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Still Freewheelin
Ariel and I went Freewheelin today in St. Paul as a follow-up to the story that we did last week at the DNC in Denver.
Aside from the fact that discovering free bikes is one of the top three highlights from our trip, we wanted to do a follow-up because there was a healthy competition between Denver and St. Paul-Minneapolis for number of rides and miles earned.
But more importantly, we didn't ride the bikes in Denver. Today, we more than made up for that in St. Paul.
Pedaling for the Gulf Coast
As part of their ongoing DNC/RNC free bike program, Freewheelin sponsors Bikes Belong and Humana are donating $10 for each mile earned to help with the Hurricane Gustav relief effort in the Gulf Coast.
When we arrived at the bike depot near the Xcel Energy Center, Freewheelin had managed to raise $127,025 this week for the Gulf Coast but they ran into some problems trying to beat Denver's numbers.
Denver logged 5,500 rides and 26,500 miles when the project ended. With five hours left in the week, Minneapolis-St. Paul had logged only 1,818 rides and 12,702 miles.
Bikes Belong Executive Director Tim Blumenthal says that the timing was to blame for the lower totals in the Twin Cities. Monday was Labor Day and many people were visiting the very popular state fair and Tuesday it rained.
But Blumenthal says that the Gulf Coast donations served as a motivation and the week turned out better than they imagined.
Ease On Down the Road
Ariel and I went on a beautiful ride along the Mississippi River, snapped photos of the U.S. Coast Guard and an “Obama” boat, waved at drivers on the street and laughed about how much fun the ride was.
We visited downtown St. Paul, I ducked into Macy's (don't ask) while Ariel snapped some more photos of another Code Pink action near the convention perimeter.
On the way back to the bike depot we headed down a steep hill with tons of traffic. I got off the bike and eased it down the street while Ariel flew down the block, apparently too fast for the police stationed on the corner to notice and warn her that she was turning into heavy traffic.
She had a rough go with the gear-shift, but she managed to make it to the median and out of the path of several big rigs. It took me a little while to catch up.
When we returned to the depot we found that we had raised about $30 each for the hurricane relief effort.
It was quite an adventure!