Need an excuse to ride your bike? Enjoy a bike scavenger that benefits the Community Cycling Center!

The Community Cycling Center is a nonprofit whose mission is to broaden access to bicycling and its benefits. To help support this mission, we are hosting a multi-day scavenger hunt that you can enjoy on your bicycle. Bonus action: We are also hosting a raffle that you can participate in whether you want to ride the scavenger hunt or not!

This is a Pay What You Can event with registration tickets ranging from $15 – $25.

How it works:

• On Saturday, August 28th at 7:00am, all ticket buyers will receive the scavenger hunt clues and answer sheet at the same time! You have all weekend to solve the clues, but the rider who turns in their correct answers first wins!
• Fill out your answer sheet that is emailed to you, and turn it into brittany@communitycyclingcenter.org as soon as it’s completed.
• All answers must be turned in by Sunday, August 29th no later than 9:00pm. We will check answers for accuracy.
• Answer sheets will be scored on both accuracy and timing. The fastest most correct rider earns more points!

The routes:

• There will be a paved route option AND a gravel route option. Each route has their own clues, and do not overlap with one another. You get to pick which route you’d like to ride!
• Completing both routes the fastest does not earn you extra points, but feel free to ride both if you have the extra energy and curiosity!

Winners for both the scavenger hunt and the raffle items will be announced Monday, August 30th!

(NOTE: Written by Community Cycling Center Cesar Chavez Safe Routes to School Coordinator William Francis.)

Out on delivery in the New Columbia neighborhood in north Portland.
(Photos: Community Cycling Center)

A student in the Community Cycling Center’s STEM Bike Class.
(Photo: CCC)

Publisher’s note: This article was written by Riley Gabriel, a program mechanic at the Community Cycling Center.[Read more…]

Incoming CCC Executive Director Jonnie Ling (left), Blaze the Trail Cat (center), and outgoing CCC ED Kasandra Griffin.
(Photo: Community Cycling Center)

Kasandra Griffin has decided to leave her job as Executive Director of the northeast Portland-based nonprofit Community Cycling Center.

In a statement to be released later today, the CCC says Griffin will leave at the end of February to spend more time with her family (Griffin and her wife are expecting a baby in early March). Taking her place will be longtime staffer Jonnie Ling, who’s been with the organization since being hired as a seasonal mechanic in 2008. Ling has worked his way up to Director of Programs and Enterprise, which means he supervises the managers of the CCC’s retail shop (Northeast Alberta Street), summer camps, and community programs.

Griffin began her tenure with the CCC in summer of 2017 and had previously worked for Upstream Public Health and served many years as a board member of The Street Trust. At the CCC, Griffin was a strong voice for cycling and active transportation activism. She spoke recently at the 2030 Bike Plan rally and was a member of the Getting There Together Coalition that’s pushing for a greener Metro transportation bond measure.

[Read more…]

A Community Cycling Center STEM instructor (right) and student from Helensview High School .
(Photo: Community Cycling Center)

Teaching young people about how to work on bikes and ride them with confidence is the bread-and-butter of many cycling-related nonprofit groups. At the Community Cycling Center, they take that idea one step further by using bicycles as the centerpiece of a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum.

The CCC has led a STEM bicycle mechanic program since 2015 at two local alternative secondary schools: Rosemary Anderson Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC) in north Portland and Helensview High School in northeast. In keeping with the CCC’s mission, they focus on schools that serve low-income youth and students of color who face barriers in traditional educational environments. The classes use hands-on lessons that give students confidence and training they can apply to life beyond high school. So far over 65 students have participated.

Now the program is set to expand even further afield with a new class in Woodburn. CCC will add Lord High School at McLaren Youth Correctional Facility to their STEM education program.
[Read more…]

Team “You Make Me Want To Shoup” hoists the trophy: (L to R): Sarah Iannarone, Joe Cortright, Alyssa Heminger, Tony Jordan and Clint Culpepper.
(Photo: Yashar Vasef)

Transportation leaders and bright minds from around the region convened at the Lagunitas Community Room on Thursday night for the latest rendition of the Community Cycling Center and Oregon Walks’ Transportation Trivia event. It was an overflow crowd and for the first time in the event’s history, all tickets were sold out before the festivities even began.
[Read more…]