rebeccmeister | The Bike Valet [bicycling]

What a weekend!

I don't remember how much I've blogged about this particular project, but over the weekend a couple other people and I finally put on the Bike Valet for our city's big annual spring festival, Tulip Fest. The bike valet built off of what other people got started last fall for a community street fair. It has felt like a somewhat odd "in" for me for bike advocacy, but in the long run, that's fine.

Step 1 for the bike valet was talking with the right people who organize Tulip Fest to get on their radar. Helpfully, they were able to supply perimeter fencing for us, whew! Step 2 was gathering up the supplies, including that sign-painting party about a month ago. Getting the supplies over to the site is its own adventure. I've been helping the rowing club haul supplies to and from this festival every year since moving out here, because the festival is located in a park where car access and parking are complicated. Hauling things on a bike trailer, NOT so complicated!

The bike valet supplies were a fairly big load, however:

Not really visible in the photo are the four sandbags we used to weight down the tent, and all of the heavy pipes used to assemble the stands to hold the bikes.

Thankfully

scrottie was able to ride over with me, just in case anything about my packing job failed. He eventually decided he should take at least one of the two chairs that I'd loaded up, as the chairs aren't particularly lightweight, either.

Saturday morning was drizzly, but we were pleased to arrive with plenty of time to get set up.

The only question was, where was the fencing? While one of my co-conspirators was off installing more of our directional signs around the park, I noticed a team of people putting up some fencing in a field a short distance away. When I walked over to ask what the fencing was for, I was informed, "For the bike valet."

Well!

With the extra time, we were able to relocate and finish getting set up, whew.

As a bonus, especially given the weather forecast, I hauled along supplies to make warm beverages. This is not my first rodeo.

It was very satisfying to finally get to deploy the vacuum brewer. Not just a bike valet, but also a Coffeeneuring/Coffee Outside occasion!

The full day on Saturday remained cool and rainy. We wound up with a grand total of 4 customers who braved the weather. But on the other hand, it was a great chance to talk about bikes and bike advocacy with the other people who were able to volunteer at the valet tent. While I have some quibbles around how certain things are done around here on that front, there's still a fundamental connection around making life better for people who are just trying to ride a bike to get from point A to point B.

While Saturday was a bit of a bummer for us, at least the main thing it cost us is our time outside. The vendors at the festival had a much more rough go of it, because they have to pay a fee to be there and there's uncertainty around whether they'll manage to recoup their costs.

Sunday's weather was far better, thankfully. The Sunday weather meant many more customers for the bike valet:

There was even a point where we checked some drums for some people who really didn't want to carry their drums all over the festival.

At one point, both of the valet stands were pretty full:

The people who used the bike valet were also all generally pretty excited about it.

I really loved running the valet in that it gave me a chance to personally meet many other people who ride bikes in my community. It means a lot to develop these connections, to know the friendly faces out on the road.

By the end of Sunday, we'd used up all 50 of the tickets we printed out! And we've started developing plans to have the bike valet at at least one other community festival next month.

I felt really good about helping make this undertaking happen. It just felt like the right thing to do. The festival is often an important recruiting event for the rowing club, but rowing serves a different demographic than bicycling. Plus, there are now a number of people who know what to do and can help out with the rowing table. The same isn't true yet for bicycling. Hopefully, we'll get there.