Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Bike Wise Breakfast

On Thursday morning the people of Wanaka were invited to ride their bike to work or school and call into the Lake Wanaka Center to receive a free breakfast. Bike Wise is, to quote their website

"....is a nationally coordinated event that promotes safety and biking as a sustainable, fun, healthy and enjoyable means of transport. Bike Wise is funded by the NZ Transport Agency and the Ministry of Health and is the only nationwide programme of cycling events."


Jo Robinson, the Road Safety Advisor for CODC and QLDC organised this event and as always, it was awesome. The breakfast ran from 7:30 until 9:30 and from what I've heard there were about 250 riders who turned up. Well done Wanaka!

Since I'm now involved with the QLDC school travel plan process and a very keen mountain biker I would not miss this event for the world. I was given the amusing, if not slightly stressful and hectic task giving out the spot prizes. We had such a fantastic turnout of riders from Wanaka Primary School. Many of those students were in my compost classes that week anyway.

At about 8:30 we had a group ride to school. Thankfully we had a couple of very large trucks with lots of flashing lights to lead and tail us. Everyone looked awesome in their hi vis vests and such safe riders. Lots of help from the parents too, which is always great to see.

What this did bring home to me though was how crazy so many drivers are in the morning, especially around schools. Come on, slow down, it's not that hard.


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