 Our speaker was Rob Taylor, a member of the Rotary Club Muskegon, Michigan, who was visiting us with his wife Priscilla. He read about our famous bike program in the Rotary magazine. He is president of not-for-profit -- the Muskegon County Bicycling Coalition -- that repairs bikes for their local bike library at the local library. They now use volunteers to repair bikes but are very interested in expanding and improving their program.
In their home metro area of Muskegon, part of the population is without a car, and some live in neighborhoods that were effectively cut off from the rest of the city by freeways. Thus, part of the work of their Muskegon County Bicycle Coalition was to interconnect bike paths to make bike commuting easier. Their group also worked with the public library to create a Bike Library where people that can't afford a bike can check one out for a period of time. Members of the Coalition take in donations of old bikes and then recondition the bikes with their own skills and then provide them to the library.
In another effort, a school teacher wanted to offer a PE program with bikes. The Coalition provided her with 30 bikes. For small kids, they take the pedals off small bikes to provide balance bikes, where the kids can propel the bike with their feet pushing on the ground. THey find that kids learn how to ride real bikes much more quickly this way. Rob and Priscilla also had an extensive conversation with our Joe Ryan about how our Bicycle Project works so they can bring those learnings back to Muskegon to improve their programs. It was great to trade knowledge with a very active Rotarian and two such avid bikers. |
Michal Warzecha says that "all systems are Go" for a fascinating program about NASA Moon projects. He wrote "For the past sixty-four years, humanity has been exploring the Moon. How did we achieve our first footsteps? How are we returning in a few years? What are the future plans for a permanent presence?".png)
