5/19/22 7:59 AM

Hey friends - continue to lurk here every so often but after falling off the grid the past few years I thought I'd check back in!

Still living in Indy - after starting the only bicycle city tour company in town back in '12, a few years ago I merged it into a local non-profit that does youth education using the bicycle and joined their team as the Partnerships & Strategy lead that finds the grant and corporate sponsorship funding that keeps us rolling. We have a few different programs and most of our program delivery is on a mobile platform that has allowed us to scale an target the reach of what we do across nearly a dozen counties in central Indiana. We go to where the kids are gathered - schools, parks, community centers etc...

https://nine13sports.org/programs/

When the pandemic shut down all of these locations, we executed a massive organizational pivot that repurposed our staff, vehicles and facility into the food insecurity space. We had often joked about the fact that at our core we were a logistics organization that just happened to move bike equipment to where kids were...and that core expertise proved invaluable as we because a logistics service for the local food banks. At the peak, we were delivering food boxes to 1500 homes a week and also delivering 125 pallets of food to 40 different agencies each week. Quite the operation:

https://nine13sports.org/pandemic-pivot/

I'm still riding here and there, but haven't put any serious mileage in the past couple of years. Did have an opportunity to do some mountain biking on Tiger Mountain outside of Seattle a couple of months ago...that was awesome. :) My daughter is now 10 and with crank shorteners on my tandem she is able to ride w me so that has been a blast...

Random question - anyone in the group live in Pittsburgh?

5/19/22 4:32 PM

Good to hear from you. I recall the time I went to a conference in Indy and I don’t think we were quite able to connect.

Good to hear you were able to move seamlessly between facilitating 2 necessities - cycling and food. Good for you.

Can’t help you with Pittsburgh. There used to be a poster, Dave, from there, but haven’t heard from him for awhile.

My main claim to remaining active in cycling is buying a new bike as referenced in another thread.

Dan

5/19/22 4:44 PM

Welcome back Nate! I recall having done interchanges with you about Multisport events. Keep on krankin'

5/20/22 5:36 AM

I recently came back after a long absence as well....bad pennies, eh? ;)

5/20/22 6:07 AM

Ha! Something like that Rob. I mean....my post even pulled LeeW back from the shadows. :)

Lee - my multisport (originally only duathlon) interest came back in 2019 when my daughter was taking swim lessons at the local university...I decided my shoulder that I had dislocated years ago was no longer enough of an excuse to stay out of the lap pool so I started swimming laps for the first time since my freshman year of high school in '89 when that was a PE requirement. Once I realized that I could pull that off, I decided doing my first triathlon in the summer of 2020 would be a fun goal. So I can now say that I've started a triathlon, but a nasty thunderstorm swept in while we were all on the bike leg so they had to shut the race down and I'm unable to claim that I've actually completed one. :) I did survive the swim with a very midpack effort and was making up big ground on the bike leg....so who knows what might have happened if I had actually made it all the way to my strongest of the 3 disciplines.

On the road bike these days, I typically set my sights on longer endurance type efforts. A couple of years ago I thought it would be fun to ride solo from Indy to the shore of Lake Michigan in a day. 178 miles later.....there I was.

My other 2 wheel hobby of riding my sport touring motorcycle long distances has resulted in similar pursuits. In 2018 I competed in a 6 day "rally" (scavenger hunt style game where riders plan individual routes to navigate to bonus locations worth varying amounts of points) that used the entire eastern US as the playing field. Put nearly 5500 miles in over those 6 days and even pulled off a 24 hour stint of riding on day 6. Quite the adventure.

My rough route ended up being Lexington KY, Knoxville TN, Little Rock AR, somewhere in northern LA, Birmingham AL, Maggie Valley NC. That got me halfway through the 6 days to the midway scoring session.

Then the 2nd half of the rally I ended up riding Maggie Valley NC, Indianapolis IN, Dubuque IA, LaCrosse WI, Minneapolis MN, somewhere north of Duluth MN, Gay MI (look that one up), Mackinaw bridge, Traverse City MI, Holland MI, Dayton OH, Lexington KY.

Working with kids and using the bicycle as a multidimensional educational tool is a blast - even if I'm not out in the field much these days. I did just finish up a 6 week class with a local high school where we conducted lecture/discussion in the classroom on a variety of bicycling related topics and then conducted urban bicycle rides another day so they got some actual experience knowing how to safely navigate the mish mash of cycling infrastructure that exists here in Indy...

5/22/22 8:28 AM

What is your Pittsburgh-related issue? I live outside Philadelphia, but I might be able to connect you to helpful people in Pittsburgh. If you prefer, you can email me via my yahoo address: LRZipris at.