CyclingSavvy class in Orange April 24th and 25th

Register Here

OCBC is proud to announce our first CyclingSavvy course of 2015 on April 24th and 25th in Orange.

CyclingSavvy is a program of American Bicycling Education Association, Inc. (ABEA). The course teaches the principles of Mindful Bicycling:

  • empowerment to act as confident, equal road users;
  • strategies for safe, stress-free integrated cycling;
  • tools to read and problem-solve any traffic situation or road configuration.

The course is offered in three 3-hour components: a bike-handling session, a classroom session and an on-road tour. The classroom and bike-handling sessions may be taken individually, the road tour requires the other two as a pre-requisite.

Sample Lesson

The object of the course is not to turn people into road warriors. Being a confident, competent cyclist has nothing to do with speed or bravado. You don’t need either of those things to have access to the entire transportation grid.

Even most confident cyclists prefer to use quiet routes when feasible. In many cases, it is only an intimidating intersection or short stretch of busy road which hinders a cyclist’s preferred route. This course is designed to show students simple strategies to eliminate such barriers, and ride with ease and confidence in places they might never have thought possible.

The philosophy and intent of our course is best described in this quote by Aimee Mullins:

…all you really need is one person to show you the epiphany of your own power and you’re off. If you can hand somebody the key to their own power… the human spirit is so receptive… if you can do that and open a door for someone at a crucial moment… you are ‘educating’ them in the best sense. You’re teaching them to open doors for themselves. In fact, the exact meaning of the word “educate’ comes from the root word ‘educe.’ It means to bring forth what is within. To bring out potential.

The 3 Part Course
Our course is designed to be taken as individual sessions or as a complete course. Train Your Bike (bike handling) and Truth & Techniques (classroom session) can be taken individually in any order. To sign up for a Tour of Orange, you must have taken or be signed to take the other two classes prior to the tour class. Individual sessions are $30 per session. A package of three sessions (the full course) is $75. A package may be used to take the sessions at any time.

Train Your Bike! (3 hours):

This session is conducted in a parking lot. It consists of a set of progressive drills designed to increase students’ control and comfort handling their bikes in various situations. Drills include:

  • Start/Stop, Power Pedal & Balance Stop
  • Snail Race, Slow-speed Balance
  • Drag-race, Gears & Acceleration
  • Ride Straight, One-handed
  • Shoulder Check
  • Object-avoidance Handling, Weave, Snap
  • Turning: Slow-speed Tight Turns, High-speed cornering, Emergency Snap-turn
  • Emergency Braking

The Truth & Techniques of Traffic Cycling (3 hours):

Through guided discussion with video and animation, this session familiarizes students with bicycle-specific laws, traffic dynamics and problem-solving strategies. Students discover that bicycle drivers are equal road users, with the right and ability to control their space.

Tour of Orange* (3.5 hours):

This session is an experiential tour of the roads in the city of Orange. The course includes some of the most intimidating road features (intersections, interchanges, merges, etc.) a cyclist might find in his/her travels. The students travel as a group, stopping to survey and discuss each exercise location. After observing the feature, discussing the traffic dynamics and the best strategy for safe and easy passage, the students ride through individually and regroup at a nearby location.

* The Tour session is only available with the full course. The other two sessions may be taken á la carte, in any order.

More information
Origins & Principles of CyclingSavvy

Register Here

 


Update!

To ensure that your bike is in perfect operating condition for the class, Jax  will extend a 50% discount on the labor charge for a “basic service” at any Jax Bicycle Center for anyone who signs up for a Cycling Savvy or TS 101 class. The basic service is $69.99. Jax will  provide a coupon to anyone who signs up for one of the classes for 50% off on the labor charge ($35.00). Any parts that are needed for the service will be at the regular price.

Email lci@ocwheelmen.org if you would like a coupon for a tune-up!

Voice your opinion – South OC bikeways planning

thumbnail link to OCTA bikeways map

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LZY7VMN

This link will let you rank proposed Bikeways in OCTA’s planning process. Some are off-highway Class 1 trails, some are along “corridors” that include familiar streets and highways. YOUR responses will help prioritize $-tax expenditures on these projects. And please leave your written comments, too.

We need to hear from YOU.

 

The OC Wins Bronze!

On 10/18/2012 Orange County was awarded a Bronze  Bike Friendly Community award from the League of American Bicyclists  as you can see from the snippet  of new awards. OC BronzeBFC

Despite our coverage of injuries and fatalities in the best and worst cities in the county, we’ve also been hard at work at some of the positive aspects of cycling in the County of Orange.

Moving from Honorable Mention to Bronze has not been easy, and required a lot of time and dedication on the part of many to get to this point.

Activities in District 4 under the leadership of Shawn Nelson calling for cities to collaborate on connected bikeways and actually doing something about it certainly helped in detailed league feedback.

Partnering with the OCTA, the OCBC brought stakeholders to the table to submit the application and guide the process forward.

Specifically, Dan Hazard (co-founder of the Huntington Beach bicycle Advocates (HuBBA)) and Pete Van Nuys of the OC Bicycle Coalition, Sandy Boyle, Carolyn Malmorado, and Wes Parcel of the OCTA formed the core, and brought a dozen or so local bicycling experts to review the application and make suggestions, with others that provided credible and enthusiastic endorsement for a bronze award.

Not one mayor was harmed by a taxi in our upgrade to bronze, although we note the City of Los Angeles also was awarded a Bronze award under the leadership of hizzoner Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as covered by bikinginla.

Teamwork Pays Off

Looking forward, there’s a lot of positive momentum here in the OC despite some recent setbacks.

For example; this week the City of San Clemente’s Planning Commission voted to adopt, with some minor amendments, an 88 point draft of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan that will be incorporated into the Circulation Element of San Clemente’s updated General Plan if approved by the City Council sometime early next year.

Once approved by the Council, the documents head north for legal review by the State Attorney General’s office and if everything is in order, sent back to the City Council for formal adoption probably around May at the earliest.

Any delay anywhere along the line slips the probable adoption date and the resultant benefits that the plan would provide.

Due to the lengthy time involved in crafting, negotiating, reviewing, amending, and all the other fun like public review and comment, cities in the OC  contemplating updating their circulation element with a bicycle plan as part of their General Plan update should quit the contemplation, and get started now.

With more cities adopting bicycle plans into their circulation (and even land use) plans, and coordinate and collaborate with their neighbors in connecting commuting bikeways, we may have a shot at earning a Silver!

What Does It Mean?

According to the people that hand out the awards, cycle-commuting in BFCs tends to increase faster than non-BFC’s, thus reducing pollution, decreasing congestion, and generally providing a healthier and more sustainable quality of life in addition to driving up the national cycle-commuting average ; which in turn leads to more BFCs, more cycle-commuting…well you get the idea.

In other words, a BFC designation increases the likelihood of a positive feedback loop to the betterment of all.

With that in mind, an award is not an endpoint, it is a degree of validation from an external source that confirms whether a community is on track or not with their measurement standards with respect to bicycle investment in the 5 “E’s”:

  1. EncouragementOCBronze
  2. Education
  3. Engineering
  4. Evaluation
  5. Enforcement

While it’s nice to have the whole County be recognized from the outside, we’ve got more work to do so we’ll get back to it.

Thanks to all who’ve helped bring the County to this point, clearly we’re on the right track, and we look forward to your continued support going forward.

Thanks OC!

Rideshare Week 2012

From 10/1 to 10/5 Rideshare Week encourages commuters to take the bus, train, vanpool, carpool, bike or work instead of driving alone for their daily excursions.

Commuters can win a variety of prizes by pledging to participate in Rideshare Week including iPads, gift cards to the Irvine Spectrum, movie tickets and bike gear.

Rideshare Week is a part of OCTA’s Share the Ride program, which is aimed at helping commuters find efficient, environmentally friendly and cost effective ways to commute to work.

The program, sponsored by the Orange County Transportation Authority, helps commuters find a vanpool, plan a trip by bus or train, and find a carpool partner.

Rideshare week is sponsored by OCTA, Anaheim Resort Transit, Enterprise Rideshare, VPSI Inc., Spectrumotion, Kaiser Permanente and Jax Bicycle Center.

For cyclo-commuters, engage your coworkers to join a commuter train as there is safety in numbers