about eight months ago, my former professor, cedomir kostovic, emailed me with an invitation to come and lecture at my alma mater, missouri state university.
missouri state university visit
bike advocacy progress report
after my typical period of indecisiveness, a general direction has been established for this body of work. the direction includes a trait that i have noticed in the past year or two in my and my students' work – that one can often include many aspects of other ideas into a single direction.
making advocacy fun
thinking on all of this bicycling stuff is fun for me because i'm motivated, but my initial ideas don't necessarily seem like they'd be fun and inviting for newbies or outsiders. i've been wondering in the back of my mind how to make all of this totally fun. then i thought of this awesome project:
bike advocacy questions and ideas
in a dual attempt to get some input and document where i am in the sabbatical process, here are my questions and ideas to date.
volunteering at 816
archie with his bike in the 816 shop. we worked together for entirely too long to switch out both of his brake cables.
it shouldn't have taken one-and-a-half hours. it probably shouldn't have taken one hour, or probably even 45 minutes. but, yes, due to my lack of experience and newbie-ness at working at the shop, it took me pretty nearly 1.5 hours to switch out two brake cables along with archie.
archie told me he has been a patron of the 816 for four years, when he first got his bike there. he's been on that same bike ever since, and it's clear that he loves it. he has several d.i.y. fixes like masking tape on his bars for grip and zip/cable ties on his top tube, which we had to take off to do the fix. archie had recently been riding downtown, heading down a sizable hill when he applied both brakes and both cables snapped. thinking quickly, he stuck his foot on his back tire to stop himself. luckily he wasn't hurt. so there he was at 3:00 sharp, when the shop opened, to get his bike fixed.
one thing that is so great (and "right") about the 816 is their d.i.y / d.i.t. (do it together) ethic. i took archie's brake fix as an opportunity to practice that as best i could, asking archie for help as i fumbled my way through the mechanics of center-pull brakes, road-bike brake levers, and finding the correct cables. we've all had those moments when we've wanted a third hand, and this time we had four.
archie is a great guy who knows his old-school soul / r&b (he sang along quietly to most every song playing on the radio that afternoon), rides his bike a lot, and needs what the 816 has to offer. i look forward to working with him again soon.
conversation maps, part 1
three years ago i had an idea in an elective i taught, called stories of the city, that i referred to as "conversation maps". the point was to use them as a way to record interactions with people in the community, organize the information, and be able to utilize it to gain new insights.
finally, i'm actually attempting to use it myself to map a couple of my initial interviews with k.c. bike activists. it's not all pretty just yet and it may not get any better. it was somewhat useful to go back through my notes and do this. i hope it will help me to sort through issues and ideas more easily as i move forward.
two-wheeled trips
one idea i had recently for my sabbatical projects was to design a website with a social component that would allow people to input bike trips they've made and see how much gas, money, and emissions they've saved, as well as add up miles and calories burned. then you could share that info on FB and twitter. there could even be a challenge component to it, allowing friends, groups, or even cities to compete against each other. the point of it is to encourage people to use bikes for various trips (commuting, eating out, small errands, visiting friends) rather than cars.
sabbatical realizations
a little 2" x 2" card i designed, among other things, to promote 816's fundraising efforts. yeah, that's a big-ass image. photo by an unknown 816 fan or member.
currently on what i'm calling "day two" of my sabbatical. not knowing when the starting line was (last day of spring term? end of fiscal year? first day of fall term?), i decided it would be when lori and murphy started back to school – aug 15.