Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society

Beginning March 11 and continuing every Thursday evening at 6:00 P.M., EBC will be offering a series of how-to bike maintenance seminars.  We’ll start things off on Thursday the 11th with a basic bike maintenance and tune up class. No previous experience is required.  Bring your bike if you have one or come and practice on our bikes!  All courses are free for EBC members and $5 for non-members.  While registration is not mandatory it is strongly recommended as courses will be capped at ten people. To register, please email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  And make sure to check out our calendar for upcoming courses covering topics from wheel care to drivechain overhauls!

Help Earth’s General Store move to its new location by bike!  Bring your backpacks, panniers, racks and trailers. Don’t have a bicycle trailer? We’ll have some at Earth’s General Store that we can hook up to your bicycle for the move.

Earth’s General Store is located at 10832 Whyte Ave, but is moving to its new location at 9506 Whyte Ave.  Show up between 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm this Sunday, January 10, 2010 at the old location (10832 Whyte Ave) and help us to make the move by bicycle.  Bring whatever you’ve got to carry stuff.  If you want to hook a trailer up to your bike, we’ll have the trailers at the store ready to connect.

See you on Sunday!

Dance Party! On Friday December 18th, for the first time ever, EBC will be having a dance party at Bikeworks! Come on down to the shop starting at 9 PM to pump away those winter blues and Pump Up the Jams! All ages - cash bar (bring your ID)

Each month, we try to host a fun event to thank our many volunteers for making EBC the great organization it is.

This month we are having a movie night–we will be screening The Triplets of Bellevue and The Bicycle Thief at Bikeworks, starting at 6:30pm until about 11:30pm, on Saturday, November 28, 2009. Pizza and sodas will be provided by EBC, but feel free to bring snacks.

If you’ve volunteered at all this year, we’d like to thank you for your help, so come on by. And if you haven’t had a chance to take part in any EBC activities yet, come by too and get to know everyone.

For more information, please see http://edmontonbikes.ca/calendar.

BikeWorks will be closed tomorrow (Sunday, September 13).

Come to our AGM instead, at Parkallen Community League Hall (11104 65 Ave) from 1-4pm.  We’ll feed you, and you can learn more about the organization.

Are there features you think the website could use?  Interface changes you’d like to see?  Would you like to help us set up a secure membership database, acquire a new computer, and improve the way EBC uses computers?

We’re looking for someone with technical computer skills that can maintain and improve our website (involves using ExpressionEngine CMS, PHP and HTML), and set up our computer(s) with access to a (yet-to-be-created) membership database, and perhaps bikes-for-sale and sales database.  There are probably plenty of other jobs just waiting for someone to do, too.

If you’ve got some talent with computers, and would like to gain some great volunteer experience while helping us out at the same time, come to our AGM on September 13, 2009 and join us.

Need your bike fixed? Come down to 85 Ave and 104 St and we’ll fix it up for free.  You’ll find us at the Fringe bicycle parking from 11am-8pm (fixing bikes from 12pm-4pm)  .

Need more than just a minor fix-up?  Head down to our shop, at 10047 80 Ave (map). We’re open on Saturday from 1pm-5pm.

Can’t make it to either? We’re still open 7 days a week!

Free annual memberships to everybody that attends the AGM ($30 cash value, but so much more than that: $2/hr shop access, free courses, and support of our advocacy andwork in the community).

Over $250 in door prizes from EBC and MEC will be given out, just for showing up.  $200 in awards for dedication to cycling (nominations are open until September 8: nominate someone today!).  Free food.  Most importantly, a chance to get involved with making this city a better place for cyclists, pedestrians and everyone else that lives actively. (And, by extension: car drivers, since there’ll be fewer cars on the road!)

Be there.  1-4pm, Sunday, September 13, 2009, at Parkallen Community League Hall (11104 65 Ave).  For more details, click here.

Do you love your pyrohy? Holubsti, borshch, kovbasa and pampushky?

Did your stomach just implode in an uncontrollable hunger after reading those words?

Ride with us to the Ukrainian Heritage Village (just east of Elk Island Park—about 55km each way).  It’s a slow, leisurely ride with bike mechanics and pit stops, so you don’t have to be super-fit to come (and you may want to go on your own if you prefer fast rides).  But you do want to be able to ride the entire 110km in one day, or else have someone pick you up at the village if you only want to go one way.

You can view a map of last year’s route here. Note that this year we’re departing from Route 99 Diner (8820 99 Street ), not BikeWorks.

For full details, click here.

If you happen to share that love of a breeze across your face as you’re pedaling your way to school or work or grocery shopping, making contact with the people around you (and occasionally running into friends serendipitously), listening to the birds and feeling the sun across your arms, then you might just be right to get involved with setting the direction of EBC.

We’re looking for fresh board members, committee members (you don’t need to be on the board), and volunteers to take on organizational tasks. It’s great for your community (and not bad on your resumé), and you’ll be directly involved in steering Edmonton towards a more bike-friendly near-future.

Come to our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Sunday, September 13, 2009.  There you’ll meet all sorts of people interested cycling: old dudes on recumbent bikes, couples on tandems, hipsters with fixies, pedal-mashing mountain bikers, and the owners of a menagerie of two- or three-wheeled vehicles (and the occasional 4-wheeler, for those days when you just need it).

You can learn about what we’ve been up to for the past year, what we’re looking forward to for the next few years, and how you can get involved with setting our course.

And we’ll totally be feeding you.  I might go so far as to suggest that it will be quality food.

And we’ll be giving you door prizes, like this Swobo Long-Sleeved Merino Jersey ($138.00) from Mountain Equipment Co-op.  And this pair of MEC Cuffo 2 Capris ($50), specifically designed for cycling.  Not good enough?  Maybe you need the MEC Rackpack Backpack ($33) to carry your loot home in.

Did we mention that if you win something, and it’s the wrong style or size for you, you can take it to MEC to exchange it?

Maybe you already have everything you could ever want from MEC.  You want something from EBC.

We’ve got ding-dong bells.  We’ve got motion-activated wheel lights that make patterns when your wheels spin.  We’ve got silicone tie-on bike LEDs (yeah, Knog frog knock-offs).  We’ve even got a bike-mounted umbrella holder, for that bit of Danish class.

So come. Get involved.  I’ll fix your bike for you while you’re there.

You can read more about the AGM here.

You know you want one of these:

Corvine Thain, vice-president of the Oil City Derby Girls, insists her crew won’t be wearing their roller gear for the event. “Our bearings might seize.”

Thain isn’t kidding. The ladies have yet to test their raft, an eight-metre-long, two-metre-tall paddlewheel constructed from old bed frames and tandem bicycles. It could be sink or swim.

—Edmonton Journal (full story)

Every year at the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters’ Society annual general meeting (AGM), we award two people with awards recognizing their contribution to the cycling community. These awards are gift certificates to Mountain Equipment Co-op (no useless plaques here), and recognition during our AGM, in our newsletter, and here on our website.

The Dale Allsopp Award is awarded to people for bringing something special to the organisation (innovation, volunteering, energy). The Jack Grainge Award is given to celebrate a life-time commitment to cycling in the broader community. You can read more about the awards and the individuals we’re commemorating here.

If you have someone to nominate for either award, send an e-mail to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with a paragraph or two (or more, if you like) explaining why your nominee deserves the award.  The deadline for nominations is September 8, 2009 and recipients will be selected by the board of EBC.

Our AGM will be on Sunday, September 13, 2009 and is open to the public (whether or not you’re a member).  For more details about the AGM, click here.

Date: 9am - 11am, Saturday, July 11, 2009
Location: MEC parking lot (12328 102 Ave)

We’re going to be tabling at the MEC Bike Swap on July 11. We’ll bring along a nice bike or two, some choice vintage parts, patches and other EBC specials for sale.

There will be a variety of activities including:

• A bike swap/chance to off load any bike related paraphernalia you no longer love (CASH only)
• Some music to soothe the cycling blues away
• Mechanic checks for bikes, to make sure your ride is a fine one,
• A donation bin/place for you to recycle the bits that are not working for you (the donations will go to EBC)
• AND information about cycling in and around the City of Edmonton.

For more info, contact Karly Coleman (MEC Sustainability Coordinator) at 780-488-6614, or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

If you’ve got some of your own stuff that you’d like to sell, tables are free, and you can still register by calling the above number.