either removed or altered.

Now, in the main part of the park, the nearby Indy Canal narrows into a stream that falls off as a waterfall near where the the old National Road Wood Covered Bridge of 1834 left land, as cannot be said enough, to help settle the frontier on the other side of the White River. Along the way it passes through the Celebration Plaza & Amphitheater and Governor’s Lawn. At the park, one can also find - the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, surrey and trike rentals, a community garden, a Visitor’s Center, the Indiana State Museum, an IMAX Theater (inside the Indiana State Museum – park operated), the 1914 Washington St. Bridge (now a Car Free promenade), a world class music stage and the restored Indianapolis Waterworks of 1870 that relied on the Indy Canal to power its turbines. Capable of accommodating up to 50,000 people, it is all this that now anchors the most bikeable downtown in America.

It was an honor to finish the work Olmsted and Kessler started, and even though I saw the unfinished opportunity, it took Indy to realize the unfinished need of their work, I worked to take my vision and instill it in so many others, so they might join the effort and insure its future for another 100 years for Indy’s residents and nature lovers.
Thanks to everyone that joined the vision.
Ray R Irvin.

After my five years in Ireland raising my son Cayo till he was four years old, the National Bicycle Greenway organization that I got nonprofit status for in 1993, was disarrayed and had lost a lot of its luster. Without my wife, or son, I returned to America in 2015 to Davis, CA, thinking I could bring the burn back with an NBG relaunch from what some people refer to as the “Bike Capital of America”. Well, in terms of bicycle facilities, on a per square mile (only 9) or per capita (66K) basis in this small city of 26,000 people (when you don’t include its 40,000 students), Davis has no equal (HERE are all the biking amenities).

However, surrounded on all four sides by farmland, as I-80 (what the Lincoln Hwy, America’s first coast-to-coast highway, yielded to) thunders through it, not only is its human power infrastructure built out, but almost like an island, even tiny bits of its example are extremely hard to replicate, even in the three tiny farm towns ten miles away. This, while it’s connection to Sacramento, the State Capitol, at only 12 miles away, is directly adjacent to busy Interstate 80 (separated by a concrete, jersey wall and cyclone fencing) and is only navigable by the most hardy of cyclists.

Nor was Davis an attractive destination for those who may have come from out of town to the national events I tried to stage there (while Indianapolis has the top rated airport in North America, Davis does not even have a commercial airport). In the summer, when most people do their bike rides, Davis, a college town/bedroom community, rolls up the sidewalks of its small downtown well before noon. It just gets so hot there that locals defer to their air conditioned homes, cars, offices or classrooms. Unlike Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America (and a city with the most bike friendly downtown in the world), where in the summer, people outside are everywhere, Davis is like a ghost town quietly filled with the well manicured yards of an outsized preponderance of large-sized homes.

Well before I ended up in what I thought was America’s top bicycle heaven, in the 1990’s, while I was in the far more temperate San Francisco Bay Area, as I watched Ray Irvin, globally known as Mr Greenway, transform a dying city with Greenways, I also listened to him gush about the all new Indianapolis Greenway scene that was beginning to emerge. And when I saw it for myself in August 2017, I knew this was where the NBG and I needed to be.

When I was in Ireland (2010-2015) writing my book, “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action” (HBGR), I acquired an in depth understanding of the road that built America, the Lincoln Highway of 1914. Toward that end, I used the Castlebar, Ireland (pop 12,068) library to bring in reading material about the Lincoln from all over America. It was then that I became aware that not only did it pass through Davis, CA, but that Indianapolis is where the movement for it began. And the force who led the charge for it was a former HiWheel racer and bike shop owner named Carl Fisher, who had become one of the. wealthiest people in the world. Fisher was one of the wealthiest people in the world. (HERE is the chapter I wrote about him in “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild It with the National Bicycle Greenway”).

In 1909 Fisher led the charge with three others to honor Mayor Bookwalter’s request for a speedway when they built the world famous Indy 500 car racing track. Also in 1909, his 5-story Fisher Automobile Company was completed to become the first automobile show room in the world. Soon, the world’s first Auto Row led from it. For half a mile, on Capitol Ave, the street was lined with car related sales and services (tires, brakes, upholstery, bodywork, etc.).

Besides selling cars, Fishers turn-of-the-century skyscraper also served as the home office for the first car headlight business, Presto-Lite. From his Michigan and Capital location (now a massive condominium/apartment complex anchored by Kroger’s), he managed factories all over America that made it possible to drive a car at night.

Through Presto-O-Lite, Fisher made car headlights affordable and widely available. This allowed the public to drive to recreation and errands when the sun went down. It also meant they could work longer hours. As a result, the productivity of factories all over America increased dramatically.

Here at his new building, was also the braintrust for the national highway he foresaw. In HBGR, in the chapter, “Lessons Learned from America’s First Coast-to-coast Highway in Building the NBG”, I talk about how Fisher established the Lincoln Highway Administration (LHA) to build will for his vision of a coast-to-coast car road with Indianapolis at its center. From Indianapolis, once the home of 97 different car manufacturers, he promoted tirelessly and the red line he drew on a map connecting Indy with San Francisco became a reality in July of 1913 when his Indianapolis based organization used 17 cars and two trucks as a part of the 1,700 mile Hoosier Tour (also called the Indiana–Pacific Indiana Automobile Manufacturers Association Tour) to blaze the exact route they would work to flesh out.

In the end, in deference to one of his sponsors, William Packard of Detroit based Packard Motor Car Company, the LHA route across America would use existing roads just north of Indianapolis to get to Chicago from New York. From there, they would rely on old stagecoach, lines, and old Indian and wildlife trails, all lightly etched out in the dirt, to follow the transcontinental railroad alignment. The LHA then went on to rally America around the Lincoln with everything from encouraging church sermons and poetry about it to noteworthy national Boy Scout participation, a weekly radio show, even a World War I victory celebration on it that included a young Gen. Eisenhower, the former president and father of the interstate, nearly half a century later, etc, etc,.

The Lincoln reached from Times Square in New York City to the World’s Fair in San Francisco in 1915 as a smorgasbord of different roads, most all of them, as we just saw, dirt west of Chicago. As they continued to work to make their coast-to-coast highway real, Fisher and his group, also had the added financial support from his wealthy friends including, Thomas Edison, former U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt as well as Woodrow Wilson, the first U.S. President to make frequent use of an automobile for relaxation.

By invoking the image of Abraham Lincoln, the LHA had succeeded at making it seem patriotic for people from all walks of life to drive, and as more and more motorists, in their newly minted automobiles, flocked to it every year, the Lincoln Hwy sparked a road building frenzy that continued unchecked all over the USA well into the 1970’s. Ultimately, as America’s love affair with the car and the highways built to accommodate it continued to explode, the Lincoln got swallowed up by the numbered highways of the Federal Highway Administration.

Like many big cities in the USA, Indianapolis got run over by all the cars its Lincoln success had engendered. It then started to die when most of its manufacturing began to leave the country in the 70’s and 80’s.This is where Ray Irvin began to make a difference. In the early 90’s he started building the internationally recognized Indy Greenways network. And by the end of the millennium, as more and more Greenways got added, more and more jobs and young people began to flock to Indianapolis.

How could they not?

In addition to the 18-mile long Monon Trail, the downtown canal towpath Ray helped turn into a place of magic and the world renowned, 11-mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail that reenergized many of the sidewalks Indy merchants do their business from, these and other greenway trophies continue to make Indianapolis central look like one giant college campus. In this podcast – (transcription), Ray Irvin prophecized this in 2006 when I did an interview with him. To the green and the play that is everywhere, add the fact that as the Crossroads of America, that 50% of the USA is all within an 8-hour car drive, and you will see why Indianapolis has become such a powerful magnet to workers who bring innovation and exciting youthful energy to this city.

As for myself, when I first moved here, in keeping faith with aligning our National Bicycle Greenway effort with the power of the Lincoln Highway that built the America we know today, because homes are still so surprisingly affordable here, I was able to buy a 19th Century Victorian farmhouse just a few blocks from Washington Street, aka, US 40, the original National Road! Surrounded by history, I was, five or so blocks from the old Duesenberg Motorworks factory.

Legendary as a regular winner in the early days of the Indy 500 speedway, their luxury automobiles selling for as much as a quarter million dollars in 2018 value, were the finest money could buy. In fact, from 1919 to 1937 the Duesenberg was the Rolls Royce of its day and was the source of the saying, “it’s a Duesy!” used to describe the best of the best.

Headed towards downtown less than a mile away, is the bridge that has now become a center of play for Indianapolis locals. In crossing the lazy White River, the old Washington St Bridge of 1870 (it replaced the pioneering wood covered National Road bridge of 1834, one hundred feet away), it once stood out as the gateway to the downtown Indianapolis Auto Row we talked about earlier. Now, however, under Ray Irvin’s direction, the bridge, closed to cars, has become a tastefully designed promenade that is always filled with people and activity as it connects the Indianapolis Zoo to White River State Park (WRSP) that Ray also helped to bring about.

Coming back to the National Road Wood covered bridge, before the Lincoln. Highway built America as we said, it was, as I, and several respected historians, feel, the true gateway to the west <why this is so>. Sadly, dismantled in 1902, nearly half a million people used the National Road wood covered bridge to get to the gold of California, the homestead land of Oregon, the religion of Salt Lake City and the settlement of Kansas as a slave free state, as it sent an incalculable tonnage of goods west from the factories that sprang up all along the nearby riverfront

On the downtown side of the river is where John McCormick built the first cabin in Indianapolis in 1820. It was originally situated on the other side of Fall Creek from the bridge before that waterway got rerouted in 1875 per this link.

Now all of this sits at the foot of downtown and the wildly popular. Indianapolis Cultural Trail, where it passes through White River State Park (WRSP). At WRSP, besides a world class, outdoor concert stage, it also features 3 and 4-wheel bike rentals, a community garden, sprawling lawns and direct access to the beginning of the world class Indy Canal that we’ll talk about below.

As for the Indianapolis Cultural Trail (ICT), as a piece of bicycle infrastructure unlike any, anywhere else in the world, I could not keep the National Bicycle Greenway in California after I rode it. As the template for what we want to replicate in all 19 of our other Anchor Cities, we have given it its own chapter in the words ahead here.

With such a way of moving people about, not only will tourism explode as the unique character of each of our cities will be placed on display, but new trails will also be launched from the Downtown Greenways we foresee. This, as people powered users will yearn for ways to reach to and from them from north, south, east and west further and further away.

In knowing how to turn all of its human powered play into an economic engine, while all the businesses throughout the immediate area flourish, a sign on a state office building high above all of this sounds prophetic. It reads:

As its tax coffers are enriched with all the dollars all this greenway activity generates, the State expertly supports it with jobs that maintain and administer it. Toward that end, during the warmer 3/4 of the year, Indianapolis is a hub of government as well as private sponsored liveliness! Lawn cutters and trail sweepers and maintainers of street furniture, etc, all busy about as tents for events are constructed, temporary fencing and wiring are deployed and vendors add more and more two, three and four wheel bikes to all the ones that all happily scurry about.

In honoring such fun, because Indianapolis residents know their own personal income streams are directly or indirectly affected by play, with greenways setting the lead, they make allowance for the slower moving inconvenience cyclists may cause them. Motorists in downtown Indianapolis slow for cyclists and tend to take greater care when passing us. They seem to know to look for us entering the roadway in unexpected places.

There is a consciousness for not just cyclists here but also greenways. Locals have come to learn the value we bring to a community, so the pathways and their users are taken seriously. Where they cross roads, added caution seems to be conferred on motorists in these areas. All along the Monon Trail, for example, for the first seven or 8 miles, there are a small number of intersections. Almost as if it is built into their conditioning, on the few busier ones, car drivers all tend to slow and exercise greater care once they reach them.

Despite the fact that the economic turndown of 2009 pushed Ray off to Florida and now North Carolina, where he is making a living off of his second passion, sailing, the greenway building infrastructure he established is still in place. As such, Indy Greenways remains active in building new Indianapolis greenways, as fueled by the rock solid Greenways Foundation Irvin, founded. What that means is that there is still a funding mechanism that keeps an active dialogue with funders of large projects. This as Indy Greenways still has its database of on the ground greenway construction firms. And because of its work with the many Indianapolis universities, it also knows where to look for the studies these schools have done about how to overcome NIMBY objections (which almost don’t exist here anymore) as well as document the increase in property values for those in close proximity to greenways, etc. What all this means, as our National Bicycle Greenway looks to nationalize their success, is that a lot of the tools we will be in need of are already here waiting to be used and/or built upon!

Some noteworthy words about Indianapolis are in order here. I am riding more here than I ever did in California as I join all ages and fitness levels of cyclists here. Nor is a fixed gear bike or lycra wear required to establish oneself as a legitimate user of the local roads and paths. Nor do enthusiasts only ride in groups on back roads on “training rides”. Cyclists here don’t seem to be in competition with one another. The transportation cyclist, racer, commuter or recreational cyclist don’t seem to stand apart from one another because it is just so big here. There are not coffee shops that collect a certain kind of cyclist because the greenways encourage everyone here to try their hand at bike riding and as their roles switch back and forth, motorists and bike riders seem more accepting of one another.

What also seems to help is that it is not congested here, Users of the road are not fighting each other over who gets to use what parts of it. Here there are as many roads to choose from as there is open space. If you don’t like the pace on one, a few turns will find you on another. Nor is everyone here rushing to get to a freeway. This is so, because with the exception of the one that rings its perimeter about ten miles away, most of the city is free of freeways.

The ease with which people from all walks of life relate to each other here also has to do with population density:

In San Francisco, there are 18,580 people per square mile,
or 870,887 people spread out over 49 square miles.

In Indianapolis, there are 2,328 people per square mile
or 855,164 people spread out over 366 square miles.

Another thing that calms people down here is the very active arts scene. Unlike California, where people are afraid to expend their time making things that won’t help them pay their exorbitant rents or mortgages, galleries and artists and organizations formed to support the arts abound here. As a proven therapy, not only does art soothe one’s nerves, but it helps to keep people off the streets as what is produced adds to the open space and nature’s green that have a prolific presence here.

Nor can one ignore the impact of the Major Taylor Velodrome. As a venue managed by Marian University, the top college bike racing team in the nation, the bicycle speedway, just like the Indy 500 did for cars, is more and more establishing Indianapolis as the bicycle center of America. With a track to help them showcase their wares, national bike component manufacturers such as SRAM, Zipp, TruTrainer, Blue Rub and Silca have all brought their operations here. And as this world class raceway also brings in top bike racing teams from all over America and the world, not only is the city jumping in to support it, but greater and greater numbers of bike riders from far and wide are getting the chance to see first hand the bicycle heaven that can be found here.

If I would have stayed in California, I would have achieved great NBG success if I would have reached the state line at South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. And since the preponderance of cyclists west of the Mississippi were either south of me in the San Francisco Bay area, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego or north of me in Sacramento , Chico, Arcata, Eugene, Portland and Seattle, I was often tempted to devote NBG energy to calling for a West Coast Greenway. Being in Indianapolis, now however, I am a little over a hundred miles from the powerful bicycle beacon of Chicago. This while our next NBG Anchor City, Cincinnati, is one hundred miles to the east, Columbus another 100 miles and Pittsburgh, the bicycle gateway to Washington DC, is 200 miles more. Instead of being a pipe dream a continent away from making the Nationali Bicycle Greenway real, the goalpost, Washington DC, is now within reach as we work to connect it to San Francisco!

Thank you Indianapolis.
Your example will help make the National Bicycle Greenway real!!

2025 Post script: My daily riding here has strongly reinforced the notion that Indianapolis has the most bike friendly downtown in the world!! In coming full circle from its former car centric ways, Indianapolis is also, for me, where my grandfather and great grandfather were born (1859, 1888)!!

MNIn 2019, I also created this 5-minute video Virtual Tour of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, the only Downtown Greenway in the World!! In the same year, I also published my new book. “How Indianapolis built America, catalyst for the National Bicycle Greenway” (HIBA). HIBA endeavors to change the nation’s perception of Indianapolis as being a place filled with speeding automobiles. Per what I have talked about about above, in the last twenty years, because of its internationally renowned Greenway system that feeds its globally celebrated, downtown Cultural Trail, Indianapolis is more and more becoming known as the city with the most bike friendly downtown in America.

HIBA shows, how, in coming full circle back to now being a top place for cyclists, it was the bicycle, its clubs, racers and industry captains that had then gone on to help make Indianapolis the world’s original automobile leader in the early years of gasoline powered transport. In it, I also show how the dynamic Carl Fisher used his successes in the universe of pedal power to make the car the ruler king we now know it as.

HIBA also shows you how the transportation innovations Indianapolis brings about continue to affect the face of the Nation. From the the National Road Bridge that opened up the West, to Fisher filling the region with first HiWheel then conventional bicycles, to its revolutionizing train travel with implementing the first union train station hub in the world, to one of its companies making chain affordable enough that bicycles could be sized down to where they could be stood over and motors could then do work instead of just spin, to another one of its businesses (run by Fisher) making it possible to drive a car past sundown (a breakthrough that can’t be stressed enough), to it bringing about the first car highway to connect the coasts (led by Fisher),

Indianapolis has always stood at the forefront of how we as an American people move about.

In laying a foundation for showing you how it was the actions that took place in Indianapolis that brought about the America we now know, I used the beginning of HIBA to take that reader through the timeline of a short history of long distance travel in America. In a later chapter, I talked about how the chain one Indianapolis company produced was needed before cars could even exist to then enjoy the roads that would bring the Western frontier into the 20th century. As the makers of a part that most all machines, whether powered by humans or by motors, need even today, Diamond Chain of 1890 flourished with its mammoth factory in Indianapolis until they moved in 2022. As testimony to the impact this company had on all of the world, Diamond Chain was one of the chief drivers of the Industrial Revolution,

As the most centrally located city in America, in describing it, that book showed how it was Fisher who gave purpose to long distance driving. There you saw how he got Americans everywhere to help him build the first road across an entire continent. The Lincoln Highway, originated in, and developed from Indianapolis, was the first arterial to travel from the Eastern Seaboard to the Pacific Ocean.

In that book, you also saw how, as we said above here, Mr. Greenway, Ray Irvin, led the charge that transformed the Rust Belt City Indianapolis had gone on to become to its now being known as the Greenway Capital of America. As an extension of Irvin’s work, the 11-mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail is what we will be keying off of as we endeavor to connect the coasts for cyclists.

By the time you have finished the book you are reading now, you will understand why I had needed to be in Indianapolis so I could relaunch the National Bicycle Greenway from where Greenways are a known and highly valued commodity. In daily using and learning about the Cultural Trail, as you will see, I have devised a formula that will replicate it with what we call Downtown Greenways in all 19 of our other NBG Anchor cities that connect San Francisco to Washington, DC.

Having such a model we can point to in place, the NBG can help our other cities show themselves off as they attract bicycle visitors from nearby and from all over the nation and world. As such, it will be the new tourist economies that result that will inspire the construction of bikeways not only to and from our Anchor Cities but from nearby population centers as well. All this as we more and more make the National Bicycle Greenway a crucially important part of how America moves about and how it does its business!

After 40 million people bore witness to Martin Krieg’s return from a two month coma and clinical death with his last bike ride across America, Krieg has been trying to connect the coasts with a bikeway ever since.

Having tried many different approaches in California, he moved to Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America in 2018. Now he is learning about all the mechanisms, foundations and groups Ray Irvin, Mr. Greenway himself, put in place to actualize the greenway masterplan the city has adopted.

As he documented the only Downtown Greenway, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, with a slideshow, he also learned a lot about Indianapolis. Armed with all this information he created a book about Indy.

His Blueprint book explains the NBG Hubs they want to build in all 20 of the Anchor Cities that hold their route together between and including San Francisco and Washington DC. He also explains the methodology they have developed for building 19 other Downtown Greenways in the Anchor Cities they have established with 16 years of Mayors’ Rides

If you agree the foundation Krieg and his volunteers have laid over the last 40+ years is now strong enough to make their dream real, you can become a part of this Movement! Your purchase of this book, makes you an automatic charter member of the NBG and gets your name listed in the book acknowledgements (updated weekly).

As I continue to build out the Facebook Reel for my book “NBG Blueprint”, I sent the 90-second script to Jenifer Aniston. Not expecting a response, I tongue cheek, added, it would be great if she could read it.

Well not only did she reply, her words floored me. She said that she would be happy to, but that she couldn’t do anything until June. OMG.

One of the most famous women in the known universe is going to effectively introduce “NBG Blueprint” to the world. What’s powerful and propitious is that because the Press is always looking for stories about her, they will be sure to make a lot of noise about this publication. As they join with her millions of fans, they will also cause a huge sensation for the National Bicycle Greenway vision.

Thank you, Jenifer. Thank you. Wow.

This 90 second script was built for Facebook Reels. A fast moving slideshow will run.behind the narrator’s voice. Jenifer Aniston has agreed to read this for us!!

After 40 million people bore witness to Martin Krieg’s return from a two month coma, clinical death and right side paralysis with his last bike ride across America, a reporter at the State house in Boston asked him what was next. Tho the answer did not make the nightly news, Krieg has been trying to connect the coasts with a bikeway ever since.

<pic>

To get it known about and in the hope we would attract like minded supporters as he. planted seeds for it, he put on many hats

Pictures for (as narrator speaks)

Bikeroute.Com one of the first bike sites (kiser skyline w/broute)
Mayors’ Rides.(Mrover)
Cycle America Regional Directories
The 17-person Busycle
Pre-Google Bike Maps
Swing for NBG
Festivals
”How America Can Bike and Grow Rich” in Ireland
High Wheel Bicycle riding & events

Having proven with his Eagle HiWheel ride from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in 2009, that there is very little of interest for the NBG between California and Indianapolis,

<mr9 Eagle pix >

in 2018, he moved to Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America

<pic>

Now he is learning about all the mechanisms, foundations and groups Ray Irvin, Mr. Greenway himself, put in place to actualize the greenway masterplan the city has adopted.

<pic of ray>

As he documented the only Downtown Greenway in the world, the 10 mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail, with a Virtual Tour slideshow, he also learned a lot about Indianapolis. Armed with all this information he created this book

<pic of Indy book >

Because people regularly tell him they enjoy his writing, always asking about his next book, instead of talking about how his group would connect the coasts with a bike way, he turned his long winded answer into a book

< picture of nbg blueprint >

The book explains the NBG Hubs they want to build in all 20 of the Anchor Cities that hold their route together between and including San Francisco and Washington DC.

< picture of hub schematic >

In explaining the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. this book shows how this bike way has transformed a once dying rust belt city bringing it riches on many levels. He also explains the methodology they have developed for building 19 other Downtown Greenways in the Anchor Cities they have established with 16 years of Mayors’ Rides

< pictures of ICT and canal >

If you agree the foundation Krieg and his volunteers have laid over the last 40+ years is now strong enough to support an interconnected network of Hubs and Downtown Greenways, please help us make it real. You can become a part of this Movement! Your purchase of this book, makes you an automatic charter member of the NBG and gets your name listed in the book acknowledgements (updated weekly).

Growing throngs of people will come to demand the National Bicycle Greenway when they become aware of the power of the bicycle to exercise their brain, to keep it young, healthy and sharp. This will be especially, so after growing numbers of jobs are eliminated by AI, robotics and self driving cars with the result being a quest for simplicity. No longer finding themselves on the vicious treadmill of trying to keep up, the newly unemployed will also be happy to learn that most of their transportation and recreation needs are best served by the two-wheel pedal machine.

While I love what he did for America and the world, as the Joe Biden administration pushed electric bicycles, the health of America was on a backwards slide. This is so because of all the new research that is coming out about the importance of using one’s leg muscles for the health of the brain. Besides all the known benefits of riding a bike, from health (mental and physical) to financial and planetary considerations, etc., a growing number of recent studies are making people aware of the fact that riding a bike helps to substantially:

* Lessen the risk of dementia & Alzheimer’s
* Increase a person’s lifespan
* Increase mental power
* Improve memory and focus

all much better than brain games such as scrabble, chess, and crossword puzzles, etc.

If you think these benefits can be achieved with walking, Medical News today says,“Cycling provides sustained aerobic exercise and requires cognitive engagement (coordination, navigation), which enhances brain plasticity more effectively than walking alone.

Nor is tricycle riding an adequate substitute. The fact that you can’t pedal a two-wheel bicycle with your eyes closed but can on a trike speaks volumes about all the countless processes that are taking place to connect the body to the brain when you move forward on two wheels.

This is all so crazy. Man has come up with innumerable inventions to keep us from having to use our legs to move about and yet in the end we are the ones who lose.

(to be continued)

All too often, when cyclists hear that the National Bicycle Greenway is a San Francisco to Washington, DC connection, they think that is great but that it has nothing to do with their own pedaling efforts.

W R O N G !

There are many reasons why this is incorrect reasoning as I will show you here.

To begin, the National Bicycle Greenway will set the precedent for the highest and best ways any city can encourage bicycling as it meets the needs of its pedaling populace. When any population center, anywhere, is looking for ways to make it easier for its non-motorized users of the road to move about, they will be able to take example from what we have done. With ours as a Best Practices model for how to make a downtown people centric and not car centric, this will put a subtle pressure on the city leaders of off-route cities to copy what we have done. They will also feel called to commission their planners and Public Works people to follow our example because of the pictures they won’t be able to help but see. These will get to them from their own constituents who will be circulating photos on social media of what any one of our Anchor Cities will have done.

This will be combined with the steady drumbeat of stories about how any of our Anchor Cities in question are enjoying dramatically increased tourism numbers. As well as greatly enriched coffers from the sales taxes they will have collected from their prosperous merchants. All this as their much envied quality of life will be my much studied,

As catering to the needs of cyclists shines a brilliant spotlight on the great prosperity found in our Anchor Cities, more and more cities all over America will want to copy what we have done. In addition, our Anchor Cities will give a sense of dignity to the act of moving oneself about under their own power. Instead of such activity being marginalized to the edge of the road or what is left over, our Anchors will show that when pedal power is given priority, everyone benefits.

When it becomes widely understood that our Anchors are heaven like sanctuaries because of the bicycle, this will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that we belong on the sidewalk or out of the motorist’s way. When our Anchors show that bikes are a needed part of the downtown mix, this sentiment will be felt all over America.

The people who live in our Anchors will happily embrace pedal power because of all the jobs it creates. Many of their neighbors and friends will have jobs because of the many cottage industries that will crop up. There will be an abundance of juice bars, bike rental, repair and sales shops, locker facilities, shower hubs, delis, coffee shops, ice cream stands, etc.

An abundance of work opportunities will also be found in the busy eateries and lodging purveyors that service all the quiet traffic that results. For those business concerns that are not on the actual Greenway itself, because bikes don’t require parking, as they work to get cyclists in their front door, they will push city leaders to make it safe for bike riders to reach them.

In such a way, they become allies to our effort to more securely move about. This way of thinking will spread to off route cities as well. This is so because when shopkeepers in cities anywhere see the increased business that honoring its cyclists brings about, we, as pedal pushers will benefit. This is because these merchants will not only honor the cyclist, but push for better conditions for them in their own markets.

Because off route cities will see that better cycling conditions increase the money making capacity of their own dealers of goods and services, they will work to make biking easier and safer right where they live, work and play. In using our Anchor Cities as a model, they will want to lay the groundwork for similar revenue engines for themselves.

With regard to employment on the National Bicycle Greenway itself, there will be work in everything from groundskeeping, to kiosk and street furniture maintenance, to lawn mowing, to sign making, to the special crews that will form for grading and paving the pathways and then for their maintenance. Overpass and underpass construction will be another source of employment. The adjacent gardens will also draw the attention of people who specialize in their upkeep.

When it also becomes becomes a widely known fact that the NBG is synonymous with employment opportunities, communities will clamor for our services. Similar to how cities appealed for a position on America’s first coast to coast road, the Lincoln Hwy of 1914, when we expand our Anchor Cities to the feeder lines, there will be a huge push to be considered. In cities north and south of our route, whole committees will be established to petition for their inclusion.

Art will also be one of the features handsomely positioned along the way. Because this is so, a plethora of grants will become available to us. With such monies we will be able to beautify our passageways in such a way that they will become known the world around from all the photos they engender. As memory factories, people will flock to them from every corner of the globe. And when they do, this will give them a working understanding of the message that the bicycle is the cause of all of the wonder they are privy to. When they return home, it will be this newfound appreciation that they will place before their city mothers and fathers.

Corporate America will also take notice. Sections of our Greenway will be dedicated to sponsors who will also maintain them. Here, their names will also appear on kiosks, benches and mileage and direction posts. And when this happens we will have garnered their support. When they promote their part of the right of way, by default, they will be promoting bicycling.

In the same way that the Cultural Trail is the heartbeat of Indianapolis, with Downtown Greenways of their own, all of the people in our Anchor Cities will rally around them. Because its many employment opportunities put food on the table of so many of its residents, the people there will feel like they have a stake in its success. They will want to see as many people as possible enjoying it.

As they share their source of pride, they will also want to show off the unique way in which their Downtown Greenway celebrates their city. As they send this call out to their neighboring communities, this message will reverberate far and wide. Embedded in this communication, of course, will be the power of pedal power.

This will also give cycling a sense of place well beyond the white line at the edge of the road. In the same way their stadiums and arenas have used the baseball, basketball and football played in the city parks and on its streets to legitimize such sport, Anchor Cities will accomplish this for bicycling.

And finally, as pedal power rejuvenates our Anchors, as this awareness spreads far and wide, we will have a bigger presence in the motor user’s awareness. As this consciousness grows louder and larger, no matter where they are, they will feel more and more called to watch out for us. They will have increased respect for us. They will see that we are not in their way but that we are good for wherever it is they may happen to see us.

We are using “this book” to show we have a plan for making our vision real. In circulating it for review, we found it to be a widely respected work that people and businesses wanted to be a part of. They had the sense that this was more than a good read but a Movement they wanted to be able to show their support for.

Business support will credentialize our offering as, by default, it will encourage all of those in their orbit to take a hard look at what we are proposing. Toward that end, it will be seen as something to be shared and taken seriously.

In honoring that thinking, different parts of the book will have ‘brought to you by’ logos. And you, your company or your organization can support it with a Possibility Thinker, Dream Weaver or Actualizer presence. All three levels get you in the book and establish you as an NBG Member!

– For $25, you can have yourself listed as an NBG Possibility Thinker in the book’s end matter. If you want a printed version, that can be had for an additional $5.

– For $75, Dream Weavers get their name listed in the book’s end matter, as well as a handsome, signed paper back printed version they can have for their coffee table.

– For $100, Actualizers get all of the foregoing as well as a signed copy of my hard back book, Awake Again (a one-time best seller in its genre).

Join this Group

Go to our tax deductible donation form HERE to Get in the Book. A book that we foresee one day being in the curriculum of more than a handful of college classrooms across the country…