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2012 PSU Bike Survey Now Open!
If you bike to the University District, or use PSU bicycle facilities, we want your feedback! The best part is that if you take the 2012 PSU Bike Survey you can enter for a chance to win prizes from the Bike Hub! This survey will help us understand what’s important to people who are bicycling and help to shape the direction the university takes with regards to bicycling investments and infrastructure. It should only take 5 minutes, so what are you waiting for? You can find the link to the survey in the right-hand sidebar of the blog.
It’s Friday, which means, log those trips!
Week Three of the Bike2PSU Challenge is almost over, and as you all know, we’ve hit our goal! 1015 riders are logging trips as of this morning, and that’s with two weeks still left in the challenge! Remember to tell your coworkers and friends that still have no signed up that it’s not too late! As usual, we’ll be announcing our prize winners on Monday, including a brand new Linus bike! If you want to see what these lovely bikes look like, head over to the Bike Hub where they’ve got a nice line-up Linuses. But remember, you can only win if you log your trips, so make sure to log them for the week by no later than Sunday at 11:59pm. The more trips you log, the more chances you’ll be one of our winners. Lastly, we’ve got some great events coming up next week. Check it out:Friday Flat Fix Clinic:Friday at 12pm at the Bike Hub
It’s going to be an awesome weekend!
Happy Riding!
-The Bike Hub
Bicycle Maintenance, this Monday at Noon!
This informative workshop will cover all of the basics that are needed to properly maintain your bicycle. We will discuss and demonstrate proper methods of lubricating your drivetrain, adjusting your brakes, properly maintaining your tires and all of the other tricks to keep you rolling around town. Fee free to bring your bicycle and we can discuss specific questions that you may have!
We’ve Reached our Goal of 1,000 Riders!
We’re very excited to announce that the Bike2PSU Challenge has officially logged over 1000 active participants! Compared to approx. 800 riders who actively logged a trips during last year’s challenge, this marks a significant milestone in our goal to encourage the PSU Community to ride to campus during the month of May.
Of course, none of this would be possible without all of you. Thank you for riding and thank you for participating in one of PSU’s most popular events! We want to also give a special shout out to the 135 team captains who are keeping their teammates motivated and inspired to ride. You are integral to making the Bike2PSU Challenge fun and engaging for literally hundreds of other riders. Thank you! Lastly, a big round of applause to all our new commuters! 332 riders have identified as new bike commuters this year so far, which is fantastic. Welcome to the club!
Don’t forget, it’s never too late to join and ride with us! We have lots of prizes left to give away and plenty of room at the big party we’re going to throw at the end, so please invite your friends and colleagues to join up and start riding.
Happy riding!
Friday Flat Fix Clinic, tomorrow at Noon!
BRING YOUR BIKE and learn how to change your flat tire. This is a great clinic for both the first-time cyclist or as a refresher for seasoned riders. Can’t make it this Friday? Don’t worry, the Friday Flat Fix Clinics will be happening every Friday at noon all throughout the rest of April and May!
Commute Tips from your Bike Hub Mechanic- Pete
Flats: they can be the bane of any bike commuter’s existence. You’ll be be riding along peacefully and suddenly you’ll feel a vibrating feeling, look down, and notice the air has gone out of your tire. When I first started riding my bike to work and school, I had no idea how to remedy this situation other than taking my bike to a bike shop for repair. If this happened on my commute, it typically meant a long walk to my destination or standing in the rain trying to look up bus schedules on my phone. Needless to say, this experience would usually cause me to arrive late and disheveled to wherever I needed to be.
As much as your local bike shop would love to take your money to get you rolling again, it’s fairly easy and far more practical to learn how to do it yourself and to carry the necessary tools with you when you ride. At the minimum you’ll need a set of tire levers, a spare inner tube, and an inexpensive hand pump (plan to spend around around $25 for all three). There are numerous instructions to be found online or, even better, you can come to one of the PSU Bike Hub’s flat fix clinics that happen every Friday at noon through the end of May. We’ll walk you through the process step-by-step, answering any questions you might have. Our goal is that you’ll come out of it with the skills and confidence to repair your tire the next time it happens.
Investing the time it takes to learn to fix your flats on your own will make you self-sufficient and able to avoid some of the inconvenience that a flat tire can cause. And who knows? Maybe the next time you see a fellow commuter staring helplessly at his or her immobilized bicycle, you’ll stop and say, “hey can I help you with that?”
Commute Tips from your Bike Hub Mechanic- Vanessa
I used to look at cyclists with cycling shoes and think of how silly they looked. Then one rainy day, my foot slipped out of my pedal and as it came back around, it hit my shin so hard I saw stars. That was the day I decided, I needed some of those silly cycling shoes, and what a difference they made. I was no longer getting bruised by the shin vs. pedal encounters during my rainy commutes. And, as I came to find out, my feet stayed drier longer when I began using shoe covers.
Well, I thought, if the silly shoes did wonders for my feet, I wondered how much better my behind might feel if I wore one of those shorts with the padding…. So I ventured into the world of bib shorts and never looked back. Even for a short commute, it makes a world of difference to have that extra padding, specially if you wear a backpack, as the extra weight makes you ride differently and pushes your weight down towards your saddle causing the “discomfort we don’t speak of.”
You don’t have to wear spandex shorts in order to have the padding (or chamois, its actual name). Mountain bike shorts offer the same padding but they look like regular shorts so its a win-win.
Rider Spotlight- Joyanna
When I started bike commuting, I had just had my second child. I was out of shape, sleep-deprived, and pretty anxious about cycling on the road with cars. I had not been on a bike since childhood. Because I knew other people who had done it and gotten fit, I took a class on commuter cycling and decided to give it a try. I started by commuting one-way and putting my bike on the bus on the way back. Over time, not only did I start going both ways, but I discovered the joy and freedom of taking my bike everywhere, all the time. I lost 40 lbs in my first 7 months of bike commuting, and went from scared and inexperienced to being known as the “bike girl” at work. A year and a half later, we are a car-free family, and I am healthier and happier than I’ve ever been. Bike commuting was perfect for me, and when people ask me why I do it, I say, “Why wouldn’t I?”Explore the Gorge by Bike with the Outdoor Program!
Have you always wanted to go on a bike tour but don’t want to go alone? Maybe you’re not sure what to bring. Well, not to worry! The Outdoor Program (ODP) is putting on a two-day bike tour June 2-3 into the beautiful Columbia River Gorge! The trip will start and end at the PSU campus, with an overnight at Ainsworth State Park. Participants should be capable of riding 40 miles a day. There will be plenty of waterfalls and scenic overlooks to enjoy on the way!
Sign-up deadline is May 23rd at noon. Pre-trip meeting May 23rd at 6:00 PM.
Also, tomorrow, May 16 at noon is our Introduction to Bicycle Touring. Join the Bike Hub for an overview of things to bring, how to stay comfortable and have any questions you may have answered! Please RSVP to clint@pdx.edu if you want to attend!
FREE Breakfast for Bikers, Tomorrow at 8:30 am!
Join us this Wednesday and every Wednesday until the end of May for FREE coffee and donuts from Coco Donuts, courtesy of the PSU Bike Hub and the PSU Cycling Team! Join us every Wednesday at the PSU Urban Plaza, Smith Center, and Cramer Hall — but only if you ride your bike that day. We’ll be there from 8:30am-10:30am or until the grub runs out, so don’t be late.
Bike2PSU Week 2: Stats and Winners!
We’re done with the second week of the Bike2PSU Challenge, and we’re getting so close to our goal of 1,000 actively participating riders! As of writing this post, we have 972 riders who last week logged 2378 trips for 21961.88 miles. Last week we burned 10,761.32 calories and offset 21,521.78 pounds of CO2 (approximations of course, see how we figured this out here). But of course, you all probably want to know who has won week 2′s prizes! Here they are:
5 Radbot 1000 Taillights courtesy of Portland Design Works goes to Tom Bielavitz, Brandon Giatti, Maria Yates, Jon Leon & Sarah MaCarthy;
A Musette bag full of Knog goodies goes to Kara Lazcano-Huff
A Boomer Wearable light by Knog goes to Liam Bugelholl
A backpack by Ortlieb goes to Leland Scantlebury
And of course, a brand new bike courtesy of Linus Bikes goes to Robert Majure!
It’s going to be a beautiful and warm week, so let’s not only get to 1000 riders, let’s see how far we can surpass it! Tell your friends and coworkers to sign up, or if they already have but haven’t yet participated, to log a trip! It’s never too late to join since we have winners each week! There’s tons more great stuff to come!
