Green Streets JAMS – a stations-based bike ride full of fun

Guest blog by: Ahinoam Pollack (Noe)(Sunnyvale Local Team) and Bruce England (Mountain View Local Team)

Occasionally great leaders come along with inspirational and exciting ideas about how to get folks excited about riding a bike, Ahinoam Pollack (Noe) of the Sunnyvale Local Team and Bruce England of the Mountain View Local Team are just those folks. Ahinoam and Bruce have been passionate about creating an opportunity for the residents of Mountain and Sunnyvale to “Journey Around Mountain View and Sunnyvale” in a fun, safe, educational, and entertaining way. From that the Green Street J.A.M .S “Journey Around Mountain View and Sunnyvale” ride was born.

The goal of the ride and riding bikes, in general, is to make it something that is for everyone, and Noe and Bruce definitely delivered. The ride began at Washington Park in Sunnyvale where the riders of all ages learned how to twist balloons decorations for their bikes. The second stop was Mercy-Bush Park in Mountain View for ice cream and a brief talk on the past history of Mountain View by the President of the Mountain View Historical Association. Final stop picnic tables at Washington Park for more fun and creative arts and craft.

The ride and activities were a great success: tickets sold out within 1-2 weeks, ~45 participants showed up, and participants asked us in the end how they can come to more events and support SVBC. We believe this event format was successful for several reasons:

Everyone loves free food and art! Participants told us they were attracted to the free ice cream as well as the art project.
The varied activities attract more participants of different ages. The twisting balloons and ice cream attracted families, but the history talk and art may have attracted the other adults who attended the event.
The event is easy to organize - one just needs to get a permit for picnic tables at the parks, which is easily done online.
We had the vice mayor of Mountain View at the event – which helps participants learn about biking projects but also shows the elected officials that residents care about biking.
Ending the ride at the picnic tables allowed participants and biking advocates to mingle with each other and in general for people to have a nice social time.

All this sounds like a lot of fun right?!? Well, that’s not how it started off. Read on to find out how Ahinoam and Bruce made advocacy FUN!!

A few months ago, as part of our SVBC advocacy work, we attended a meeting with a Sunnyvale city council member. He asked how many people we expected would use a proposed bike lane. From his experience, current bike ridership wasn’t that high in the city. He said that, in a sort of chicken and egg scenario, we need to increase bike ridership on city roads to promote safer and more abundant biking infrastructure.

How do we get more people to bike on the streets as well as join the biking advocacy movement? One way is by organizing fun biking events! We organized one such successful event - a bike ride with activity stops – and wanted to share our experience!

Here is a map of our ride – “Green Streets JAMS (Journey Around Mountain View & Sunnyvale)” – a collaboration between the SVBC Sunnyvale and Mountain View local teams.

The ride included three stops with activities.

First stop: at Washington Park in Sunnyvale. We had volunteer ride support teach both adult and kid participants how to make flower balloons. The participants made the balloons themselves! While usually only kids like getting balloons, our experience shows that both adults and kids enjoy learning how to twist them. Noe bought Qualatex 260Q balloons (100% latex – theoretically compostable). Learn how to twist your own balloons here.

Second stop: Mercy-Bush Park in Mountain View. Once the ride participants arrived at the park, we shared ice cream with them provided by former mayor John McAlister from his Baskin Robbins Ice Cream shop. We followed that with brief talks on past history of Mountain View with Mountain View Historical Association President Pamela Baird, and on where active transportation is headed into the future with Vice Mayor Alison Hicks. This was a great way to take a break midway through the ride and learn more about the region we all live in. The kids were entertained by the ice cream and the adults enjoyed the history talk (and the ice cream).

Third stop: picnic tables at Washington Park. We returned to Washington park and had three tables set up with boxes containing: pieces of bike chain, oil based paint markers (see here and here for recommendations), and different types of key chains. The kids and adults enjoyed painting the bike links with different designs to create a key chain. We got used chains from Menlo Velo for free (they have endless), cleaned them with a degreaser and toothbrush, and then used a chain tool to break the chains into six-link pieces. We also demonstrated the “de-linking” process during the session.

We hope that we can carry forward what we accomplished this year into next year and beyond, and with increased partnership with local teams throughout the regions covered by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition.

Please join Bike Sunnyvale/SVBC Sunnyvale Team ,the team works on advocacy, outreach, and fun in Sunnyvale and surrounding area. If you ride in, around, or through Sunnyvale:

join our monthly Biketivist Forum meeting. Meetings occur the third Monday of each month. This meeting is the perfect place for you to meet your neighbors who ride bikes and care about issues that affect two-wheeled travelers.
Sign up to our email groupJoin the online discussion about Sunnyvale bike topics, and stay up-to-date on meeting times, locations, and agenda

Photo credit: Enno Holzenkaempfer