What Does He Think Of His "Bicycle Friendly" City?

This is a question I've asked, sometimes rhetorically, on and off this blog:  What, exactly, does it mean to be a bicycle-friendly city.

In the immortal words of one Dr. Tom Hammett of Chattanooga, Tennessee, his city's boast of "Bicycle Friendly" status is "mere bull droppings."  In a letter he wrote to his local newspaper, he writes of the hazards that still exist for cyclists, including those too often imposed, wittingly or unwittingly, by law enforcement officials.  One of them, he says, nearly killed him.

You might disagree with his politics, but he does make a valid point:  that in most cities, even the so-called bicycle-friendly ones, safe facilities for cyclists are "limited and do not serve the entire city," as Dr. Hammett complains.  "In general, our transportation grid is lousy," he points out.  Which brings me to another point: You can't have a bicycle-friendly city unless the whole transportation grid--including that for motor vehicles, not to mention public transportation--is well-designed.  Few cities, at least here in the US, have those things. Simply having a car-free commercial strip downtown doesn't cut it.

Cyclists at the Chickamauga Battlefield, Chattanooga, TN. From Outdoor Chattanooga.

What's really interesting is that Dr. Hammett isn't some hipster who moved into the city because he wanted to walk to his favorite bar and pedal to work.  He is a retired physician who says he "loves" Chattanooga--where, apparently, he spent his professional, if not his entire, life.  And he recognizes that his, and other people's (whether or not they're cyclists) quality of life in that city is intertwined with making it truly "bicycle friendly."

Chasing Storms, And History

When I was a student, one of my classmates said he wanted to become an agricultural metorologist.  Naturally, being a city girl (well, guy in those days), I didn't know such a job existed.  So he furthered my education.

Anyway, he once said only half-jokingly that his studies and an internship in a weather station actually made him a worse forecaster.  Growing up on a farm, he said, you read almanacs and learn how to read the sky, the wind and other parts of your surroundings.  Studying meteorology, he said, "takes you away from that" because "it's all about technology" which, he claimed, "destroy your intuition and common sense."

William Minor probably would agree with him.  He left a 30-year career as a news reporter for the Miami Herald and moved to Pennsylvania, where he lives a plain and simple life among the Amish.  But unlike the Amish, he spends a lot of time away from home, chasing storms--or, more precisely, weather.  On his bicycle.

William Minor, center, with biologist Jan Goodson and NC State College intern Austin Mueller.

Since he is a volunteer firefighter (at age 75!) in his new home, he also uses his work to help raise awareness of volunteer fire departments, which he says are vital to the fabric of America.  Wherever he goes, he checks with a state trooper or other law enforcement official to help him find a local fire station and make contact with its chief.  Once he finds them, he asks whether he can stay.  They usually oblige him but, as he says, he promises to keep out of the way and spends time helping to clean them and with other tasks.  

In away, those two pursuits--weather and fire departments--aren't so disparate.  Going around the country by bicycle helps Minor to see them close up and document how they are changing--and how they, in turn, can change the country.

Wherever he goes on his bicycle, he tows a trailer full of equipment that he uses to take soil samples, record cloud patterns and gather other data.  He emphasizes that he is not a meteorologist; rather, he is a researcher, just as he was when he was writing about Watergate or his travels with Jacques Cousteau.  

He does, however, offer some warnings.  "The earth is in for a major weather cycle," he declares, and all of it--at least on the East Coast of North America--has Hurricane Matthew as its precursor.  "We fail because we don't pay attention to history," he warns.

He believes that he is recording that history from his on-the-ground data.  We had better weather forecasting forty years ago, he explains, "when there were only two weather satellites.  Now there are 19-plus" but people don't pay attention to what's going on around them and notice the patterns, he says.

Hmm...I wonder what that old classmate of mine is up to.  If he's a meteorologist, agricultural or otherwise, perhaps he should get on a bicycle and follow William Minor.  The firefighters would probably welcome him.

A Ride That Leaves Nobody Behind

People have gone on bicycle rides to support all kinds of causes,from veterans' affairs to peace, from liberating people to conquering diseases, and everything in between.  I've participated in a few myself.  The great thing is that most cyclists ride for causes I support.

That includes Gennadiy Mokhnenko.  He's a pastor who directs the Pilgrim Republic Children's Home in his native Ukraine.  Its focus is on orphans and other "vulnerable children"--of which the Ukraine, like many other countries experiencing upheval and poverty, has many.

In fact, one of those children became one of 32 childen Mohnenko and his wife, Lena, have adopted.  Andrey Dudin was the first of them, in 1999, when he was 12 years old.  He'd been homeless for six years when the Mohnenkos took him in.  Now he is accompanying Gennaidy on the US leg of his World Without Orphans bicycle tour, which began in 2011.



They ride every summer and the US leg of their ride is being supported by Serving Orphans Worldwide, a nonprofit organization based in Bristol, Tennessee.  Its work complements that of the Pilgrim Republic Children's Home, in that it rescues, trains and supports struggling childrens' homes worldwide.  Both organizations want to dispel some of the myths about adoptive children:  namely, that they can't be loved as much as biological children and that if their biological parents were addicted to drugs or alcohol, they will end up the same way.  "It's a stupid idea," says Mokhnenko.  He uses himself as an example:  "I grew up in an alcohol addicted family and I'm a pastor of 27 years."

As of this writing, he, his adoptive son and other cyclists are riding through Tennessee. They began this part of the tour in Los Angeles in May and will end in about three weeks, he says, when they reach Miami, Florida after "pedaling 60 to 80 miles a day."