This year, we hope to offer our full 3-session package in 3 different towns – Portland, South Portland, and Westbrook – as well as a few standalone “Train Your Bike” courses in between. For those who elect the full package, we will ride together through such challenge areas as the Casco Bay Bridge (and show you how to handle the ends), arterials such as Forest Avenue and perhaps outer Congress Street, a number of challenging intersections, and in the Westbrook tour, William Clarke Drive and the traffic circle at Main and Cumberland Streets. And we’ll have fun (and be safe) doing it!

Navigating Woodfords Corner as a group, July 2011

The Classes

To review, the curriculum consists of 3 sessions:

1. Train Your Bike, a skills class that takes place in a parking lot;
2. Truths and Techniques of Traffic Cycling, a classroom discussion-oriented presentation about bike laws, traffic dynamics, and problem solving strategies;
3. A City Tour, where we ride as a group through the city and stop to discuss and ride through especially challenging features.

The first two sessions may be taken individually, but both are required for the last. Find more details here.

The Schedule

May and June dates are firm, the rest are subject to change as the season progresses. Note color coding to easily identify each type of session.

Registration is now open for the May and June classes, here. Registration for subsequent classes will open as the time approaches. We are looking forward to an enjoyable summer of pedaling for fun and transportation, and we hope to meet you along the way!

A student navigates Forest Avenue inbound approaching the I-295 interchange.

Toni Ferrell

I am pleased to introduce a certified co-instructor for this course, Toni Ferrell. Toni took the Cycling Savvy Instructor seminar with me in Orlando in early April, and has since taught several sessions in her town of residence, Fort Myers, FL. She is an architect by trade, and as such, one of the program’s best sidewalk chalk road diagram artists! She has agreed to visit Maine to help me teach this session!

We start on Friday evening, August 26, with the Truth & Techniques of Traffic Cycling classroom session. This class uses guided discussion with video and animation, to familiarize students with bicycle-specific laws, traffic dynamics and problem-solving strategies. Students discover that bicycle drivers are equal road users, with the right and ability to control their space. This class will be held at the Portland Public Services office at 55 Portland Street (map), starting at 6 PM sharp and ending on time at 9 PM. A bike is not required for this class.

John doing the Cone Weave

Next up is the Train Your Bike skills session on Saturday morning, August 27, starting at 9 AM. This session will take place in the parking lot of the Riverton Community Center (map). It is designed to help you to become more comfortable on your bike, from the basics of starting and stopping through using your brakes and gears, to help you gain confidence for trails or roads. This class may be taken by itself, or as part of the entire package.

July Tour on Forest Ave.

After a lunch break, students taking the full package will continue on to the Tour of Portland. We will ride down Forest Avenue and across the Casco Bay Bridge, studying a series of challenge areas and discussing how to approach them. Students will then have the opportunity to try the feature, alone if comfortable or with a partner if not. We will return to the Riverton parking lot by 5 PM.

The classroom and parking lot sessions may be taken á la carte for $30 each, or you may buy the full package for $75.

*** Register here now! ***

For those who want the full package, we start on Friday evening, July 8, with the Truth & Techniques of Traffic Cycling classroom session. This class uses guided discussion with video and animation, to familiarize students with bicycle-specific laws, traffic dynamics and problem-solving strategies. Students discover that bicycle drivers are equal road users, with the right and ability to control their space. This class will be held at the Portland Public Services office at 55 Portland Street (map), starting at 6 PM sharp and ending on time at 9 PM. A bike is not required for this class.

Next up is the Train Your Bike skills session on Sunday morning, July 10. This session may be taken standalone as well as with the other two classes. As before, it will take place at the Maine Mall parking lot, across from the Cornerbrook Shopping Center at the corner of Gorham and Fodon Roads (map), from 9 AM to Noon. It is designed to help you to become more comfortable on your bike, from the basics of starting and stopping through using your brakes and gears, to help you gain confidence for trails or roads.

Between Train Your Bike and the afternoon Tour of Portland, students are encouraged to join us for an optional short social ride from Noon to 1 PM. We will ride in a group at a relaxing pace, buy our own lunches at a local convenience store, and eat them in a pleasant shady park in the Red Brick neighborhood. You are welcome to participate in the lunch ride whether or not you intend to stay with us in the afternoon.

Sunday at 1:30 PM, we begin the Tour of Portland section of the full course. Leaving on our bikes from the Mall area, we will spend the next 3.5 hours visiting areas all around Portland, learning how to get through them safely and confidently as drivers of human-powered vehicles. This session is designed to give you the confidence and skills to handle any situation you might encounter. We will end up back at the Mall by 5 PM.

The classroom and parking lot sessions may be taken á la carte for $30 each, or you may buy the full package for $75.

Register Here Now!

This exciting new bicycle confidence curriculum is premiering in Maine with a Train Your Bike session to be held on Saturday morning, June 11, 9 AM, at the Maine Mall parking lot across from the Cornerbrook Shopping Center and Panera Bread. This 3-hour skills class is designed to help you to become more comfortable on your bike, from the basics of starting and stopping through using your brakes and gears, to help you gain confidence for trails or roads. At the conclusion of the class, you are invited to join us for an optional 3-mile leisurely group ride to pick up lunch and picnic in a pleasant park in the Red Brick neighborhood.

The Train Your Bike session is the skills development portion of the 3-session Cycling Savvy curriculum. It may be taken stand-alone for $30, or as part of the entire Cycling Savvy sequence, $75 if you sign up for the entire 3 courses at once. (The first Truth & Techniques classroom session and on-road Tour of Portland will be scheduled soon and will be repeated several more times this season.) Train Your Bike and Truth & Techniques may be taken in either order, but both are prerequisites for the Tour of Portland.

Use this form to register now!

Welcome to the Southern Maine section of Cycling Savvy! This site will provide you with the latest information on our progress in bringing this great traffic cycling curriculum to Southern Maine. You can subscribe to our local news feed and calendar and contact me.

We are just about to schedule our first class, a Train Your Bike session, perfect for people getting back on their bikes who may be unsure of their bike handling skills. This will soon be followed by a classroom session and the Tour of Portland on-road session.

What is Cycling Savvy? It is a new cycling curriculum geared especially to the intown adult rider who wants to use his or her bike for transportation as much as possible. Our motto is “Empowerment for Unlimited Travel.” The curriculum is designed to show students simple strategies to eliminate barriers to their bicycle travel, and ride with ease and confidence in places they might never have thought possible. The object of the course is not to turn people into road warriors. Being a confident, competent cyclist has nothing to do with speed or bravado. You don’t need either of those things to have access to the entire transportation grid.

A few words about me, if I may. First and foremost, I’m not an athlete. I wouldn’t have called myself a cyclist before I started riding my bike to work in 2002. My reasons for riding to work initially had more to do with the environment and politics than fitness and sport. Since then, however, I’ve found that I do enjoy it, and being more in shape is a great side effect! I own very little cycling-specific clothing, because I can get away without it on my 5-mile each way commute, most of the year. (Cycling-specific clothing has its place, just not necessarily as required gear for the short-distance transportationalist.)

When I began cycling to work, I didn’t know anyone else who did it, and had very little idea how to do it. I had a vague sense that I was supposed to ride on the right, with traffic, and follow the same rules, but that’s it. Initially through self-education on the Internet, I learned about the “vehicular cycling” philosophy, which on the one hand seemed like common sense, but on the other, has accumulated a lot of cultural baggage. I was surprised to learn that there was controversy in some circles over bike lanes, which I had never thought much about before. However, since there were no bike lanes on my commuting route (and still aren’t), I simply learned to ride with traffic, at first tentatively and then, in more recent years, more assertively and confidently.

After a few years, I wanted to become more active in the bicycle community, and got my feet wet helping to lead an effort, with Andy Greif of the Community Bicycle Center in Biddeford, to collect and send several  hundred used bikes to East Biloxi, MS, in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That was my introduction to many of the local bike advocates with whom I still work today, including those as at the Bicycle Coalition of Maine, where I am now a Board member. I got interested in the advocacy and encouragement end of things, and joined the Portland Bicycle Pedestrian Committee. I also took what was then called Road I (now Traffic Skills 101) from the League of American Bicyclists, and several years later, decided to become a League Cycling Instructor (LCI) with the same organization.

My emphasis at this point is almost entirely on cyclist education. On my way to this place, my computer programmer’s brain became interested in the traffic engineering side of the infrastructure questions; I studied up on standards and operational issues, and continue to informally advise on infrastructure matters to the Portland Bike Network Committee. But those who work with me know that I have strong reservations about paint as the sole answer to the problems bicyclists face on the roads.

Without getting into all that here, I’ll just say that prefer to take the more positive approach of being for something rather than against something (with a few exceptions like door zone bike lanes), which brought me to Cycling Savvy. I believe strongly in the equality of bicyclists in the transportation system, and in the effectiveness of confident bicycle driving for getting everywhere you need to go, regardless of the presence or lack of special bicycle infrastructure, which will never go everywhere you need it to go anyway. What I am for is educating cyclists to empower themselves today to ride confidently anywhere for transportation. By teaching and promoting Cycling Savvy, I am putting my money where my mouth is and doing something about it.

Please join us! Take a class! It could change the way you look at your bicycle, not to mention your place on the road.