BTWD 2007

The weather could have been better, but it also could have been worse; and despite the overcast skies I think this was the best BTWD yet. The turnout was at least as large as last year when the weather was perfect and possibly larger (like the Park Service I no longer do crowd estimates, I do enjoy playing the "guess how many beans are in this jar" game though). This photo is from Gwadzilla, there are more on the site.

Schwag - BTWD shirts were red, I had to throw away my favorite - the blue one - earlier this year because it had a big stain on the front and the future Mrs. Washcycle does not approve of such things, so it's nice to replace it. Everyone got breakfast I think and when Dunkin Donuts ran out of coffee they went to get more. Zipcar (chance to win a jersey) and Flexcar (gave out bagels) were there, as were Commuter Connections, NPS, Rails to Trails, The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a few others.  goDCgo was there again and I found ou they have a cool interactive map of downtown transportation that, of course, includes bike trails, lanes, routes and even parking.

Speakers - Good turnout. 4 city council members, Wells, Mendelson, Cheh (according to her website she had a ward 3 bike ride during her campaign) and new member Bowser (she biked in on a bike-the-sites bike), all showed up. So did Fenty (looking good in spandex) - and he didn't even come last year when he was running for office. Tangherlini was there as was Del. Norton. I can't remember having so many high-profile local officials - and it's not even an election year. I didn't see Rep. Blumenhaur or Councilmember Alexander, but they may have been there before I was. Of the speakers, Fenty did the best - he mentioned all the ongoing work (without really having to read it from his notes, like he knew about it) including the 300 bike parking spaces planned for the new baseball stadium. Norton gave it a good effort, but her speech probably would've gone over better with the Critical Mass crowd. Wells speech was short, so he didn't say much except that this council is dedicated to making DC a great city for bike commuters and having three of them on stage - and bills coming up in June - made it hard to argue with.

Crowd - Last year someone on DCist criticized the crowd as lacking in diversity, but I looked at it this year and I don't think that was the case. It certainly was not dominated by "young, white men" as is the typical bike commuter. The crowd was close to 50% female (if not more). There were young people and those who were less young, and they represented every racial and ethnic group in the city.

And best of all, I won a bike pump.

Did anyone go to the other pitstops besides Freedom Plaza? Thoughts?

Addendum: John Kelly Biked to Work today too..

If there were proper bike lanes into the city, places to park your bike once you got here and showers at your office, more of us could ride, fewer of us would be overweight, there would be less pollution, and less pollution-related illness.

More great photos (including some by Jeff) here at DCist

Comments

[al frankfurter]

Went to Silver Spring. There was no free dunkin donuts, starbucks, or Whole foods giveaways. Just bananas, dasani, and not-so-great bagels without cream cheese or other toppings. Not really worth stopping there on my ride to work.

[ohmypolarbear]

Went to Alexandria (Old Town). Apples, bananas, water, coffee, energy bars, bagels, samosas (!). We got BTWD water bottles with our t-shirts, which haven't been mentioned - a typo slipped through, though: the bottles all had the date listed as May 19, 2007.

I totaled my bike last week, so I had to borrow a bike-the-sites bike from Rosslyn. They made it very easy, and you can't beat free! I hope we see a report somewhere on how many bikes they loaned out.

Flexcar was offering free memberships, and the Zipcar rep said the City of Alexandria would reimburse any residents that signed up. Kudos to the government official that agreed to that one, and kudos to Flexcar for doing it themselves.

The crowd was pretty diverse, about half and half male-female and mixed racially as well. The average age was older than I expected, but of course I'm biased since I was probably the youngest at 23.

[gwadzilla]

good seeing you this morning

and

thanks for giving credit where credit is due

have a great weekend!

[Purple Eagle]

I stopped briefly in College Park. Small number of people while I was there, but the "convoy" heading for Freedom Plaza had already left. Food was not outstanding - similar to Silver Spring. One of the tables (I did not notice the sponsor) had a cool aerial photo depicting the planned route of the trail connecting West Hyattsville with Fort Totten, and another showing potential routes for northern extension of the Paint Branch trail through the BARC property, connecting with an existing trail along the same corridor further north.

[Chris]

I did the rounds - rode out from DC to Vienna, and met up with some folks out there. We went into Rosslyn and listened to some music, before heading to Freedom Plaza, where I spoke with the beardless Gwadzilla snapping pix.

[Meigh]

Hello from Flexcar! I hit both Silver Spring and Freedom Plaza stops and was *immensely* impressed by all of you. (So much so that I biked in to work today!) So, if any of you who biked in on Friday didn't get a chance to sign up for Flexcar FREE, drop me a line and I'll make it happen for you. Meighan(dot)Mahaffey(at)Flexcar.com

[Grendel]

I worked the Hyattsville Pit Stop. Bananas, bagels, bottled water, assorted teas and juices and Starbucks. A number of people ran into the iced coffee the hard way, the weather was a bit cool for that product that morning. I chewed the ear off a reporter for half an hour or so. I think we had around 30 or so people come through that morning. Someone said that was the best for a first year PG county stop.