Month: July 2020

Tonight, July 27th, will be the fourth weekly repair clinic and slow roll. They’ve been a success so far, with dozens of people participating over the last three weeks. Griffin has taught some valuable skills about how to get our shifting to where it should be and the rides have been really pleasant. It’s great to have a large group of cyclists to create a sense of community and to make vehicles more aware of our presence on the roads. We’ll be holding these at Jolly Circle for at least the rest of the summer!

I’ve been wanting to do a goathead removal service project ever since we started this association back in 2018 so was thrilled when Michael Wood recently proposed a specific section of 800 South that needed some love. My wife and kids actually had a bad experience with that area a few years ago–all their tubes got popped, basically. So on Wednesday, July 8, we met at 7 with our weed tools and shovels and started digging them up by their roots. This section of road is about 3 blocks long and has unkept fields on both sides of the road, which means lots of goatheads! The propert owners of one section actually stopped by in their UTV with Snickers ice cream bars to thank us. They were quite nice and told us that most of the area will soon be sold by other family members to developers. That will certainly be good for us cyclists if houses do go into that area! In all we filled a couple of buckets quite full and look forward now to riding there this summer without worrying about flat tires!

This summer, every Monday night, we will be meeting at Jolly Circle Bicycle Repair to have a short repair clinic and then do a “Slow Roll” ride around Springville. The clinics will be taught by Griffin Park, local bike racer and owner of Jolly Circle.

The idea of the Slow Roll came about in Detroit with the basic idea of bringing community members together every Monday evening to ride through town. Each week follows a different route, showing off the city to a diverse group of people, and giving people confidence by riding in large groups. This basic format has been copied in many other cities and we are now bringing it to Springville. So spread the word and I hope to see growing numbers of people out riding together every Monday evening!