The Great Escape: October 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Bike Ride To Austin
Thursday, October 22, 2009

A few months ago I was asked if i could take a week out of my busy life to go to Austin, TX with a cycling team called P-3. Apparently they were planning to ride bicycles from Greenville, SC to Austin, TX, in 4 days. This means bike riding around the clock, approximately 400 miles per day! So, there are 5 teams of 4 to 7 riders, they ride in a relay, so one team is on the road all the time, day and night.My roll in all this is mechanical support, along with Aurther Reaves. We are driving The Great Escape van filled with tools, wheels, parts, etc... Aurther and I have been taking turns driving the van, riding our bikes with the teams, driving the bus following the teams and even driving the team support vans to give those drivers a break. It's been a very busy 4 days.So, while I was trying to get a few hours of sleep on the side of the road in the mountains of Tennessee, I began to think about all the people in my life who have suffered with cancer. My father suffered with Leukimea for severla years, Alicia's father died from throat cancer, my Uncle Don died from lung cance at 62, Warner Bacon with brain cancer at 57, Rick Gorzinski at age 49, Jed Collins at age 36 and the list goes on and on! Every team van is plastered with names of friends and loved one's who have been claimed by cancer, so many names that all 5 vans are covered from front to back. As I lay there shivering in the cold mountain air on the first night of our trip, I thought, "these are the people we are riding for"!But over the next 4 days, road with almost all the teams and heard some of there stories, and i realized that we are not riding for those who have passed, but for those who are alive! We are riding for Laurens, who is currently battling breast cancer and riding her bike to Austin! We ride for Cathy, who rides her bike with one lung, the other one lost to lung cancer! We ride for all the Warriors fighting cancer and all the survivors, who have fought cancer and won!In the last 4 days, I logged 250 miles on my bike, helping each team as much as I could on there mission. There are 28 riders of all abilities on the 5 teams, this is the best group of cyclists that I have ever ridden with, because they ride with passion and purpose!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

GREENVILLE NAMED BICYCLE FRIENDLY COMMUNITY

GREENVILLE NAMED BICYCLE FRIENDLY COMMUNITY

Prestigious award honors City’s efforts to promote bicycling

GREENVILLE (SC) The League of American Bicyclists has honored Greenville with its prestigious Bicycle Friendly Community award. Greenville joins Columbia and Spartanburg as South Carolina's only Bicycle Friendly Communities. The League of American Bicyclists’ mission is to promote bicycling for fun, fitness and transportation and work through advocacy and education for a bicycle-friendly America. Greenville was granted the bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community designation for four years and the League of American Bicyclists will provide the City with feedback on what it can do to make Greenville even more bicycle-friendly. Announcement of the Bicycle Friendly Community designation comes at an ideal time as the City plans to begin a comprehensive Bicycle Master Plan study in January 2010.

The City began its Bicycle Friendly Community initiative, named Bikeville in 2006 with a City Council resolution endorsing the League of American Bicyclists Action Plan for Bicycle Friendly Communities. Bikeville is a committee of volunteers comprised of City staff, engineers, planners, retailers and advocates who collaborate on efforts to encourage and educate bicyclists, and the plan established specific goals that ranged from installing bicycle racks on all Greenlink buses to celebrating National Bike Month every May.

Over the past five years, the City has installed eight miles of bicycle lanes and there are currently 10 miles of paved bicycle trails throughout the city. The City plans to install an additional five miles of bicycle lanes on the following streets within the next year: Spring Street, Falls Street and portions of Broad Street; Washington Street, from the Amtrak Station to the McBee Avenue intersection; Church Street, from Augusta Road to University Ridge and Fairforest Way, from Laurens Road to Mauldin Road. The City also has a Bicycle Parking Ordinance that requires most new developments which provide vehicular parking to also provide bicycle parking and in 2008, City Council passed a Complete Streets resolution which ensures that all roadway users are accommodated in new road construction projects.

The City submitted its Bicycle Friendly Community application in August 2009. The application was carefully reviewed and scored by a committee, which also consulted with local cyclists in the Greenville community. Communities are judged in five categories, which the League of American Bicyclists refers to as the Five Es: Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement and Evaluation & Planning. A community must demonstrate achievements in each of the five categories in order to be considered for an award.

According to Bill Nesper, director of the Bicycle Friendly Community Program for the League of American Bicyclists, the award is presented only to communities with remarkable commitments to bicycling and is a national recognition of the City’s “tremendous efforts to create a truly Bicycle Friendly Community.”

Follow this link to the LAB’s Official BFC Press Release.
http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bicyclefriendlyamerica/pdfs/bfc_fall2009_pr.pdf

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Great Escape Speedway

Just a few of our Customers Losi Late models. See these cool Hot Rods in action at The Lake Blalock Speedway and coming soon to The Great Escape Speedway at our Spartanburg location.