Category: Blog

29th October 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 285: Ride For Their Lives

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Childrens’ health professionals on the Ride for Their Lives ride.

TOPICS: 30 or so childrens’ health professionals are riding from London to Glasgow to deliver a letter to world leaders at COP26. I joined them on day six between Newcastle and Carlisle.

MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 285 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Friday 29th of October 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by JensonUSA, Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody. It’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information, check out our website www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:10
Hi there I’m Carlton Reid and today I had the honour to meet with a bunch of health professionals on day six of their ride from London to Glasgow. This is the Ride for their Lives rolling demo and they left on Sunday 24th October from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. There are a core bunch of 30 or so riders with additional day riders joining from different cities en route. Most are children’s healthcare providers and they’re riding to Glasgow to deliver an open letter to political leaders gathering at the COP26 climate conference. Polluted air causes an estimated 7 million deaths annually, and of course, shares the same root causes as the climate crisis. We discuss this and much more on this episode of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. The riders were heading to Carlisle and I jumped between the groups to record audio with as many folks as I could grab as we were riding along or stopping for breathers. We left from Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary in pouring rain and first off I interviewed the CEO of Great Ormond Street hospital Matt Shaw. Well, I thought I did. Well, I did, but the radio mics clearly didn’t like the rain and they turned themselves off without me knowing it. Very gamely, Matt agreed to be interviewed again later in the ride but first here I catch up with Dr Mark Hayden, one of the co-organisers of the ride. Mark was recently awarded as Active Travel Campaigner of the year by London Cycling Campaign, as you soon hear.

Mark, caught you up. Yeah, just through this friends.

Dr Mark Hayden 3:09
Is it? I don’t know. I’m following my little way up. And I’m just looking looking at that. And

Carlton Reid 3:15
it’s a beautiful route now me it wasn’t it Harry coming out of Newcastle was Yeah. But now the rain stopped and you’re now in you know, the, the tires to the side. It’s lovely. It’s beautiful route. Yeah. So, Mark, tell me who you are.

Dr Mark Hayden 3:29
Me?

Carlton Reid 3:30
Yeah.

Dr Mark Hayden 3:31
Well, I’m a paediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Consultant in London, which is a bit of a mouthful and largely irrelevant. That major mainly pays my pays my salary and like allows me actually more time than you’d expect to concentrate on what I think for me is the most important thing I can do at the moment, which is dressed addressing the climate health emergency and like, we all know it cop 26 coming up the situation that we’re in, but not everybody is actually doing anything about it. And you know, you do

Carlton Reid 4:05
lots of stuff because you were active travel campaigner of the year. Yeah, absolutely. With the London cycling campaign.

Dr Mark Hayden 4:12
I was surprised I didn’t apply.

Carlton Reid 4:15
Do you do? Yeah. How did you get that award? What are you in London to make people sign up notice?

Dr Mark Hayden 4:23
Well, I think they mentioned this the right for their lives, which we’ll talk about in a bit, I’m sure. As part of that, because it does fit as you know, there is a strong association between cycling, cycling, infrastructure and riding. But the main thing I was really doing in London was initially focusing on our staff at Great Ormond Street at the time of the pandemic, mainly, and getting cycle infrastructure sorted within gosh, so we actually used a mob called cycling UK he probably heard Yep, and they have something called a cycle friendly employer scheme. Have a think I wrote some one of my usual angry letters to an MP or something. I think there’s a MP cycling group. And they wrote back and said, Why don’t you talk to this guy called James pallisa. So wait, I got together with him. And we, we got Gosh, to be the first NHS Trusts to be a cycle friendly employer. And of course, because I always have to overdo things, we made sure that gosh, was a gold cycle friendly employer. So that gave a lot of opportunity for you know, changing structural things like parking is the main thing. You really need showers, stuff like that. But also information sharing and encouraging people and groups that help. There’s riding along all of that sort

Carlton Reid 5:45
of stuff. Your electric bike there, which might be the sound that people hear it is yeah. Is that what you normally like? Or is that your everyday bike apart from

Dr Mark Hayden 5:54
when it gets stolen, which is either if I ever leave it on the street, which I never do anymore, or AFI was on I think Sakura one or something one of the SAS trends rates going north, up the Lee Valley when I got pulled over by a couple of guys threatened to be shanked, and they relieved me of my previous bike, which was a much more expensive one. But it is a better bike. So I’m not sad about that. So is that one

Carlton Reid 6:19
of the things that you do? Gosh, then you make sure that number one? Well, number one, that’s certainly one of the major things is the people who are coming to work on their bikes are going to have somewhere secure really secure. Yeah, especially in London. Yeah, it’s

Dr Mark Hayden 6:32
got to be behind swipe carded stuff system, if their stuff.

Carlton Reid 6:37
So it was a one already have you put that in? Well,

Dr Mark Hayden 6:40
funnily enough, the guy who actually thought of this ride, Vince, is just ahead of us in a group called silky Oh, he’s been sort of working on that for years. You know, he’s sort of been running that for years. And actually, when I sort of got involved with him, there was a lot of secure cycle parking at Gosh, which is an unusual situation. But nobody used to, you know, there was one section that people could easily get into. And that was always full, and all the rest you couldn’t get into, because you have to ask the security guards for the right door to let you in. So there’s all of these barriers, which were the easiest barriers in the world to kick over once you got organised and did something about it. And you organised an active travel group, which we did rather than a bicycle Users Group, which I think are an impediment to everything. I don’t like bicycle Users group, they just focused on cyclists. And I’m interested in active travel. And Cycling is a great part of active travel. But yeah, so it’s for that bit for the cycle friendly employer. A lot of it was stuff I just did by talking to people, and I didn’t need money and I didn’t need changes. So that was fine. But the junction at Holborn where the paediatrician who works at the Evelina, there’s a bunch of Evelina riders riding with us was killed that the beginning of August Yeah, I can’t do anything about that. The you know, that needs to be changed by,

Carlton Reid 8:15
okay. You got this on your your gang right here.

Dr Mark Hayden 8:19
And we’re on Komoot. And, you know, the only people that can actually change that are Camden, and the mayor, and some clever people who understand how to design a junction, which isn’t me. So that was really the next step. And it wasn’t a conscious step. You know, he was just, I’ve roughly got my stuff cycling, I’ve roughly got them safe. And now someone’s been killed. And that could have been one of my stuff. And several Gosh, stuff are being killed near Gosh, and one’s being killed on that junction before. And everybody knows about it. The mayor, Camden, they all know about it. They all know it’s wrong, and they’re not acting. So people are only going to act if they’ve got the money to act, or they’ve got the inclination. So really, that’s when I sort of moved further into the advocacy quite air. And I think that’s really why the LCC gave me this award, which they probably just made up this year. As far as I know, I don’t know. But so the I think it was around the advocacy. That was the main thing,

Carlton Reid 9:26
advocacy in London. Yeah, let’s segue to what you’re saying about Vince. And coming up with the idea for this ride. Yeah. So when did you start planning this? Why did you start planning this? How did you start planning this?

Dr Mark Hayden 9:39
Yeah. Well, I did talk to Vince about we have lost your group. By the way. Let’s just drop the pace then. Because it’s hard for me to ride lead and

Carlton Reid 9:49
no, I’m taking you away from your role there.

Dr Mark Hayden 9:52
So yeah. Should we just talk?

Carlton Reid 9:55
Yeah, shouldn’t we maybe have

Dr Mark Hayden 9:57
a chance? Sara Do you actually you don’t work in the Bristol Children’s Hospital? Do you? Your mum’s cutting in your hair to support your mama? How old are you 79. Your youngest thing is Toby’s 18. And one of our other writers who left us in Sheffield was 18, too. So you might you make our youngest rider, we were just talking about how the ride came about.

Carlton Reid 10:22
It’s the electric bike, you say?

Dr Mark Hayden 10:24
Well, it is to turn it off.

Carlton Reid 10:28
No, no, no, we’re back together. I think almost

Dr Mark Hayden 10:32
no, it’s off now. And you’re right now, nowadays, now I can use my legs to tell me the pace to go rather than my than my mind. I don’t need electricity on the flat. Should we go back to

Carlton Reid 10:45
when So Vince is up ahead? And yeah, so maybe when maybe when did this all come together?

Dr Mark Hayden 10:49
As I said, I just saying what I was talking about is just on the ride the other day, and we were going, when did we think this happened? He goes, I’ll go and look for the email. And he hasn’t done that yet, because we’ve been a bit busy. But I would say it’s about a year ago now nearly a year ago. And the way it came about was the fertile ground of the safe, effective and sustainable travel group, which I was talking about, which is better than a bug because it focuses on how people get to work in any method other than the car, basically, including hybrids, hybrid methods, not hybrid cars. And we were just in that group, and we declared the emergency or we’re about to declare the emergency, which we all know is a bit of, you know, what does it mean when someone does that? So we were sitting in the group going, what can we actually do? What actions can we take that are real? So that’s when Vince said it. We all said, Well, that’s a stupid idea. Because pliers goes a long way away. But about a week or so later, it’s thinking in and people thinking about it. The next time we had the meeting, we said that’s a great idea. And we’ve been planning it ever since. So that’s how it came about.

Carlton Reid 12:05
So it’s always gonna be the cop 26 was the goal. Yep. To tell world leaders that things are going to change. And then there’s a letter from 45 million. So tell me about the letter from 45 million health professionals. Right, which is what you’re carrying

Dr Mark Hayden 12:21
is that, well, we’re carrying a series of messages, really, I mean, obviously, just what we’re doing is a message. And perhaps the most powerful one, because we’re doing it with our bodies. Lots of letters and things like that have happened in the past, I guess the main thing we’re trying to do differently is to get people to read them, and then get people that act on them. Like Greta says, we know what the problems are. We know what the solutions are. None of it is difficult. None of is tricky. We can fix this completely easily. And we could have done 20 years ago. What’s missing is the will. So that letter that you’re talking about is the healthy prescription. And it’s been signed by I don’t know how many people but the the number you’re quoting is the organization’s that have signed up to it and how many people they represent. And that’s basically a very simple letter. And I couldn’t tell you, at this point, the exact wording, but very simply it talks about adjust and rapid transition away from fossil fuels. It doesn’t mention cycling at all, and nor should it because that’s just a method to do that. But in addition to that, the Royal College of Paediatrics of Child Health and we’re cycling with the college president president today Camilla Kingdon, she’s, which group she’s in. She’s in Sequoia group.

Carlton Reid 13:42
Are they ahead of us all behind us?

Dr Mark Hayden 13:43
Good question. I think they I think they’re behind us.

Carlton Reid 13:47
Okay.

Dr Mark Hayden 13:48
So Camilla Kingdon. She’s a neonatologist at the Everlina, a colleague of the lady who died and she’s the she’s the president, and that college on Monday this week, put out their statement. So we’re carrying that we’re carrying the letter. And we’re also carrying a letter that came from Geneva, from the World Health Organisation. A letter and a report, which came out very closely together, which Dermott who’s the head of head of health, climate change and health at the World Health Organisation cycled from Geneva to London, to give us and then I was lucky enough to cycle with him, from Geneva to from London to almost Oxford where his mom lives. And he turned off left. And so all of those documents represent what we want people to hear. So we’re not trying to say what we want them to hear all the time. We’re trying to direct them to the experts to the adults in the room, and to tell them to listen to them. We’re healthcare professionals. We’re not for Climate scientists, but we know that this is the greatest threat to our patients. And that if we’re not protecting the planet, we’re not protecting our patients. So that’s the simplicity. That’s the synthesis, I suppose of our message. And

Carlton Reid 15:18
if you clean up the air for people to breathe that exactly the same time mitigates against climate crisis anyway?

Dr Mark Hayden 15:27
Well, I can’t. I mean, humankind is very inventive. But I can’t honestly think of a way that you could reduce pollution and make air quality better, but make the climate crisis worse, because they’re both the same thing. They’re both caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels of coal, oil, and its derivatives and gas. So you need to stop doing both of those things. And both of them work together. But the problem in the UK? Well, it’s not a problem. But one of the issues in the UK is making it relevant to people. And, you know, floods and typhoons, and all of these terrible things that are affecting billions and billions of children across the world aren’t necessarily directed, directly affecting people in the UK. But air quality is, but they don’t know about it, they should know about it. It’s again, like the climate crisis has been known about for years. But the truth has not been told. And the focus has not been on the right place. So that’s why we were using air quality because it’s a direct impact on children all over the world. And particularly in the UK, where cops taking part. And our initial target is UK health workers. And then health workers more broadly. We’re not aiming to speak directly to the public, we want to speak to healthcare workers. We want us to all realise it’s our jobs as our colleges say. And then it’d be nice if politicians listened. And even better if the general public felt that we were trustworthy people who were speaking the truth. So I guess that’s the bottom line. So glad I had a battery there otherwise, I wouldn’t have been speaking at the top of this hill.

Carlton Reid 17:21
So trust medics, well,

Dr Mark Hayden 17:24
they trust nurses and pharmacists, I think at the top. medics are sort of not at the top quite appropriately, I think. And that’s why we’re not medics. You know, there’s a few doctors but we’ve got doctors and nurses, OTs and speech therapy, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, pharmacists. We’ve got electricians that work in the States, we got sustainability professionals, we’ve got young people who either used to be or even still our patients of Gosh, we’ve got, we’re not a bunch of doctors cycling to Glasgow, we could have been, that would have been way easier to organise. There are millions of doctors with lycra and carbon fibre bikes that I could have brought along. But I didn’t want to not because I don’t like them. Some of them are my friends. But because we’re not gonna, we’re not going to get people cycling. By sticking to the same old stereotypes. We’re going to get people cycling, by making everybody feel welcome. So that’s really the message and we’re not going to fix old white men like me, I’m going to fix climate change. You know, we’ve tried that look at all of the sort of conservation efforts and stuff that’s failed in the past. The only solution is diversity. So if we weren’t following that, as a principle on the ride, I think it would have been pointless doing the ride.

Carlton Reid 18:59
Well, Mark, I’m gonna I’m going to turn round in a minute, and I’m going to try and get some other people find Camilla. Yeah. We’ll try and get some other groups back there. Brilliant.

Camilla, first of all, we are well, we’re just coming off Route 72. You’re now going into into Corbridge. Is this your first day with the ride? How many days?

Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:18
My only day with the ride. So I’ve come up from London to do Newcastle to Carlisle.

Carlton Reid 19:23
Nice. rainiest day.

Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:26
I know. But you know

what? It’s like, late October. I was actually fully expecting it to be cold and wet. Yeah, it’s not particularly cold. So no, all good.

Carlton Reid 19:34
That’s good. Yeah. Right. Tell us on tape who you are. And you’re the president of an august organisation. So tell us that.

Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:43
So I’m Camilla Kingdom. And I’m a consultant paediatrician, and I’m the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Carlton Reid 19:50
And where do you normally do your doctoring?

Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:51
So I, I work at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital which is in central London.

Carlton Reid 19:56
Sadly, a colleague of yours was killed.

Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:59
She was.

Carlton Reid 19:59
On a road in

Dr Camilla Kingdon 20:01
very near the college. Yes, yes, yes.

Carlton Reid 20:04
Yes. So is that I know this has been planned along before. But are there colleagues who would have known that person?

Dr Camilla Kingdon 20:13
I knew her. So she worked in my hospital. She said her name was Marta Krawiec, yes. She was a consultant, paediatric allergist. And in fact, she and I went, went to Cairo together to run. I was running a conference with paediatricians in Egypt. And they were desperate to hear learn more about allergy. And she volunteered to come. And so we spent, in fact, I saw the pyramids with her. So it’s absolutely heartbreaking. She was cycling through central London. It’s a route that I do very, very frequently. Everybody in London knows that interchange. And I think she was the seventh or eighth person to diet. So it’s absolutely heartbreaking.

Carlton Reid 20:59
Let’s look to the future. The Royal College has got a new policy on climate change. When was that announced? And what is it?

Dr Camilla Kingdon 21:09
This week. So we’ve launched our climate change statement. And this is on the back of us declaring a climate change emergency back in 2020. And, in fact, a group of our members brought it as a motion to our annual general meeting. And of course, it was passed unanimously, it was cleaning out no argument to be had about that. But what was it’s one thing passing a motion, that we’ve declared a climate emergency, it’s another thing to do something about it. And so what we’ve got is, we’d look, we put a call out for volunteers we had at paediatricians volunteer. And so we’ve divided them up into five work streams. And we’ve got a work stream doing, looking at the research in relation to impact of climate change on children, we’ve got another work stream, looking at how we advocate for children and young people in terms of so a bit like the cycle road, you know, this is about raising the awareness about the impact of pollution on children’s health. So that’s the advocacy group is a group looking at international children of the impact on global child health. So we’ve got this series of workstreams. And they’ve all got some targets to achieve. And this was sort of at the beginning of our journey, but we very much see this as a continuous effort in the college over the over the years, you know, until we’ve solved the problem, we’re not going to stop the

Carlton Reid 22:32
work and just cycling hook into that. Well,

Dr Camilla Kingdon 22:35
cycling, of course, cycling hooks into it, because you’re not burning fossil fuel in your engine. And so many of us cycle anyway, to work, I commute to work on my bicycle. And I think this particular cycle ride grabbed people’s imagination, because you know, it’s a good hard slog to Glasgow, you’re putting yourself out of your comfort zone. But you’re really kind of trying to get the message out that the children’s lives are impacted by poor air quality. And, you know, a nine year old died not far from where I live, in fact, in South London a few years ago. No, exactly. And, you know, it was a landmark case, because the coroner ruled that air pollution can be contributed to her death. But there’s a wider issue in as much as this is also about health inequalities because we know that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are more impacted by poor air quality and other aspects of climate change than children from advantaged backgrounds. And actually, sadly, globally, children in the poorest countries where actually they’re probably causing the least impact on the on the planet are the most affected in terms of poor air quality, dirty drinking water, etc, etc. So, this is a real child health issue.

Carlton Reid 23:58
Earlier in the morning, and long before I circled back to talk to Dr. Camilla Kingdon. I had to become disconnected from the group’s after some of my recording equipment fell from the bike. A rider in fluoro, yellow kindly dropped back to be with me. I didn’t know it for about 15 minutes or so. But this was Dr. Mike McKean, a name I was actually familiar with because A, he treated one of our kids and, B, my wife knows him well. My wife is a hospital paediatrician, you see, she should have been on this ride really? Anyway, me and Mike rode in tempo to the town of Prudhoe, where we were expecting to meet with the fast roadies who had gone ahead to buy a replacement tyre following a blowout. Instead, we got to the bike shop first. And what we’re twiddling our thumbs waiting for the group. I use my dried out radio mic to talk first to Mike. And then when the roadie group finally arrived to Janet Poon who had ridden off earlier with my other radio mic. That’s a lot of mics. I know, let’s be professional. Here’s Dr. McKean. Okay, well let’s just walk across here are waiting for the rest of the fast road group to to arrive. We’ll use one microphone because the other microphones up the road there with Janet. No idea where they are. So Mike we have arrived outside. Well it used to be bike highwayman or bike repairman? Giant Newcastle giant Newcastle. No,

Dr Mike McKean 25:29
it’s the two companies. Yes.

Carlton Reid 25:31
So we’re kind of in the cycle area of Prudhoe.

Dr Mike McKean 25:34
Yeah.

Carlton Reid 25:34
And we are waiting for the crew because we’ve had a bit of a mechanical so I’ve had a bit of a tyre. That’s burst. So the crew, I guess, hopefully will arrive quite soon. But in the meantime, let’s let’s talk to you, Mike. So Mike, tell me first of all, who you are, even though I know who you are, because my wife knows you. Anyway, who are you, Mike?

Dr Mike McKean 25:50
So I’m going to Mike McKean. I’m a children’s respiratory consultant at the Great North Children’s Hospital. And I’m also clinical lead for the child health and wellbeing network in the North east North Cumbria.

Carlton Reid 26:01
So that’s basically children’s well being so not just their physical health, but also what they’re breathing, their mental health, their exercise, all of that kind of stuff is that yeah,

Dr Mike McKean 26:12
but also also a lot of is about education to an early intervention, I think. I’ve often thought you know, that, that we we’ve got some fantastic people working in children’s health, all over the country, really. But we shouldn’t forget that actually, the children’s workforce in the UK is massive if you include our social workers, our voluntary sector, but most importantly, our teachers. And I think we’ve all got a part to play in supporting our kids to become as healthy as possible that’s both physically mentally, but also in their learning their education so that they can reach their potential.

Carlton Reid 26:49
And now you’ve been on the ride since day one. So you joined in London, from a pair from your full timer. But you joined in London. So you’ve been riding now for five days.

Dr Mike McKean 27:01
Yeah, this is this is I forget which day it is now, stay six.

Carlton Reid 27:06
And this is the first time you’ve had relatively poor weather because you got a meal. It’s actually dried up now. But you’ve had some poor weather today. Yeah, we’ve

Dr Mike McKean 27:15
had a tailwind for yesterday, which was the long run from Harrogate was nearly 90 miles. So having a tailwind was fantastic. And it was overcast them. But other days we’ve had sunshine which has been been unseasonal, perhaps, but nice.

Carlton Reid 27:29
And how

many people are doing the ride, because obviously, people are joining in each city and riding a bit like me, of course, but how many are in the core group so that people like you when you’re doing it every day.

Dr Mike McKean 27:42
And I think there’s the tea, something 33 of us, I think during the call, and then there’s often another 10 or so riders joining us each day. And then of the 33, you know, they come from all sorts of backgrounds, really, I guess, all focused on children’s health. And so there’s therapists, there’s nurses and doctors, but there’s also charity workers for the children’s hospitals as managers, IT people and and very importantly, now a new a new breed we’re seeing in the professionals we’re seeing coming into the NHS, which is sustainability officers who really are educated and trained in trying to help us develop an NHS service, which is hopefully going to become carbon neutral, or even carbon negative. Now, wouldn’t that be a thing? The NHS is a huge part of the UK. And if that sector and that that working sector was actually carbon negative one day, that would be a great example, because we will know that that climate change is having such a big impact on everybody’s health, and that includes the NHS workers themselves.

Carlton Reid 28:49
So not just NHS workers arriving at work and tootling around electric cars, but you’d hope the sustainability officers are also saying walk more cycle more. It’s not just the the pollution you’ve got to worry about. It’s people’s health.

Dr Mike McKean 29:04
It’s people’s health as a whole and so within an environment in the in the UK, you know, thinking about our ability to cycle and walk to work is quite important and we’ve learnt lessons as we’ve gone along of the country. And you know, cycling from London you know, through London, Oxford, Sheffield, Leeds now into Newcastle, it’s quite apparent that psychopaths are not maintained, they’re not joined up. There’s the so many obstacles in crossing main roads, motorways dual carriageways, and they’re simply kind of cyclists if you like a second class citizens, and therefore that puts people off and involves a little bit of risk and danger too. So you’re going to cycle through a city at the moment you know, it’s initially no way you go in there’s a little bit hazards in the way. But I think sustainability in the NHS is not just about cycling and getting to work. It’s actually in the work environment. So that’s the electricity we use. It’s how we conserve energy, but also how we Bring greenness into our environment. So there’s a big movement about city farms now, and a lot of hospitals looking at kind of green areas within or within them or next to them to help, you know, grow fruit vegetables have pleasant places to come off the know, that’s really good for people’s well being as a whole, not to be confined into brick walls all the time. And there’s lots of evidence to show that actually, for patients, whether it’s kids or adults, actually being in an environment where there are flowers or trees is actually kind of quite important for them. Of course, you can then see green corridors coming through cities, which is interesting. I would say the other thing that that I’d like to raise who’s just been thinking a bit about it with some colleagues on this, right, which one of the best thing about is right, you speak to people who’ve got different ideas and thoughts. And one of the best things that are one of the most important things I’ve heard, there’s really educated me is about education, really. And of course, getting bringing education into our, our children’s lives about sustainability. They get it, in fact, they’re probably teaching us, I must say a thing or two. But across the world, there’s still large amounts of children who are disenfranchised who do not that good education. Sadly, in large areas of the world, it’s often the girls who struggle more than the boys to get a good education. We know that if kids get good education’s that actually systems they can engage with systems and make them work. And particularly, we have to shout out for the girls, we need more girls across the world to be getting involved in education to being educated. And that I think, is where the power of change can come from.

Carlton Reid 31:39
Power of change COP 26 How hopeful are you?

Dr Mike McKean 31:43
I think we now know we got the knowledge. There’s a lot of people who now have a belief. I don’t think it’s wide enough in the in the UK, let alone across the world and people really understanding the problems you’ve got, but also that there’s very positive solutions ahead of us. Am I optimistic? I’ll be very honest and say no, because I don’t think we’ve got that groundswell yet that we need. But, you know, turning a big tanker around takes time, they said, Isn’t it so I firmly believe if we can create the nudges, that will move in a direction that will be better, and hopefully, we can keep doing that each year.

Carlton Reid 32:19
Now, my wife is a cycling paediatrician. So that’s how I already knew your name. So as soon as we were on the road there, because you very kindly dropped back when all my electronics fell off, and it was raining, it was horrible. And the riders went off, and my bike was one of the bits you currently dropped back there. And then we’re riding for a bit and then you said to us, okay, yeah, I know Mike McKee. So I know Mike McKean is a keen cyclist, and my wife told me that so tell me a bit about how keen Mike McKean?

Dr Mike McKean 32:51
not particularly. I’m a runner, now.

Carlton Reid 32:53
Come on.

Dr Mike McKean 32:54
I’m a runner. And, and of course, as you get older, you get bad knees. And my knee surgeon said, you know, you’ve got to be careful now. So mixing it up, has been my what I’ve been doing for the last few years personally. So I’ve been doing some triathlon, swimming and cycling. I cycled to and from work when I can, and probably should do it more and I intend to do more.

Carlton Reid 33:15
But that’s from Tynemouth all the way into Newcastle. So that’s, that’s a canny ride, and you do it on the main road. It’s not a very nice ride, not

Dr Mike McKean 33:23
not always very pleasant. But if I’ve got the right gear, I know where I’m going. Now I know the routes actually does feel very safe now. So it’s just me deciding to do it and making a change and making a mental shift. Actually, I can do it. By the time I’ve actually if you’re driving and queuing and parking, it’s actually probably just as quick and you get a bit of fitness in and do I enjoy I mean, cycling and commuting don’t always particularly enjoy it, I enjoy a run. But cycling out in the countryside is got to be one of the most pleasurable things I’ve learned over the last two, three years. And having you know, and coming to a place like this cycle art and, and giant in Provo, where they’ve got some serious bike specialists who can get you kitted up, but also measured so you can get on a comfortable bike, you know, so people were shouting at bikes with discomfort and I used to I had an old bike that was a row, a bone shaker, I would describe it as. So it was never really a pleasure. You get a good bike that’s well set up. It feels safer, more comfortable and actually more enjoyable. So the last few five days, although been hard work, I would say it’s been a privilege and a pleasure, actually.

Carlton Reid 34:31
And did you know anybody on the ride before you started?

Dr Mike McKean 34:35
Well, I there’s three, three colleagues, two colleagues of mine and myself from Newcastle doing it and but there’s a load of other people who are just cycling in now.

Carlton Reid 34:46
Yes, we have people arriving just

Group 34:48
We missed you.

Carlton Reid 34:50
We’re fast. We’re very fast.

Group 34:53
I assumed you were cycling ahead. So I just went oh It was a little bit. It was hairy, hairy, so I think it was.

Carlton Reid 35:07
Yeah. So Janet, you’ve only just arrived here after you left us a wee while ago and you had the microphone on and off you went and microphone separate fine. So I think we might have started talking. But anyway, tell us who you are. Janet, what’s your name? I’m Janet. And what’s your second Janet?

Janet Poon 35:28
I’m Janet Poon. I work with Gosh,

Carlton Reid 35:31
which is a Great Ormond Street Hospital

Janet Poon 35:34
in London, and I am an electronic paediatric pharmacist. I work for the EPIC system. So I configure the pharmacy side of the aqueous grading system that Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Carlton Reid 35:46
Okay. And the bike you’ve got here. Is that white one over there?

Janet Poon 35:51
Yes. With the pink handles,

Carlton Reid 35:54
yes. Now, how much of, cos you’ve? You always kept up with the group as you’re doing pretty well. But how much riding have you done before in this kind of, you know, fast roading?

Janet Poon 36:04
I pretty much to none to zero because I commute to work. That’s all. That’s all the cycling experience I have. In preparation for this. I did do one 100k light day ride to Westerville North London, like two weeks before this. And that’s really

Carlton Reid 36:20
it. And have you found it?

Janet Poon 36:23
It’s been really fun and challenging times. But I’m really glad I’m in this group, because I think everyone has grip. It’s so elite, and they’ve got so much experience and they just helped me through so much. They taught me how to go uphill, how to go downhill.

Carlton Reid 36:36
How to ride in the rain today.

Janet Poon 36:38
We’ve had pretty good weather. And so I think the fourth day was a hideous word yesterday. It was like the longest of distance of the four days. But all pretty good weather until today, because we’re getting close to Glasgow. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s been really fun.

Carlton Reid 36:56
And you didn’t know people before some people you didn’t know. You kind of you joined here as a big group. Some of you didn’t know. I didn’t

Janet Poon 37:04
know anyone beforehand. We all met briefly and assume corporate projects resume course before the actual day. Mark, the organiser actually had to speak to one of my colleagues to check that I was real busy. You know, I’ve never met anyone before. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 37:19
So why did you join? Why did you how did you for how did you find out about it? And why did you join?

Janet Poon 37:25
My colleague said said colleague and Carlos said our you know, Mark is going right into Glasgow, do you want to join them? Like, yeah, sounds like fun, why not? And then I found out the court that you know, what they’re doing, which is obviously political air pollution. I thought that’s such a great course. And I’ve learned a lot about not just cycling, but a lot about air pollution as well, during this ride,

Carlton Reid 37:47
is because you’ve got sustainability officers who are joining the ride. It’s not just doctors and nurses. And you also have

Janet Poon 37:55
Yeah, we have we have quite a few hedonistic sustainability from different NHS Trust joining us charity heads as well, but mostly because of the pollution pods. So we saw pollution pot yesterday at the Royal Victoria. And is demonstrated they have five in London and five in Glasgow and they all represent like air quality of different cities. But in between, I think Birmingham, Newcastle, correct me if I’m wrong, and one other cities also have a just one port and that port. That pot is like a future version of what our air would be like in 20 years time. We don’t do anything today. And it’s quite eye opening, like when you go into it, even before you go into a pod, you can see the pod is very, like polluted so and just even before getting to report you can smell it yeuck and really nasty. So it’s quite, it’s quite a wake up call.

Carlton Reid 38:46
So we’ve got to clean our air.

Janet Poon 38:47
Definitely.

Carlton Reid 38:49
Not just for the planet, but also kids lungs. In the future. Everyone’s lungs, not just kids’ lungs.

Janet Poon 38:56
Yeah, I mean, we’re all adults with children once and no children will become adults is for everyone.

Carlton Reid 39:02
Yeah. And is that what you’re hoping the politicians, the world leaders will will take away from cop 26 that look, there’s a groundswell of support for this. Come on, get your act together, do something real. And

Janet Poon 39:18
I’m just hoping they’re public. Everyone was status. It’s not just you know about the leaders everyone doing their part and it’s how healthcare professionals we have the closest contact with public and very often it is us who will kind of miss the kind of passing on the baton and letting the children and the patient and family know that how important air pollution is to their health. Even when Ella died, so they they’re the family didn’t realise how how severe how there’s a VA disability and the velocity of air pollution impacts their children and unfortunately, passed away.

Matt Shaw 39:57
So I’m Matthew Shaw I’m an orthopaedic surgeon by background and I’m the Chief Executive of Great Ormong Street Hospital.

Carlton Reid 40:04
So you’ve been with the ride from from London from London. You started at Gosh, Great Ormond Street. Yeah.

Matt Shaw 40:10
Yeah. Indeed, and then we went to Kings Cross to see the pollution pods altogether as riders and then went to Oxford on day one,

Carlton Reid 40:20
right. And how many people were was started off in London,

Matt Shaw 40:24
or I think there’s about 40 of us everyday, this around about 40. We have some cool riders from all the hospitals that ride the whole event. And then we have day riders that come join us just for a stage. So the Evalina hospital, they’ve decided to cycle their idea so that there’s a couple that are doing the whole thing, but a lot of them come for one or two days, which is great.

Carlton Reid 40:50
So this is basically the roadie group. So you’ve got a few different groups and you’re kind of like, named after trees. Which tree is this? Which group is this? Well,

Matt Shaw 41:00
I think it’s changed. I think it’s silky oak. It was originally silky. Oh, then it was Sequoia. Okay, that it was. I’m not sure what we are now a hybrid is what I would say.

Carlton Reid 41:11
The other fast roadies, I heard you got on your Did you know who you’re even riding with?

Matt Shaw 41:16
Yeah, so we’ve got a pharmacist from Great Ormond Street, some intensivist. from Glasgow from Newcastle. A couple of riders from Sheffield. Head of sustainability in Sheffield. Teri, who’s the head of the Newcastle charity? She’s a really keen cyclist. Yeah, so a really good spread of people.

Carlton Reid 41:36
And then how long have you riding each day roughly? Because they’re obviously going to each groups can be a bit different. But there’s this group, the roadie group?

Matt Shaw 41:42
Yeah. It’s around about 100 and 107 to 140k’s a day. And it varies in height between kind of about 600 700 metres to about 1500 metres, which is the biggest.

Carlton Reid 42:01
And have you always been a roadie?

Matt Shaw 42:04
You know, I’ve never been into mountain biking that much. It’s I guess living in London. Regents Park’s relatively nearby. It’s just the natural thing to do, rather than, you know, there’s no easy to mountain bike. So yes, I’ve always been into road bikes, and then

Carlton Reid 42:22
riding into work also.

Matt Shaw 42:24
I’ve got a scooter. I pushed me to Okay, so I haven’t got a car. got into the car about three or four years ago. I’ve got three kids 15, 10 and eight. And it was just, I just wasn’t using the car. So decided that time to go. So yeah, so scooter. I use the electric scooters now that are in London where you can hire them. So which is great. It’s good.

Carlton Reid 42:54
And this ride you’re doing here now, It’s raising awareness of two things. But mainly it’s air pollution. Yeah. And getting to the job, paediatrics its kids lungs. But that also links into the wider picture, which is why you’re going to COP26 of all climate change.

Matt Shaw 43:11
Absolutely. And I think for most people, you know, if you talk to NHS staff, nine out of 10 staff will be really into this agenda, the whole climate change agenda. But I think the way into that, for many is around health. Because I think people always look at the green agenda in a bit of a weird and wacky thing. Rather than mainstream. I think it’s becoming mainstream. But from a health perspective, I think everyone gets it. Especially when you’re monitoring levels of pollution outside your hospital, which is way above what they should be.

Carlton Reid 43:45
So should the NHS be doing more on preventative medicine, you know, preventative stuff, rather than getting somebody into hospital and they’re already

Matt Shaw 43:53
Yeah, well, of course it Yeah. But of course, the long term plan suggests that prevention is gonna be a real key pillar for that. The question is, is how do you catch up, recover and deliver a Prevention Agenda at the same time? And that’s the real challenge that we’ve got. But absolutely, prevention is at the forefront of that plan. It’s just delivering it. And it can’t just be health alone. It’s got to be social care, got to be local government. And it’s multifaceted in terms of exercise.

Carlton Reid 44:23
Have you seen a difference how long you’ve been the NHS obviously came in as a surgeon, so it must be a good 20

years?

Matt Shaw 44:28
Yes. Yeah. 98 turning unqualified.

Carlton Reid 44:31
So have you noticed much of a difference on the issues you’re talking about today? And they changed.

Matt Shaw 44:38
So I think for the last five years, I think things have been slowly changing. And this year, last year, I’ve seen a real shift. It’s cut driver. I think people are naturally attracted to this agenda. I think mud guys slow Sorry, I’ll just get down the mud first. And the bumps

Carlton Reid 45:05
the Northumbrian roads, unfortunately a quite a lot of potholes. Yeah.

Matt Shaw 45:12
Yeah. So I think in the last couple of years, I’ve seen quite a change steady. I’ve seen quite a change. But I think that’s driven by the people, the workforce society. And then I think the NHS has then started to legislate and regulate in relation to that. So we know that, you know, in time, our regulators gonna be looking at what our green plans are. And we’re going to be judged as symmetric. And that’s important, because that will drive change and change.

Carlton Reid 45:46
And when this is handed in, when the letters and and the, you know, the ride finishes, and you hand this in, yeah, what do you expect to actually happen? Well,

Matt Shaw 45:56
I think, you know, this, this action alone, this event can achieve anything in isolation. But I think that this combined with many other things that are going on, and really, I think the public driving change in this agenda. I think our politicians will need to be more ambitious, need to be more upfront about it and prioritise environment more. It’s not a choice anymore. Is it the economy or the environment? It’s, it’s both. And I hope that’s the message.

Carlton Reid 46:35
I left Matt and the roadies just before Corbridge and turned back for home hoping that I’d bump into the final group on the road. And dear listener, I did. They were stood laughing and joking on the corner of a quiet country lane and I could see why they were always the last ones to get in at night serenaded and cheered by the earlier groups

Nathan Elliott 46:59
I’m Nathan Elliott I am the actual cycle mechanic helping helping the teams get get through the day. I am the non medic spoke shed mechanic I’ve literally been helping helping everyone out with literally just the journey so we started off in London, obviously going to Glasgow. I’ve been the one like just helping out on the repairs on the way so I am the non medic

Group 47:28
Bicycle medic Okay,

Carlton Reid 47:33
yeah, sure the bicycle

Nathan Elliott 47:36
and resuscitation anyone so far?

We’ve been good though. We’ve kept all the bikes going everything and everyone’s got their hopes up in the best group. By far this has been the best morale, morale and banter so it’s been very, very good.

Carlton Reid 47:50
Okay, you can see why you got red wine here? Is that what it’s like? There’s no water in these water bottles it’s red win. Now, I don’t know how much to trust you because you said that rain is refreshing and you quite enjoyed it. So but anyway, who are you?

Alexandria 48:07
So I’m Alexandra. I’m a paediatric immunologist from Great Ormond Street Hospital. And it’s travelling on the heels. So rain was refreshing. Yeah, so I’ve also been cycling from London, hopefully to Glasgow.

Carlton Reid 48:23
Yes. And to Carlisle today. And so this is the last group this was at Sequoia Acacia sorry, Acacia. So Acacia is the last group almost having the most fun. But that also means that you’re getting in probably at eight o’clock at night compared to people getting out for

Alexandria 48:42
long long days, but also I think when we’ve made it the whole team, like it’s a bigger group of people every night. So where are you guys

Carlton Reid 49:05
okay, thank you and who have we got here drinking?

Dr Fin Craig 49:08
I’m Fin.

Carlton Reid 49:10
What’s your second name Fin?

Dr Fin Craig 49:11
Craig.

Carlton Reid 49:12
Okay

Dr Fin Craig 49:13
And that’s Fin with one ‘N’.

Group 49:18
[Laughs]

Carlton Reid 49:18
and where are you from? And

what do you do?

Dr Fin Craig 49:20
Great Ormond Street palliative care consultant.

Carlton Reid 49:22
Okay, and do you normally cycle the cycle to where cycles work?

Dr Fin Craig 49:25
I cycle everywhere but I don’t cycle for fun. I cycle for transport.

Carlton Reid 49:29
See everybody I’ve talked to so far all the doctors on the trip are saying roughly the same. So there must be an enormous amount of doctors at GOSH riding?

Dr Fin Craig 49:38
No, there’s not Well, there is a fair number of people I don’t think it’s doctors necessarily. It’s multi professionals and probably more than, a lot of doctors that drive.

Carlton Reid 49:49
Is that changing?

Dr Fin Craig 49:51
I don’t know. I think it needs to the hospital there’s a lot more cyclists I think since lockdown. But I wouldn’t say it’s predominantly talk to us. I would I would say it is amongst doctors, it’s probably the more middle grade junior staff. I was going

to send consulted doctors, even before the pandemic, junior doctors, and all

the allied professionals much more. So I’d say it’s probably more physios. You think likely? We’ve got a good yeah. Okay, there’s only two people in my team, that cycle

Carlton Reid 50:22
has been notice a change, though, in the last say, three, four years, if you’ve been riding in that long if you see more people coming into work now on bikes.

Dr Fin Craig 50:32
I don’t know because I, it’s that’s hard to tell because I lock my bike somewhere where most people don’t lock their bikes, that

Nick Martin 50:38
there are more people cycling into. In general, we know that. Racks are used a lot more, got more racks, we’re getting some data to show these few more people. So I’m not sure if they’re all.

Carlton Reid 50:52
Okay, in general. So right now, now I’ve come to you. I’m out of sync here in the in the group. But so who

Nick Martin 50:57
you are Nick Martin. Okay, what are you doing head of sustainability at? Gosh.

Carlton Reid 51:02
See, that’s one of the other things that people have been telling me. And they’ve been impressed with the saying there’s, there’s more and more sustainability officers in hospitals. And that can only be a good thing, because you’re basically telling people to get on their bikes. Is that one of the things you tell people to do, or advise them to do?

Nick Martin 51:17
Don’t tell anyone. Yeah, I mean, no people have made, made their own minds, especially the pandemic is very useful thing to avoid, you know, getting on trains and tubes, when people were a little bit worried about what the consequences might be.

And when to check, it was less than

Unknown Speaker 51:35
a good gateway opportunity for people. And then we’ve set up a group. In fact, this ride came out of a little group we set up to support people to get themselves actively into work during the pandemic. And this, this whole idea came out of that colleague, Vince, and then Mark Hayden, the intensivist. We took it from there. So that was all around helping people get into work. And then what should we do with cop? And then let’s write the essay.

Dr Fin Craig 52:01
And we have three we have this really good effort, gosh, called cheer app, which encourages sustainability dare points for riding and that sort of points, everything I’m Mager on it should load up.

Nick Martin 52:13
So the hospital recently declared a climate emergency. So we have a target to get to net zero by 2030’40 emissions, we can control 2040 for the broader emissions, things like that tie into the ability for staff take it into

Dr Fin Craig 52:27
pieces. A lot of us have got into this so like you report your actions every week, because today’s Friday it might be time so I’ve been reporting more than 12 weeks. So I have to say my exercise of exercise five days. I’m switched off my computer my monitor my charges my lights, heaters and fans. I don’t have a printer. Now active travel can I start commuted everyday this week. Okay, so I’ve muted tune from overdue I’ve done loads of points. I’ve done 10 Miles five times this week. Yeah. Plastic pledge I managed to stick to my plastic pledge. I haven’t gotten meat free this week. Sadly, because of eating I haven’t TerraCycle but I learned all about Terracycling from this app. I didn’t know you could TerraCycle blister packs for medications. So now you know when you you put your pills out one of these right it’s written been bring it best way bring it to Superdrug and they there was a way of tetracycline so they separate the foil from that. Yes. That is recyclable. And you know in a month at home we’ve got an absolutely not monster about three months massive bag to be recycled. I didn’t know about that. And people don’t know about this. Have I used three cups reusable cups and bottles. Yes, everyday this week. Have I had outside breaks? I think this counts as five days outside breaks. My I’ve done up to 70,000 steps, right for their lives. How many kilometres Have you cycled this week? I’m going to say 90 plus and then I submit it. And hopefully that will go in and then we have a leaderboard. I’m quite good at staying top of the leaderboard. And if you win if the top of the leaderboard month to get a 10 pound gift voucher or place of your choice, well no, there’s a choice of three or four. Not getting them in the garden centre with the moment wanted to garden centre. Nice, okay, we’ll look at

Nick Martin 54:15
that. But then this app shows how your personal well being and your, you know, opportunities to contribute to the environmental broader picture are integrally

Carlton Reid 54:24
linked. So that’s all nudge nudge technology, basically, people are then going oh, I don’t do that.

Dr Fin Craig 54:32
Yeah, totally. And it’s become the norm in our family now but but only since getting this app and as you can see, I’m at the top of the leaderboard at the moment. Vince is a real competitor of mine, I have to be quite careful in

Carlton Reid 54:46
any events because he’s been so far ahead. Thanks to all of the right for their lives riders and thanks also to Jo Rogers and climate acceptance studios for inviting me to join them the right way side is at the climate acceptance studios.com forward slash ride for their lives. You could donate your rating miles to them via Strava or an email as they aim to collect as many lives as possible before they reach Glasgow. But meanwhile, get out there and ride.

19th September 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 283: Autonorama

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Peter Norton

TOPICS: US academic Peter Norton, author of the classic “Fighting Traffic,” talks about his new book “Autonorama” which details the historically-resonant threat to pedestrians and cyclists from driverless vehicles.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 283 of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 19th of September 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson, USA, Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of the spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information, check out our website at wwwthe-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:10
I’m Carlton Reid and one of the perks of my job is get my mucky little paws on books before they’re published. A few months back I read the new book by US technology historian Peter Norton and he promised me the first of what will be many media and podcast interviews. And this is it. Peter is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. You’ll likely know him from his classic book “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.” As you’ll soon hear, Peter only wrote a book per decade so it was a rare treat to get my hands on a pre-publication copy of “Autonorama,” an historically-resonant warning about driverless cars and how the tech bros need to get cyclists and pedestrians out of the way. I got an early copy of Peter’s book so I could write a cover blurb for it. Janette Sadik-Khan also penned one. The former commissioner of New York city’s Dept. of Transportation wrote that Peter’s book shows that “safer, more livable cities will be achieved not by the tech in our cars, but by our actions on our streets.” Amen. And here’s Peter.

Carlton Reid 2:42
Peter, I have I’ve had a copy of your book in digital form.

Carlton Reid 2:48
It’s a few weeks ago now. And when I read it, it was absolutely fascinating, as I would expect, of course, from you. And then I was just looking now, at the date of this book right now is going to be probably October ish, I think when it comes out. But that’s 2021. Your last book, which I’d like to talk about first actually was 2011. So you’re basically doing a book every 10 years, is that right?

Peter Norton 3:14
Well, that’s a that’s a small data set for a trajectory plot there. Let me add also that my first book actually came out in 2008. And the paperback came out in 2011. So if you saw 2011, then then you saw the paperback.

Peter Norton 3:33
So I don’t know what my trajectory is. I do have another book project now but I don’t have an expected date for it to come out yet. And, you know, I, since there’s other work involved besides books, I don’t I’m not confident giving you a sort of mathematical projection.

Carlton Reid 3:56
Well, what we’ll look forward to it in 2036 it’ll be worth the wait.

Carlton Reid 4:02
so what what is it what it tell us what you do? You know I could do this in the intro, of course, but why don’t we hear from the man himself? So what do you do when you’re not writing books?

Peter Norton 4:14
Most of the time, I’m teaching and that especially means grading papers. I have a lot of students they write and I read their work and that’s really the biggest part of my working time is is that um, and when that’s not happening, then I really enjoy some of the other things that I get to do. Like, for example, you know, talking to you is is a delight.

Peter Norton 4:39
talking to other people. One of my favourite things is when an advocate of some kind comes along somebody who thinks that walking should be normal, or cycling should should could really make a big difference in terms of sustainability and affordability.

Peter Norton 4:57
When those people come along, transit, advocates

Peter Norton 5:01
and they say that they find what I’ve done useful. Well, that really brings me joy, because you know, they’re the ones actually doing something I just write about it,

Carlton Reid 5:10
Because you are one of these authors, who will be perennially paraded in effect, because what you wrote about when I would like to talk about that even you’ve been on the show before, I think we absolutely should. We should talk about your your first book and where you’ve come from, because that kind of feeds into the into this, this this next book, your new book.

Carlton Reid 5:32
But you’re paraded because you talked about something which happened in the 1920s 30s 40s. But it’s absolutely still with us today. They said there’s a dominance of a certain four wheeled thing. So “Fighting Traffic” brought into the public sphere that jaywalking is not a natural thing, it was an invention. So I don’t want to pigeonhole your book to say that’s all it’s about. But you could say that’s one of the good takeaways is it’s bringing that history of jaywalking, being motordom creating that. That’s why a lot of people quote your work.

Peter Norton 6:16
I think that’s a useful way to sort of distil it down to something very elemental, and, and concrete and specific. Because while jaywalking is obviously just a very small part of the story, it really captures a lot of what has been missing from the story.

Peter Norton 6:36
So the story that we get in the States especially, is that car domination, which you know, is ubiquitous, is the effect of mass demand of a free market of, of democracy of values, such as individualism, and freedom, and so on. And sure, there have been critiques of that dominant narrative. Since automobiles began. That’s still the dominant story. The USA is a car culture, this is what people want. And, you know, in the end, they got what they wanted. And so we get jaywalking says, Well, now Hang on.

Peter Norton 7:21
There was a time when few people drove and walking in the street was normal, and that had to be denormalized. And once it was denormalized, well, then actually, part of the motive for getting a car was that the alternatives were getting worse, not just the walking, but also riding a street car, taking the bus or riding your bike, all of those got harder as they inevitably do when you have an environment that favours driving. And that that fact of course, then complicates what it means when people say they prefer to drive Well, you naturally prefer to drive when all of the alternatives have been, you know, impaired, so much. So yeah, I think I think that’s a nice way to capture the the gist of “Fighting Traffic.”

Carlton Reid 8:11
I don’t know how much this comes across in the US. But in here in the UK, we have this huge issue, and it does go mainstream now and again, in the mainstream press, low traffic neighbourhoods. And then when you start talking to people who are very much not in favour of low traffic neighbourhoods, you just see this just amazing mindset of they really cannot imagine not being able to get places in their car. And just a slight thing, like putting bollards in the way of where they used to driving, they can still get into these these areas, but the narrow driveway a little longer. They use all sorts of arguments, including, you know, well how are disabled people going to get around. And they’ve never been interested when you look at their social media and disabled people before but they, you know, use this, they also use air pollution. It’s just it seems to be such a favourite of people in favour of motoring. It’s a strange one, but they talk about how cars when they’re standing still in traffic jams are incredibly polluting, so we must have them moving freely. So free up the roads, and then we will have no more pollution. So these these arguments come out just

Carlton Reid 9:29
so frequently, it’s been taken on board by these people so so carefully, and they regurgitate this, but there’s just no imagination of a life without a car. So how on earth Peter, are we going to have a different future when there are an enormous amount of people, probably even worse, where you are, who really cannot imagine a future without automobiles?

Peter Norton 9:59
Well,

Peter Norton 10:00
Carlton, there’s a word you used, I think three times in that question, imagine or imagination. And I think that’s exactly the key. So a failure to imagine is exactly the, you know, for. First of all, I should say that the people who wanted to sell us car dependency recognise that imagination is essential. And they helped us imagine futures, where car dependency is liberating. And they were extremely good at it. And I think we have a lot to learn from the people who sold us car dependency about how you make different futures. Imagine it imaginable because they excelled at it. Now, when you have generations growing up in a car dependent environment, well, it’s not too surprising that, you know, if that vehicle that they depend on literally depend on is threatened. Now, this becomes a source of anger or opposition to to even elementary reform, like putting in a bollard to make the space more accommodating to anything except driving.

Peter Norton 11:18
So, yeah, that opposition is, is there. And yet at the same time,

Peter Norton 11:26
we know from harder and experience from the past that that these kinds of obstacles can be overcome. I think one way to do it is to frame it correctly. So you can frame

Peter Norton 11:41
the change we need to make as taking away driving. But we can also frame it as giving people choices.

Peter Norton 11:49
In it’s interesting fact that the Netherlands ranks very highly on places where people like to drive, I got a top rating on that from

Peter Norton 12:02
some app company. But

Peter Norton 12:06
at the same time, you have choices. And I think one of the reasons why the Netherlands scores high on places to drive is that the people who are driving or driving by choice, they don’t have to drive there. And that takes off everybody off the road who is there by compulsion, and makes the, you know, the driving experience and experience of choice? Well, if we give people choices, then,

Peter Norton 12:30
you know, we I mean, we can frame this as now you can choose to walk now you can choose to ride a bike, and yes, even now you can choose to drive so that that’s another possibility. I’d like to offer one more.

Peter Norton 12:45
Which is that when it became quite clear that cigarette smoking was shortening people’s lives, often by multiple decades. And this is going back to the 60s especially the tobacco companies were very good at framing that as a threat to people’s preferred way of living. And their advertising helped delay the transition by presenting cigarette addiction as pleasurable. And what people have gradually figured out, at least most people is that even more pleasurable than enjoying a cigarette when you’re addicted to a cigarette is not being addicted at all. And of course, that transition from a state of addiction to a state of non addiction is a very difficult one.

Peter Norton 13:35
But in the end, that destination of being addiction free, has a liberating feel. And that extends even to being free of your car dependency, as long as you have the alternatives that you need for that to work.

Carlton Reid 13:51
So your latest book

Carlton Reid 13:54
is very much extrapolating forward on on car dependency.

Carlton Reid 14:01
Let’s go into the book. First of all, it was called “Autonorama.” Why the no, but why is it auto no roma and not autorama?

Peter Norton 14:10
Well, it could be Autorama because autorama was the name of some shows, automobile shows that were put together in the USA in the mid 20th century. And this all goes back to the word diorama you make something vivid three dimensional experiential. I mean, this is an immersive experience before you know video games gave us immersive experiences. There were these giant shows. And the the American automobile companies in particular General Motors excelled

Peter Norton 14:42
at these shows, and General Motors hit on this in the biggest way back in the late 30s when they developed a famous show called Futurama combining the words future and diorama you’d like you’re travelling to the future.

Peter Norton 14:59
This was their way of making a future of car dependency, both vivid and apparently liberating, because after all, it’s a model, it doesn’t have to really work. And now, to get to the word autonoma, which is you know how I choose to pronounce it, I can’t correct your pronunciation because it’s not even a word. I just made it up. But when we in, in 2015, note, said again, said again, so I write a net again. So I get it the way I say it is Autonorma, Rama, which is like autonomous.

Carlton Reid 15:37
Okay. yes, right? Yes. So it’s just a matter of new cars autonomous driving does come a lot into into the books.

Peter Norton 15:45
Yes. And so “Autonorama” is a fusion of autonomous and futurama. And I’m claiming in the book that this is the fourth generation of a sales spectacle of a futuristic fantasy. It’s being presented to us to influence us, and to, frankly, deceive us about the feasibility of car dependency.

Peter Norton 16:10
And so the book argues that there have been really four waves of this each about 25 years apart, so roughly 1940, 1965, 1990, and 2015. And in each one of the these waves were presented with a futuristic spectacle of car dependency made possible by the latest technology. And the people presenting these spectacles recognise the power of imagination, and they help us imagine these futures, not in ways that are realistic, but then in ways that are persuasive and attractive. So it’s called autonoma, Rama, because I’m trying to argue that while it looks like the last 10 to 20 years of this futuristic spectacle has been about something that’s fundamentally new. I think it’s really the same show. It’s it’s a retread of a show we’ve been seeing for over 80 years. It’s, and what makes it seem new each time is it’s dressed up with technology that’s brand new until this time, above all, it’s machine learning, LIDAR, and so on. But it’s what matters isn’t so much the technology, but just that the technology is new enough and dazzling enough to lead us to drop our scepticism a little and believe that anything’s possible. Arthur C. Clarke said one…

Carlton Reid 17:49
Do you not think that …?

Peter Norton 17:50
Go ahead.

Carlton Reid 17:52
Sorry, Peter, that the scepticism

Carlton Reid 17:56
wasn’t there, say four or five years ago in the mainstream?

Carlton Reid 18:01
I just I just get much more

Carlton Reid 18:04
inkling from the press now that that there does seem to be more scepticism. So people like you and me who have been sceptical about autonomous vehicles for a number of years, are now becoming a bit more mainstream. And if things like you know, even just recently at the,

Carlton Reid 18:20
at the Paralympics in Japan, where, you know, a certain form of autonomous bus, ran into a blind athlete, what these these things are just terrible, terrible stories. And then the head of Toyota comes out and says, Well, you know, autonomous vehicles, you clearly haven’t got a future, certainly with the current technology. So do you think the technologies and the sorry, the, the scepticism around the technologies is catching up to where it should be, which is these technologies are nowhere near ready for for human consumption?

Peter Norton 18:56
Yes. In other words, the degree of the extravagant promises that were ubiquitous five years ago, are scarcer now. And the promises are more modest now. But what hasn’t changed is the same basic claim, which is that the technology is coming. It may take a little longer than we thought. But it is coming and it’s the technology that will determine what we do not we who will determine what the technology does. And companies are very smart about adapting to these, you know, these disappointing or these broken promises and the disappointing news like the one you just referenced from the Olympics, the Paralympics

Peter Norton 19:43
and for example, right now Waymo has been building up a reputation for itself as the people who are actually today, in 2021 every day of the week, delivering

Peter Norton 19:57
fully autonomous driving or

Peter Norton 20:00
For riding experiences in Arizona, and this way of framing it, in other words, we’re doing it right now is deployed in a way to sort of

Peter Norton 20:15
expose people like me and you as the Luddite naysayers, that that, you know, they would like to characterise this as, in other words, then they’ll say, you know, the the somebody will say, Well, you know, can this ever really happen? And we must says, we’re doing it right now. It’s, it’s bogus for a lot of reasons that you already know. But it’s rhetorically very effective when they can say we’re doing it right now.

Carlton Reid 20:42
What are you doing?

Carlton Reid 20:42
What are Waymo doing? What are Waymo claiming and not able to actually stack up?

Peter Norton 20:47
Yeah, so Waymo can, in fact, pick you up in Chandler, Arizona, and then take you to another destination in Chandler, Arizona, in a vehicle that has no driver, including no so called safety driver, the person who you know, is there to supervise the vehicle and take over in the event of an emergency, there’s not even that. And now, of course, the vehicle is under constant monitoring, and the passengers are in close communication and so on. But it really is autonomous, in that specific sense that there’s nobody operating the vehicle who is in the vehicle. Now, I think this is a sort of

Peter Norton 21:45
And of course, then the the operation costs, the overhead are very, very expensive as well. And this is all because it’s operated at a loss by Alphabet Incorporated, the company that owns Google. And, you know, this is this is another words, they’re paying a lot of money to get a claim of credibility across. It’s not a profitable business model or anything close. Also what makes Waymo possible is that it operates in a — I’m I was about to say town, but it doesn’t hardly is recognisable as a town — in an in an semi urban environment, in which there are almost no pedestrians because it’s so unwalkable The streets are enormously wide. You know, there’s ample there’s a left turn, you know, two or three left, turn lanes, right turn lanes everywhere you go.

Peter Norton 22:46
In other words, they have to have a highly contrived environment. And this, to me is another repeat of history. Because to make car dependency work, the environments, urban environments had to be completely reconstructed, just so you could move each person in their own 100 square feet of of automobile space and park them when they got there. And so what Waymo is proposing implicitly, they’re not saying this, of course, is sort of rebuilding America again, or the world again, around what the vehicle needs instead of around what people need.

Peter Norton 23:23
Now, I know you have a lot more that you could probably offer about what what makes Waymo more an illusion than a reality and I’d love to hear it. But

Peter Norton 23:45
An extremely influential public intellectual named Malcolm Gladwell has a podcast that’s hugely popular and he has an episode called “I love you, Waymo.” And it really presents Waymo as delivering us from every imagined and real evil in the urban environment. It’s It’s It’s really the vehicle as a magical deliverance, again, presented by a very eloquent and appealing intellectual in a way that makes it seem credible. So that’s, you know, an illustration of the fact that public relations is a really big part of this as it always has been.

Carlton Reid 24:27
So, yes, we haven’t got conditions like

Carlton Reid 25:06
It’s a natural conclusion? That’s that’s where the technologies have to go. They have to say, “Well, okay, we can’t see everything. But if we just chip your, your cap, if we just chip your trousers and we just chipped your phone, if we’re just chip everything, then everything will be found in future” will be fantastic if we chip everything?

Peter Norton 25:24
Yeah, that’s certainly what we’re we’re hearing, often implicitly, sometimes in explicitly that this is where we have to go to make this work. And

Peter Norton 27:33
I’m laughing, too, it’s almost incredible, how we will go to such elaborate lengths to solve problems at the high tech end of the spectrum, only when we could solve them at the low tech end, or already do solve them. At the low tech, and there’s a, an expression I’ve taken to using with students where my students are all engineering students. And so I draw a line at the on the board. And at one end, I write high tech. And at the other end, I write low tech. And I circled the high tech end. And I say, if you’re only looking at the high tech, and you may be missing something really useful at the low tech and and to help them overcome the bias against low tech, I say, why don’t we call this high sosh, like, if it’s high tech, then high social, or high social would be the better counterpoint rather than low tech, which sounds like, you know, something primitive or

Unknown Speaker 28:34
simple. So I think we’re missing the low tech end of the spectrum. It’s not being a Luddite, to say it has a lot of value, or a lot we can value in it. And often, the low tech end can help us make the high tech end work. You know that a lot of the most useful systems we can have in the world, combine high tech and low tech instead of pitting them against each other.

Carlton Reid 29:02
There is a technology Peter that you mentioned in “Fighting Traffic,” your first book, and you mentioned it in this book, and I believe we haven’t discussed it before, but that is the speed governor so the speed limiter so this is technology that you would think would be a preamble, a precursor I should say really to autonomous driving if we’re really gonna have autonomous driving well the next stage should be let’s let’s let’s take over some of the takeaway some of the human element and put speed governors in cars and that technology as you’ve discussed it in both books is not exactly brand new that you’ve been able to have speed governor speed limiters since early 19 hundred’s so why haven’t we gone to that stage? Why? Why are we missing out quite a critical stage which would actually have unbelievable speed, safety benefits if you had every car, GPS speed track.

Carlton Reid 30:00
Or in previous technologies just literally speed governed?

Unknown Speaker 30:04
Well, you know, the the early version of that the speed governor from the 1920s, which a lot of city people in America were calling for is a way to make streets for pedestrians device that would make it impossible to drive faster than 25 miles per hour. I think there’s a lot to be learned from why that was so zealously fought by the automobile interest groups. And I am pretty confident I know why, because they read their own statements to each other. And in effect, they said, people have to pay a lot of money for a car. And that means they wanted to do something that other vehicles don’t. And that one thing that cars do best relative to the other vehicles of that era, is go fast. And so if you make it impossible for the car to go faster than say, an electric streetcar, well, then people will just keep taking the electric streetcar. Why would they, you know, pay a lot of money for an automobile. And I think that basic reason is still with us. I mean, one of the biggest obstacles to among many obstacles to the autonomous vehicle future that’s being sold to us is that an autonomous vehicle can be extremely safe. If it doesn’t matter how fast or slow it goes. But, you know, the people who want to make a go of this in a business sense, know that no one will pay money to ride in an autonomous vehicle that has an average speed of eight or 10 miles an hour. So that, you know, the speed is is is, you know, essential from a business point of view. In the US in particular, it also was sort of built in to our urban geography, it because of engineering standards.

Peter Norton 31:58
I mean, it to an American audience, often the first objection I’ll get when I criticise car dependency is people will say, well, it’s a big country with long distances. And this is, of course, a kind of a silly claim, because what the distance that matters is not the distance from one coast to the other coast. The distance that matters is the distance between your home and your workplace, or your home and your school, or the shop and your home, or whatever it is those distances. And those distances can be extremely short. But in the US are our, our highway engineers, when they look at the fact that the time it takes you to get your to your destination, is the product of two factors, namely the distance and your speed. the only factor they actually worked into their calculations was speed. In other words, they never bothered with the distance. And they never made any serious effort to ask, how can we keep our destinations, close enough together, that we will save you time on your way to work? Instead, they said, How can we get you travelling faster? Now, it’s the same problem, how much time does it take you to get to work, but they chose to attack it only from one side of that equation and not from the other. And because they committed themselves immediate a public responsibility to fight what they called delay, delay being travelling slower than the speed limit, then every time you were delayed, the problem had to be solved at public expense by adding new highway capacity that would let you go the speed limit again. And as a consequence of all of that, we already have destinations so far apart, that you cause anxiety, when you tell people that we made in need a future where you go slower.

Carlton Reid 33:53
Your definition when you when you’re saying use high social instead of low tech. That’s kind of interesting and worthwhile. It doesn’t seem to be something that people would tend to use apart from, of course, advocate, because you mentioned the phrase before you I term Luddites, so you know, autonomous vehicles, speed, even

Carlton Reid 34:22
capacity of roads, and making roads fit for whatever car whatever motor vehicle is on the road at the time, for instance, Tesla’s now this is all progress. And Peter, what you’re doing, and if you say things like, well, we could use public transport and we could use bicycles, or we could walk that’s anti-progress, that’s not moving forward. We already have got that.

Peter Norton 34:47
What’s interesting about that, it’s a great question. And it’s actually one of the reasons why I thought, why don’t we call low tech high social, because then we can sort of try to characterise social

Peter Norton 35:33
As you know, for ‘Autonorama’ one of my inspirations is Rachel Carson in “Silent Spring.” And her book was highly critical of the high tech,

Peter Norton 36:24
you know, “Silent Spring” is a reference to a future where there are no songbirds because of chemical pesticides. Well, there equivalents of that for urban mobility, like,

Unknown Speaker 36:37
you know, a future where we can have parks that you can walk to, we can have playgrounds that your children can walk to safely without you having to drive them to the playground, children going to school, these are attractive images, like songbirds are that, you know, high tech, incidentally can help us get to because there’s a place for high tech in a sustainable, Livable Future, there’s a vital place for high tech and that, but it’s then again, a question of making sure that we are the ones choosing the tech that we need for our chosen purposes. And not, and we don’t turn into people sort of waiting for tech to happen to us, which is how it’s getting framed right now.

Carlton Reid 37:25
Are you worried about the Apple Car? Because that, you know, every time they do Apple do take on a technology, they they pretty much transform it in their own making, and make it incredibly popular? Or do you think they will be burned just as, as other companies have have actually been burned in this this this space? Because clearly they they’ve lost? An executive just recently has gone to another company for I think,

Carlton Reid 37:52
and and they haven’t brought out this this is this much vaunted car, despite working on it for a long time. So do you worry about Apple? Or is it thing you’ve got no real worries?

Peter Norton 38:04
Well, I do worry about all of these companies, including Apple, and maybe apple in particular, for the reasons that you mentioned, they’re very good at this. You know, the iPhone is something that people feel an attachment for, which is unlike, you know, the phones we remember as kids, which you weren’t strictly, you know, utilitarian objects.

Unknown Speaker 38:26
I also worried because not just Apple, but also the companies to get apps onto your phone are very good at commanding our attention. And a lot of the thinking around autonomous vehicles right now is that they can be profitable if they’re really massive data collectors. And that’s what has made the iPhone profitable for many companies. And it can also make a sort of Apple Car. What some people in the industry call the ultimate mobile device, a device we will be as attached to as our phones. Now, part of your question is, will this will they actually succeed at this and I actually don’t think autonomous vehicles will ever succeed at being anything like what they’re represented as to us as as something you know, you’ll be able to summon it anywhere, anytime. And it will take whisk you away to your destination, right away the way all the public relations shows. But the fact that I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t want that to distract us from the fact that the pursuit of that goal can be really, really destructive. In other words, you may never get to the goal. But the destruction in the wake of that effort could be profound. And I mean, I think history is trying to teach us that because in America, we’ve been pursuing a city where you can drive anywhere at any time without delay and park for free when you get there, we’ve never achieved that city. And yet we’ve never stopped pursuing it. And in pursuing it, we have really destroyed the pre automotive cities of America and turned the post automotive cities into kind of car dependent energy, wasteful, vast expanses of pavement. So I think we could we could repeat history, we’re at risk of repeating history, because the unachievable promise of the autonomous vehicle may lure us along a path of extravagant spending over use of energy. Carbon emissions, I mean, the list goes on.

Carlton Reid 40:45
Peter, many people, and this is where the Luddite comes in. Many people have said, you know, technologies will be unachievable. And then lo and behold, they become achievable. And the Luddities are proven wrong. And before you said somthing about choice, and how, if only you had the choice of a form of transport, so the Netherlands, you’ve got lots of choice, and you choose whichever transport mode you want, whereas other countries, you know, there’s really ones, it’s monolithic, only one

Carlton Reid 41:14
transport choice, really, because that’s been designed. But autonomous vehicles, if they get it right, and if we are wrong, and where we are proven to be Luddites and Apple, a miraculously in in a year’s time, 18 months time comes out with a product that is just genuinely the real deal? Isn’t that something that could potentially

Carlton Reid 41:39
make bicycling and walking, perhaps not public transport, but certainly those two modes, that can be a golden age for those modes, because you get rid of the nut behind the wheel, you get rid of the most dangerous part of the motor vehicle. And that’s the human driver. So surely, why is you as a technology, intellectual or technology academic? Why are you not saying we can do this, but maybe have parameters in so we steer in a certain direction?

Unknown Speaker 42:14
That’s a wonderful question. And so rich possibilities about about how to approach it.

Peter Norton 42:22
So I mean, first of all, in any book about the future, and “Autonorama” although most of the actual text is about the past, that’s there to help us get the future. Right. So the book I think of is fundamentally being about the future. And I think every author of such a book has to admit they may be wrong. And I, I admit, I may be wrong about autonomous vehicles. But I think, I think the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly on the side that says,

Peter Norton 43:33
There was a an article that came out maybe three or four years ago, by Adam Millard Ball, where he concluded and the conclusion he presented the conclusion with extremely high confidence that autonomous vehicles will return streets to pedestrians and cyclists and even children playing games, because the vehicle will be programmed to avoid injuring those people at any cost really. And here’s that, to me, this is a perfect illustration of why we have to study history or we will get the future wrong.

Peter Norton 44:59
autonomous vehicles would either be mostly stopped in cities, and therefore no one would pay a penny to ride in one. Or they would operate only in wastelands like Chandler, Arizona, where no one walks anyway. So those two alternatives I think are equally unlikely. And here’s here’s where history comes in.

Carlton Reid 45:23
Well,

Peter Norton 45:23
Go ahead.

Carlton Reid 45:26
Well, there’s your future. The future is every single place in the world looking like Chandler, Arizona. In other words, you get rid of the pedestrians, you get rid of the cyclists, because they’re the ones holding back progress, Peter!

Peter Norton 45:39
Exactly. And and, Carlton, I do believe that it’s possible. In other words, it is possible that, that to make these things work, they will, you know, they being policymakers, engineers, corporate interest groups, and so on, they will make sure that

Peter Norton 46:54
designed with such that the pedestrian comes first that automatically you have a pedestrians paradise neglects the fact that the laws, the engineering standards, the social norms, and so on, are all subject to change from the groups with the most at stake and with the most influence. So motordom’s response, the automotive interest groups response to the fact that their drivers were getting into deep legal trouble and deep financial trouble every time they hit a pedestrian and to the fact that the newspapers were were demonising vehicles and their drivers wasn’t to say, well, we have to make cars that only go 10 miles an hour or something like that. Their response was to change the social norms. The jaywalking campaigns were part of that, to change the laws, and to change the engineering standards, such that now, you know, in a typical American city or suburb, a pedestrian wouldn’t even dare try sometimes to even exercise their legal right at the typical American crosswalk, especially on the fringes of a city, you see people waiting patiently at a marked crosswalk where they have the right of way, while drivers just race on through. So I think you’re going to see the same thing with autonomous vehicles. In other words, the autonomous vehicles will, there will be ways to make sure the pedestrian gets out of the way might be an obnoxious noise or a flashing light could even conceivably be cameras that ultimately have facial recognition in them. They’ll make sure that the laws are a certain way.

Carlton Reid 48:40
China already does that.

Peter Norton 48:41
That’s right.

Carlton Reid 48:42
The Chinese already have that. They have that right now. If you if you jaywalk, you can be instantly fined.

Peter Norton 48:50
Right. So China decided at some point they wanted a national automobile industry and suddenly the you know, when you have an authoritarian country like China, the that can be a policy that’s implemented quite quickly. They promoted that industry in part by becoming changing from a country where everybody cycled to everything into a country where it’s hard to walk safely and where you are treated like you know, an enemy of the state if you if you exercise, a little resourcefulness just to get across the street. And that may, I hadn’t thought of that illustration, but that may be the ideal illustration for why the Malcolm Gladwell Adam Millard Ball thesis won’t stand up. I think the other illustration is historical.

Carlton Reid 49:40
Do you know, I’ve never actually thought about this because this autonomous driving is very much a tech bro thing is very much Silicon Valley. Google. Apple. Now we’ve talked about them. We haven’t talked about China. Do you know is this something that never come up on your your LIDAR and then China will

Carlton Reid 50:00
What is China doing with autonomous vehicles, you know, they’re ahead in so many other ways. If this was a viable technology, you’d think they would be at least equal to the Silicon Valley Tech bros, or potentially even further afield, especially because there are, as you said, there are authoritarian country, they can do what the hell they like with their streets, whereas in some respects, even in auto-dependent USA, and then the UK, there’s still gonna be some kickback, whereas in China is gonna be no kickback, if they want to do the whole system where it’s gonna be autonomous vehicles, they can do autonomous vehicles.

Peter Norton 50:37
Well, I’m not privy to a lot about what’s going on there. Besides what, you know, I can pick up fairly easily in journalism, but

Peter Norton 51:01
an example I spend some time on in the, in the book is a 2010 movie that was co produced by General Motors, China and its Chinese partner, SAIC used to be Shanghai AutomotiveIndustries Corporation,

Peter Norton 52:08
Maybe not so much in the vehicle, if not in the vehicles themselves, then in the technology, the world would need to have these vehicles.

Carlton Reid 52:16
I can imagine they would also chip if, literally, you know, we we worry about this is like, Oh, you know, we’re gonna have to have chips on our phones. And then of course, we’re gonna have to have chips in, you know, embedded in our skin. We’re in China, that wouldn’t be a problem. Yeah, everybody who’s born, there’s your chip. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got a system where Yeah, China has got autonomous vehicles, no problem, because everybody wouldn’t be a

Carlton Reid 52:40
better dream come true for an authoritarian regime than to have not only chipped people, but they’re also travelling in vehicles that can be tracked, their location is known at all times.

Peter Norton 52:52
You know, it, it really is an authoritarian’s dream come true. Which of course is ironic, because car dependency was sold on the claim that it was personally liberating.

Carlton Reid 53:04
You talk in your in your book about “transport sufficiency,” what’s what’s transport sufficiency?

Peter Norton 53:10
I’m presenting transport sufficiency as the alternative to a sort of transport perfection. Now, obviously, perfection sounds more attractive than sufficiency. But that comparison changes when you recognise that transport, perfection is actually never achieved. It’s frequently invoked and frequently promised, because that has a way of opening up wallets of opening up public money for roads and so on. But it’s never actually achieved. And the result is actually kind of worse than transport sufficiency. Because in the pursuit of transport perfection, you get all kinds of nuisances, that are, you know, worse than transport sufficiency, and that are ubiquitous in the US, such as, for example, you know, buses, if they come at all come once an hour or something like that, or walking means walking next to a six lane highway, and having no place to cross and so on. So transports efficiency is saying, Well, if we forego perfection, then we have possibilities that are actually very attractive. This, incidentally, is another case where I want to give the credit to Rachel Carson, also to to Jane Jacobs, who were saying very much the same thing. They didn’t use the that vocabulary. But Rachel Carson, for example, was in effect saying, if you give up the dream of, say, pest free agriculture, where you have no insect pests at all, then you can actually do some quite wonderful things, you know, by crop rotation, varying your crops, you know, finding the suitable, the crop right crop for that

Peter Norton 55:00
environment and so on. Jane Jacobs was offering a version of that same kind of message, namely, the perfectionist visions of the planners was never really achievable. And the pursuit of it was destructive. But if we sort of agreed that it’s okay to have, you know, a mix of, of building stock, some of which may be a little decayed. And it’s okay if we have people who sometimes find it frustrating on the sidewalk, because there’s so many people walking and so on. If we accept those things as part of the deal, well, then we can take take that as a serious possibility as an alternative that looks very attractive compared to the pursuit of perfection, we never actually approach.

Carlton Reid 55:48
Also in your book, I’m now I’m going to pick out because I I’m lucky enough to have been sent an advanced copy. And I’ve, I’ve read it, and I picked up it, so I’m not gonna just pick out bits and throw them at you. And you’ve got to explain to us to everyone who’s listened to this. So you wrote “a city optimised for drivers keeps not only drivers dissatisfied, but everyone else, too.” So explain that.

Peter Norton 56:16
Well, this is actually related to the previous point, namely, a city optimised for drivers is ultimately unachievable for the simple reason that

Peter Norton 57:34
you will find that you can live further from work and maybe save yourself or rent or get yourself a lower price on your house. If you choose to live another 10, 20, 30 miles from your daily destinations, which in turn means more total driving, it means more people coming into the city from a wider radius of origin points, and all needing a place to park their vehicle all day. And so it’s a kind of a treadmill, where the more you accommodate drivers, the more driving there is, and therefore the more effort you have to take to accommodate them. And if you the ultimate example of this would be Houston, Texas, where if you you know do a Google image search for Katy freeway, which is interstate 10 near Houston. You see, I think it’s now 26 lanes of congested traffic. Which, which is it makes the most dystopian dystopian science fiction seem, you know, mundane by comparison. So it’s, it’s it’s an absurdity.

Peter Norton 58:46
And, you know, that’s the point I was just trying to make.

Carlton Reid 58:48
But 28 lanes will fix it.

Peter Norton 58:52
That’s right.

Carlton Reid 58:53
One more will fix it. We’re just looking for that sweet spot.

Peter Norton 58:57
Exactly, yeah, one more lane is what it’ll take.

Carlton Reid 58:59
So both you

Carlton Reid 59:02
and I, we, our research interests often coincide. Mine from the UK angle and from the US angle. But they often talk about or look at eventual dystopias and and but you when you’re reading the literature of the 1920s, 1930s, it’s full of optimism and and ditto for for here. So I’m I’m currently reading lots and lots of literature, from that time where modren was going to be perfection. It was you know, we weren’t going to ever reach

Carlton Reid 1:00:00
That’s basically where we’re coming we’re the Grouches is here, we’re, we’re the, the boring old Luddites, or not even Luddites. We’re the boring old people pointing out that, yes, you can have this technology, but it won’t actually do what you say it’s going to it’s going to do. And we did have to look at history to kind of prove that in all this optimism.

Carlton Reid 1:00:24
Now really ever we’re just stuck in traffic. Yes, this this, this is a freedom machine. If you’re the only one driving it, as soon as everybody else has this fantastic technology, it ceases to be practical.

Peter Norton 1:00:39
Quite so. You were reminding me of a word that might be applied to both of us as well? That’s very common, maybe more here than there naysayers were the naysayers. But yeah, certainly, if you compare the utopian visions of the 30s, or the 40s, or the 50s, with what we have now, it is profoundly disappointing. I think this compels us to ask why do we keep falling for these techno futuristic fantasy lands that can’t be achieved? And that was a question that was very important to me in autonoma? Why do we keep falling for these things? And of course, one of the arguments in “Autonorama,” is that we actually do get sceptical after each wave of these things. There’s a credibility gap that sets in

Peter Norton 1:02:33
inspire gets applied to make us believe futures that are both undesirable and unachievable?

Peter Norton 1:02:40
Well, then then we’re being manipulated again.

Carlton Reid 1:02:42
That sort of reminded me of a like a visual joke like, you know, you know, “Punch,” Punch, there are satirical magazine in the UK, I’m pretty sure it from them. So it’s there’s a, there’s an illustration of a horse and cart, a drunk farmer. And I’m sure this has been used in the US as well, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with this trope. But the farmer is drunk, leaning back, in effect, asleep in the in the back of his, his vehicle of the day, his character of the day driven by a horse, but the horse can actually get him home from the pub. So these technologies of autonomous vehicles, I’ve actually been with us before, you would just have the horse would take you home from the pub drunk. So nothing that they’re really dreaming of now are something that we couldn’t have done using other forms of technology previously, and you kind of make that point in the book where you say, and I’m quoting you here,

Carlton Reid 1:03:43
where “walkability, cycle routes and basic transit are so much less expensive, that even if we diverted a 10% of the funds now going to building, maintaining and policing roads, and and the future of these roads, means we can actually start to see beneficial trends in a year or two, never mind in 10, 20 years.” So that’s where we need to be brave and actually funding technologies

Carlton Reid 1:04:11
that work, that are proven to work,

Carlton Reid 1:04:15
but maybe not sexy.

Peter Norton 1:04:18
I love the way you put it. In fact, that opening analogy really ought to give us pause because that farmer’s horse, got the farmer home, even if there was an inch of snow and it was sleeping, and it was night. All of which would have made it you know, a technical nightmare to sort out at the best high tech companies r&d divisions today. It’s true that you know, the resources necessary just to make walking practical and cycling practical and to give people more reliable and better bus service and so on are not that significant. And he would finally give

Peter Norton 1:06:23
You know, yeah, that would be restoring choice to people and technology could be part of it. Because one of the reasons why we over built roads is that, you know, the excuse was, it’s not practical to charge people for their road use by the actual cost of each mile, their driving, that would require, say, a toll booth on every mile of road, and everybody would have to stop and get coins out of their pocket to pay the toll. And therefore, we’re gonna go with the gas tax instead. And the gas tax was this incredibly clumsy and stupid, low tech way to create a funnel of money for roads that became a self perpetuating treadmill of road building. Well, technology can let us undo that. So I’m being a high tech fan here and saying, why don’t we, you know, charge people and then put that money into giving people choices.

Carlton Reid 1:07:14
Do you see any? Because you mentioned many times in both books, how the automakers basically got everybody else to pay for their infrastructure, you know, society paid, governments paid on their behalf. Do you see

Carlton Reid 1:07:32
that happening with autonomous vehicles, because if we are going to have autonomous vehicles, and we know that the technology they’ve currently got aren’t going to be sufficient, they’re going to have to have a remodelling of the streets, which we’re going to have to pay for at the end of the day, it won’t be the automakers and never has been the automakers. And it’s never been the users, the motorists either. It’s always been society as a whole. Do you see in for instance, in the latest Biden’s infrastructure bill, you know, how much of that is actually going to subsidising all of these tech dreams?

Peter Norton 1:08:06
Well, I can’t speak very specifically about Biden’s infrastructure bill because I have some homework to do to get better acquainted with the details. I only have the headline level information about it. But what I can say is absolutely the costs, entailed in accommodating and enabling autonomous and other highly automated vehicles on the roads has already been getting picked up by the US taxpayer in a big way. And this goes across parties and administrations. At the end of the Obama administration, there was a smart cities competition where one US city got a enormous amount of money to promote.

Peter Norton 1:09:37
autonomous vehicles are coming in. It’s our job in the Federal Highway Administration to help it happen. And she announced large sums of money for that. And without even checking, I think we can be certain that there are substantial public funds from US DoT even under Mayor Pete for

Peter Norton 1:10:07
So yeah, these interest groups, these trade associations and lobbies are simply too powerful for that not to happen.

Carlton Reid 1:10:16
So, Motordom Mark II?

Peter Norton 1:10:18
Yes, I think we still have Motordom and in fact, the Motordom club is expanded to include tech companies.

Carlton Reid 1:10:25
Peter, as always, it has been fascinating. Your book was excellent. I was kindly asked to write a blurb for it. That’s why I got an early copy, in which I hope I was as glowing as I ought to be. Because it was a fantastic book, and a very, very good follow up to “Fighting traffic,” like the kind of the next stage. So tell us, when’s it gonna be available? Where is it going to be available from tell us all of that detail.

Peter Norton 1:10:57
So the press is Island press, and Island press says it will be available October 21.

Peter Norton 1:11:06
A nice feature of the book’s title is that you won’t get a lot of irrelevant hits. If you type in the book’s title “Autonorama,” it t ought to be the first thing that comes up on any search engine. And it will be available through essentially all the book channels that people are already using.

Carlton Reid 1:11:28
And that’s all IslandPress.org. Now, where can you find more about you, because you’re not on Twitter.

Peter Norton 1:11:36
I know, I have a an About Me page on my department’s website, my department being the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia.

Peter Norton 1:11:52
I think if anyone searched just for “University of Virginia” and “Peter Norton,” it would probably come up near at or near the top.

Carlton Reid 1:12:01
So you’re proving yourself here to be that Luddite.

Peter Norton 1:12:05
Well, you know, I recently had a friend who so use of social media, I had a journalist friend I like very much recently tell me I have to be on Twitter. And then in the next sentence, he said, but I lose an incredible amount of time on it, I have to say, so I’ll consider joining the twittersphere. Again, but you know, I have some

Peter Norton 1:12:31
costs and benefits to to consider.

Carlton Reid 1:12:34
Yes, I wouldn’t encourage anybody to do it. Because it is can be a time sink, and you do tend to talk around in circles. But at the end of the day, it is good to, to have like,

Carlton Reid 1:12:49
cuz I use it the other day, in fact, for a Forbes article, in that I was taken on a whole bunch, I don’t know why they’ve adopted me, but a whole bunch of anti low traffic neighbourhood folks have adopted me as their bet and one of the name I have mentioned why I’m the one at the moment, which they’re there that they’re piling in on me. And so I try and win when I take them on. You know, it’s like, this is not radical, you know, a low traffic neighbourhood is not radical, you know, the Romans had low traffic neighbourhoods. 600 years ago, the York Minster had low,, these are bollard, these are not you know, the throughout history we’ve had, you know, motor carriages restricted. This is not unusual yet all the mass media and these people are seeing this as this incredible, new and novel to them dystopian future where you can’t go exactly where you want in your motorcar. So I take these people on, and I try and move it on. So because it’s not a very radical concept, they consider it radical. I just say, well, let’s just ban cars.

Carlton Reid 1:13:56
They then flip their lid, because that is just something that they haven’t is like, Whoa, we just thought we’re talking about you know, just a few bars here. Now this this lunatic is talking about banning all cars. Now, of course, I don’t have any power in it. I can’t do anything about this. But just mentioning that concept that that is your future and I kind of scared them. I hope it just nudges the Overton window for them, just nudges up a little. So they then think that LTNs or maybe they’re not quite as crazy, or as radical as we think because this nutter is talking about banning all cars. So maybe we will just keep quiet. Mostly you’re talking to the wind, you’re not gonna convert anybody people have got their their rigid points of view and I don’t know why they even start arguing about it. But there was a glimmer, it was two or three posters, who when you actually started chiselling away, and you actually showed them because they one particular one came on and was very anti LTNs but then

Carlton Reid 1:15:01
I started talking about highway removal. And how it didn’t lead to Carmageddon, there didn’t lead to congestion everywhere. And then I showed them a photograph of this particular the poster child of highway removal in South Korea and showed them how it is now a park today. And their argumentation had been about how all LTNs was shoving

Carlton Reid 1:15:27
all the heavy traffic onto these major freeways where there was actually lots of houses next to it. But when I showed them, like other countries have done this, they actually came around to this concept, and I just got one convert from this argumentation, I would consider that to be a success. So some Overton windows might be nudged open, but then one person who was anti LTN is gonna think ‘Well, actually, there is a different future, because South Korea did that.’ So that’s why I use social media and and I don’t mind spending time arguing with people, even though 90% of them, you’re not going to change their mind, you might change 10% of people’s mind. And perhaps those 10% could be an important 10%.

Peter Norton 1:16:15
Well, I am delighted by this story, and you’ve given me something to think about very carefully. I read that piece in Forbes, by the way, and I absolutely loved it. And the reason I saw it is that I am on social media. I saw it on Facebook. And I recall your sort of attention getting statement in that post, which was the first sentence is been banned cars are approximately that. So I loved the deliberate provocation that that was that was amusing. And I shared, of course, I shared the article because it’s it’s it’s common sense presented bbsolutely refreshingly. Well, yeah, I think I’ll give it a try.

Carlton Reid 1:17:09
Don’t blame me though.

Peter Norton 1:17:10
No, no,

Peter Norton 1:17:11
if I if I ended up

Carlton Reid 1:17:12
I didn’t, I didn’t.

Peter Norton 1:17:14
Yeah, if if my career stalls to a halt, because I’m constantly tweeting, or, and so on I’ll take full responsibility. And you have that on Zencastr.

Carlton Reid 1:17:27
Thanks to Peter Norton. There’s a photo of him and a link to “Autonorama” on this show’s website at the-spokesmen.com. Next month, I’ll have a chat with Lachlan Morton, who, as I’m sure you know, rode this year’s Tour de France by himself, but meanwhile … get out there and ride.

5th September 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 281: “If you look at the tree, you hit the tree”: eMTBing Guiding Masterclass With H+I’s Chris Gibbs

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Chris Gibbs and Jude Reid

TOPICS: Carlton’s wife Jude rides to work on an electric bike but hasn’t ridden off road for more than 20 years. Cue this three-day eMTB press trip in Cairngorms courtesy of Shimano. H+I‘s head guide Chris Gibbs reintroduces Jude to genuine mountain biking while talking about the passing scenery and Shimano’s EP8 leg-boosting e-bike platform.

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 281 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show is engineered on Sunday 5th of September 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast … since 2006! For shownotes links and other information check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the Spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:10
Bike fitter and author Phil Cavell recommended paddle boarding as a complementary activity for cyclists a couple of episodes ago. On Friday we took him up on that suggestion, booking a two-hour private tour with a guide. The “we” was me, Carlton Reid, and my hospital doctor wife, Jude. The paddle boarding was great but the guiding left a lot to be desired. There were no safety briefings beforehand or during, precious little instruction, and almost no communication while we were out on the water. To all intents and purposes we were left to our own devices and, if on the beach I hadn’t asked a few key questions, we would have been ignorant of some key techniques. As beginners, we were expecting more. Or maybe we were just spoiled, because we had just come back from a glorious three day mountain biking trip in the Cairngorms; glorious partly because of the Scottish Highlands scenery but also because of some expert hand-holding and gentle encouragement from Chris Gibbs, head guide of Inverness-headquartered international mountain bike holidays company H+I. Chris Gibbs was originally a soundtrack writer and composer — some years ago he went to Japan in search of adventure but instead fell in love with the outdoors becoming a mountain bike guide. For H+I he has led mountain bike tours all over the world during the last decade, He is most at home — literally — in Scotland. Thanks to Shimano, we were lucky enough to have Chris to ourselves, and he made guiding look effortless — as well as being super warm and friendly he was clearly on top of his game; he has several mountain guiding and first aid qualifications and is a bike fettling tutor for Velotech. During lockdown he topped up his technical knowledge, diving deep into Shimano’s dense tech sheets including genning up on the EP8 electric bike platform. Normally a Yeti acoustic bike rider, he joined us on EP8-equipped Merida 160 electric mountain bikes. Our 2 and a half day trip started at Inverness railway station with Chris meeting us with a van …

Chris Gibbs 3:44
Hey, how’s it going? Good to see you again. Hi, I’m Chris. Nice to meet you. Let me grab your luggage, the vans parked just round the coner.

Carlton Reid 3:56
It’s great that we’re getting you to ourselves.

Chris Gibbs 3:59
Well, you say that now? We’ve got a pretty reasonable forecast for the next few days.

Carlton Reid 4:05
And where are we riding? Are we getting picked from the hotel and then going out?

Chris Gibbs 4:09
So we’re basically our own little unit this week. So today, we’ll get up to the office, have something to eat for you guys. And we’ll sort of do an introduction to the bikes, get everything set up and basically faff around for getting everything sorted. And then this afternoon, we’ll go for a little local ride. We’ve got some good trails just out the back of the office and some little secret spots and things that we can just have a play and get used to them. Then tomorrow, I’m going to pick you up and we’ll go down to the Cairngorms and we’ll head down to the Cairngorms there for sort of a day of two halves lots of kind of playing around with the motor and trails that lend themselves to that and then we’ll and then we’ll head out for a bit of a wilder adventure.

Carlton Reid 4:52
And how wild and gnarly is that for somebody who might not be completely 100% — I’m being diplomatic here …

Chris Gibbs 5:04
It can be, it can be as wild and gnarly as you’d like it to be. And it can be as chilled out as you’d like it to be, you know, it’s just us. So we can tailor it to you guys. And if you want to push the envelope, we can certainly find spots. And if you say, ‘Chris, I’d really like to do this really nice sedate ride, and then have a really good coffee,’ we can also do that as well. And we can factor in skills in as well, if you like. That’s totally fine.

Chris Gibbs 5:32
You know what there I actually one of the things I like about ebikes actually, that sort of, I guess the moment that it clicked for me, was I started down powering everything. And there’d be climbs that I would physically never make on a regular bike. And like super technical or super steep or whatever it was things that I wouldn’t be able to achieve. And then down powered e-bike gave me just enough that I was still working physically really, really hard, but suddenly, I was able to make things that I wouldn’t have done.

Carlton Reid 6:03
A little bit extra oomph.

Chris Gibbs 6:04
Yeah, just yeah, exactly that and you’re still using quite a lot of technical skill. And you’re still, you know, your heart rate is still way up there. And that’s when I sort of, I guess had a light bulb went off. This is this is actually really good fun. I think just now on mountain bikes, but all bikes are just this amazing tool for adventure. And you know, it just gets you to places that you wouldn’t see on foot, and you wouldn’t be able to do in a day. Otherwise, obviously, I’m very mountain bike focused. And the kind of views in the places you can get to behind a mountain bike are second to none. And like you say, you can’t, no one ever comes back from a mountain bike ride and feels worse, you only ever feel better. But this is us arriving.

Chris Gibbs 6:54
Cool. Perfect. Let’s just set up some bikes. So Carlton, yours first. At the moment, we’re just releasing some air from the fork. So for Jude is quite a lot lighter than the last person to ride this bike. So we’re just softening the suspension up — basically, in an air fork and shock, the air is acting as a spring. So we’re just getting that set to your weight. And then that way the bike is going to manoeuvre and move over the terrain as best as it can. And be most efficient and most comfortable for you – one more time, stand up as if you’re descending. Yeah, definitely. Brilliant. Let’s have a quick look at the bike. So you’re to turn the thing on it’s here. So with these models, we can remove the battery. So it will come out of here but we don’t need to right now. And you can or you can charge the battery within the bike, either one. Once you’ve pressed and held that for a couple of seconds, you get the display up here, the moment the motor is off, so there’s no assistance, press that arrow, you get one bar. That’s you in Eco mode. [Motorbike sounds]. So Eco doesn’t sound like that, so that’s not Eco, so one bar, and that’s your kind of minimum assistance, two bars that’s you in Trail and three bars, that’s you in Boost. So you’re going to get the maximum power kicking in as quickly as it can. So this is the Shimano EP-8 motor, so the most recent and newest motor from Shimano. So when they were putting this out, it’s a big, kind of big part of it was the fact that it was smaller, sleeker, which means that a bike can be a lot more nimble and a lot more sort of manoeuvrable and playful without all that weight and bulk of older motors in it. It was designed around still feeling like riding a regular bike. So that natural pedal feel. But I guess kind of the way, the way I often think about it is that it’s it’s like you you’re still using your legs, but it’s like you’ve been given really strong legs. And what I really like the fact that is so customizable, so you can power things right down. And if you’re kind of trying to get a training ride out of it. So you definitely can get your own heart rate up. And you can power that right down more or you can boost it right up. So you’ve got maximum power, it’s all working for you. And that’s kind of coming from the the software side of things that you are able to control from the app and from e-tube, and then e-ride can display for you as well. On top of that with this, this bike, it’s built into a 160 travel bike. So it’s a very capable mountain bike, it’s designed for mountain biking. It’s not just a sort of commute up and down canal path near you This is for going up up big mountains and then coming down them again. What I’d encourage you to do up here a little bit, is kind of shift the gears but play around with the cadence you spin. And just see how it reacts to different cadence and different pedalling.

Jude Reid 10:09
Alright, yeah, I think it got the spin up. What’s the left shifter for?

Chris Gibbs 10:17
What’s that? Sorry.

Jude Reid 10:18
The left shifter. Is that the front? No. There’s only one ring at the front.

Chris Gibbs 10:22
On your left is the dropper post remote. And also the display. So that’s to swap between modes.

Jude Reid 10:32
Okay, so

Chris Gibbs 10:35
Well, no, you don’t have a shifter that’s the dropper post?

Jude Reid 10:39
Oh, is it? Sorry.

Chris Gibbs 10:42
Yeah. That’s fine. So when you press that and put weight on the saddle, it will drop, yeah?

Chris Gibbs 10:53
So how does it compare to what you’re used to?

Jude Reid 10:57
Well, it’s nice to have gears.

Chris Gibbs 10:59
Yeah. Like we were saying earlier, it’s as customizable as you want it to be. So if all you want is Eco, Trail and Boost, fine. But as you kind of develop as a rider, and you start to want more from your bike, and to understand a little bit more as well, that’s when you can get into the depths of it. I think now it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish between them. Because like the EP-8 motor is small, small and discreet.

Carlton Reid 11:36
Small as in looking?

Chris Gibbs 11:37
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, frames. Now, some of the most modern is quite hard to tell the difference. And the EP-8 was a much sort of sleeker designed motor than its predecessors. And you look at it and the bottom bracket area, you actually do need to look to notice, and, and we’ve got three bikes all together, so we are hearing them. But if you were to compare this to all the motors, also, you can have different brands, each one sounds a little bit different. And this is significantly quieter. And if you listen now, a bit more gravel, you’re hearing more trail than your motor. So this is all part of the Great Glen way. We’re gonna branch off this in a second. So it’s a tight left, just round the rootball just up here, if the gates closed. Yeah, it is. So following my line again, nice and wide round here.

Jude Reid 12:49
No, I’m not going wide.

Chris Gibbs 12:50
a little bit wider than that.

Jude Reid 12:53
Yeah,

Chris Gibbs 12:57
Do you wanna have a go at that, Jude?

Jude Reid 12:59
I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that.

Chris Gibbs 13:01
That’s OK. So like, you want to keep traction on the bike. So you don’t want to stand up pedal, you want to kind of spin into keeping a bit of weight on the saddle, and just spinning up. So where we are, this is kind of a big local riding spot. So going up to the very top end here, that takes us up to some pretty steep and gnarly trails like half of the Scottish World Cup downhill team practices in this spot. So you often see some pretty, pretty handy riders around. That around that side goes down to sort of a Great Glen Way. And this takes us down to face Inverness. So we could pop down in here, we’ll get a couple of views, some nice, easy descending, and then we can link back into the forest. And there’s a few little up downs and things we can play on and have a bit get a bit of a feel for the bikes as well without jumping into anything super committed up here.

Chris Gibbs 14:00
Okay, Jude. So we’re about to go down a slightly steeper it’s still fire road, but kind of rocky, like you can see. Yeah. So this is the time to make use of that dropper post, get the saddle right out the way Yeah, and just start descending nice and big and open. So like up here, like a big gorilla. So you’ve got loads of room for the bike to move underneath you. So the thing to get used to now you’ve got 160 mm of suspension, so you don’t need to turn around every rock. If you can keep loose in your arms and legs. the bike’s gonna soak it up for you. So just nice and down this line here on the left. Good job. Just here’s perfect. Well done.

Jude Reid 14:43
Sorry.

Chris Gibbs 14:44
No, don’t apologise.

Carlton Reid 14:47
Look back, it’s quite steep.

Chris Gibbs 14:49
Quite steep, quite rocky. The trick to all this stuff and the more and more familiar with the bike you get is looking for far ahead. So look where you want to be. Because if you look at If you look at the tree, you’re going to hit the tree. If you look past the tree, you’re going to sail right past it. I’m sure there’s a lesson for life in there. And just that nice is soft in your arms and your legs, like you’ve got this much suspension in the bike, but you got this much in your legs and arms. So like working with the bike, I almost think sometimes you can just look at everything and treat it like a pumptrack. Really. So with mountain biking, a lot of people look at a good rider and they go, their first response, or their first impression of it, if they don’t, if they don’t ride themselves. They’re like they’re so aggressive. But they’re not aggressive. They’re just really active. So they’re using their body to absorb the lumps and push down into the holes. So their body and their bike and moving loads underneath them. But their head is staying nice and still. And if your head is nice, and still, because everything else is moving, then that’s how you feel really in control. Yeah, when you look at good videos, you see like the bikes are going way out to the sides and over, up and down. But you can almost draw a line from where their their vision and their head stays. Same with good skiers and all sorts. Yeah, perfect. We’re going to continue down here, it’s going to bring us into a really beautiful bit of forest. And then we can pick and pick and work our way sort of back up and over. Yeah, nice one, just move out here. So we want a solid grip of the bar. And we only need that one finger for pulling on the brake. Can you just feel a little bit more control? Let’s take a minute to get used to but you’ll just feel a little bit more stable on the bars. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gibbs 16:37
The point is to come and have some fun.

Jude Reid 16:39
Yeah. I like the uphill.

Chris Gibbs 16:42
You know it. I’m a big fan of climbing as well, actually.

Jude Reid 16:47
Uphills and wide downhills it’s very much the same.

Chris Gibbs 16:51
I see. So as someone that rode mountain bikes, and has ridden other bikes and hasn’t spent much time on an e mountain bike, how does it like, does it feel like riding a bike to you?

Jude Reid 17:05
And yeah, I mean, yeah, but there’s just that mountain bike feel, isn’t it? You still got a mountain bike feel whether it’s an e-bike or not an e-bike.

Carlton Reid 17:16
You don’t you don’t feel as though you’re riding a motorbike?

Jude Reid 17:18
No.

Chris Gibbs 17:20
That’s and that’s, I think, what I think that one of the biggest strengths of the EP-8 is it does feel like mountain biking, you know, feel it doesn’t feel like you have a motor that’s doing all the work. It just feels like you are pedalling. And then you have as much or as little assistance as you want. I quite like it because sometimes you just feel like it still feels like your own legs just got really strong.

Chris Gibbs 17:48
Have you tried Boost mode yet?

Jude Reid 17:52
Is that number three?

Chris Gibbs 17:53
All three, yeah.

Jude Reid 17:54
Yeah, that’s what got me up that hill.

Chris Gibbs 17:56
Okay.

Jude Reid 17:58
Fast spin and Boost mode.

Chris Gibbs 18:00
Yeah.

Jude Reid 18:02
Ooh, woah. Went into a tree!

Chris Gibbs 18:09
Did you look at the tree? Good job.

Jude Reid 18:18
Didn’t quite get the hang of that one right.

Chris Gibbs 18:21
Yeah. That’s the thing as well, you know, like, I think, again, with e-bikes, a lot of people go ‘oh, the motor takes away all need for skill.’ It doesn’t. There’s still timing, there’s still and you still do need a feel to ride them or need many, many skills to ride them well. And I think that it is good to come out and find that, actually, some technical sections are still hard.

Carlton Reid 18:48
Our induction afternoon over we were shuttled to our luxurious lodging, the historic Bunchrew house beside the Beauly Firth, a stone’s throw from H+I’s new-build HQ. Chris joined us for the silver service dining and we used those calories on the following day’s ride in the Rothiemurchus estate just outside Aviemore.

Chris Gibbs 19:15
Alrighty, so we’re down in the Cairngorms today, and riding just outside Aviemore at the moment. What we’re going to do for for this morning’s ride is we’re going to kind of pick up some of the really famous and amazing sights of this area, and really scenic trails, but we’re going to thread it and piece it together with all the little local bits of secret singletrack. There’s loads a little punchy ups, nice rolling bits and this area’s got loads of flowy forest trail in it. Later in the day, we’ll head out on much wilder, but this morning gives a great place to test out the engagement of the motor like how quick engages, you’ll definitely notice that kind of quietness of it as well it will give us a chance to play with some of the modes so we can head for some steep, techie terrain, feel how the different modes play out and each one so we’ll kind of find different places that we find more comfortable or less comfortable and how we ride it in different ways. So the trails will lend themselves to showcasing everything that we’ve got working with us today. And firstly, you want a lot of control as you’re going down and up and sort of undulating, so nice to start off in Eco mode. And then as you come around the turn, then maybe flick it into Trail and see how you feel kind of punching up through the roots.

Chris Gibbs 20:28
So technical move coming up

Jude Reid 20:39
Not in the right gear or the right mode, I don’t think for that bit.

Chris Gibbs 20:46
I put that in trail mode and it was nice. This is for here, we’re now on kind of this sort of flowy forest bit up and down, undulating is quite a good place to feel for that kind of pedal feel of the motor. So because you are kind of on and off the pedals and doing little pedal strokes, you get the kind of feeling of that natural pedal from the motor.

Chris Gibbs 21:10
Nice one. You can lead, just keep going down and stop when you get to the wee loch. Lot more confident today. So we’re just coming up to Loch an Eilein, and as we come around here, we’re gonna turn to the right. And there’s a complete labyrinth of routes. So it’s quite good little spot to play around, probably in Trail mode for now. And just see how many of the roots you can burst through. So Loch an Eilein translates as loch of the island. So we’re about to kind of dropped down just into here. And we’ll have a look at the island, which does have the ruins of the castle on it. So that was the Wolf of Badenoch’s castle. This is Badenoch and Strathspey. And if you ever seen Braveheart, the Wolf of Badenoch is the first guy that gets beheaded. Not the most factually accurate film in the world. Yeah, it’s good spot in the winter. Well, this last winter completely froze over. I mean thick is thick enough that people were walking out to it and all sorts, you can swim out inside is pretty overgrown. Now that the stories of this underwater causeway there’s one of these kind of footpath under the water three steps forward five steps to the right, three steps forward kind of a bit like Indiana Jones to get to the castle. Pretty cool spot and it doesn’t take long before you feel like you’re getting out there and not kind of away from from everyone else. Right. Perfect. We’ll continue around the loch. And then I think we’re going to go and pick up something a little bit more adventurous.

Jude Reid 22:57
Wrong gear. Nearly made it.

Chris Gibbs 23:03
Good job

Jude Reid 23:05
Just the wrong gear for that last section.

Chris Gibbs 23:07
Big difference from yesterday. Nice. So now I’ve put you in a much nicer stance for riding, let’s try and get you just a little bit looser as well. So in the next couple of turns, so the bikes always gonna go where you point your eyes. So let’s try and look around and through the turns a bit more. Instead of just turning with the bars, let’s try and lean the bike a little.

Jude Reid 23:27
Okay.

Chris Gibbs 23:27
So an example, which is being here.

Chris Gibbs 23:32
Right, looking like a mountain biker now. And this is called the Rocky Road. So you kind of know what you’re getting here for. And it’s actually quite a nice little bit of trail because it goes between two different forest forest boundaries here in Rothiemurchus. side over to Inshriach, there’s one split in the trail. And you just need to stay to the left hand side. And you can lead this go up front, and try and have a play with looking far ahead and test anticipate the trail for what what mode you would be in, and also what gear you need. So try and let you know those little steep punch ups through the roots can be in the right mode and the right gear to give you the best chance of success for them. Because I think you’re quite you’ll have quite a lot of fun for this. There’s a nice wide, wide lines around all through the rocks that you’ll see as we go. And when we get to this little stream crossing. That’s where we’ll stop and meet up again. Yeah, if we’re spread out, go for it, have some fun.

Chris Gibbs 24:38
Just watching ahead.

Chris Gibbs 24:40
It’s quite impressive, being that Jude tried to avoid every single rock yesterday, but now she’s riding over the top of them or

Jude Reid 24:49
I’m trying to look ahead and the bike sort of just goes where it wants to go yeah

Chris Gibbs 25:01
Good job again, when we’re in, because you’re in quite a nice little rhythm there, riding well. That’s night and day from first thing yesterday.

Chris Gibbs 25:13
She’s going straight for it. I like it. Look at that. Nicely done.

Jude Reid 25:25
That was fun.

Chris Gibbs 25:25
Yeah, that’s a big difference from yesterday.

Jude Reid 25:32
How reliable is the battery sign?

Chris Gibbs 25:35
How reliable is what, sorry?

Jude Reid 25:37
The battery sign? Because according to this I’m not using the battery at all.

Chris Gibbs 25:41
Oh, yeah. No, that’s fine. I mean, if you’ve been on Eco and a little bit of Trail, yeah. And you’ve got a big 630 watt-hour battery in there. So you haven’t eaten into it yet. Me neither.

Jude Reid 25:57
That’s cool. I’m used to using half my battery on the on the way up to work.

Chris Gibbs 26:03
Ah, OK.

Chris Gibbs 26:03
Yeah, well, we’ve been riding quite efficiently as well. In the spin of things, if we started throwing into Boost and just boosting everything, then you’d find we kind of start to eat into that battery more. But because we’re riding efficiently, we can get quite a lot of mileage out of them.

Jude Reid 26:21
Yeah. And it’s not half the fun is actually getting the workout as well.

Chris Gibbs 26:25
Yeah, exactly. So as you go up here now, we’ve got a couple of little water splashes. There are little bridges at the side but after your last performance I think you need to take the water every time. After you, go for it. Have some fun.

Jude Reid 26:48
[SPLASH!] Oh, thank you! I’m sopping now.

Chris Gibbs 26:52
Ha, ha you just got tidal waved.

Jude Reid 26:55
Yeah.

Chris Gibbs 26:56
You’re gonna have to be faster next time to get him back. It looked quite impressive from behind.

Jude Reid 27:10
He wanted me to squeal, he did it on purpose. However, I brought some dry socks.

Carlton Reid 27:18
You have?

Jude Reid 27:19
I brought dry socks, you haven’t.

Chris Gibbs 27:24
It’s not a Scottish bike ride until you’ve got wet feet anyway. By the time you’ve been through a few streams, smashed your way through the pine trees for an exfoliation it’s practically a spa treatment.

Carlton Reid 27:40
Day three, and Jude now much more confident on the bike we headed into Glen Feshie.

Chris Gibbs 27:50
Right now we’re in the heart of Glen Feshie. So this is a slightly lesser known area of the Cairngorms. But further out from having more, a little bit wilder more rugged, and sort of big open Scottish glen.

Chris Gibbs 28:02
You brought us out here because we weren’t going to go here this morning, we were going to go overlooking Loch Ness. And then we’re driving out here. And you had this brainstorm and you thought, let’s look at the app, you can tell us about the the actual weather app, or you are using a selection of weather apps to then zoom in.

Carlton Reid 28:21
And then you thought, well, it’s going to be weather basically, exactly how we’ve got it. So tell us the apps you were using and and how you use those, you triangulate those three to get the weather for a very, very small place.

Chris Gibbs 28:35
Yeah, I think. I think firstly, it comes from being being local and knowing the weather a little bit. And when you’re a mountain bike guide in Scotland, you get pretty used to looking at weather forecasts and knowing and trying to keep everyone as much as you can in the dry, in the sun, and in all the best places. But I tend to use the mountain weather information service, which is MWIS. And I use an app called Windy, which is a weather radar. And you can put on lots of different parameters of kind of wind, rain pressure, and then I will say use combination of the Met Office and YR as well. So most mornings start with looking at a lot of weather. And over the course of the years I’ve been guiding I’ve become quite a weather geek. It’s almost like a fun challenge to try and keep yourself in this best spot at the best time. But also even it starts to affect how you time a ride. You know, you want to be in a certain place by a certain time to either avoid rain or or wait till it’s backed off and that sort of thing as well. So it’s a weather weather, I guess influences everything we do up here.

Carlton Reid 29:33
So keeping on the apps angle here. So we’re here on a Shimano trip, now Shimano has got two apps when you’re going to show me so we’re a beautiful forest in we’re actually technically we’re not in the sunshine right now. But Jude who fell into the river a wee bit before unfortunately, is is basking lizard-like in the sunshine

Chris Gibbs 29:53
She is drying out.

Chris Gibbs 29:54
She’s drying out. But you’re now going to show us the app. So we’re in the forest and you’re not going to shows the apps that, basically mesh with these machines.

Chris Gibbs 30:03
Yeah, and I guess the thing was with the, with the EP-8 and the full Shimano systems they’re 35 years in the making and the development all sorts of, and they play well, with all the systems on the bike, the drive trains, the motor, the brakes, everything kind of works well together, but particularly this app. So the first one we’re going to look at is E-tube. So e-tube is where it’s an app that lets you customise how the motor behaves. It also would let you look at your Di2 components and run diagnostics of the full system, whether that’s the display, whether it’s the motor, you know, all those individual components, the shifters and everything that goes along with either Di2 or with the E bike motor itself. But this is we were talking about where you can have two different profiles on this. And you might have one set up for max power, for instance, where you’re going out with all your mates, and you want to go as fast as possible up and down everything. Or you might set one massively powered down. And that’s for you to kind of work as a training ride or training profile, or anything in between. So as much as you can imagine, so you’ve got that Eco, Trail and Boost in each profile, but you can customise each one and how it feels.

Carlton Reid 31:15
And how geeky do you have to be to get into the gubbins of that?

Chris Gibbs 31:19
I think actually, it’s super simple, it’s really intuitive. If you can work a stereo, you can work this,

Carlton Reid 31:24
Oh, that’s me out!

Chris Gibbs 31:24
Because I think, you know, this one, it’s got really easy sliding bars, you know, you look at it, you slide across, and you go, ‘Okay, I’m in Eco mode at the moment and I’m going to slide that up so that the power comes in as quickly as possible, or the Eco is as powerful as it can be, I’m using that full 85 newton metres, or potentially you want it to come in later and be a lot slower in how it how the power ramps up. And you can do that across every one of the settings in Eco, Trail and Boost. So you can really kind of customise the feel of the bike. And some people like that I particularly like it quite powered down, so that I’m still working physically really hard. But I’m able to make things that I wouldn’t do if I was on an acoustic bike or regular bike.

Carlton Reid 32:11
And then if you’re on a mid ride, and for instance, the weather came out you were using the apps and yeah, it was totally opposite of what the app told is like, suddenly got sunshine, actually, we’ll go out for a longer ride. So would you just use on the handlebars? Or would you would you actually go to the the app and thinnk I will actually I’ll I’ll, I’ll change the profile on the app?

Chris Gibbs 32:34
So I mean, you could do both, they’re quite easy to switch between. So profile, switching between profile one and profile two, you could do just from the display, and just from the bars.

Carlton Reid 32:43
You do that in advance, you set up your favourite profile

Chris Gibbs 32:47
Exactly right, or potentially halfway through the ride, you go, I want to stretch this motor and stretch this battery as far as I can. So then you could start to come in and really customise that. And it’s just a case of firing up the Bluetooth between the two connecting your phone up and having a look through. You can do a physical connection as well, from your laptop to, to and through one of the ports on the display. But very simple with a phone or a tablet just to kind of Bluetooth and connect on through.

Carlton Reid 33:16
Okay, well we are now getting as you can imagine we are getting a little bit eaten by midges, so we ought to get going again. But let’s talk about H+I as we’re riding through these beautiful woods. Let’s let’s talk about what H+I does, where you’ve been. And if people are looking to book for the Cairngorms, what they can expect, the kind of trips that you do basically, if we talk about that as we’re going.

Chris Gibbs 33:38
Aye.

Carlton Reid 33:38
Chris, first of all, what does H+I stand for, if anything nowadays?

Chris Gibbs 33:45
It used to stand for Highlands and Islands. Since it became international now it’s just H+I.

Carlton Reid 33:53
So the website, tell us what the website because that is not H+I.

Chris Gibbs 33:58
So mountainbike worldwide. And at the time, that was where it’s now worldwide adventures. So H+I is us as a guiding company and mountain bike worldwide is the landing page to access all those worldwide adventures across 17 locations in the world now. So we have three trips here in Scotland, and that is the Highland Odyssey which goes through the Cairngorms and then out to the West coast and up into Torridon in the big Northwest. We have the Cairngorms itself, which is based here in the Cairngorms for the full week of riding. And then we have the coast to coast which is an East West traverse

Carlton Reid 34:38
Thanks to Chris Gibbs of H+I for the expert guiding and to Shimano for the experience. Thanks also to Sean Stanfield of Fusion Media for setting up the whole shebang. The next episode will feature on-bike nutrition with a side helping of Ancient Roman energy food but meanwhile get out and ride …

15th August 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 279: Bike Portland’s Jonathan Maus

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Jonathan Maus

TOPICS: 16 years of Bike Portland

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to episode 279 of the Spokesmen cycling Podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 15th August 2021.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the- spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:08
Hi there I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to today’s episode of the Spokesmen Cycling podcast brought to you in association with Jenson USA. Today’s show is a chat with Bikeportland’s Jonathan Maus. Started by Jonathan 16 years ago as a one-man blog chronicling Portland’s lively and eclectic cycling scene, the site is now a multi-media operation that’s about to get a refresh thanks to investment from a new co-owner. Here’s our remotely recorded, 65-minute chat …

Carlton Reid 1:45
Jonathan, you’ve been doing Bikeportland for a wee while I’m it’s at least 16 years, I believe.

Jonathan Maus 1:52
Yes.

Carlton Reid 1:53
Um, so people who listen to this podcast are now gonna be able to listen to your podcast, which is great. So there is some news which we will get on to have the expansion of your media empire. But first of all, I’d really like to Kai probably haven’t done a great deal of even though I’ve been to visit you in person, I probably haven’t grilled you in this in this exact way. So this is a This is Your Life. This is I’d like to know more about

Carlton Reid 2:21
the man behind the blog was a blog now I need your input. So first of all, are you originally from Portland, Oregon?

Jonathan Maus 2:32
No, I moved up here with my family in 2004. So a little bit before I started Bike Portland.

Carlton Reid 2:38
And where you from?

Jonathan Maus 2:40
I was living for about 10 years, I lived in Santa Barbara, California, which is on the Central Coast really beautiful places where I went to college as well. So I stuck around there as long as I could, and then ended up having to leave. Because it just got so expensive and ridiculous in Santa Barbara. So anyway, yeah, we found our way up to Portland and I and before that I grew up more in Southern California. So about 30 minutes south of Los Angeles near like Long Beach, California. I’ve always been sort of near the coast.

Carlton Reid 3:09
Okay. And then why Portland?

Jonathan Maus 3:14
Well, we were really like this stereotypical young family in California sort of like pulling our hair out about how expensive things had gotten down there, and how strange sort of the economy and just the community was in a place like Santa Barbara, which is this this super, super, super wealthy area. And then you have like a bunch of baristas, and yoga teachers, not a lot of middle class. So that was a big red flag and we were renting an apartment we’d been renting apartments for you know, for a long time at that point. And we’re just ready to live somewhere live in a community owned a home sort of the whole American Dream stick, you know, and this isn’t for of course, this is before 2008 in the big financial crash when you know, you were still just supposed to buy a house and renting wasn’t wasn’t wasn’t as appealing. So yeah, we we got out the magazines looked at where were cool places to live. And Portland at that point was, you know, always on the top of those lists. And so I thought, you know, it’s still on the west coast, it would still be relatively close to my family in Southern California. And that’s we came up and visited a friend that had moved up to the Portland area and basically went back and a weekend saw a house we liked and bought it and that was it.

Carlton Reid 4:21
Because there is a climate difference. Isn’t there? There’s a bit of difference in weather between where you grew up and Portland.

Jonathan Maus 4:30
Yeah, for sure. But I mean, I feel like at that point, I was just so young. I didn’t really think through the decision that much into somebody. I mean, which we can get to later I mean, I lived two blocks away from a freeway before I became much much of a transportation activist like I am now I would never bought this house so close to freeway Had I known then what I know now but also made to think on the weather thing. You know, actually, the weather in California can be pretty boring Southern California weather it’s it’s always the same. It’s hazy sunshine and mid 70s every single day and it’s I

Jonathan Maus 5:00
I got to tell you, it gets kind of boring. nothing ever changes. You don’t have clouds and seasons and darkness and water from the sky. So I really liked I really liked the climate up here.

Carlton Reid 5:10
Although you have had a heatwave recently, haven’t you? I mean, you might still be having it. Cuz you’ve had some extremes there.

Jonathan Maus 5:15
Well, yeah, of course, of course, nothing. Nothing is normal now. So now we’re getting a lot a lot more that heat and dryness that from Southern California is coming up here for sure with climate change.

Carlton Reid 5:24
Mm hmm. And you said before young family, so so who are you talking about?

Jonathan Maus 5:30
Right, so I had a daughter who was a few years old, in Santa Barbara. And then since we’ve moved up to Portland, my wife and I have had two more kids. So we’ve got, we’ve got a 18 year old who’s setting off the college, we have a 16 year old who will be a junior in high school. And then I’ve got my boy who’s 10 and going into fifth grade.

Carlton Reid 5:47
Right? Okay. And your wife,

Jonathan Maus 5:51
My wife, Julie, yet she works actually for the City of Portland in the signals and street lighting division. So that’s, that’s interesting. She, you know, she mostly when you know that she’s had that job for maybe four or five years. So for the most part, when I was really building bikeportland, and throwing everything into it, and working all day, every day and all night, she was really keeping everything going and, you know, looking over at me, like, you know, what the heck is going on? Why are you trying to, you know, have a blog support our family kind of thing. So it’s who was about four or five years ago that that was kind of, you know, still not, let’s say, working out financially for the for bikeportland. So she was sort of like, Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get a job.

Carlton Reid 6:30
Was there any friction that if you were you were doing stuff, potentially quite critical of the city? And here’s your wife working for the city?

Jonathan Maus 6:38
Well, there wasn’t friction. I mean, you know, it’s I guess it’s, it’s okay, that she’s not sort of directly in the department that I cover most, right? So she’s in signals and street lighting, which there is sort of a hard line there. She’s not working on the planning. And if she was in the bike planning section, or she was in the, the, the project section, that that may be a little more awkward, but even then, I mean, she’s a professional, I’m a professional. I think there are probably people at the City of Portland who are aware of that, and they’re kind of like, you know, looking at it with a little bit of a side eye. I’m wondering what’s going on there. But I think as long as we keep it all, all on the up and up, nothing, nothing bad will come of it. I mean, I think the other context of it is is that she got the job after there had already been really a split at the City of Portland and bike Portland. I mean, back in the early days of Bike Portland, we were sort of more like, you know, partners, in a way it was kind of like they saw me more as an advocate, you know, part of their team to help them get their news out. And there was definitely more of a collegial atmosphere. But that had all definitely eroded by the time she started working there. So they’d already built in sort of systems to ignore ignore by Portland and sort of create a wall between us I do not have the same relationship with them that I’d had in the early years.

Carlton Reid 7:51
Okay, now pedal backwards. You’re talking about you got a house in the same house. You got then if you stayed in the near the freeway, is that right?

Jonathan Maus 7:59
Yeah. Yeah, we’re still in the same place been given moved here yet. Oh, four. So yeah. 17 years, I guess now.

Carlton Reid 8:05
Okay. So when you moved to Portland, you and you said before, you weren’t a transportation activist, but were you a cyclist in some way, shape, or form?

Jonathan Maus 8:17
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I’ve been riding bikes since I was a kid. And pretty much even in my professional life. I mean, even in college, I was a big bike rider, I raced a lot of research on the Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara, road team and as the mountain bike club so I was super, super competitive racer, before I moved up here, and I just want to one of the first things I did out of college was worked at Chris King precision components, which which folks might know that the headset and hub makers, they were based in Santa Barbara, so I was a racer, and you know how it goes in the industry, you kind of just gravitate toward the biggest bike company in your town. So that’s what I did. worked over there. And then after that, you know, I did some PR work freelance for a bit and in the bike industry and and worked for a couple bike brands and stuff. So I’ve been around the bike world, basically, basically, my whole my whole adult life. So yeah.

Carlton Reid 9:07
And that’s how you’re making money before you moved. You’re in the bike industry.

Jonathan Maus 9:12
Yeah, I’d started. I started a public relations media relations firm. And I was working for myself. I had some clients in the publishing industry. So I worked with authors and publishing houses. And I also always maintained a client or two or three in the biking world. And I was really excited. I was I was building that business. I loved it. I kind of was up and coming. You know, I was young just starting out and I had you know, I was working for some companies I really liked. And yeah, that’s what I would have been doing had I not sort of found my way to being a blogger, I would have probably still been having my my media and PR firm because I liked doing that work. It was interesting. It just wasn’t as interesting as by Portland.

Carlton Reid 9:53
So then you started a blog. Yeah, this is like you had a day job and

Jonathan Maus 9:59
Then you start this.

Jonathan Maus 10:02
Yeah.

Carlton Reid 10:02
So what’s the very origins of how you started?

Jonathan Maus 10:06
Right. So when I moved to Portland, I definitely had my eye on the bicycle community and the bike scene here. I thought my first inclination was, let’s let me know I was going to get involved with the bike community. And maybe I’d get into like a nonprofit as like a pro bono client of my PR business, right? That was kind of how I was thinking. So I instantly joined any email list, I could and was really just starting to get to know people kind of like, looking out at the bike rides and seeing what was happening and starting to meet people. And I thought that’s what I would do, I would maybe help maybe a bike org, you know, get online or whatever they needed help with in terms of media relations and stuff like that. I was also like tinkering with building websites for folks and that sort of thing. So that’s how I thought it would get involved. But, you know, one thing just led to another. What happened was, it’s sort of at this, it’s the same amount of time, I started looking into the bike scene here in Portland. And again, for folks that don’t know 2004, 2005 was really like this amazing moment in Portland for cycling. A lot of the groups that are that were known for, and a lot of the like creative street culture that became a lot more well known in the subsequent years was just getting started, you know, like we had an all female mini bike dance team. We had this thing called bike summer and Pedal Palooza, which was this amazing, you know, several weeks of bike events, we had the zoo bombers. So we had some really, really fun, we had a bunch of tall bikes and free bike groups going on. So I came here from California, never having seen anything like that. And I was just blown away. I mean, to me cycling was, you know, who could get up the hill fastest, who was who could be the most aggro on the single track. And then if you wanted to, you know, goof around, you get a cruiser bike and go down to the beach, and maybe pop a wheelie like that was the extent of interesting bike culture that I knew of before moving to Portland, and I got here, and I and I mean, I would look out my front window and there’d be 30 people dressed like bunnies ringing their bells on Easter. And I was like, What in the world is going on? Like, this is really fantastic. And I just loved it. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, you know, we had street festivals. And I’d look up and see clowns riding tall bikes, jousting with each other while they’re on fire, like, stuff really blew me away. And so it was around that time that I got an email popped into this group’s email list that I followed this bike group. And it was someone from the Oregonian, which is sort of the the newspaper of record in Portland in our state. And they said, hey, there’s this new thing called blogs, we’re we want to have a network of blogs. And we thought, of course, since it’s Portland, and this is bike city, USA, we want to have someone write about bikes on our website. So this is the Oregonian’s website, they’re looking for a bike blogger, let’s say. And so I saw that, and I was like, well, that’s perfect. I mean, I’m a, I’m a news guy, I know how to write, I’m doing PR Media Relations, I’m super excited about the bike scene. Absolutely. So I remember firing off an email back to that person and just, you know, really selling myself like, Oh my gosh, I totally want to do this, just sign me up. So they gave me the gig. And so for that was like April 2005. So that was my first sort of experience with seeing my stuff published on the internet. And basically, I would email this person, a few paragraphs about something I did on my bike or some reflection I had about the bike community. And then a couple hours later, it would appear on Oregon live, which was the Oregonian’s old website. And I just thought that was amazing. It was super interesting to me, that whole process of publishing my stuff, and then documenting the local bike scene here. And then once that happened, I really got got into blogging, I was like it just something kind of shifted for me. And I also saw how blogs and sort of the democratisation of the internet and publishing in general, I also saw how that could impact my business as a PR person as a media person. And I started to realise that, you know, I would probably be helping clients start blogs and help clients start telling their story online and in different ways. So I just sort of dove headfirst into the whole online blogging world, and started researching it and, you know, reading up on it and joining a lot of blogs and just reading everything, basically. And so it wasn’t too long after I started doing it for the Oregonian doing this blog for the Oregonian that I realised how just how lacking their tools were like, basically, their whole, their whole format was just really kind of old school once I saw what was happening with typepad, and and blogspot and these other tools that I could just have a few clicks and have my own blog. Right. So my gears started turning, like, you know, basically, why the heck would I do this for the county. And when I could just do it for myself. And I remember, there were a few back and forth where the folks that they were going in were asking me for advice in terms of like, what can we do to make our blog network better. And I was sending him emails with all these lists of things like here’s here’s what blogging is, like they didn’t even have permalinks people couldn’t comment on our blog post back in those early days. And I was getting frustrated that this new bike blog that I started for them, you know, was sort of being saddled by not having the latest tools that I was reading about online. So once I realised that you know they weren’t gonna start

Jonathan Maus 15:00
To take my advice and improve their own blogs on the Oregonians website, I just was like, I’m out of here, you know, so it only did that for a couple months. And then I, you know, like I said, clicked a few times found WordPress, and got a domain bikeportland.org just on a whim, I got the.org thinking I might want to be a nonprofit, or I just liked how it sounded. And so that was it, paid $9.99 for the domain, and in July of 2005, started publishing stuff on bikeportland.

Carlton Reid 15:30
And then the design hasn’t changed much.

Jonathan Maus 15:35
It’s really funny. I mean, it, it hasn’t really changed a ton. I mean, I got a free theme. And this is something that you know, Carlton, once they started doing by Portland for several years, and people were paying me pretty good money to advertise on it. I always thought to myself, man, you know, like, I got the mayor calling me I’m getting you know, several $100 ads from people for these banners. And I don’t really have any overhead. I mean, I’m paid, you know, I got a free free design. Basically, I got a domain for $9 a year. And I’m publishing this stuff. I mean, it was just so amazing to me. And I always felt like how that was always so exciting to me that that could happen. So yeah, it’s basically the and I’m still didn’t get this. But I’m still basically using the same theme that I started with in 2005, which, which I think you could laugh that but it also shows you the sort of, you know, how how good of a tool WordPress is and sort of the power of the internet in terms of some guy who at some point, created this theme and put it out on the internet for free. Now, I have to say that I’ve also spent, you know, 1000s of dollars, with web people to tweak it and make it work and make it seem like theme stable and all that stuff. But for the most part, it looks the same.

Jonathan Maus 16:38
And we can get to that later in terms of like, you know, that’s one thing that I talked about with my investor here was, you know, paying for the massive sort of finally getting a massive update and upgrade to the site. So it looks a lot different.

Carlton Reid 16:50
And we will get on to that fantastic news. And it was like, you kind of mean I subscribed to your newsletter, the kind of the insider bikeportland newsletter, you send it every week. So you had this news last week. Just fantastic. And then you sent me another one this week. And I thought I must talk to Jonathan about that. So we’ll get onto that. However, I wanted. I know this because I have been there. And I’ve seen this with my own eyes. And I was just as as you were, I was just blown away when I saw the bike culture in Portland, which is which is something to behold. But for those people who haven’t been to by born perhaps even I haven’t even come across this, this these cultures. Let’s go through them one by one. So I think you kind of mentioned the Sprockettes first, you’ve got a dance troupe or you had a dance troupe? So So

Jonathan Maus 17:38
yeah.

Carlton Reid 17:40
Tell me about that first. Now we’ll go through each of these little cultural things.

Jonathan Maus 17:45
Right, so so there was a group called the zoo bombers, which were people who would take the Max which is our light rail, and they would catch it, you know, downtown, and they would ride it to the top of this hill that we have, which is right up above Portland, it’s where the Rose Garden is, it’s where the zoo is, right. So it’s a hill right next to downtown Portland. And at some point, someone realised would be fun to take little kids bike, so you know, 16 inch wheels, and they would all pile on the light rail line, the max, and they would pay a buck or whatever, actually, let’s be honest, they didn’t pay, they’d go up there. And again, they met at 11 at night, let’s say right, so it’s a nighttime thing, they go up to the top of this hill, they hike their bikes up to the very, very top in this beautiful park. And they hang out, they get to know one another, you know, maybe haven’t have a beverage or two or whatever. And then they get on their bikes, they walk over to the road. Again, it’s pitch black on their underrun Mini mini bikes. And they would just bomb down the hill. And it’s a really fun downhill, these are sharp corners, narrow roads, really steep, and they would end up back where back at the light rail stop, and then they take the train back to the top. And this became this became like a religion for people. I mean, they would do it every Sunday, you know where to meet in the same way that a critical mass what happened in a city, if you’re in to bike stuff, you know, bike stuff, you could rely on it, you know, there’d be people there, you know, you’d see the same faces there. And these people started to build, you know, really strong bonds and sort of grow the group. And it became a real, it became a real thing. You know, you’d see, BBC did a video on that one point, you know, sort of starts getting attention, right. It’s very, very part of the sort of Portland weird ethic. And it created this whole community, obviously, right. So there were just dozens and dozens people that would show up and you could come in, if you’ve never done it before, they had a whole library of bikes down there, that they would loan out to you. So you could take one of these kids bike. So that was how Zoobombing sort of was established. And then there were there were women that were showing up. And sort of I guess at some point, some of the women thought, Well, hey, you know, what’s going on here, you know, we need to have kind of our own thing. And I think it was the history and again, I’m not, you know, it wasn’t like it’s necessarily inside that scene. So this is just what I’ve learned from knowing folks, but at some point, you know, the women brought up their own bikes, and then there was a party or some event where they ended up dancing on them anyway.

Jonathan Maus 20:00
So long story short, they created something called the Sprockettes, and this was an all female minibike dance team. And it’s just what it sounds like. They have the synchronised dances that they would do and they were all pink, by the way they would, you know, go to thrift stores and get dragged up pink clothing, you know, so think of pink fish nets and skirts and tank tops. And then they had their bikes all painted pink and these little kid bikes for the most part are or BMX bikes, and they would do these really fun dances. So 2005, 6, 7, there was an annual big annual event here that they would do. And then they start getting booked out at tonnes of events. So this becomes a real thing. And they have practices. And anyway, it’s just wonderful. At one point, my wife joined and we went out New Belgium brewing, paid, paid the Sprockettes to go on do a tour all through the West Coast, and got them a bus. And they went and did the New Belgium Tour de Fat events. They were real, really amazing group and just the most wonderful people you could ever imagine. So that was really fun. But that was the Sprockettes. So just try to imagine a city in a culture where something like that could could exist. And there’s all sorts of other ancillary things around you know, the Sprockettes that made them possible just this all kinds of different groups and, and bike clubs and things that were happening.

Carlton Reid 21:14
Was it is it the coalescing of like the keep Portland weird vibe, which is, which is kind of is the city is famous for? and a growing bike culture? Were they feeding off each other? What How come it started like this?

Jonathan Maus 21:31
Yeah, it’s really important. I mean, it didn’t just come out of nowhere. I mean, Portland had a legacy for cycling that I think is definitely unmatched in America. I mean, 70s 80s, you know, in the 80s, we had our mayor biking to work. And there we had, you know, huge Bike to Work festivals in the 80s downtown and just amazing buy in, you know, one of the leading congressmen in the US, you know, United States Congressman Earl Blumenauer, was, you know, previously in charge of transportation in Portland. And, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s, really ushered in, you know, definitely Portland’s era of being the leading cycling city in America and got the first bike lanes the first blue bike lane. So this was a city in Portland here that, you know, you know, we fought, we fought a freeway project, we were the first city to say no to the federal government expanding, you know, a freeway here and building a freeway in you know, giving a bunch of federal subsidy people secure, organised and said, No, let’s invest that money in light rail. So this is a very progressive city when it when it came to transportation. So that’s sort of the legacy that all this culture was really built on, you had, bicycling was just sort of like in the mix here, it was always in the water. And you have this, you know, this travelling, this travelling thing came through here in like 2003, it was called bike summer, and it had gone went to several different cities on the west coast, Vancouver, Los Angeles, other places, and the people that organise that thought it was so much fun that they wanted to keep it going. And I think that was really sort of the the big genesis of a lot of the sort of creative bike culture in Portland. And once you know, 2004 came around, we kept that festival going. And then it was just off to the races. And we had all sorts of interesting, interesting things happening around cycling here.

Carlton Reid 23:08
Interesting, you also mentioned before the jousting,

Carlton Reid 23:13
the tall bikes, the pedal palooza, describe some of that, because it’s some of the people are the same, and some of the people are different.

Jonathan Maus 23:21
Yeah, so just like any healthy cultural ecosystem, you know, people start forming groups, and then people spin off of those groups and spin off of those groups on want to do their own thing. So, you know, we had a group called like Chunk 666, which would have this, it was this really interesting, sort of underground secretive group that had a ‘zine. And they had this big annual thing called the Chunkathalon. And these are people in their garage, tinkering together with welding torches, putting together huge chopper bikes, or just, you know, bikes with three frames welded to each other. So you have to basically climb way up and you’re super tall. And if this chunk catalogue, they would have just these really remarkable in really wild events, where they would be, you know, there would be tonnes of people around and they would, you know, the main attraction was jousting. So they would get these huge poles and on the end of the pole, they’d have like a boxing glove or some other implement, and they would just pedal at each other. And these tall bikes as fast as they could in the person fell over last and the person who stayed up right one, but of course, around the edge, you have hundreds of people throwing beer cans, and, you know, you know, baby plastic baby doll heads and food, and it was just this, you know, fires being lit, some of the bikes were lit on fire themselves. So yeah, that was one part of it. You know, there was another whole group of clowns. There were actual, you know, clowns that would go around and do clowning. And they would, they always had bikes involved with them, there was this house where they would all meet, and every Thursday there was a street festival, one part of town, and there would be a bunch of really creative things happening there around biking, so and the Sprockettes would show up right so and then you have things like you know, pedal Palooza, which is really kind of the engine, which was this several week event where anybody can put a bike event on it on this sort of community.

Jonathan Maus 25:00
The calendar and it really encouraged people to leave their own rides. And that that I think, is probably the most important part of Portland’s bike culture. And this year in 2021, it’s going strong. It’s three months long this year. So it started as a as a as a two week thing. And we were talking 300, 400 events. At the height of pedal Palooza, there’s there could be 10 events in one day, we’re talking every day of the week. And this is everything from let’s go visit a bunch of bakeries on our bikes to let’s all wear the colour teal, and just just go to the park and take pictures of ourselves wearing funny costumes, a lot of them are dance party rides, where you have different DJs. And there’ll be a theme maybe there’s a big one, one of the biggest rides is called Prince versus Bowie, where one faction is Bowie fans with the big speaker system. One faction is both, you know, Prince fans, and they’re all dressed up, like the artist and go through the town, playing music and stopping at parks and other places to to dance and you know, just hang out. So if that’s that’s not even touching the surface of the amazing rides coming up this week, there’s going to be a bike play where a local theatre group has a bike themed theatre act that they go do in different sets around town and hundreds of people will follow them on their bikes to these different scenes in the play that they will act out live. So it’s really amazing outpouring of just creativity. And it’s all centred around cycling, and everybody’s on a bike. And so that’s kind of this environment that has really existed through all these changes in all these years in Portland, and is still going strong today. I’m really happy to say.

Carlton Reid 26:31
So Jonathan, when Yeah, that that description, and it absolutely marries with what I’ve seen. And it’s just it’s unbelievable to see. And it’s fantastic. But do you think there are some people who are attracted by that and become, you know, cyclists, people on bikes? But by the same token, there are some people who who might have become cyclists but thought, ‘Oh, God, I can’t become one of those people.’ Do you think it has a you know, a yin and a yang here?

Jonathan Maus 26:59
Well, I don’t want people to get the wrong idea, when I was just describing are just some of the sort of like, you know, some of the, you know, some of the subculture groups, a lot of this cultural stuff is really broadly appealing. I mean, we have cargo bike groups, we have family biking groups, and we have a critical mass that’s really popular. So it’s really there’s stuff going on that attracts all different types of people. But yeah, I think what happened in the early aughts, so 2006, 7, 8, when this cultural stuff was really front and centre, and it was, you know, bikeportland was really just coming on strong, we’re getting a lot of attention for the bike culture here. It did, I think, probably turned some people off, because the focus was really these subculture groups. And I think a lot of people looked at that and said, Well, I don’t want to go get naked. I mean, we have the largest naked right in the world, hands down. I think at one point, they counted, you know, 17,000 people 12,000 15,000. it shut the city down. It was so big, and so naked and amazing, right. And that’s what I think a lot of people looked at the sort of the, quote unquote, cycling culture in Portland. And they saw, you know, grown women wearing pink skirts dancing with their bikes, they saw naked people they saw, you know, clowns on tall bikes, but that that never really was the full picture, but it had an outsized impact on what people thought about the bike culture. So I think it ultimately probably did turn some people off or it allowed people to have this caricature of the bike culture in Portland that that wasn’t really true. It just happened to be the one that made the most noise. And I think, you know, if you fast forward several years, the bike scene here evolved a lot and has gotten away from a lot of that stuff. I mean, the zoo bombers are basically don’t exist, the Sprockettes, basically not around anymore, pedal Palooza is going strong, but many of these groups have sort of faded out. A lot of people are married now and have jobs and you know, moved away or moved to houses right. A lot of the people that powered a lot of these early groups, it was definitely a cultural phase. So and that was part of it is so things change so much in the bike culture and advocacy scene has evolved considerably. So it was weird for me as being someone who’s documenting all these groups and documenting all this interesting stuff. And it really in some ways really powered a lot of what made Bike Portland I think special was covering showing photos of things on bikes that people never really seen. And then once those things evolved and went away well it was kind of like well then what does bikeportland do then you know, how does it continue to evolve? So we can get on to this next one? I jumped the gun there though.

Carlton Reid 29:23
Well, I kind of want I want to I want to keep to this topic about the kind of the culture or and you’re right there’s it’s very broad culture. It’s not just the pedal Palooza or the Zoobombers is up there is that the critical mass and there is the cargo bike culture. Yeah, I know that. But anybody from the outside, say in Europe, who is into bikes and and perhaps has come across bikeportland as one of the major advocacy, stroke, blog, news, whatever

Carlton Reid 29:54
place to go to see will assume that if they landed in Portland, it’ll be like Amsterdam.

Carlton Reid 30:00
And that every single person, you know, every second person at least, will be on a bicycle. Yet it’s not like that. So tell us about the actual mode share of cycling in Portland?

Jonathan Maus 30:13
Yeah, it’s definitely not not like that at all. I think there was a time between 2005 and 2008, where we had our biggest increases in bicycling mode share. And people should know that for an American city, we’re number one, in terms of mode. Sure, we’ve definitely plateaued, we’ve even lost a little bit. But in terms of big, you know, relatively big, I think we’re one of the top 20 cities in terms of size courses, college towns, where people bike more, but I’m talking, you know, real major metropolitan cities in America, the more people bike to work according to the official data than any other city.

Jonathan Maus 30:48
But it’s America, and that that number means that you’re only at six or 7%, which is really sad, right? When you compare it to the 35% or so in real cycling cities, like Amsterdam, Copenhagen. So yeah, it doesn’t feel like that when you get here, there are streets and places in the morning peak in the afternoon peak after work, that you could see a lot of traffic. But of course, now we don’t even have those commuting peaks because of what happened with COVID. And everybody’s travel patterns are so much different. Um, yeah. So, you know, there was a moment when there was a lot of optimism, and I think that’s part of the Portland biking story. It’s certainly part of the bikeportland story is the first several years of this site when I was doing all these things, and posting all these stuff. And ite just felt like there was this cultural moment, that was super exciting. I think I felt like we would get there, I felt like we were on our way to having 30% mode share. I mean, it was just a foregone conclusion, in my mind. I mean, there was such optimism, I had such confidence. We had someone who was in the mayor’s office, who was a great bike champion, someone who I knew really well, and we did stuff with when the as they were coming up through the ranks, and they got elected mayor in 2008. And we thought, I mean, I thought and I think I sort of have always sort of reflected a lot of the community’s you know, feelings, and in a way, which is, it’s on like, we’re going to get there, we’re going to get 20% 30%. And then we’re gonna have something even more special than Copenhagen, and Amsterdam, because, you know, over there, they like to say, oh, biking is just like a vacuum cleaner. Everybody has one. And I always think that’s just super boring. You know, it’s too bad for them. They don’t have any creative, fun culture, they don’t celebrate cycling. And my thing was always, you know, Portland’s going to have both, we’re going to have the wonderful cultural celebrations of cycling and the fun around it, and all the community around it. And we’re going to have the mode split, to match those other places where you do leave your house and everybody’s on a bike. Unfortunately, it didn’t go that way. The culture has to a large degree has, you know, that moment is over. Our trajectory on mode split is certainly plateaued, if not, you know, stagnated plateaued and is dipped a little bit. So, you know, we find ourself in 2021 in a much different place than I would have expected if you talk to me in 2010.

Carlton Reid 32:57
Hmm, you talked about the 1970s and the 1980s. And carrying through into the 2000s,

Carlton Reid 33:05
for how bikeportland became or sorry, how Portland became a city that could then have a publication such as bike portland. But in my book, Bike Boom, I did talk about how there was you can almost go back to the 1880s 1890s. And and when the streets were first laid down in Portland, which, which is also a factor. So Portland is different to many other American cities because of its street structure.

Jonathan Maus 33:38
So right. Yeah, there are there, there are a lot of factors in that. And that’s true, that one of the coolest things about Portland is this map that I have in my kitchen, I’ve got a I’ve also got down here in my office. It’s an 1896 map of cycling routes in Portland 1896. Produced by it was printed by a local bike club in 1896. That was, you know, almost two decades, maybe 15 years, at least, before the first car was sold in Portland, we had an established map that lists taverns, and everything, it’s got all the best routes, you know, the street I live on is almost right on that map in 1896, as a biking route. So yeah, and then that, that that same sort of grid, you know, was was further sort of, like, you know, solidified with the fact that we had a really strong streetcar network later than a lot of other cities did. And we never broke that grid. We’ve had a boundary around this city, in terms of how growth can happen. So a lot of the same progressive transportation stuff I talked about earlier. We also had very progressive land use policies and development policies. Something people around here is very, very proud of. And that meant, yes, that we had, for a long time, we had a grid of streets, relatively small blocks, you know, that means when I say a grid of streets, I mean you can get on a street and know it’s going to go across town without having to jog all around. So those things definitely helped. Helped or factored in to

Jonathan Maus 35:00
Making us sort of more of a bike city.

Jonathan Maus 35:04
So

Carlton Reid 35:07
yesterday, we had the IPCC

Carlton Reid 35:10
climate change report,

Carlton Reid 35:13
which has got to be heeded, one would hope, by world leaders. So you may have

Carlton Reid 35:23
thought that you’re not going to get that mode share till recently, but maybe with that report with Cop26, in Glasgow in November, with the world actually finally waking up to the fact that we have got to get rid of fossil fuel technology, electric cars, even if they came on stream, you know, in the next 20 to 30 years, and even if everybody went on to getting electric cars, which we know is pretty much a pipe dream anyway. But even if that didn’t happen, it still wouldn’t solve stuff. So we have got to change the way because we know transport is one of the you know, at least 25% of emissions is transport. And an awful lot of that is road transport. So are you now maybe more optimistic after news like yesterday that something could change? Or do you think people will absolutely bed down and the mode shares you’ve got now are pretty much the mode shares you’re gonna have in 20 years time?

Jonathan Maus 36:19
Yeah, I mean, it’s a mix, I am still optimistic that our mode change can tick back up, and we can, you know, kind of get back to that trajectory that I was so excited about back in the, you know, 2008, 2010 era. Absolutely, if I, if I wasn’t optimistic, it would be hard to continue doing bikeportland have gotta hold out some hope that we can get there. You know, and that gets back to part of the cultural mill you sort of Portland in Portlanders, is that there, there is a tremendous, deep will of activism here in people that, you know, don’t necessarily tune out in situations like this, but they turn out, they go out into the street, they form groups, they join activists in organisations and stuff like that. So I think the climate report is going to hit everybody, you know, everybody’s going to be solid for a few days here and figure out what they’re going to do. But I think ultimately, it’s going to, it’s going to definitely increase urgency of the pressure on local leaders to do stuff. And we’re getting close there. I think, you know, unfortunately, Portland has, in a lot of ways forgotten about cycling, it’s kind of a big thing that’s happened for the last decade, for various reasons, that, you know, the whole conversation around why Portland is sort of forgotten about cycling. But I think you know, it’s going to come back, you can’t keep it down. Cycling is it’s everybody has a bike in their garage here. They’re just waiting to use it, they’re waiting to dust it off and be given the chance to do it in a safe way, in a convenient way. And that’s not that’s not going to change, those bikes aren’t going to vanish. So people love doing love biking here, it’s always been a bike city, and always will be. But it’s going to take some shifts, right, we’re gonna have to not just keep striping, you know, unpainted unprotected bike lanes, while we continue to make driving as easy as it is and easier. We’ve got to actually, you know, do more stuff to discourage driving, which I think the city is doing and the region’s doing, they’re just not doing it fast enough. I think that’s the big new tension is the pace of change. You know, if I’m a politician, I could list off a tonne of things that I’m doing on to to make transport, you know, burn less emissions, a huge, long list, that would sound great. Unfortunately, it’s not enough, right. So it’s about pace of change, and activists and people on the ground want it to happen a lot faster than any politician I’ve seen, really has been willing to stand up and, you know, deem it so, so that

Carlton Reid 38:42
Hold that thought, if you’re if if I was gonna make you, the transport Commissioner, whatever the role would be that would knock heads together and would change. You know, somehow I was able to just know, maybe President Biden comes along and says right cities, you’re going to have to appoint

Carlton Reid 39:00
really good, green minded transport commissioners next week. And you amazingly, were freed because of what the things we’re going to talk about soon. To become that transport Commissioner, you weren’t able to do stuff you were able to boost bikeshare important. How would you do it? Give me your one, 5, 10 year plans, please?

Jonathan Maus 39:24
Well, I think I mean, there’s a lot of things. I mean, you know, there’s got to be a way to sort of up the speed with which we do projects we’ve already agreed to. If you’re talking about one year, five year 10 year, you know, we’ve got a lot the city has a lot of great projects in the pipeline that just are taking too long to get out onto the street for various reasons. And I think by political fiat, someone should be able to stand up and say, okay, whatever paperwork, you know, being problematic, whatever permitting is being problematic. We need to up the urgency on this new bike path or on this new road redesign because of climate change because this is urgent because it’s an emergency. So right there. You

Jonathan Maus 40:00
You could quit, you could speed up a lot of things were already doing. I mean, the other big thing is, you know, stop waiting for super expensive big capital projects and just do quicker things with, you know, concrete barricades. And you can easily go out, what I would do is just do an audit of the central city, let’s say and some of the all the different town centre notes. So even out further away from the central city, audit, the bigger streets, everywhere, we don’t need the excess capacity for driving, of which there are dozens and hundreds of lane miles of just streets that we allow people to drive in that become de facto no go zones, if you’re on a bike, because you’re afraid, you could just stick those into a database, spit out a report. And then you go over to those streets, and you’ve got 1000s of concrete barriers, and you just start, start laying them out and you create mobility lanes, we have to get away from thinking of bike lanes, and, you know, transit, we need to make mobility lanes, in addition to transit lanes, but let’s say mobility lanes, where it’s people walking, it’s it’s scooters, and any other electric device that’s out there. Hoverboards, you know, one wheels, you know, self balancing, unicycles, electric bikes, bikes, there are so many new vehicle types that are just waiting to be used, that aren’t bikes and aren’t walking in our cars, we need to find space, so you you cordoned off a bunch of lane miles of road all around the city, with with concrete barriers, again, that’s a central right now the city is still painting, they’re still painting bike lanes with no protection, that those are useless, people will not use those. And or they put out plastic posts, which are almost useless, and people run into them. And they’re doing, they don’t look nice. And those don’t inspire people either. What inspires people is concrete, you need actual physical barriers. So if we created the whole network of those, and we were strategic about connecting residential areas to destination areas, you would see a massive amount of people get out and start riding. And once people start riding and walking and using their scooters, then you can just basically do whatever you want, because you have this sort of constituencies there. And then the politics changes, right, then you have a lot of people who are worried about taking space away from drivers, all that goes away. And we just we haven’t done those things. And I’m convinced if we even did one of them, if we did one physically protected, really convenient direct route from a major residential area to a major work and destination area, it would, it would just make advocating for the stuff so much easier, because I can guarantee that it would be flooded with people that weren’t driving, it would give everybody something to look at point to and say, See, that’s what we’ve been yelling and screaming about all these years. And that you the city have been so timid and so afraid to do for a long list of reasons, oh, your engineer sake, it doesn’t work. Oh, the drivers will be mad. Oh, the business associations were all these things, all those who melt away? And people go, Oh, I’m absolutely assured of that. And it’s frustrating that, you know that that still hasn’t happened. I mean, a lot of times, you know, I’m definitely I’m definitely a journalist and a media person first and foremost. But the every time I talk about this, I get so frustrated. And I just think Gosh, what maybe I should just go full, full bore into, you know, joining an advocacy crew for something because it makes me so mad. But I also think it’s important to have someone independent and have media so that so so that’s where I am.

Carlton Reid 40:12
Mmm, and let’s get on to that. But first of all, let’s go across to David, who will talk about our show sponsor, take it away, David.

David Bernstein 43:21
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a longtime loyal advertiser, you all know who I’m talking about. It’s Jenson USA at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices, and what really sets them apart. Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is they’re on believable support. When you call and you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors, and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check them out. Jenson USA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support. And we thank you for supporting Jenson USA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 44:46
Thanks, David. And we are back with Jonathan Maus, and Jonathan is now going to talk about I’m gonna ask him about the good news that he told his his newsletter recipients last week.

Carlton Reid 45:00
So Jonathan you’ve had an investment.

Jonathan Maus 45:02
Okay, yeah, 16 years in, and I’ve got my first seed funding. So funny. But yeah, so I got, I guess I basically sold part of bikeportland. So through all these years, I basically made this thing survive with smoke and mirrors, it’s never really afforded me the ability to pay myself much at all, or, you know, do any of the stuff like have retirement or any kind of health insurance or that sort of thing. So, finally, you know, I had someone in the community step up after I made a mention of an enewsletter, about how I wanted to invest in some new things to do video and other other things, but I couldn’t afford the equipment. So somebody long story short, stepped up and said, hey, how much do you How much do you need, and this is a wonderful person, that community who wants to support media that they think is pushing for the stuff they believe in, in this case, the person is, you know, really, like, like we said before, wants to, wants to take that, that that line up of, you know, fighting climate change, and getting more people to bike and, and all that stuff. So this person wanted to invest in by Portland, because, hey, they know that operations like like bikeportland, basically can’t survive otherwise. And it’s true. You know, without this investor,

Jonathan Maus 46:14
I don’t know if I would even be talking to you today. I mean, it gets, in some ways, it gets better and more exciting and easier to keep going every year, because you’ve been around so long. But in but in other ways, and other real sort of real life ways. It became harder and harder for me to justify, basically my life’s work without, without enough compensation, without enough financial security, and without enough ability to build it into what I want to build it to. I mean, when I was going back and forth with my investor, all he was doing was talking about things I wanted to do for the site. And at one point, I remember, you know, I think you mentioned something and basically was kind of trying to needle me a little bit and say, I think there’s something else here. And I and I was honest, and said, there is something else there. And that’s the fact that you know, I need to get a raise, and I need to make sure that my family can can breathe a little easier, and that my wife doesn’t have to be, you know, wondering what the hell I’m doing all the time, you know, devoting so much of my life to this to this work. So that’s part of it, too. And so now it’s up. Now that’s the fun part, fun and hard part had sort of a honeymoon of being excited about it. That’s, that’s already blown over. I’m actually now I’m in the phase of really trying to build and trying to do right, by that investment and take Bike Portland sort of to its next next chapters.

Carlton Reid 47:35
So that investor is Mike Perham.

Jonathan Maus 47:39
Yeah, so So. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 47:41
So he’s made his money from software development. And I looked on it on Twitter, you’ve got called Sidekick means the things I don’t know about, but I’m sure people who are into into certain types of software know what Sidekick is, I think he was saying he’s just got his 100 millionth download. Yeah. So he’s, he’s was he he appears to be from his life profile. He appears to be like a transportation cyclist. Yeah. So he’s, he was basically a reader of yours?

Jonathan Maus 48:08
Yeah, Mike’s been a reader for a while he’s, he’s funded the site in the past, you know, he would, he was he was a person who I kind of knew from Twitter, and I just seen his name and email or two. And then he would, he would send a cheque in just randomly out of the blue, you know, pretty sizable cheque. And I always do a double take and be like, wow, this Mike guy really loves the site. This is fantastic. Let me send them, you send them a postcard say thank you.

Jonathan Maus 48:30
And so we really, you know, we really aligned. I mean, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t work with just any investor, for sure. And but you know, Mike, he was just sort of perfect. I mean, we really aligned. He’s an open source software person, he, he never got into the software biz to make a tonne of money. He did it because he loved it. And he wanted to help people do things. And it just so happens that, you know, some of the software he wrote was very, very useful to a number of people. And it’s been it’s valuable. So there you go, he made enough money now where he wants to help help the things that he that he loves. And yeah, I’ll, I’ll never forget when he just said to me, you know, he knew he knows that. He knows what Bike Portland is going through. He’s also a newsie. He’s a news junkie. And he understands that, you know, for instance, in America, well, even even where you live, Carlton, there are a lot of people that fund the media. And depending on who has the most money, a lot of times that media is going to be stronger, it’s going to be able to spread its message more in America, we have a huge problem with that, you know, disinformation and media that’s very partisan. And Mike intentionally wanted to put money into media for that reason, because he knows without without his help, bikeportland couldn’t survive, because there’s just no model for for what bikeportland does. It doesn’t make sense financially. And I’ve I’ve certainly felt that that’s one of the reasons why I was getting to a point of very high stress because all of our advertising is gone. You know, that that’s all goes to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook or or, you know, wherever local businesses are putting their money these days, they’re not spending money on bikeportland like they used to, and so we’ve had to rely on

Jonathan Maus 50:00
individuales subscribers, which is great. But that’s if you want to build a business. And you don’t have the ability to have 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of subscribers, which is kind of a chicken and egg. I mean, people want to see really great content and really, really amazing things from the media provider in order for them to subscribe, but you can’t create that stuff unless you have a lot of money to have reporters. And, you know, so it’s chicken and egg. So, you know, I couldn’t rely just on our great subscribers. So something had to give and take it was Mike, it was Mike. Mike had to get so yeah.

Carlton Reid 50:30
Is Mike hands on or hands off?

Jonathan Maus 50:32
Mike is hands off Absolutely. You know, we we talked, we talked really carefully about that. He he he doesn’t have any, there’s no return technically, right that he has to get, he does own a share of the bike of the pedal town media stuff, which is our parent company, he does own a share of the company. But there’s no sort of like, you know, number that he has to get back technically, in order to you know, where he’s going to pull out kind of thing. So

Jonathan Maus 50:59
he wants to see change happen. He trusts me, because he knows Bike Portland, and he knows what I’ve been putting into it all these years. And we’re just gonna have to see, you know, where that goes to see does he re up. And you know, the next when the year comes up, I’ve already had a conversation with another investor that you know, Mike and I’ve talked about, so someone else after they saw the news about the bikeportland getting an equity investment, someone else in the community stepped up and said, Hey, I’m interested. So I’ve been talking to that person. So it’s, it’s a different, it’s a different era for bikeportland. Now I’m trying to, I’m talking to people to help with the site and do different things. I’ve hired someone to do to do some stuff. And I’ve got a freelance budget. And I’ve upped our game in some other ways. And it’s just going to be a continuation of that now, including the site redesign, despite Yes,

Jonathan Maus 51:48
although, that was another person who was a bit nervous, I probably was a really great web web person who’s who’s does all my tech stuff in my WordPress design. And I was able to email him and say, Hey, you don’t have to worry about the big upgrade and redesign now because we’re good for it.

Jonathan Maus 52:03
And then tell us about the hires than that you’ve made. So because it’s pretty I mean, when I was, you can hear my dog. Sorry, When, when, when I was last in Portland you had Michael was doing, like, reporting for you. So have you got somebody like Michael?

Carlton Reid 52:19
Not really, I have a different person. There’s nobody really like Michael, he’s moved on. Now. That’s gonna be the next person I’m going to be looking for. But what I’ve done is I’ve hired someone named Maritza Arango. She’s really fantastic. The first person I ended up hiring was someone to do like events. So events editor is the position and it’s someone who is, you know, making sure our calendar, our events calendar is full with all the penalties, events, and all the other things that are going on. Because I think a Community Calendar is a real value add that, like Portland can provide. This is a calendar that has, you know, everything on and not just bike rides, but advocacy meetings and everything. So that’s one of her main tasks. But Maritza has also been doing like some social media stuff, and she’s helping me with some of the design things. So yeah, I’m just trying to hire you know, smart people that can that can add value to the site and take some load off me and thinking about everything and having to do everything on my own. But the next hire, I think the big one that’s really going to change the game is going to be more of like an editor position, someone who can be a reporter who knows the issue pretty well, who can go out, get a story, talk to people, you know, do do real reporting. I mean, that’s, that’s always been sort of the bread and butter in some ways of bikeportland is that we can actually do real reporting, that that compares that and competes and compares with the local, the other local media outlets, you know, for our topic for these mobility, and transportation topics. So, you know, when I can find someone like that, if I can find someone like that, that’s going to be huge, because that takes as you know, doing reporting, and doing it right and meeting people’s expectations, which after 16 years are really, really high, Bike Portland really can’t make mistakes. And Bike Portland, you know, people just expect a certain depth, but it’s increasingly difficult to deliver on that depth. If it’s just me, because you know, my, I have a million other things, I need to do that with the site and managing things. So the ability to you know, talk to five sources for an article and, and take a day or two to write something which you know, for most reporters, they’ll take a week probably to do a story if not longer, but my average is probably an hour or two. So that doesn’t really, that doesn’t really work. When when you have the committee looking at you saying, Hey, we really want to, you know, change the narrative, we need you to hold this group accountable. And this agency accountable, that takes work and it’s going to take finding someone and paying them a good rate to keep them around. So once Lincoln have someone like that, it’s going to really, really up our game and change things a lot.

Carlton Reid 54:35
So when you’re talking about some of the things that you think you were doing there, I was thinking like the UK context, and that is we’ve got like, advocacy organisations like in Cambridge cycling campaign, for instance, would be the second biggest campaigning org in the UK and then you’ve got the London cycling campaign again. So it’s all of the things that you’re doing will be coalesced

Carlton Reid 55:00
To bodies with with a reasonable number of volunteers for a start, and then paid staff members, both those organisations have got paid staff members. And it’s like an advocate. They don’t need a Jonathan Maus to hold them together. You know, they they kind of exist above and beyond, you know, a person. So is that something that you think

Carlton Reid 55:29
bikeportland can grow into?

Carlton Reid 55:30
I’m not saying for any second that you’re going to be disappearing, and going away, but just is that written is it needs if this is going to continue in 50 years time? It needs to be not just you?

Jonathan Maus 55:43
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I definitely see that that’s what I want to for not just reasons of my own, you know, mental and physical health, but, um, because of who I am, I mean, I’m a white middle aged homeowner, got, you know, I’m just like this classic person who has sort of, you know, controlled and handled things for a long time. And that is really limiting. That puts up some red flags for me in terms of like, what’s like Portland’s perspective? How do we make decisions about what we cover and how we cover? And that’s limiting? So that’s another big reason why I do actually want to not be as involved. And yeah, it would be great if I could, you know, right now I have my eyes really on you’re 20. I’ve always, I’ve always been this way I was I was really looking forward to your 10. We had a big party, it was a real momentous thing. We launched I think we launched our subscription programme at 10. I forgetting now. But anyway, we all have always had these milestones and 10 was a huge one for me, we got there and we push through 15 was not quite as exciting just because it’s not as round of a number. But the 20 year mark is going to be or I should say, 2020, you know, the 20 year mark of doing this, which would be I guess, 2025. So your 20 is going to be a big thing for me. And I’m really already looking at that as saying, okay, that’s when everything is going to be in the vision that I have right now in terms of what bikeportland is, and I hope by that time, I’m definitely just like, you know, this old codger in the background, who’s, you know, maybe writing an opinion every now and again, or blasting some agency, but I’d love to just see it, you know, being great and happening, you know, without me at that point.

Carlton Reid 57:11
Like a Mark Sani type figure, if anybody who doesn’t know Mark Sani, he’s like the guy that co founded bicycle retailer, the trade magazine in the US, and now just write a grumpy old column in the back

Jonathan Maus 57:22
or do something else. I mean, there’s so many other things to do, you know, I’ve got I’ve got my kids and my family and stuff. I’ve never just have not given enough attention to compare to this this work. So you know, that’s another that’s another big part of it. I’ll have probably grandkids by then. So.

Carlton Reid 57:37
So in year 20, which is four years away, is that right? Yeah. How old would you be?

Jonathan Maus 57:45
Oh, let’s see. I’d be 50 years old.

Carlton Reid 57:48
Oh, that’s a big milestone. So that’s like a 50. And a.

Jonathan Maus 57:52
Yeah,

Carlton Reid 57:53
okay. Yeah, I can I can see why.

Jonathan Maus 57:55

1975. Yeah, it just hit me as I said that, too. So shoot, I’ve got I’ve got for four years now to really get this thing dialled in. So the clock is ticking.

Carlton Reid 58:06
That’s cool. So tell us about apart from the hire that you made, and maybe the changes cuz you’ve got a podcast now. So your your competition all of a sudden. So tell us about the podcast? what’s what’s going to be on the podcast? How often is going to come out? What are you doing?

Jonathan Maus 58:24
Yeah, so the Bike Portland podcast, we actually had one back in, I believe, is 2015 2016, you know, couple dozen episodes. When I had Michael Anderson and Lillian Karabaic, another friend was producing it. For us. It was It was great. I thought we had a good podcast, but they moved on. And kind of the story bikeportland is I didn’t have sort of the money and the ability to keep them around and sort of pay them. So they moved on to doing other great things. And I just had to let the podcast just, you know, phase out. So here I am trying to restarting it. So last month, I restarted it back on my own. And in the meantime, of course, there’s lots of new tools. And the sort of delivery methods of podcasts have gotten a lot easier and better. And everybody’s doing it, of course now. So I relaunched it. And it’s been really great. I’m starting out by just interviewing folks in the community that I think are interesting, or have something important that needs to be shared. But that’s not where I see it going. I’d like to say do it much more often. I’d love to do it once a week. At this point, I’m probably maybe twice a month, hopefully. But what I want to see it evolve into is more of a news oriented podcast and less of a just interview podcast. And again, I don’t see myself as necessarily having to be the host. I’ve already talked to Maritza. She may do one. She’s from Bogota. She’s a native Spanish speaker. So I was hoping that she could maybe interview someone in Spanish. So it’s open to anybody that works for bikeportland. So it won’t always be me doing interviews. I kind of started with that just because it was comfortable and sort of easy for me to just talk to people and record it. But this news podcast is something I’ve really been thinking about a lot in terms of a vision where I want to share original audio, think of it like, I don’t know if you watch I mean, it’s more not necessarily a BBC style, more of like more of one of the cable news shows and in America like maybe Rachel Maddow

Jonathan Maus 1:00:00
Or something where, let’s say I would do an intro, but then I would share audio of like a local press conference or other local newsmaker saying something in a meeting meeting. And then I could, you know, comment, comment on that, and then maybe bring in a guest of recent news, and we would talk about that. So it’d be something that was definitely more relevant in terms of its timeliness, like something that happened a day or two, before we could record something, and the podcast would be more of a news podcast with no more analysis is something that just happened, that to me would be really the ultimate dream. And, and I think that really reflects kind of like some of my visions for bikeportland. In general, I mean, right now, with the amount of tools and how easy they are to use, and just the sort of digital publishing, you know, continuing revolution, all these 15 years, it’s so exciting, because I don’t think it would be that difficult for bikeportland to do, you know, live reporting, you know, remote broadcasts from places or, or even just, you know, turning around news stories and doing video of them. I mean, all that stuff’s really not that far away, it’s pretty close for even an outfit like bikeportland, with our extremely limited budget to do, once you have sort of that minimal equipment buy in, and you got enough skilled people to do it. I mean, you know, with Instagram, live, Facebook Live, right, all these different places to, you know, use our YouTube channel has about, you know, I think around four or 500 subscribers now. So that’s another channel for us, we can put that stuff out there, you know. So that’s what’s exciting to me right now about Bike Portland is that we’ve spent 16 years building all these different platforms. And now there’s the equipment and sort of ease of producing this kind of content, I think is improved so much. And it’s so exciting. Now, we seem to go out there and get the news and figure out how to package it in a way that’s really interesting and compelling and different, and sort of continues to like meet and exceed what people expect from bikeportland. If we do that, I think it can be a super exciting next couple of years.

Carlton Reid 1:01:48
And one of the strengths you’ve always had has been your fantastic photography. So I’ve always been impressed by the photographs you have on your site, and not just the photographs, but also like the galleries of photographs, you’re not just having one, you know, killer photograph, you can then dig down and get loads of photographs.

Jonathan Maus 1:02:05
I appreciate that. Thanks. Um, I mean that that was an intentional thing. I mean, I realised from an early, early, early time, and by Portland, that photographs was something that I can compete on, right, my Portland could actually compete with anyone on photography, I won’t say anyone sorry. I, you know, Reuters, and, you know, AP photographs and war zones, obviously. I mean, I’m still like, you know, sort of an amateur. But for the most part on the topic that we were, that we cared about in the community that bikeportland covers, we had images that impressed people and excited people. And I knew because I’ve been on the internet a very long time, and I understand how the internet works. If you do that kind of content, you have to impress people, people have to look at your stuff and go, Oh, that’s, that’s better. And I know that that’s different. That’s no one’s doing that. And no one was doing the type of photography of bike culture that bikeportland was doing when we first started doing it, right. So that was like an intentional thing that I realised, wow, this is how we can sort of stand and get people’s respect, and have people consider us as a real authoritative, you know, place for news. And that’s Yeah, now I’m trying to basically replicate what I did with still photographs I’m trying to do in audio content, whether it’s a podcast or otherwise, I’m trying to do that with video I’m trying to make, you know, news videos and other videos are helpful to the same level that we did our photographs so that people are impressed by them. And I think, you know, if, if I was able to do that, it’s gonna be pretty fantastic. We’re gonna keep people around. And as you know, the competitive environment online is extreme. It’s nothing like it was when I started when bikeportland started, we were really the only game in town on this topic. I mean, if you want to cool pictures of bike culture, and bike news and stuff, like be counted by Portland, that’s also why a lot of businesses gave us money to advertise, which they don’t know. And the competitive environments a lot different. Now everybody’s got their, you know, social media feeds with a lot of great content. So you’ve really got to, you’ve really got to bring it and that was kind of part of my pitch to to my to any investor, including Mike was like, Hey, you know, we’re competing with people’s established social media networks, where they’re seeing amazing videos and photographs from all their friends. How are we going to differentiate and add value to the community? If we don’t have great equipment, great reporters, super smart people on the cutting edge of what’s going on, we’re gonna have to deliver that to keep people around. And, you know, by pointless nothing if there’s no people around. So that’s what we do.

Carlton Reid 1:04:23
Jonathan, that’s been fascinating. Thanks very much. At this point in the show, I normally say, you know, where can people get in touch with you? What what’s, you know, websites, and we’ve been talking about that throughout the show. Is there anything where we could we could I mean, maybe your personal because you’re on Twitter as in your personal capacity as well as bikeportland. Yeah, so yeah, so this gives a bit give us a few places where they can get get your stuff.

Jonathan Maus 1:04:49
Well, people can most of the most personal stuff I do is on I was on twitter at @Jonathan_mas. So Jonathan underscore maus on Twitter is a good place

Jonathan Maus 1:05:00
to find some of my my stuff and it’s not personal, I don’t do a lot of dogs and family stuff. I do kind of keep it to the topic even on there. So I don’t do a lot of personal stuff online. I don’t do really Facebook or Instagram much personally because I don’t know it’s kind of like the cobbler, you know, has the worst cobblers family has the worst shoes, you know, like I’m on line all day. And so I don’t feel like doing that on my personal level.

Jonathan Maus 1:05:22
That’s the way to find me.

Carlton Reid 1:05:25
Thanks to Jonathan Maus there. And thanks to you for listening to the Spokesmen cycling podcast, show notes and more can be found on the-spokesmen.com. Our next show is a half hour chat with the founders of the upscale LeBlanq joy rides. That will be with you next week. But meanwhile, get out and ride

f your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

11th July 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 277: Le Tour: Too Hot to Handle

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Donna Tocci and Jim Moss

TOPICS: Marketing specialist Donna Tocci, lawyer Jim Moss and show host Carlton Reid discuss their highlights so far of the 2021 Tour de France. Plus a little bit of US trade news. And Jim’s dogs.

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 277 of the spokesman cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Sunday 11th of July 2021.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the- spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:09
Hi there I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to today’s episode of the Spokesmen Cycling podcast brought to you in association with Jenson USA. Today’s show is a smidgen of US bike trade news squeezed into an hour of Tour de France chit chat. Joining me from the baking/raining US — delete as appropriate — are outdoor lawyer Job Moss (and that’s outdoor as in skiing, cycling and mountaineering, not Jim practicing laws outside) and marketing specialist Donna Tocci. It’s another Tour de France day in the boiling, boiling hot Pyrenees. The ride has ended. And we’re going to talk about that. First off, and the person who suggested that that we should talk about that is the person we’re introduced first. And that’s Donna. Hi there, Donna. Hi.

Donna Tocci 2:05
It’s so great to be back on with both of you.

Carlton Reid 2:08
And the both of us is actually I’ll bring Jim in straightaway. Given the fact that somebody else in the shadow. Okay, Jim, how you doing? I’m doing great. Hi, everybody. Donna, I was going to talk to you fast before I brought him in. But I’ll come straight back to you anyway. Because we were talking before the I press record and this before we go you got to have Jim on the same call. And we were talking about I guess, as people do we talk we start talking about weather. And Donna, you were saying it was rainy for you. It’s rainy for me also. And we’re then thinking about what’s what’s what David is suffering from we know what he’s suffering from because he’s told us he’s going up into the mountains to it to escape the heat. We know absolutely that Tim living in So Cal is going to be roasting. And we assume, Jim, that you are also suffering from a wave is that would that be right? Yes. Haha gym.

Jim Moss 3:08
Glenwood Springs two days ago was 100 Grand Junction was 106 year record. We’ve had five 100 degree days here in Denver, where normally we would have three or four for the whole summer. And even the mountains are. I mean, it’s always up in the mountains. I’ve been up in the mountains every Friday for the last eight weeks building mountain bike trails and it’s even hot up there. It’s it’s quite ridiculous. And more importantly, when this heatwave now in May, we got so much rain. We didn’t turn our sprinklers on and I have mosquito problems at two Boy Scout camps that I help. They’ve never had mosquitoes. I mean, they just never had it but there’s so much rain in May and now in June we’re roasting right so we’re expecting the place to then catch on fire. I mean,

Carlton Reid 4:13
yeah, you’ve got that to come Haven’t you so don’t tell us about what you’re talking about. I’m what maybe the Tour de France are gonna have to the organisers are gonna have to do in the in the very probably the very, very near future.

Donna Tocci 4:25
That’s always surprised me being an event organiser for road races. That road racing with

Carlton Reid 4:33
this is running, running this running.

Donna Tocci 4:35
Yep. Running, that you try and have the events in the summer as early as possible, because you don’t want to have the heat exhaustion or heatstroke or anything like that. And it has always surprised me that the tour doesn’t start early. The stages don’t start early. They start them in the heat of the day. They’re they’re talking about the heat even more so this year, I think and you know we won’t go down the rabbit Climate change. But um, but you know, it’s, it’s scary what could happen to some of these writers, you know, their body temperatures can rise, they can have seizures, they could just become dizzy, lightheaded, fall off their bikes, nausea, you know, all of that rapid breathing and heartbeats. All of that is symptoms of heatstroke or heat exhaustion. And you just you worry about these guys, after a while they’re on their bikes for four and a half hours a day in the blazing sun, you know, putting max effort. Yes, they are amazing athletes and their bodies have been trained. But you know, there comes a point when I’m surprised they haven’t had a problem yet network.

Carlton Reid 5:45
Because when we do small teams or move we follow the professional riders, including like in the Tour de France, the attap you don’t start at the time they start, you know, they’re starting like midday, one o’clock, you know, when you do the the tap, you’re starting at seven o’clock for that very reason. So it’s almost like we need a duty of care for these riders in that, you know, we’re we’re putting them through stuff that clearly for TV schedules, you know, that’s why the time is, is there right now? Because it’s it’s really good for, for getting on TV. And if you have it, you know, incredibly early, it’s going to start mucking up those kind of schedules. Jim, are we are we from a legal you know, duty of care point of view, should they be looking at this much, much harder?

Jim Moss 6:31
Well, in the United States would be an OSHA issue, whether or not your employees have the ability to get cool. I’m not quite sure about Europe. And and you know, your professional so you agree to race in the conditions that are there. In cycling also has a slightly different issue, I cycle in really hot weather because I maintain a speed that provides unless I’ve just got nothing but tailwind, some breeze coming at you. So when you sweat, you you don’t feel as hot because the moisture gets whisked away pretty quick. But you’ve got to have plenty of water. And you know, in Denver, a lot of our city parks took out their water fountains over the last couple of years. And so a lot of times, I’ll plan my rides based on where I can get more water. You know, I started out with a one water bottle that half the waters already been frozen in and I add more ice and water and the other one I just had ice and water. And then knowing that, you know, the second half of the ride is going to be lukewarm stuff I got out of the spicket someplace, but I at least know where there’s water.

Carlton Reid 7:41
And that person getting enough gym, the pros are getting enough water, you know, we see the domestiques you know, bring in bring in? What is that an SU? You know that there’s that duty of care? We’ve got that covered? It’s just the damn heat,

Jim Moss 7:53
right? And if it kills somebody and it will it think about how hot the asphalt is, if you go down, think about this, what tires you’re writing, if the asphalt gets sticky, you know, I mean, those are going to be real issues coming out of the mountains, you’re on a hard cold asphalt going up in the mountains, and then you come down to the city, you drop 2000 feet temperature changes 20 degrees and you’re hot asphalt. It’s going to be interesting. So yeah, it’s gonna be a problem, they’re eventually gonna have to switch either to higher starting times, or they got to change the whole tour de July is going to be the tour of Antarctica if you can swim. And and you know that maybe they go to sometime in September, October. Most of the races here nowadays have sort of disappeared. We have evening races, a lot of evening crits and gravel races. But weekends, you know, the big long rides are now all May and September

Carlton Reid 8:58
and be tough to move it from like the month because that’s kind of traditional, but there’s no reason to say you can’t have this at 7pm. You know, that’d be actually from a US point of view. That’d be quite good, wouldn’t it? you’d actually having a slightly more reasonable time for you.

Jim Moss 9:15
You have a boy than your then your face and light issues? Yeah, well, I mean, they they have to get done before it gets. I had to get done an hour before get started. So you, you’re probably not on a four or five hour day, you’re not gonna be missing much time starting at two or three, four hours later, you’re still writing to the heat. That you know they have to start at 7am in the morning. The road races start at seven or 8am. Yeah. Just no other way around.

Donna Tocci 9:46
Yeah, and your body. Sometimes your body actually heats up when you stop. So yes, Jim, you’re right. And when you’re on the bike, you have a breeze if you’re going you know as fast as they go but when you stop is Sometimes when it catches up to you, yeah, so um, yeah, I’m, I’m interested. I have not heard that they’ve had this problem before, but I would be interested to hear in the future what what happens is they’re talking about, you know, for the US I did the conversion, it’s like 8687 degrees. While they’re riding, that’s just really four and a half hours. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 10:27
Yeah, no, it’s it’s absolutely, Punisher and some riders clearly will, will be able to cope with that better than others. Now, I’ve obviously that we’ve all seen the famous images of people, you know, with a bead on running. I mean, this is like, you know, 60 years we’ve seen this, this is not new, that there’s been heat in the Alps and the pyramids and stuff. But you see, a bead on being been, you know, sprayed across a rider to call them down. What I’ve seen in Portland, Oregon, which I noticed is actually one of the places had a heatwave, just very recently, probably even still now. I thought I was on a bike shop when I was there a few years ago. hoop which is basically that the riders, anybody can go through it, a rider goes through a hoop that’s actually made up of a hose pipe, and they’ve drilled little holes. So when you go through it is a cooling sheet of water. And that sounded like a fantastic thing to do individually outside the shop. But maybe they should be started doing this for the for the riders where you’re not getting somebody coming along with a bead on down the back of your neck, just cool the riders down by spraying them with water.

Jim Moss 11:40
You know, I was on a ride that makes my ride on Thursday, Thursday, and several of the sprinkler systems were going along the ride and I kept riding into them because they were shooting into the to the bike trail and the right into them and get cooled down a little bit. It’s it’s you just use what’s available. You know, rainstorm, quick rainstorm, left water on the trail and wrongly a ride around the water and we were all riding through it and washed bikes away later, but it cools you down. But yeah, it’s it’s gonna be a problem, it’s gonna be a major problem here in the West.

Carlton Reid 12:22
Drink that stuff. You know a lot, a lot of the a lot of the the the systems are set, if it’s agricultural, in spraying the field, a lot of that is actually chemicals in there as well as water. Yeah, I know, when I used to tour in Israel. That was actually one of the things you must not do is drink the hydroponics, you know, the system going through the fields that are watering making the desert bloom. In effect, you don’t drink that stuff, because it’s half of it is just pure, pure chemicals. Anyway, none of that was was in our show notes to show topics to begin with. So Donna, thank you ever so much for bringing that that’s it’s a phenomenal point that they’re going to have to address that. If not very, very soon, then at some point, they’re going to have to absolutely change the timings for these events because of their heat. Now. We’re now you know, best part of two weeks in to the race and we are going to go backwards a little bit. And that is do you agree that it’s good that the tour is no longer the organisers are no longer going to be suing that spectator? who caused the crash Tony Martin’s crash in on the opening stage. Donna, do you think they that’s right for them to do that? Or should they have pursued that person?

Donna Tocci 13:41
Oh, I have a lot of thoughts about this. I don’t know about legal Jim can talk about that. But, you know, suing her for for just being stupid. And I hate that word. But this really was, um, she wasn’t malicious. She didn’t have any intent. She was just being stupid. I’m shocked that this doesn’t happen every year. Because you see the end. We’ve talked about this before, in years past is and there is no way to barrier off the entire course for the day. But the people are standing so close. They have flags, they have signs. And when you go into the mountains, they are literally screaming in the faces of these guys and flying their flags in their faces. I am shocked that this doesn’t happen every year. It was terrible and all of that but there was no intent. There was no maliciousness. I don’t see how you could sue. But Jim can answer.

Carlton Reid 14:53
Well, Jim, the legal legal Eagle of the show. What Where do you stand on this?

Jim Moss 14:58
Well, it’s French lawsuits. Very different from the US law, I had those questions pop up when I posted the article. So whether or not we can sewer in the United States, it probably be difficult. But in France lawsuits a lot easier or a lot more difficult to do. But she didn’t get arrested criminally. And that’s probably what should happen. The issue is, is do you make an example of her to prove to the rest of the spectators to get the heck off the roads? What was it two, three years ago when the motorcycle stopped, and, you know, the riders ran into the back of the motorcycle, and one rider grabbed a bike and took off running, you know, we got to get the spectators off the road. And if, if they get into one at the same time, it’s one of the fantastic parts of being at a bicycle race. I know it’s so close. Think about the guy who always has the helmet on and says you helmet with antlers. And he shows up racing across the road of this race. And he comes running out of the woods someplace and runs along with the with the riders. Nice smart enough, he stays out of the way. But it’s some other races. I mean, when you’re close enough, you can knock the cell phone of the person taking a selfie out of their hands onto the ground, then we’ve got to get some intelligence into these people. And if making a martyr or making an example out of this woman is what it takes, then go for it, do whatever you have to do, because at the speed some of these writers are writing even though it may be uphill, it’s still dangerous. We can see that in the in the video. I think the real issue is is should they still be based on how long this last. You know, if if the rest of the tour people are staying off the course. Then it worked. If it works for the next year, people stay off the course. That’s a success but but I think that you need to tell these people they have to get out of the way. You know, when I’ve when I’ve had immediate badgers one time I got to close in the motorcycle driver gave me the nasty look, you know, because he actually had to slow down for a second light jumped. And, you know, that’s looking through a camera lens and not doing a good job of calculating through the lens when people went where people were. It didn’t cause a problem for the race. It caused the problem for the motorcycle rider and that was his job. But, you know, even the media people screw up once a while. But we got to keep people off the course. Yeah, get close. Enjoy the riders, you know, see the sweat. Yeah, the whole time. What’s been bothering me is one of one of these people have COVID of these writers are sucking in massive amounts of air and over, you know, someone’s screaming in their face. And you’re getting it you’re getting whatever disease they have, you know, you know, you sort of want to ride with a mask he said you wouldn’t go to just sucking enough oxygen I suspect

Donna Tocci 18:23
or, or sergeant. If you know if there’s someone who is trying to do harm to the to the riders or the race, ethnic and again, you can’t you can’t barricade the whole road. So I mean, this is going to continue to be an issue but but Jimmy You’re right. I mean, they’re they’re just it’s a balance between wanting to be that close and rider safety. Hmm.

Jim Moss 18:51
I think the picture shows a lot there’s a difference in my opinion, of getting close to the racers, watching the racers getting encouraging them to go harder, faster, better. supporting your country, your team, whatever. This had nothing to do with that. She just wanted to be on TV. And I know she got TV she got beaten. She did a good job. she

Carlton Reid 19:21
succeeded. Yeah, yep. Well done grandmother.

Jim Moss 19:25
So I think in that case, yeah, maybe you you do take her down because it had nothing to do with racing had to do with ego.

Carlton Reid 19:33
Okay, so, Jim, you’d be an awful judge because you’d be sending people down left right and centre Donna, you’re clearly the wisdom of Solomon. You were much much more lenient on people. Let’s Let’s there’s so many talking points around this tour potentially one of them being well, we already know who the winner is, which is kind of takes away the Jeopardy angle. But despite that, there’s still obviously tonnes and tonnes of things. have already gone on in this tour already make absolute belter now one of them from from a from a global point of view Never mind a British point of view. It’s just Mark Cavendish. So Mark Cavendish is equalling of Eddie mercs his record is phenomenal he you know it’s up there with the the absolute best of any British sports person, you know ever you know I liken it to Roger Bannister you know breaking the two minute mark and stuff. It’s like it’s just amazing. a certain person might not have taken Cavendish his victories Quite so. Well Is that so let me just read what Eddie Merckx actually said that we don’t know the content. I don’t know the context of why Eddie said this. I have interviewed Eddie, I have had dinners with Eddie I have written with Eddie. He is absolutely famously grumpy. So what he said absolutely fits in to the pattern of this sounds absolutely the what like what Eddie would say. Anyway, I’ll read it out to you. So it is. This is Eddie. I think somebody asked him on I think this Belgian TV or Italian TV, they asked him a question about what do you think about Cavendish and he came up with this he said, I want 34 stages by winning Sprint’s I’m not going to do his his accent By the way, in the mountains in time trials and going on the attack on the descent. Let’s not forget the five yellow jerseys I’ve got at home plus the 96 days I award. Does that that not seem much? Clearly he was riled. So the question must have upset him. But do you guys not think he could have just said congratulations to Kevin that’s it. Just Say No more? What What do you think? What does that be submerge any of his his memory? Donna, what do you what do you think about what he said?

Donna Tocci 21:47
Well, I did a little research because the last couple of years have taught me that just a little blurb on Twitter isn’t always the right context. Really? I did not know that. So I went and I found an article and he he did say that but he started with there’ll be no problem. If Cavendish equals my record, I won’t lose any sleep over it. If he does it. I’ll congratulate him because it’s not easy to win 34 Sprint’s and then he went on to say, of course, there’s a difference between us. And then the quote that you set. So in context, it’s a little bit different. Um, it’s still

Carlton Reid 22:33
quiet, anyway.

Donna Tocci 22:35
But before the race, somebody asked him about cab and the prospect of him, you know, catching the record. And he said, to be honest, I no longer believed in his comeback. Miracles can sometimes happen in cycling. I think that’s such a miracle. So I don’t know. I mean, could he have congratulated him a little bit more? Maybe. But that’s his personality. And I don’t think we should be reading him too much. I think he will absolutely. Congratulate Cavendish and he should and, you know, records are made to be broken. But you know, he’s working and that’s okay.

Carlton Reid 23:17
He’s quirky. You. You’re definitely right, then thank you for bringing some of the context in there done. I really don’t think it absolutely exonerated at all. But yes, thank you for bringing that up, Jim. With that new bit of context, is that alter maybe anything that you might have been thinking about? Or maybe you didn’t even need that context to think what you’re going to say?

Jim Moss 23:36
All right, first of all, anyone who has three autobiographies written by the time they’re age 30, I am, I think, a little whacked out just some ridiculousness going on there. The personality there is interesting. Um, and so I also think there’s a difference. I mean, the sport has definitely evolved. We now have specialists. like there’s no tomorrow when Marx was writing, we had people who are going to win the Tour, and we had people who were helping him win the Tour. We didn’t have teams that showed up with just sprinters hoping to win, you know, races or just with mountain riders. You know, it’s, it’s like everything in life. We’ve got it down to finite degrees. Everyone does specific things. You know, marketing now includes posting on social media and communications because posting on social media, and, you know, obviously, that didn’t exist 20 years ago, and at the same time, I also think Burke’s accomplishments mean a lot more. And I think because of the fact that he won races, the entire rather than just winning spreads. How many times have we seen Cavendish drop out of the race after winning three or four Sprint’s knowing he wasn’t going to go to the finish, or feel good or something. How many times has he stood on the podium going? Yeah, I’m the sprint winner.

Carlton Reid 25:14
I think we know there’s differences, you know, between what max did and what Cavendish did we kind of we kind of know there’s that there. I’m just looking at this point of view of just, you know, the differences there. But still, you would as as with emotional intelligence, as a person you would hold back now you’re also with with knowing, you know, what, how journalists are going to frame this, and how they will pick out quotes, you would know, to keep quiet. When you you just repeat you’d be like a politician almost. And maybe that’s maybe that’s a good thing that that mercs isn’t a politician. And that he’s just said what he thinks. But yeah, they are journalists are going to pick that quote, they are going to zoom in on that bit, when all he should have said was, congratulations, and keep his his his thought maybe a bit more private. Well, that’s what I

Donna Tocci 26:07
was looking for, though. So we don’t know if he’s called Cavendish. We don’t know any of that. And also, so Eddie is 76. And me being a little philosophy, philosophical, is Do you think he’s trying to stay relevant? Like he doesn’t want people to forget about him or forget what he did? And so that’s why he was listing off his accomplishments for Jim, to your point, is there something going on three out of biographies by the time he was 30? I don’t know. But, you know, at 76, maybe he feels the sports moving on from him, and he wants to be relevant for another week or so

Carlton Reid 26:42
I don’t know. He will never not be relevant, or he will always be known as the most accomplished to run it for the for the reasons Jim said, you know, he did it in when he won the race, he didn’t just win win status, we know that he’s absolutely going to be the pinnacle of the sport forever.

Jim Moss 27:00
So that’s the difference. Everybody is jumping on Cavendish bandwagon for what he’s accomplished. And that’s fantastic. But and Cavendish himself always appreciates his team, because it takes, you know, 234 people to get him where he’s gone. Now. But when you look at the Tour de France and the great writers in the Tour de France, Cavendish, his name is not on that list. It’s the winners. The people who wear the yellow jersey on the final day that matter, not the ones who are there just to I mean, I just don’t see sprinting as any big thing.

Carlton Reid 27:44
This is such a shame. Wow. No, I allow your dog to bite you. There you go. Because your dog was totally grumbling when you when you’re talking about Cavendish and mercs Hey, I sent that your dog Jim was very much in Kevin dishes camp. Yeah, he was. He was he was he was grumbling when you were talking about Cavendish not being as good as mercs I think your dog

Jim Moss 28:14
there was another dog walking around outside my dog has no opinion about

Donna Tocci 28:19
but you more agree with mercs comments than not then.

Jim Moss 28:26
Yeah, I do. I also think that a 76 year old guy who’s accomplished everything he can has the right to say that he wants as well as the right for the for the reporters and journalists to take it out of context and do what you want. But if if if currently said Jim, fly over to the UK, we’re going to dinner with either mercs or Cavendish. I’ve never met Cavendish. I have talked to Eddie marks a couple times. I’m still gonna go talk to mercs. Um, I mean, I I cannot do it. I can’t do what either those two gentlemen have done. I and I’m not a sprinter for sure. I mean, I’m the last thing you’d ever call me as a sprinter. And it’s amazing when he takes off. It’s amazing how he can follow his lead out people when everyone was trying to cut him off. So I’m not taking Cavin I’m not taking I don’t want to take anything away from Cavendish. But I think taking anything away from mercs on what he said about it. It is is wrong. I think that there is a big difference between winning sprinters jerseys winning races. The way emerged versus winning races the way Cavendish did I think there’s a colossal difference Okay, so

Donna Tocci 29:47
alright, so Carlton, can I go back and this is similar topic because who’s going to wear the jerseys when they get to Paris, is you said the tour is already we already know who’s going to win. But do we? Because you have people with signs on the side of the road. You have people who get sick, you have people who crash. I mean, this is something my dad always said about car racing. You knew I would have to get that in there is that there’s a reason why you race the race. So, you know, yes, it looks like it would be.

Carlton Reid 30:23
So Donnie, he’s gonna stay around. He’s gonna stay up, right? So basically, okay, barring crashes, and barring being taken out by a spectator or barring, you know, Eddie mercs leaping on and suddenly pulling people from bikes for daring to win his race barbering that, then yes, yes. We don’t know who wins. But we do know who’s going to win if none of that happens. And yes, all of those things absolutely can happen. And we really don’t want them to happen. We want this to be a pure race of athletes. A little less. Absolutely, yes, yes. But barring all these miniscule things that might happen, from an athletic point of view, we know who’s going to win. So so that has taken the Jeopardy and it was almost the first one. When was the first time he was in the you know, it was a fourth or fifth day where he was clearly going to take that jersey to Paris if he doesn’t fall off. So does that not, you know, take away a lot of the shine from this year’s race, Donner just knowing that all we’re looking out for is is false. We’re not looking for somebody Really? Are we really expecting anybody to power past him in the pennies?

Donna Tocci 31:37
No, I don’t think so. And I and let me make this clear, because I don’t want nasty grammes later. I don’t want anything to happen to him. That’s not why I said that. I just said it, because you don’t know. I mean, that’s why you race the race, right? I don’t think provided he stays up. Right. And he stays healthy. I don’t think anyone’s going to catch him. I think that the question and Jim, I’d love to hear your answer for this is, is Cavendish going to make it over the mountains.

Jim Moss 32:10
When you get the announcers, the US announcer saying the cut off time is in 40 minutes. And it looks like Cavendish is going to make it sort of bugs me when when you have a Domestique that’s been hustling water bottles to the front, hustling, you know, things around doing a poll, you know, working hard the entire race. Yeah, then the cutoff time means something because those people are already exhausted by the time you know, they get to the base of the mountain and they still get over. Versus the announcers are now following whether or not a sprinter or the sprinters are going to make it because

Carlton Reid 32:59
cities middle legs, these little legs up or down. It’s so hard for Mark I mean really isn’t built. He’s not really built for this race. If you if you really, really be brutally, he has got to be, you know, shepherded over those hills.

Donna Tocci 33:17
He’s here. So there’s Carlton when you’re saying does it take some of the shine out of the race? I think that’s where the announcers and the journalists, they’re focusing on Cavendish? Not necessarily for the record, but also for the drama, if you will. Does he get over the mountain does that you know, that’s where the story is.

Jim Moss 33:37
Do you think there was ever a comment? Do you think there was ever an issue of any merge getting over the mountains and getting in for the cut off time? So we have a point, we have a person in the Tour de France riding with a jersey leader’s jersey, not the yellow one but but a different colour. And we are worried about them not getting thrown out of the race. And yet at certain points in the race, we say they are the greatest writer ever, because they can sprint.

Carlton Reid 34:11
Are you Oh, does that mean you’re not you’re not quite up with the fact that there are speciality so you have sprinters and you have mountain goats and you have GC riders are you are you decrying that fact? Would you rather see like the van out of this world library, you know, all rounders, would you rather have a race of all rounders, Jim?

Jim Moss 34:34
Yeah, that I thought that I’d rather have a race. I just think that it makes more sense. I think we’re taking a lot away from the wear of the yellow jersey with the polka dots in the green so whatever colours there are in these racist Great example, who’s the female I crapped my brain With that female writer of crash to the World Championships, but was expected to win from the United States. Anyway, when she won the the Colorado classic last time she raised here, she wore every single jersey, no other person was wearing a jersey, she had won them all. That’s a racer, in my opinion, she could leave in the mountains, she could do the sprints, she could win the end, no matter what the course was the gym days, and she won all four jerseys.

Carlton Reid 35:41
Isn’t that all the beauty of the Tour de France and and that’s the grand tour is in that you have got races within races. So if you do have somebody who’s clearly dominant and can win and everything, and in fact, you don’t have Jeopardy after the first four days, and it’s a three week tour, at least you have these other elements. And that’s what they were designed for, you know, these jerseys were brought in to do exactly that, to have different element to the race, you would have races within races, because we all know that the polka dot jersey tends not to be the best climber, or the genuine, the best climate of the tour is going to be the person who goes out and get to the point and then probably drops back and doesn’t, you know, is at risk of being like almost like Cavendish and not finishing that day’s stage. But that’s also a plus point, isn’t it? You can’t just have everybody being a generalist. Otherwise the race could be over in the first three days. And it’s a three week talk. Jim,

Jim Moss 36:38
I’m thinking, I don’t know when I tried to figure out when the race was over in the first three days. And Chloé Dygert is the name of the free throws thinking up. I don’t buy into the idea that I’m more like Donna along the lineup, I think there’s always a chance that the race can change. I think that is why the tour is such a fantastic race is because and until that, you know next last day, whatever that race is, it can always change something can always go wrong. Bikes no matter how well they’re maintained. Break. Yep. And so I think that’s the issue of the tour. I think that the other jerseys are proud on to provide entertainment to keep people interested in a three week long tour, who may not follow all three weeks, who, you know, will just show up for the last day or just watch weekend. Those other jerseys provide entertainment during the race. Are they racist within the race? Sure. Are they marketing issues? I think they’re more of that than anything else. And as that then created its own? Has the marketing created its own reality. Yeah, we have bicycle racers who are on the big racers who do one thing now they ride it in, we have racers who only do one thing they ride to the top. You know, I mean, it’s so so the sprint jersey used to be worn by the person who won at the end of the race. Now the sprint has now during each ride, we have sprint points mid race, we’re getting a race within a race within a race.

Donna Tocci 38:30
So Jim, do you think with the different jerseys maybe being marked more marketing and this sprinting with, you know, within the race, do you think that takes away from the purist the generalist and takes away from those folks racing the race? I think a generalist like a mercs you know, who did it all? Do you think that takes away from those guys?

Jim Moss 38:58
I don’t know if it takes away as much as we have a team that knows they can’t win. So they train and get something else. I the winner, the total people accents. I represent so many different sports categories. People ask me who are the toughest people that I know. And they talk football every single time here in the United States. And I think that’s just a joke. I say that if you want to meet some of the toughest people in the world, you should find a bicycle racer and a mountain near bicycle racers can do it for 21 days at all out for 21 days and it’s brutal. And a mountain near does for 72 hours all out. And you know, life is on the line. Those are the toughest people I’ve ever met. And some of the nicest people I’ve ever met and skinniest and yeah, and skinniest also. And yet a football player who believes he’s the toughest person out there. You’re not allowed to talk to me if you get you know, they’re surrounded by people. You can’t get near them. I’ve never seen anyone you know who’s come off adverse to didn’t want to talk and would talk to anybody, that merchant in the street. Hey, did you know I just summited Everest? And look at the bicycle racers? Man, they’re just, it’s just brutal, brutal stress on your body. So do I think it takes away? No, I think that the whole tour is the winner. Do I think it adds different things to look for different reasons to watch the tour? Yes. And for that reason, I think it’s a beautiful and pre marketing idea. But

Carlton Reid 40:47
let’s not forget Jim did, the whole tour was founded, the whole tour exists on selling you things. This is why this this exists. This is it. This is a marketing event. You know, it’s not a sporting event, just to happen to have a bit of sport as an element. It’s just to sell a little bit teams, these these are not the British team, the American team, the attain, these are commercial teams. So all these teams are trying to sell you things. So we’ve got to bear that in mind. This is just you’ve got to have all these changes. You’ve got to have like the speciality and the races within races, because you want people to keep watching and if you have a race over in the first five days, people stop watching people stop buying the product, they no longer buy the tiles or the cookers, you know, the Borah cookers, all these weird and wacky products that are on the the shirts of the Tour de France riders.

Donna Tocci 41:39
Right you get less awareness, your your sponsorship gets less awareness if people stop watching less eyeballs, people don’t come to the race. Absolutely. Really. No TV time. But Jim, we can have a whole philosophy of the whole talk about the toughest athletes because I would challenge definitely not football. I would challenge hockey players. No way. 90 minutes. Now, wait. But that’s not for this podcast, maybe we’ll do a different.

Jim Moss 42:16
I tell you an easy way to think about it, Donna, you get a hockey player, put 45 pounds on their back, put another 20 pounds of clothing on them and put five pounds on each foot and a mountaineering boots and have them hike uphill for three days.

Donna Tocci 42:33
I don’t know. But a lot of I don’t know about that. But I do know a lot of them cycle especially in the offseason to to keep in shape. And I know that some of the former pro hockey players are now taking up cycling. So

Jim Moss 42:51
I think it’s wonderful, but it’s not, it’s not the ability to do it. It’s the mental toughness that makes the difference. In my opinion, it is the toughness to get up the next day, after x hours of sleep, whatever it may be, and put on that same set of clothing and go out and do it again. And in the case of mountaineers, knowing that if they screw up their debt, and they’re not dead. No,

Carlton Reid 43:20
yeah, there’s there’s some genuine Jeopardy isn’t there, you’re gonna fall off the mountain, you kind of you’re dead. At this point of the show. I’d like that night to break for a commercial interlude. It will take us out but when we come back, we’re going to have a wee bit of US trade news, which is hot off the if these things exist anymore, hot off the press. And Jim will talk about that. And then we’re going to talk about our tour highlights each of us and I’ve got one. And I’m hoping Donna and Jim. Both have a highlight of this year’s tour. But for now, let’s go across to David.

David Bernstein 44:03
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a longtime loyal advertiser, you all know who I’m talking about. It’s Jenson USA at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices, and what really sets them apart. Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is they’re on believable support. When you call and you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors, and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check them out. Jenson USA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support. And we thank you for supporting Jenson USA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 45:28
Thanks, David. And we are back with show 277 of the spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast we’re here we’re with with Donna and with Jim and Jim a whenever we we we, we pitch these the shows. And it’s good to have you both on by the way. We say what you want to talk about. And I was all tougher on silver and silver. And that’s all I put down. And if anything else down on the things to talk about, however, Jim, you did give something to talk about which which kind of like takes us back to when this first started this particular show it was very trade oriented. So you’ve got some us bicycle trade news you’d like to share. So go with that before we go for our our tour highlights?

Jim Moss 46:16
Well, there’s, we’re having another bike show, a commercial bike show here in the United States. It’s called The Big gear show. And it’s going to be held in Park City, Utah. third, fourth and fifth and August. It’s going to have more than cycling equipment there but the majority of the exhibitors are cyclists. So it’s the first

Carlton Reid 46:38
sketch and next year

Jim Moss 46:41
this coming August, this Yeah, yeah, this year in 3 months.

Carlton Reid 46:46
That’s crazy.

Jim Moss 46:48
Um, well, this show is outside the show is more like interbike demo in that everything is there’s no in indoor things that so you’re going to walk from booth to booth to booth on a giant parking lot and talk to people and in some of these booths, you’ll be able to grab a bike and go right it

Carlton Reid 47:07
is it Lance Camisica. So Lance was formerly of interbike. Then he had bike press camp and various says Atlanta is doing this.

Jim Moss 47:16
Well. No, Lance was hired to run the cycling portion of it. There was a trade show that gets started. Quick history Outdoor Retailer ran both interbike and the Outdoor Retailer trade show Outdoor Retailer for everything but cycling. They moved interbike out of Vegas, the cheap, easy place to have a trade show where anybody from the United States can go I hate Vegas, but it’s cheap. Anybody can get there to Reno and it died. So two guys had felt that that the paddlesports industry, which originally was a major part of Outdoor Retailer, had been treated badly. And they were correct by Outdoor Retailer by Nielsen at the time. And so they started up a show in Madison, Wisconsin called the paddle sports show. And it was a little show but a big success. The paddle sports industry came together again. They moved into Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which sounds really weird, but Oklahoma has a great man made slalom to slalom courses, whitewater area. It’s pretty neat. But it’s still Oklahoma City. Oh, comments. So they then had the the idea of not bringing in clothing manufacturers. And I’ll tell you that reason in a second and just having gear, boats, bikes, climbing gear, shoes, that type of stuff, and then move the show to Park City, Utah, Utah, wanting any trade show they get their hands on, will probably spend a lot of money to get in there. The reason why there’s no clothing is clothing nowadays takes about 16 months to produce. So so that’s why Outdoor Retailer kept moving the show up to June. And yet for most retailers, you know, gyms, the beginning of their season, not the end, they don’t know how much money they made or how much money they have to spend next year. They only know what was a success this year, in June. They’re just opening the stores and they’re working hard then. So there’s a real controversy because the clothing manufacturers and even the ones that are showing up already have clothes, they’re they’re opened by dates that are you know, you didn’t have yet didn’t have your order. And already you weren’t going to get your order in nowadays. So by getting rid of the clothing manufacturers just having year which takes less time to produce there trying to get the show up and running. And the national bicycle dealer Association hopped on board, and so I’m looking forward to it. I know the two guys who started the show they’re they’re super great individuals, personal friends, and then they hired for show directors Lance coming aska to run the bike part and they hired Oh, what’s his name? Crap. He’s gonna give me so much grief. Kenji, Kenji artinian to run the outdoor part so people that that ran both shows for a long period of time and people have a great relationship with the best show directors of both shows the best people with the best personality the best people who understood what’s going on our hired run the shows, so we’ll have

Carlton Reid 50:41
a big friends I’ve been with them when they’ve been in the same place that they’ve been on site. Is there a website for this gym? Yes, there is. Hold on, I’ll find it for you the big gear calm.

Donna Tocci 50:56
Okay. A big year show.com But so, Jim, as I was looking at it this morning, I look there’s like 42 exhibitors you know everything from Camelback to a kayak company Adidas Sterling row, which surprised me because I thought they were just for arborists, but they do. They do other rope as well. It was really designs, which is motocross. So where are the bike companies though?

Jim Moss 51:23
Um, well, Diamond back. I’m in that diamond back. Oh, let’s see who else? I have no idea right now. I don’t really look Sterling rope started out as a rock climbing rope. While you’re right, it’s not Troy Lee designs like this. I have not looked at who’s there yet. Fat chance bicycles. Interesting. Um, it looks like it’s mostly sports. Still, I think that they’d struggle this year to get bike companies in because bike companies don’t need the extra business right now they are run off.

Donna Tocci 51:59
People are people doing trade shows this year. Because I do know from my road racing that a lot of the companies have decided not to do expos and things like that through the end of this year. So I wonder if that’s some of it. I realised it’s outdoors gym, but I wonder if that’s some of it, as well. But they’ve got a full I mean, I was looking, I was quite impressed. I have all these educational set sessions and networking time set out. I mean, it’s a it’s a big show for I don’t you know, if currently you hadn’t heard it was this year. And you know, are they really promoting it? Or is it kind of a test year?

Jim Moss 52:41
Well, they also have a different model, which is extremely interesting. They will push if you are a retailer, they put you up. And in some cases they fly you in. Yeah, they have a very different model about how they put on their shows.

Carlton Reid 53:02
It’s the it’s the bike bike press camp model. So you get the key people in, you put them in a nice ski chalet in a nice Mountain Resort in the summer. And then you sell them stuff,

Jim Moss 53:13
right. Although they brought they had this model. I don’t know if they’d ever been to the bike press camp or not. But they created this model prior to bringing Lance on. And I don’t I don’t know if it’s gonna work. I don’t know what’s going on. I know Oklahoma City when they just had paddlesports was working. But it wasn’t. People just weren’t happy with Oklahoma City. Although the demo was awesome, because it was so confined and but there’s so much stuff you could you can do. I also think of Park City is a problem. Getting Salt Lake is is a slight pain for most people. And then you got to get a shuttle or rent a car or whatever. I’m trying to get to Park City.

Carlton Reid 54:00
It’s 40 minutes though, Jim. That’s that’s, that’s that’s incredibly doable. Yeah. And now at tops.

Jim Moss 54:06
Yeah, but it’s still people. People want to land and in 10 minutes, be in their hotel room. And, you know, go out to have a good dinner. And whenever there’s a new show, everyone’s trying to figure out, I got invited to dinners and all the dinners are back in Salt Lake City because people who know Salt Lake City for the outdoor real retail trade show.

Donna Tocci 54:32
These guys have never tried and go to eurobike

Carlton Reid 54:35
Huh, well and get there.

Jim Moss 54:38
Yeah, it’s, you’re right. And it’s gonna be confusing. I wish them all the luck in the world. I’m going I’m going to support them. But like I said, you might not have heard about it because their motto is they only care about retailers and they only really care about retailers. That’s it. They they can care less they came from the paddlesports industry. So I think there’s something going on there. There’s a lot of housing here. Um, they have a, you can demo the mountain the road and you can take your boat over to the lake and demo it there. So it’s

Carlton Reid 55:11
a fabulous place to have a trade show. I know that for a fact and David would know that Frank because he lives there he moves. Yes, we know it’s a fantastic place for for outdoor sports. Let’s get back to the the main premise of the show, Jim. So thank you very much for for bringing that to our attention. I certainly wasn’t aware of a gym. But let’s go back to Tour de France. And I will start so so hopefully you’ve got your anecdotes ready of what your highlights of the tour now I’m going to be slightly left field and and say my highlight hasn’t has been turned France connected, but isn’t absolutely terrifying, because it’d be too obvious for me to talk about Mark Cavendish and which has been phenomenal. But I know I get shot down in flames from Jim, if I if I mentioned mark, he’s clean our champion. Anyway. My highlight would actually be at lackland Lachlan Morton. So Aussie pro, doing this thing called the Alt Tour. So he was in Andorra. Yesterday, the pros are now they’ve gone through into Android today. So he I think he’s left now. So he’s basically a few steps ahead of them riding the whole tour by himself, bike packing, as well. So totally self supported. And he’s also which is the Wii amazing thing, especially in this heat doughnut is he’s riding between all the connection points as well. So he’s got to be a few days ahead of the pros, because he’s riding the whole lot when the pros are getting in their air conditioned coaches and driving off or sometimes they go, they fly. He’s going to be riding the whole thing. So if you haven’t been following what Lachlan Morton has been doing and he has been doing an amazing I know he f racing, and Cannondale, who and Rapha who are supporting him. They’re getting huge coverage compared to the coverage they’re getting for the from the EF racing team who are racing in the Tour de France. So they’ve created this, this, this almost this event that’s getting almost as much coverage as the Tour de France itself. It’s just truly amazing. But I that’s my personal highlight, partly because it’s my son’s personal highlight because he Lachlan Morton is one of his heroes. So my son is a big, big long distance cycle tourist. And he’s been really inspired by Lachlan, and what he’s doing, and the videos are fantastic. If you haven’t watched them go and catch them up. So Donna, what’s what’s your highlight of this year’s tour? Oh, doggy. Well, that’s your answer, doggy. Where do you

Donna Tocci 57:46
hearing Jim’s dog. But also what Laughlin is doing is he is he’s writing for the world bike relief. And they have raised yesterday mentioned that for for 2557 bikes.

Carlton Reid 58:01
Yeah, another another reason to think is amazing. Yes, yes, yes.

Donna Tocci 58:05
And people are coming out, and they’re cheering him on as well. He’s getting a lot of good press. And he’s riding 12 hours a day in the heat, but so that is an absolute great highlight. Button mine and Jim, please don’t hate me and don’t sit your dog on. Is there it’s Cavendish, but it’s the moments away from the race. So I’m that the genuine emotion from him. As he as he wins the stage, that genuine joy from his team. You know, it’s not another ho hum. It’s the emotion that they all have. Because sometimes, you know, you see people that went a lot, and they’re like, yep, there’s another one. He’s not like that. I’m also that picacho realised the significance of all of this and gave Cavendish, his yellow jersey from that day, and then cap gave him a green jersey, but still respect, but there was snapped there. And then I also just loved as a dad the other day when Kevin just set the record. They were saying, Oh, your son will love this. And he said, Well, I have four children. And he said but one Yes. My one child is very into cycling, but I have children. It’s Casper, his little boy Casper. Casper. Yeah. So those are the moments that I’m enjoying is actually seeing that the Hume the human side. And then of course, Matteo vanderpol dedicating his stage went to his grandfather was really,

Carlton Reid 59:42
huh, that’s wonderful. Jim, Jim. Your highlights

Jim Moss 59:47
quite different also. I am sort of amazed at the number of different countries that are represented in the tour this year. I know That sounds a little different. But the tour used to be all European. Then it branched out a little bit and to the stances people say, and Russia and Colombia. And and if you look at the tour roster this year, there are people from every continent except Antarctica. And there are people from countries that had never been in the tour before. And and they’re not making anything out of it. I think it’s finally pretty neat that the tour really represents most of the world. And then my big thing, of course, is Laughlin. And talk about a personality. If I guarantee you if a little kid runs out on the road and sees Laughlin riding past and cheers the mom Laughlin is gonna stop and say hi, and talk to the kid. He lives here trains hear a lot. And and you’ll hear somebody say, Yeah, and I got passed by luckily on the day said, Hi, I was doing a good job. And I talked to him for a minute while he slowed down to ride with me because I was talking to him. And then at the same time, because that Duff, he’s just terrific. climbs here. I mean, yeah, he’ll he’ll ride 10 hours up and down the mountains here is a really a nice guy, besides just an unbelievable ability to just get on the bike and stay on the bike and keep hauling. But so personality wise, he’s just, there’s none better. Because Because, you know, we’ve all dealt with these exotic personalities that, you know, right in the tour. Although I saw a couple, you know, I ran into a couple pros lately that have been really nice to talk to. So anyway, um, yeah, the vast number of different countries represented individually by the tour is pretty interesting this year. And a locklin’s personal tour, I think is it’s extremely exciting and neat. None of us ever came up with the idea that there’s something going on the race that was that exciting this year.

Carlton Reid 1:02:16
And, Jim, thank you ever so much for giving us those highlights. And for being on today’s show. We have been recording for just a few seconds under an hour. So we will get there. Because we have got to go and I haven’t actually know the results of today’s stage. And I know who was roughly out ahead, but I don’t know. Professor, I don’t want anybody tell me either.

Jim Moss 1:02:42
I have no idea. But I Oh, good. Good. I’d love to get in here, Carlton. Go What? So the Boy Scouts of America at their 3800 camp just south east of Denver starting Memorial Day 2022 are going to be putting on a five race three day consumer Expo. Stay tuned, it’s going to be something big. It’s going to be something exciting. We had a gravel bike race there 129 mile gravel bike race, four and a half hours of the winter. People loved it. So we’re going to blow this up and make it a big cycling event. There are courses for downhill courses, beginner courses, mountain bike, gravel and cross courses and we’re going to have a road race or road ride and

Carlton Reid 1:03:28
you have a website

Jim Moss 1:03:30
there’s no website for that already gym or not. The decision was made a couple days ago. We don’t have a name yet let alone Okay, when we get it just put it on your calendar or something to do Memorial Day weekend.

Carlton Reid 1:03:41
Okay, sorry, what day is that? I have no idea when that is done.

Jim Moss 1:03:45
It’s the end of May May 31. Yet 2720 2930 on May 2022. thing Okay, thank you. Thank you for that.

Carlton Reid 1:04:00
Well, Jim can carry on going and give us your your website details how people can get in touch with you.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:08
Recreationlaw.com is my website or Jim at rec-law.us or just Google recreation law and you’ll find me.

Carlton Reid 1:04:23
Excellent. And Donnawrap up the show for us by telling us how people can get in touch with you, Donna.

Donna Tocci 1:04:29
This has been so much fun. I’m so glad we did this, um, Twitter and Instagram just at Donna Tocci. You can find me both places.

Carlton Reid 1:04:38
Wonderful. Just spell that t o c c i.

Donna Tocci 1:04:41
Yeah, that’s it. That’s the one.

Carlton Reid 1:04:44
Wonderful. Well, Jim and Donna. Yeah, I agree with you on it. It’s been a blast. Thank you very much for for taking the time of not watching the tour. Although you did say you watching the evening, didn’t you before the show started so I do Yeah, but you don’t want any spoilers. Definitely. So I won’t spoil it. Africa I don’t know. But thank you to you both for being on today’s show. And thanks to the listeners for for being with us to listen to you. And thank you for David for giving us that ad break. He is currently actually sheltering from the the heatwave by climbing up into the mountains near his home. So thoughts and prayers to anybody who is suffering that heat including I’m coming full circle here, including the riders in the Tour de France, and maybe they will have to change the timings for that.

Carlton Reid 1:05:34
So thank you so much and we will speak again.t

Carlton Reid 1:05:37
Thanks to Donna Tocci there, and to Jim Moss baking or being soaking wet in America, and it was Donna being rained upon and Jim baked, but thanks to you also for listening to the spokesmen cycling podcast show notes and more, as always can be found on the-spokesmen.com It’s only one more week of the Tour de France. So I’m sure you’ll be listening and watching that and hopefully we’ll get the spokesman crew together again. But meanwhile, get out there and ride