We are really excited to get more people involved this year for BikeFest and open to any and all ideas for how it needs to evolve after over a decade of bicycle themed shenanigans.   If you have any ideas feel free to share them here on the MB. Hope to see a big crew on the 17th. We will work on having a virtual way to attend the meeting like skype or google hangout for people that are unable to get to the BikePGH office. Mike

I don't know if I'll make the meeting yet, but here's an idea i'd like to share:  A short bike ride with the mayor and county exec aimed at people who OPPOSE bike lanes.  The ride would start at the city-county building (using free HR bikes?) and travel down Grant street to left on Liberty, down to Stanwix St., then up the Penn Ave bike lane.  It would end at the convention center with a Q&A session about the need (or hatred) of bike infrastructure.  This would allow those 'comment section' critics to actually get to talk to the mayor about how bike lanes are a waste of money, but only after experiencing rush hour traffic from a bicycle seat.  Maybe have a pro bike columnist like Brian O'Neal mention it in one of his columns to bring out the critics.  Bikefest is a lot of fun for cyclists, but this would be a way to move the agenda forward.

This is a cool idea.   Keep them coming!  

A footdown tournament might be fun!

Staircases are your friend! With the city's effort to inventory all 700+ city steps now complete, and funding in process to repair some of them, I think it would help the biking community to learn how to use them. * How to carry a bike up or down a staircase * Top 10 most useful steps for simplifying a trip (see my suggestions below) * Finding the city's online map * Practice! Map out a ride of about an hour's duration to try out a few. Avoiding monsters like Rising Main Ave or from Armstrong Tunnel entrance to Duquesne U. As to my favorites, far and away the most useful to know is the 144-step flight from Joncaire St to Pitt's Frick Fine Arts Building. Going up, it provides an easy way to get from the Jail Trail to Oakland without having to deal with the tough grade or irksome traffic on South Neville. Going down, it provides a critical connection from the Schenley bike lane and the Jail Trail. The set of three at the top of James Street behind Allegheny General allows quick access to the Fineview neighborhood. The set of steps at the dead end at the north end of Arch Street, past Randyland, avoids the tough, busy climb to get into Perry Hilltop. In West View, a 53-step set plus a 200-yard hike pushing the bike through the woods lets me avoid steep, super-busy Horseshoe Curve on Perry Highway. Downtown, a staircase connects Ross Street to the Liberty Bridge sidewalk. The West End Bridge becomes much easier to use as a bike route when you know how to connect to the steps on each end. In the West End, the Saturn Way steps, and others, let you get up into Elliott and up to the West End Overlook. In Troy Hill, anyone not caring to commute home by biking up Rialto Street, of Dirty Dozen fame, can utilize either the steps alongside, or the long flight up to Goettman Street from the new trail along Rt 28. In Brookline, the Central stop on the South Busway gets you to the two sets of Jacob Street steps. A set up steps just east of the McKees Rocks Bridge connects to Davis Avenue, supplying a traffic-free connection to downtown via Fleming-Antrim-McClure-Eckert to the Chateau Trail, and north into Brighton Heights and Bellevue. A set of steps connects Eckert/McClure with California Avenue. Last I knew, these were in bad shape, but their usefulness is undeniable. Long story short, putting these to use can simplify a commute, open up new ideas for housing, provide hidden shortcuts, and avoid lots of traffic.

A few years ago on the message board, we had a game called Wheelset Of Fortune. As it evolved, it became a low-speed, no-pressure treasure hunt. Two people, chosen in the previous round, got to identify a thing of some sort, and your job was to go find a similar thing, take a photo of your bike next to it, and post it on the message board. If you took a photo of one of the things, you got one entry. If you took a photo of both the things, you got two entries. Multiple entries of each counted as one. At the end of a week or so, we made a list of all the entries, assigned them a number, "spun the wheel", similar to the TV game, and chose two numbers at random. Those would be your tag setters for the next round. I suggest that we do something like that during BikeFest. You don't have to be at any particular place to participate, or at any time. Daylight helps, but depending on the tag, may not be necessary. It allowed everyone to get into the game without having to race all over, trying to beat someone else. Say the tag was statues of lions. So, in your travels, you looked for statues of lions. If you didn't know of any, maybe take a little different path to work or wherever and maybe you'd find one. The game encouraged exploration. I worry about a lot of the various events, needing to be at Location A at Time B, and if you're not there, you miss out. Well, with this, you don't miss out! All you need is a bike and a camera! And an account on the message board. It would really help if we could get the photo upload feature on the board to work properly, too. Thread: http://localhost/message-board/topic/wheelset-of-fortune-take-3/

This is coming up next week. Hope to see everyone there. Looking into having a google hangout for the night in case you can not make it to the office. More info to be posted next week.  

I've mentioned before about having a seminar on how to equip yourself to video your rides. I couldn't do this last year due to equipment failures, but am in a much better position now. As before, I think it would be a good idea to have cameras rolling while I or others explain what we're doing and how to get ready, as there's no ideal way to do it. Almost five years into it, I myself am still tinkering and testing. But there are a bunch of us out there doing it, and what works for one might not work for another. Possibly the culmination of this is a set of short, 10-minute or so, videos, presented by several people, assembled into a YouTube playlist to be stored on a Bike-Pgh YouTube channel.

Great ideas, everyone! Really looking forward to tonight's meeting. If you're unable to attend in person, you can join via this Google Hangout: https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/bikepgh.org/bikefest2017meeting If you have any questions, please email me at volunteer@bikepgh.org

Half-baked, but let me compose my thoughts at the keyboard. Bike-Pgh should seize the opportunity to present itself as being able to help foster cycling in the city -- not that it's not doing that already, but rather that I'd guess there are a lot of members, and many more non-members, who do not know or appreciate how much help BP can be. With now thousands of members, each one of them should be on the lookout for employers or industrial landlords who could make better use of parking spaces to put in bike racks. I look at where Stef Burch now lives, and see that at the Vermont hospital where she now is, there's parking for 30 bikes. Somebody had to argue for that space, and further argue that it be covered, be equipped with ideally shaped racks, and have full-motion video. BP probably could provide some of that strong-arm service, but members need to be pressed to keep a sharp eye out or ears to the drumbeats that say, hey, we're about to modify stuff, so NOW is when to get the designers and funders of construction projects to include parking 30 bikes. And NOT to try to backfit it into plans after the hammers are silent and the concrete has cured. But in terms of BikeFest, take the opportunity to present to people, as loudly and often as possible, just what-all BP can do.

Join the next BikeFest Advisory Committee meeting! When:  Monday, February 6th 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm Where: The Kingsley 6435 Frankstown Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15206 Contact: bikefestadvisorycommittee@googlegroups.com  

Sorry, I'm going to have to miss this one. Stu

Hey! I will plan to be at the next meeting, couldn't make it tonight. Can we try to have this publicized more? Whether a post to this thread on Facebook or an event on FB or some email blasts to membership would be helpful! ~Tricia

Sure thing, Tricia! The next BikeFest Advisory Committee meeting will be promoted via social media and the upcoming Messenger newsletter(s). -Sarah

This group has been meeting every month and has made good progress on planning and executing this year's Bike Fest. The basic goals of the committee have been to (1) relieve Bike Pittsburgh of much of the day-to-day work that executing the event requires, so that more of Bike Pittsburgh's energy can be devoted to Pedal Pittsburgh and Open Streets; (2) work with ride leaders to increase the quality of events; (3) increase the diversity of participants in events; and (4) improve the scheduling of events to avoid similar or competing events being scheduled at the same time. Bike Fest will largely follow the same format as last year, with a beginning date of Friday, August 12 and ending with Pedal Pittsburgh on August 27. The Bike Fest party will be held at the Wheel Mill; details on that event will be forthcoming. With regard to goal #4, we have blocked out August 27 so that Pedal Pittsburgh is the only "official" Bike Fest event on that day. Also with regard to goal #4, we will be asking for potential ride leaders to submit their events to us between June 9, 2017 and July 9, 2017, so that we can work out any scheduling conflicts by the end of July. A separate announcement formally calling for events will be issued on or about June 9, but in the meantime, please start thinking about your event, if you plan to hold one. Also, as part of goal #2, a number of the committee members are long-time Bike Fest ride leaders and are happy to work with new or potential ride leaders to help them with organizing their events (see goal #2, above). To that end, if you are thinking about hosting an event and would like to talk with someone who has "been there and done that," we will be meeting on June 24 (location TBD) and, I believe, having the familiar "Ride Leader's Party" where a contingent of people will be available to help with all aspects of putting on events. If someone wants to discuss ideas sooner, please email the Bike Fest Advisory Committee at the email address above, or come to the next meeting at the Wheel Mill on June 12 at 6;30 p.m., or email me directly at jcm250b at juno dot com. We are looking forward to another great Bike Fest, catching up with old friends and making a few new ones.

Cujos (sic) to the folks stepping up to keep BikeFest going. Really looking forward to seeing an event calendar from BikeFest. The earlier you publish event dates, the fewer conflicts & frustration you'll cause for participants who might have already committed to something else on a particular date. Re event scheduling, last year's PMTCC Tour de Red Belt was originally set for the day after the Every Neighborhood Ride. It got pushed six days to the following Saturday (the day before PedalPGH) which I think worked better from a fatigue & recovery point of view. ;^) Also FYI last year's Mon Valley Century was Sun 8/14, which one might reasonably expect to translate to the 13th this year, although they haven't announced a date yet. PS August 12th is a Saturday.

Saturday, August 12 will, almost certainly, be the Every Neighborhood Ride. I have no idea about the Mon Valley Century, which I think appeared on the official calendar, but mainly because it happened to be held during Bike Fest. Regardless, we (the committee) will be reaching out to past organizers to try to get those dates. We will also be reaching out to the PMTCC regarding their event(s) so that any conflict is minimized or avoided.

As I've said in past years, I would really like to do some sort of seminar on setting up your bike and person to be able to record video while you ride. As we've clearly seen in the past few weeks, you never know when the clip you capture can have major impact. I've been rolling video for almost five years, with various equipment and configurations, and think I can talk intelligently about it: Costs, what to buy, what else to buy besides cameras, how to process and store it, how to upload, etc. If others who are doing something similar want to join me, so much the better. And I think the whole thing should be accompanied by someone carrying a camera around to zoom in on whatever I'm talking about at the moment. Being able to edit that down into a 10- or 15-minute how-to would really help get this idea off the ground for a lot of people who otherwise could not make the seminar.