Cycle Oregon looks to make lasting impact with ‘Cycle Safe’ program

Scott Bricker leads kids from Cottage Grove in a bike education class as part of Cycle Oregon’s new Cycle Safe program.
(Photos courtesy Scott Bricker)

Cycle Oregon — the popular week-long bike ride that’s also a non-profit — has had an immeasurable impact on bicycling and rural towns across Oregon in its over two decades of existence.

While those are certainly things to be proud of, Cycle Oregon board member Keith Ketterling felt something was missing.

“What do we leave behind [in the communities we ride through] in terms of cycling? We come into a community and we bring economic development, but we leave the next day. We ride into town on our nice, expensive bikes, but do we make a connection on a cycling level? If we don’t leave cycling behind, we’re not leaving the essence of our event.”

Practicing the essential shoulder check move.

Those questions led Ketterling to create Cycle Safe, a new Cycle Oregon program that educates kids how to ride. The basic idea, Ketterling shared with me via email, is to spur bike education programs that grow and sustain themselves long after the 2,000 person ride leaves town.

Classroom session.

The inaugural effort launched this summer in Cottage Grove. Cycle Oregon worked with former Bicycle Transportation Alliance executive director (now consultant) Scott Bricker to develop the program. Bricker is an expert at bike safety education and he helped build the BTA’s current Safe Routes to School program. Bricker worked with the local Boys and Girls Club to get the program off the ground.

Bike Gallery stepped up with a donation of 25 bikes for the Cottage Grove program. Program participants will get education and encouragement to start riding regularly. The kids are taught by community volunteers, who are required to complete a bike education training themselves. The hope is that these volunteers will become bike education leaders in the community long after Cycle Oregon has left town.

For Ketterling, Cycle Safe is a way to spread the word about bicycling to more Oregonians and to “create a new generation of cyclists.”

Cycle Oregon 2011 takes off September 10th from Sutherlin, Oregon. The first day’s ride ends in Cottage Grove, where a ride is planned with graduates from the Cycle Safe program and Cycle Oregon riders.