The Bluegrass and Beyond

I have been bicycling in the countryside for fun and exercise for nearly two decades. One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2013 was to make most of my short, in-town trips by bicycle once spring arrived.

Spring arrived last Wednesday. Despite below-freezing temperatures in the morning and a cold afternoon wind, two trips downtown and one to the University of Kentucky campus went well. Since then, it has snowed. And snowed.

Oh well, one of these days the weather will catch up to the calendar. When it does, more Kentuckians will be looking to bicycles as a means of transportation, an enjoyable form of exercise and even a vehicle for economic development.

To jump-start those efforts, the Kentucky Rails to Trails Council and several other organizations are planning the first Kentucky Walk Bike Summit, April 11 and 12 at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Frankfort.

The summit was modeled after the Lexington Bike Summit that Mayor Jim Newberry’s administration helped put together in 2007. It gave momentum to several Lexington efforts, including new bike lanes and the highly popular Legacy Trail.

Bill Gorton, a Lexington lawyer who is chairman of the state Bicycle and Bikeways Commission, said the goal of the summit is to share stories and strategies about successful projects around the state with people in other communities who want to do their own.

“We want to create a place where people get together and meet other people and share the stories about how they made these things happen,” Gorton said. “We’re hoping some of the smaller communities will work with the Transportation Cabinet and other sources of funding and say, ‘You know what, we can do that!’”

Among an extensive list of speakers and panelists are Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson, a cyclist who as Louisville mayor began a 100-mile trail around the city; Transportation Cabinet Secretary Mike Hancock; David Adkisson, president of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce; Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists; and representatives of state cycling groups and the Federal Highway Administration.

Gorton said the Transportation Cabinet has become more supportive of bike lanes and trails, such as the one connecting Lexington and Wilmore that was built along old U.S. 68 when the road was widened several years ago.

“It took the engineer in the district to say, ‘Hey, we can do that,’” Gorton said. “But these things need continued attention and advocacy.”

In addition to making existing roads safer for cyclists, Gorton said recreational trails can become important economic development assets. They are a part of the Beshear administration’s focus on “adventure tourism.”

One such effort involves converting abandoned rail lines into trails. Kentucky has only about 30 miles of those trails scattered around the state, and most are short. The most ambitious project now under way is the Dawkins Line, which would be a 36-mile trail in Breathitt, Johnson and Magoffin counties.

“There’s lots to see and experience in rural Kentucky, and by creating a destination like that, it can serve as the nucleus of other tourist activities,” Gorton said. “If you could link these with Kentucky State Parks, which are some of the best in the nation, there are great opportunities. You’ve got to have people see the potential.”

For more information and to register for the Kentucky Walk Bike Summit, go to Kywalkbikesummit.com.

I see the tourism potential for road cycling in Central Kentucky every Memorial Day weekend, when I run a rest stop at the annual Horsey Hundred ride. The Bluegrass Cycling Club, of which I am a member, has sponsored the two-day recreational ride for 35 years.

The Horsey Hundred is two days of supported rides of between 26 and 100 miles. The event attracts about 2,000 participants each year. I have met people at the Horsey who came from across North America, including a big group of Canadians who spend more than a week each year riding our back roads (and spending money at our hotels, restaurants and stores).

The Bluegrass Cycling Club makes money on the Horsey and gives most of it away to bicycle-related philanthropic projects in Central Kentucky. Grants are in the $2,000 to $4,000 range. For more information about applying, go to Bgcycling.org. The application deadline for this funding cycle is May 15.

Surely by then the snow will be gone.

The Alamo in downtown San Antonio is Texas’ most popular tourist attraction. Nearly 200 pioneers, including a group of Kentuckians with knife designer Jim Bowie among them, perished in the 13-day battle with Mexican forces in 1836. Photos by Tom Eblen

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — On Monday, the 185 Kentuckians visiting San Antonio with Commerce Lexington heard about what this city is doing to transform itself. On Tuesday, they heard more about how it is being done.

The bottom line: public-private partnerships that can bring together expertise, consensus and money from a variety of sources to the table. Those partnerships also include the public, which has approved several bond issues and tax increases to fund new public infrastructure necessary for private enterprise to take root and grow.

“It’s all about partners,” said Nelson Wolff, a former legislator and San Antonio mayor who now leads the government of surrounding Bexar County. “It’s all about building personal relationships.”

A morning panel discussion included Ben Brewer, president of Centro San Antonio, an umbrella group that coordinates downtown improvement efforts; Darryl Byrd, CEO of SA2020, the city’s long-term visioning process; and Felix Padrón, director of the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

With them on the panel were three Lexingtonians — Mayor Jim Gray, Lexarts President Jim Clark and Jeff Fugate, president of the Downtown Development Authority — to help relate San Antonio’s experiences to what is happening in Lexington.

Byrd said San Antonio’s long-term planning process has been about setting ambitious goals for world-class excellence, developing strategies and partnerships to accomplish them and continuously measuring progress and results. “We try to divorce ourselves from things that keep us thinking small,” he said.

Brewer said Centro keeps that long-term vision in mind as it coordinates a variety of downtown improvement efforts. One key piece is a downtown improvement district, created by property owners in 1999 to fund extra landscaping, cleaning crews and a staff of 50 tourism ambassadors in the center city. Those commercial property owners pay annual assessments totaling about $2 million to fund the efforts to make downtown welcoming and looking its best.

Padrón discussed the role arts now play in improving the economy and quality of life in San Antonio, including a significant investment in public art. “It’s not art for art’s sake, but art for economic development,” he said.

After the morning session, the Commerce Lexington delegation broke up into groups to tour the Blue Star Contemporary Arts Center; Café College, a resource center to help local middle and high school students pursue college educations; the new Mission Reach of the River Walk; a nearby Toyota plant; and downtown attractions and improvement efforts under way beyond them.

I took the downtown walking tour, during which Brewer showed the group longtime attractions such as the Alamo, the River Walk and the circa 1731 San Fernando Cathedral.

Brewer also highlighted such efforts as the “amigos” hired through the downtown improvement district who answer visitors’ questions and help them find their way; adaptive reuse of old buildings to enhance the city’s unique character; improvements in public transportation, including a bicycle sharing program; and conversion of some former surface parking lots into small public parks.

The Commerce Lexington group returns to Kentucky on Wednesday after a morning session focused on applying lessons learned in San Antonio to improvement projects and programs already under way in Lexington.

Follow the trip

Tom Eblen will post updates and photos from the trip’s final day Wednesday at Twitter.com/tomeblen

The skyline near San Antonio’s Alamo shrine is filled with hotels and the Tower of the America’s, built for the world’s fair Hemisfair ’68. City officials say San Antonio attracts 22 million tourists each year, 75 percent of whom are leisure travelers rather than people attending conventions.

San Antonio’s BCycle bicycle rental system has 19 locations throughout the city’s downtown area. The bikes are designed for short trips in the city, but the system’s popularity falls when temperatures rise into the 90s, as they were Tuesday during Commerce Lexington’s visit.

The circa 1731 San Fernando Cathedral, the oldest continuously functioning religious community in Texas, was among the stops on a downtown walking tour that people on the Commerce Lexington trip took Tuesday in San Antonio.

The long Memorial Day weekend is over and you’re back at work today — thinking about what to do next weekend.

Well, get your bicycle out of the garage Saturday morning and head downtown for the annual Bike Lexington Family Fun Ride, a roll around the city without having to worry about cars getting in your way.

Registration begins at 8 a.m. at Courthouse Plaza, and the ride begins promptly at 10 a.m. There will be a Kids’ Bike Safety Rodeo and children’s bike race from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. There also will be food vendors and a raffle for a free bike from Bike Lexington’s main sponsor, Pedal Power Bike Shop.

The Family Fun Ride route map is below. For more information, go to BikeLexington.com.

May is National Bike Month, a good time to briefly note upcoming events and review recent progress toward making Central Kentucky a better place to ride bicycles for fun and transportation.

■ Bike Lexington, the city’s monthlong celebration, is sponsoring commuter classes and a commuter challenge. The family fun ride through town, which always attracts a couple thousand riders, is June 2. More information: BikeLexington.com.

■ Second Sunday’s third annual Blue Grass Airport event is June 10. Several thousand people always come out for a chance to ride, skate and walk on the auxiliary runway while it is closed to aircraft. More information: 2ndSundayKy.com.

■ The Bluegrass Cycling Club’s 35th annual Horsey Hundred tour is May 26 and 27. Saturday ride options include routes of 26, 35, 53, 75 and 100 miles. Sunday options are 35, 50 and 75 miles. All rides begin at Georgetown College.

The rides are supported with rest stops and “sag wagons” to pick up riders who need help. About 2,000 cyclists will come from across the nation to ride through our beautiful countryside. For more information, go to BGcycling.org.

■ Broke Spoke Community Bike Shop reopened Friday in a much larger space at the new Bread Box development at West Sixth and Jefferson streets. The shop started in late 2010 behind Al’s Bar on North Limestone and Sixth Street.

The non-profit shop “recycles” donated bikes for sale to low-income people. “Our goal is to provide reliable basic transportation at a price anyone can afford,” said Shane Tedder, one of the shop’s volunteer organizers.

Broke Spoke also provides a place where anyone may borrow tools to work on a bicycle in return for an hourly fee or shop membership.

The shop now has a 2,500-square-foot space, thanks to the Bread Box’s developers and an $11,000 grant from the Paula Nye Memorial Foundation, which the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission administers from the fee that motorists pay for “Share the Road” license plates. Other financial backers included the Bluegrass Cycling Club and Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt.

Broke Spoke is open 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday and 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. The Bread Box, a former commercial bakery, also is home to West Sixth Brewing and several artist studios.

Broke Spoke’s new space opens onto the proposed extension of the Legacy Trail, from the Northside YMCA on Loudon Avenue to East Third Street and Midland Avenue. For more information, go to Thebrokespoke.org.

The Bread Box is next to Coolavin Park, whose former tennis courts have become the site of Lexington’s burgeoning bike polo leagues. Last weekend, the park hosted Ladies Army IV, an all-female bike polo tournament that attracted 40 teams with more than 200 athletes from the United States and from five European and Asian countries. Who knew?

■ An important piece of bicycle infrastructure just opened with little fanfare at the double-diamond interchange at Harrodsburg and New Circle roads.

The original design called for a sidewalk. But Urban County Councilman Doug Martin said he was able to work with Bob Nunley and others at District 7 of the state Transportation Cabinet to put a paved bike path on both sides.

That short path might not seem like much to motorists, but it solves a huge problem for cyclists. Crossing New Circle Road can be a major problem on a bicycle, and more solutions like this are needed.

Martin hopes this connection and others along the Harrodsburg Road corridor will allow the Legacy Trail to connect eventually with the new bike path along U.S. 68, providing a safe way to ride all the way from the Kentucky Horse Park to Wilmore, he said.

Meanwhile, Lexington recently installed bicycle detection devices at several intersections where lights often wouldn’t change without a car present. Also, an updated bike-route map of the city will be published in May.

■ Bluegrass Bike Partners is a new regional effort started in Midway to identify and market businesses and organizations that welcome cyclists. More information: Midwayrenaissance.org.

■ Pedal the Planet Bike Shop has become the state’s second organization, after the University of Kentucky, to be certified as a “silver” bike-friendly business by the League of American Bicyclists. The designation recognizes companies and institutions that provide certain ways and incentives for employees to bike to work.

The first Tweed Run was held in London, England, in 2009. Since then, Tweed Runs, or Tweed Rides, have been held in dozens of cities around the world. Here’s the drill: Dress in Edwardian costume, find a vintage bicycle and gather for a leisurely ride through town.

Lexington’s third annual Tweed Ride was Saturday afternoon. I joined some Tweed Riders who came early to ride in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. After the parade,  more than 100 of us gathered at the Sidebar on North Limestone Street, cycled up to the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning for a group portrait on the steps and then rode to a home off Manchester Street for a benefit party for Lexington Bike Polo. Lexington’s talented poster artists, Brian and Sara Turner of Cricket Press, designed this limited-edition poster for the event.

The ride was a lot of fun on a beautiful St. Patrick’s Day, even if it was a bit warm for proper British tweed.  For those who wore tweed anyway, a stiff upper lip came in handy.

Here’s a photo gallery I shot using the Hipstamatic app for iPhone. It added just the right amount of funky retro class. (Click on each thumbnail to enlarge the photo.)

After many years of being a so-called grownup, I returned to riding bicycles for fun and exercise in 1995. Since moving closer to downtown Lexington a few weeks ago, I also have been riding a bike to the office, to interviews and to run errands when I can. It’s an especially easy choice on a beautiful early-spring day like this.

Lexington isn’t a bad city for bicycling, but it could be much better. I think back to what I saw last April when I went on a bicycle trip around Holland with Lexington friends Mike and Janette Heitz.

Here is a good, short video about bicycle transportation in the Netherlands. What’s interesting is not so much how bicycle-friendly that country is now, but how bicycle-unfriendly it was less than four decades ago. Why the change? The Dutch in the 1970s decided that they were tired of automobile traffic congestion, high gasoline prices and huge numbers of traffic fatalities. Do those problems sound familiar?

Some members of Congress, flush with campaign contributions from oil companies, have been trying to take bicycle infrastructure out of highway investment in the name of deficit reduction. That’s a very bad idea, since, among many other benefits, more bicycle infrastructure can reduce the need for more-costly automobile infrastructure in many places.

This country is, geographically, very different from the Netherlands. Among other things, it’s bigger, hillier and more spread out. Bicycles cannot be as big a solution to transportation problems in this country as they are there, but they could be much bigger than they are now in many American towns and cities. As this video shows, if you build it, they will come.

From the Netherlands to America from Bikes Belong on Vimeo.

Creative director Adam Kuhn, project manager Lindsay Rall, partner Brad Flowers, producer Angela Baldridge, contract videographer Ian Friley, partner Griffin VanMeter, and interns Brooke Hurley and Elliot Olson Photo by Angela Baldridge; photo by Baldridge by Ian Friley

Like many successful business partnerships, Griffin VanMeter and Brad Flowers got together in 2008 and built a company because, well, they needed work.

VanMeter had bought and fixed up some North Lexington rental property. Flowers had been a mechanic at Pedal Power Bike Shop.

Both had spent a lot of free time on community projects. Flowers chaired the Mayor’s Bike Task Force and helped organize Bike Lexington and the Shifting Gears charity bike program for Pedal Power and Kentucky Refugee Ministries. VanMeter had organized a bike race and helped friends launch Stella’s Deli and Al’s Bar.

They met at Al’s Bar over ping pong during Flowers’ 30th birthday party in November 2007. They discovered they both had common interests in branding, marketing, event promotion and good pizza. They kept talking over dinners of homemade pizza.

Finally, in fall 2008, they decided to launch a business called Bullhorn. But what kind of business?

“It literally came down to a coin flip between Bullhorn the pizza restaurant and Bullhorn the branding and marketing company,” VanMeter, 31, said.

Branding and marketing won the toss. Now in its fourth year, Bullhorn is getting a lot of attention for its branding creativity and marketing efforts for Lexington businesses and community organizations.

The company recently won its biggest contract yet after answering a request for proposals to bring better design and consistency to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s communications with citizens.

Rather than each city agency designing its own public communications its own way, Bullhorn will create templates for city employees to use, beginning with the annual Fun Guide calendar. The goal is to improve communication and save the city money, said Scott Shapiro, a senior adviser to Mayor Jim Gray.

“Their proposal showed a contemporary, solid design across media,” Shapiro said. “Plus, they clearly love Lexington. They seem like they would do anything to make the city of Lexington shine, and that came across in their proposal.”

(VanMeter donated $1,000 to Gray’s 2010 mayoral campaign, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance database.)

A love of Lexington and Kentucky is a consistent theme, both in Bullhorn’s work and the partners’ personalities. Flowers spends a lot of his free time on local bicycle advocacy. VanMeter started a quirky Facebook page, Kentucky for Kentucky, for Kentuckians to share trivia about the state.

Last November, VanMeter and two friends launched a Kickstarter.com campaign to raise $3.5 million to produce a Super Bowl commercial promoting the greatness of Kentucky. They fell well short of their goal but received priceless international publicity for themselves and Kentucky.

After attending the 2009 Creative Cities Summit in Detroit — and helping to organize one in Lexington the following spring — Flowers and VanMeter sensed that Lexington was changing.

“We were both really inspired by all of these young entrepreneurs who wanted to do something and just did it,” VanMeter said. “We felt like we could see a lot of opportunity, but we needed to change the dialogue about how Lexington saw itself.”

Bullhorn first gained attention for work on behalf of non-profit organizations such as the Blue Grass Community Foundation, Junior League of Lexington, Fayette Alliance and The Plantory, an incubator for social entrepreneurs.

Bullhorn’s first business client was Henkel Denmark landscape. Others have included the local Vespa scooter dealership, Link-Belt Excavators, The Lexington Angler fishing shop, Hayden Construction, Parlay Social and Mt. Brilliant Farm.

About half of Bullhorn’s clients are non-profit organizations. The company has produced several high-quality, storytelling videos that explain an organization or company’s values. The ability to share videos on the Internet makes multimedia storytelling a powerful branding tool that is no longer costly to produce, VanMeter said.

So far, the partners said, they have provided all of Bullhorn’s start-up capital. Revenues have doubled every year. Bullhorn now has three full-time employees, two interns, a part-time bookkeeper and several independent contractors for various services. Bullhorn is looking to hire two more full-time employees: a business-development specialist and a graphic designer.

Bullhorn’s partners hope to keep growing their business without losing its quirky sense of humor and a company atmosphere that encourages outrageous creativity.

“We’re now focusing on making Bullhorn a sustainable business and not just a fun idea,” Flowers said. “As jokey as our public persona is, we’re really serious about being a stable business and staying around.”

As a boy in the late 1960s, Ken Silvestri worked weekends at his grandfather’s fruit stand outside the McCrory’s store on Main Street, where the Lexington Public Library now stands.

Shoppers were beginning to leave downtown for the new Turfland Mall and other suburban stores, “but there were still lots of people on the street,” he recalled.

Then, in 1971, Main and Vine streets became one-way thoroughfares to speed traffic through the city. Other downtown street pairs were converted to become one-way including Short and Second; Maxwell and High; and Limestone and Upper.

“After Main became a one-way street, the traffic was moving so fast it changed the complexion of the place,” Silvestri said. Fewer people walked by, and it was harder for drivers to stop to buy apples and oranges. Sales dwindled at his grandfather’s fruit stand. “After a while, he just closed it,” he said.

Many people now want to return those streets to two-way traffic. The Downtown Master Plan calls for it. The Urban County Council has endorsed it. Mayor Jim Gray has commissioned a study to assess the business, traffic and environmental impacts.

Although Gray favors the switch, he wants a big-picture review and solid data before making any decisions, Scott Shapiro, a senior adviser to the mayor, said in a presentation Thursday to The Lexington Forum.

That review should be completed within 12 to 18 months, Shapiro said. The state Transportation Cabinet must sign off on changes, he said, but state officials “have been great to work with so far and have been very encouraging.”

Many cities that created one-way streets downtown about the time Lexington did have switched back and been glad they did, Shapiro said. But every city and street is different. No matter what decisions are made, some people will complain.

“My experience,” said former council member David Stevens, “has been that we have 300,000 traffic engineers in Lexington, and they all think they know what is best.”

Here is the central question: Does Lexington want a downtown that is better to drive through or come to?

One-way streets do move traffic faster. Suburbanites who commute to downtown offices like that, as do people coming and going from the area’s big events. One-way streets can also be less problematic for emergency and delivery vehicles.

Warren Rogers, a construction executive who said he has looked at cities that switched one-way streets back to two-way traffic, said accidents rose. That makes sense: motor vehicles may be traveling slower, but they mix it up more with each other, as well as with pedestrians and cyclists. And there are simply more pedestrians and cyclists on two-way streets.

“It’s about priorities. Is our priority the car, or is it people?” said Renee Jackson, executive director of the Downtown Lexington Corp., which represents downtown businesses and property owners. “Two-way traffic really is better for business.”

Two-way traffic encourages more people to use sidewalks, businesses have more visual exposure and streets are easier to navigate, especially for tourists and newcomers. Added traffic flexibility can ease congestion by providing more alternative routes.

While the city’s big traffic study is a good idea, here’s the thing: traffic, like water, tends to naturally make its way around obstacles. That’s what happened recently when sidewalk improvements reduced traffic on Main Street and shut it off completely on South Limestone. Drivers adapted.

Downtown is coming back to life, and eliminating most or all of the one-way street pairs is an important next step to making the heart of Lexington more pleasant and prosperous.

Silvestri, the boy who worked at his grandfather’s fruit stand, grew up to be one of Lexington’s major commercial real estate brokers. He says eliminating the one-way streets downtown will be especially good for smaller, locally owned businesses. It will help create jobs and lower vacancy rates, which in turn will raise property values and tax revenues.

Many Lexingtonians will still prefer suburbia to downtown, and that’s fine. Silvestri lives near Hamburg Place, which he points out has its own vexing traffic issues. “But at least,” he said, “the streets over there are two-way.”

When Men’s Health magazine declared in June that Lexington is the nation’s most sedentary city, some people got angry. Others challenged the highly suspect data on which the ranking was based.

But local leaders and health advocates were thrilled. After all, what could be better motivation for changing the ugly truths behind that ranking?

“We know we’re not really the most sedentary city,” Mayor Jim Gray said. “But we also know we’re not the healthiest, either.”

Men’s Health’s slap at Lexington is a focus of this weekend’s Second Sunday celebration, which is likely to bring thousands of people to the CentrePointe meadow downtown from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday. Festivities begin with a Sedentary Parade — that’s a parade that doesn’t move — and continue with a 5K race, a bike ride, a health fair and lots of opportunities for fun and exercise.

This is the fourth year for Second Sunday, a statewide effort in which almost all of Kentucky’s 120 counties close a prominent street and encourage residents to come outside and exercise.

Some communities, including Lexington, have expanded the program to monthly during good weather. For the second year, Blue Grass Airport closed its second runway on the second Sunday of June, and thousands came out to play on it. The airport plans to make it an annual event.

The Men’s Health ranking built support for Get Healthy Lexington, a partnership of local businesses that helps put together Second Sunday and similar initiatives.

So where do we go from here?

Jay McChord, an Urban County Council member and one of Second Sunday’s founders, has some ideas. “What if we gave Men’s Health a better story for next year?” he said. “What if Lexington became an inspiration for the entire country?”

McChord dreams of a follow-up story like this: America’s most sedentary city becomes a model of civic fitness. That attracts national attention and funding from private foundations to help Lexington build more infrastructure to make walking, biking and other physical activity a part of everyday life.

In many ways, America’s fitness landscape is ironic. On one hand, organized youth sports have never been more popular. Adult athletic events such as this weekend’s Bourbon Chase fill up only hours after registration opens. On the other hand, more Americans than ever before are overweight and out of shape, and they suffer from diseases that are the result of sedentary lifestyles.

It is easy to see how that happened. Adults drive more and walk less. They ride elevators and avoid stairs. Children play outside less and with video games more.

Because of safety concerns and suburban subdivision design, parents drive children everywhere rather than letting them walk or ride a bike.

McChord uses an economic analogy: We have the health “rich” and the health “poor,” but we have lost the large “middle class of health.” So how can we rebuild it?

As Lexington grows more dense to preserve farmland and limit the costly infrastructure of suburban sprawl, more attention must be paid to creating a less automobile-centric city, Gray said. That will give people more opportunities to incorporate physical activity into their everyday lives.

McChord said several national philanthropic foundations are giving hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to cities and organizations to help them accomplish significant policy changes that promote good health.

What policy changes could work in Lexington? McChord said city officials want to expand so-called joint-use agreements with schools and churches to make public and private athletic fields and playgrounds more available for everyone to use.

He said it also is important to change city development plans and building codes to encourage more physical activity. For example, McChord said, developers could get tax breaks for including bike racks or other facilities in their projects.

Painting more bicycle lanes on streets and building more multi-use trails are important steps. “The Legacy Trail opened up a lot of people’s eyes to what was possible,” McChord said. “We live in one of the most beautiful places in America. We’ve got to figure out more ways to enjoy it outside of a car.”

If you go

What: 2nd Sunday and Sedentary Parade. Non-moving “parade” kicks off afternoon of activities, health information and demonstrations; food and drinks available.

When: 2-6 p.m. Oct. 9.

Where: Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza, CentrePointe lot and Phoenix Park, downtown Lexington.

Info: (859) 244-1944, Gethealthylexington.org. For activities in your county, go to 2ndsundayky.com.

I have received several phone calls today from people wanting to donate to the Isaac Murphy Bicycle Club, which I wrote about in today’s Herald-Leader. I should have included that information with the column.

Make checks payable to Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden c/o Blue Grass Community Foundation, 250 West Main St., Suite 1220, Lexington, Ky. 40507.  For more information, call (859) 225-3343. The group also has a Facebook page here.

Writer Frank X Walker was bothered last summer when he attended opening-day festivities for the Legacy Trail and saw only a few other people of color.

“I got to thinking about what I could do to change that,” said Walker, 50, who has ridden a bicycle since he was a child in Danville. Walker’s 73-year-old father is an avid cyclist, and his son rides a bike to classes at the University of Kentucky.

Walker had recently published Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, a book of poems based on the life of the great 19th-century black jockey. Murphy’s home in Lexington’s East End neighborhood stood where the trail will begin when it is completed. That gave Walker an idea that many others in Lexington were quick to embrace.

They created the Isaac Murphy Bicycle Club, which organized classes this summer for children in the East End, teaching them bicycle skills, safety and rules of the road with donated second-hand bicycles.

The children also learned about the history of their neighborhood, where more than a century ago, Murphy and other black jockeys and trainers at the old Kentucky Association track helped make Lexington the horse capital of the world.

On Aug. 20, about 25 kids who attended at least two of the three classes this summer will be given new bicycles, helmets, locks, safety lights and water bottles at the YMCA on Loudon Avenue. Then they will all take a ride on the Legacy Trail.

“I remember as a kid how exhilarating it was to ride my first new bicycle,” Walker said. “I want other kids to feel that, too.”

The kids will be encouraged to continue participating in rides and other club activities — and to get their friends and families riding bikes, too. “This might be a way to get people in this part of town walking and riding the Legacy Trail,” Walker said.

The club has received money and volunteer support from many Lexington organizations, including the Urban County Council, the city’s Partners for Youth program, the Bluegrass Cycling Club, the Blue Grass Community Foundation, Dick’s Sporting Goods, the Broke Spoke Community Bicycle Shop, the Police Activities League, the William Wells Brown Neighborhood Association, Seedleaf and the East Seventh Street Center.

“We’ve been collaborating with as many parties as we can find,” Walker said, adding that the club could still use more donations and sponsorships.

The Blue Grass Community Foundation’s Steve Austin, who earlier worked with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Legacy Project, which helped the city build the trail, said, “I want the kids of the East End, like kids anywhere in the city, to feel like it’s their trail, too.”

When I attended a club training session last week, Dave Overton of the Bluegrass Cycling Club was teaching bicycle skills to a couple dozen kids, ages 6 to 14. Afterward, volunteers served them lunch, including a cake decorated with the club’s logo: a jockey riding a bicycle.

“It’s fun to just be able to go out and have fun and do what you like doing,” said Zion Alaboudi, 10, who can’t wait to get his new bike.

The club plans more sessions of classes, and members are considering ways kids could earn bicycles through good school attendance and academic performance. And the East End was a good place to start, but Walker wants the club to eventually have chapters in other neighborhoods citywide.

His larger goal is to get more people of all ages and races on bicycles and walking to improve their health and get to know their community better. Walker, an associate professor of English at UK, has been leading weekly rides for other faculty members on the Legacy Trail. And he is trying to get 100 families to ride bicycles in the annual Roots & Heritage Festival parade, Sept. 10 in the East End.

“This is how you grow it,” Walker said. “You start with kids this age.”

Click on each thumbnail to see complete photo:

On a rare warm day in February 2010, Steve Austin began a bicycle ride from his home in Ashland Park. He is almost finished with it.

Austin didn’t set out intending to ride all 416 miles of Lexington streets inside New Circle Road. But the more he rode that afternoon, the more he thought it wouldn’t be that hard.

“Finding the time and the right weather was my biggest challenge,” said Austin, a vice president at Blue Grass Community Foundation.

Austin rode mostly on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but occasionally during heavy weekday traffic, always starting from his home. With a yellow highlighter, he marked off each street on a well-folded city map, but he didn’t keep track of his total miles ridden. He has only a few streets left to go.

“I was really doing an experiment to see if Lexington is a bikeable city,” he said. “The answer is yes. We tell ourselves it’s not because of traffic, but inside New Circle Road is really compact, although it’s more hilly than it looks from a car.”

Austin, who was trained as a landscape architect and land-use lawyer and has spent much of his career as a city planner, said that viewing Lexington from the seat of a bicycle has given him a new perspective.

For one thing, he was impressed by how courteous drivers were to him. And he was struck by how nice Lexington’s older suburban neighborhoods are — even the less-affluent ones. “But we missed a lot of opportunities as we grew from the core by not building greenways along the creeks to connect them,” he said.

“You can live in a great suburb and still have to drive to everything,” he said. “Retro-fitting the urban fabric to make it more pedestrian- and bike-friendly is going to be one of our challenges over the next few decades” as gasoline prices rise and the population ages.

But that won’t be as difficult, or expensive, as it might sound. Austin discovered that New Circle Road is no more than a 30-minute bike ride from anywhere inside it, and the city is filled with lots of streets going the same direction.

“You can ride almost anywhere without getting on a busy road — a Nicholasville Road, a Richmond Road,” he said, adding that Liberty, Mason Headley and Parkers Mill roads can be just as treacherous.

Austin said small things could make a big difference, such as signs marking good bike routes and cut-throughs at key points — a bridge over the creek behind Lafayette High School, for example, or a pathway behind Picadome Golf Course — that would allow cyclists to avoid busy roads.

“Those are incremental costs compared to the benefits we would get for the city,” he said.

Such small improvements could encourage more bicycle commuters. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey found that only about 1 percent of Lexington’s 143,000 commuters bike to work. “What would it take to get to 10 percent?” Austin wondered.

Austin now bikes to his downtown office several days a week, and he rides around his neighborhood some evenings with his son, who recently got a bicycle for his 9th birthday. Austin, who also has taken up jogging, said he has lost more than 20 pounds and is trying for more.

Austin said his journey also helped him notice things about Lexington that have nothing to do with biking — for example, how some of Lexington’s nicest neighborhoods are only a stone’s throw from some of its most dilapidated. “Yet we’ve kind of compart mentalized things,” he said. “We have mental blinders.”

Austin also noticed University of Kentucky flags on homes in almost every neighborhood. “It sounds kind of cliché, but UK athletics is the unifier, the common reference,” he said. It made him wonder: How powerful would it be if every Lexington child could attend a basketball game in Rupp Arena, if only once?

“I think it’s important for us to get to know our city better,” he said. “And you just don’t get it from the windshield of a car.”

I have a framed photograph of my 35-year-old self covering the 1994 Winter Olympics. I am wearing a colorful Norwegian sweater. But what I always notice first is my chubby face. For the first time in my life, I was getting fat.

My doctor called me on it a few months later. “You need more exercise,” he said bluntly. “Ride a bike. That’s what I do.”

I was never much of an athlete. I hiked as a Boy Scout. I marched with the Lafayette High School band. But after college and marriage, about the only exercise I got was chasing after my two young daughters.

So I bought a road bike, helmet and padded shorts, and started riding around my Atlanta neighborhood. The more I rode, the better I liked it.

I began riding on weekends with the father of one of my daughter’s friends. Soon, I had the stamina and courage to accompany him on long rides. I was comforted that he was an emergency room doctor.

Within a year, I had ridden 2,000 miles. I was 35 pounds lighter, I felt great and friends kept telling me how much healthier I looked. Most of all, I was constantly looking forward to my next ride.

Since moving home to Lexington in 1998, I have continued to ride at least 2,000 miles a year. Now almost 53, I have yet to weigh as much as I did at 35, despite my love for barbecue and bourbon balls.

Men’s Health magazine recently ranked Lexington as the nation’s most sedentary city. That might or might not be true, but studies have shown that most Kentuckians don’t get enough exercise. Doubt the studies? Look around you. Or look in the mirror.

Here is what I have learned from my fitness adventure: Exercise works only if you enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t keep doing it. So find an activity you enjoy.

There is something magical for me about the biomechanical harmony of riding a bicycle. I love going places under my own power. It is a lot like hiking, except the scenery changes faster.

Climbing a big hill on a bicycle is challenging. The reward is the rush you get from flying down the other side. All you hear is wind and the whir of your back wheel’s sprocket; it sounds like a fly reel when a big trout is pulling out the line.

Cycling is best when you ride with other people. You can have some wonderful conversations while pedaling along at 15 or 20 mph, once you learn to pause and resume talking with the noise of wind and traffic.

Several people I ride with in rural Central Kentucky have become close friends. We have shared a lot with one another. It only makes sense; we have had so many miles to talk.

But this might be what I like best about cycling: Each ride is like a mini-vacation in one of the world’s most beautiful places.

I see nuances in the rural Bluegrass landscape on a bicycle that I never notice from a car. Were I not cycling, I would have had no reason to discover  the dozens of lightly traveled country lanes I now know so well. I often ride past beautiful antebellum homes, abandoned distilleries, caves, creeks and waterfalls that most people around here don’t even know exist.

Tuesday morning’s ride was typical. A friend and I met soon after dawn on the edge of Lexington. The sun shone through plank fences, creating beautiful shadow patterns on the road. We sped by horses grazing in fields and saw a young colt being taken for a walk. Birds danced across meadows filled with wildflowers. Squirrels gathered walnuts around stone fences.

We stopped at Windy Corner Market for coffee and a country ham biscuit. I enjoyed those Kentucky Proud calories all the more because I knew they would be long gone by the time we finished our fast, 28-mile ride and parted for our weekday routines.

Cycling has made me healthier and happier. It isn’t just exercise. It’s fun.

Last year’s popular Second Sunday event at Blue Grass Airport will be repeated this weekend. People are invited to bring their bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates, sports equipment and walking shoes to have fun and get some exercise on the airport’s 4,000-foot runway Sunday from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

The free event will offer a number of activities, including a batting cage from the Lexington Legends, sports equipment from the YMCA and a display of various aircraft and safety vehicles, including fire engines, police vehicles, helicopters and unusual airplanes.

Participants can register to win tickets to one of three Florida destinations, courtesy of the airport and Allegiant Air. They also can bring picnics to enjoy while watching aircraft take off and land. During the event, aircraft will be using the airport’s main 7,000-foot runway, so there will be no interruption in flights.

Second Sunday participants should plan to enter the airport grounds from Versailles Road, near the Fire Training Center across from Keeneland Race Course. Parking will be adjacent to the runway. Leashed pets are welcome.

Second Sunday offers monthly events in Lexington and annual events statewide to encourage all forms of physical activity and fitness. Last year, 115 counties participated in the annual Second Sunday program in October, in which a section of road was closed in each county for the afternoon so people could use it for exercise and recreation.

Click here to see reports from last year’s event, which was a lot of fun.

Scooters have always been fun, but with gas prices hovering around $4 per gallon, they’re also looking practical.

“I love it,” said Lesme Romero, owner of Lexington Pasta, who bought an Italian-made Vespa scooter last November to deliver pasta from his shop on North Limestone to restaurants and markets around town.

Romero drives his Vespa almost daily, but has filled the tank only twice, because it gets about 90 miles to the gallon. Downtown parking is easy, he said, and the bright red-and-white scooter is good advertising.

“People see us and say, ‘There’s the pasta guys!’” he said. “I take it to the farmers market and Thursday Night Live, and everybody wants to stop by and see the Vespa.”

Vespa of Lexington has sold nearly 200 scooters since it opened in November 2009 at 198 Moore Drive, said owners Whit Hiler and Michael Wright. The company sells Vespa, Piaggio, Genuine and Sym scooters and services most brands.

While many people buy scooters for fun, an increasing number commute on them, Hiler said. Scooters have been especially popular with people who work at the University of Kentucky (campus parking is easier) and among families that want to go from two automobiles to one.

Scooter prices start at about $2,100 and go to about $9,000, depending on brand, model and engine size, Hiler said. Gas mileage (regular unleaded) ranges from about 50 mpg to nearly 100 mpg. Top speeds range from about 35 mph for small-engine models, such as the one Romero bought, to 90 mph.

A motorcycle license is required to drive all but the scooters with the smallest engines, which still require a driver’s license or learner’s permit. Helmets are strongly recommended.

The most popular scooters the shop sells are Vespas — Italian for “wasp.” The Italian company Piaggio, which made aircraft during World War II, began making Vespas in 1946 to satisfy Europe’s need for cheap transportation. The Vespas steel body, which has become a design classic, fully encloses the drivetrain, and there is a covered ledge for the driver’s feet.

There was a Vespa dealer on New Circle Road until 1981, when the company withdrew from the U.S. market for two decades. Other Vespa dealers in the region now are in Louisville, Elizabethtown and Cincinnati.

“Lexington has been a good market for scootering,” said Hiler, adding that his shop ranked third in sales among Vespa’s 42 dealers in the Great Lakes region in 2010.

Local enthusiasts last year formed the Circle 4 Scooter club, which has a Facebook page and sponsors rallies and other events. “Scooters can save you a lot of money, but they’re also fun — that’s the biggest benefit,” Hiler said. “We call ourselves fun dealers.”

A cheaper ride

Lexington bicycle shops also are seeing sales rise along with gas prices.

“We’ve had a pretty strong season so far this year with gas prices doing what they’re doing,” said Billy Yates, owner of Pedal Power Bike Shop at South Upper and Maxwell streets. “Even if people commute (by bicycle) just one or two times a week, they’re starting to see a savings when they fill up at the pump.”

Pedal Power is selling more practical bikes than in recent years — hybrid models with upright seating, fenders, racks, baskets and bags. “It’s a very viable means of transportation for many people,” he said.

That is because statistics show many automobile trips are within a mile or two of someone’s home, said Wendy Trimble, owner of Pedal the Planet bike shop, 3450 Richmond Road.

“Our sales are at an all-time high,” Trimble said. “We attribute some of it to commuting and recreation, but a lot is health and fitness issues. Bicycling is a great, low-impact way to lose weight, and it’s fun.”

You will see more bicycles on Lexington streets Monday than on any other day of the year. The annual Bike Lexington festival is expected to draw several thousand people to activities at Courthouse Plaza and a car-free family fun ride around town. More information is at BikeLexington.com.

Click on each thumbnail to see complete photo:

Keep your fingers crossed, but it looks as if the weather will cooperate for Central Kentucky’s big bicycle weekend. Events are planned for cyclists of every kind, from kids and newbies to spandex-clad regulars:

Friday-Sunday: The Bluegrass Cycling Club hosts its 33rd annual Horsey Hundred tour of rural Central Kentucky. The event begins Friday afternoon with registration at Georgetown College and a pre-ride party at Royal Springs Park in Georgetown. On Saturday, there will be rides of 26, 36, 50, 76 and 102 miles to choose from. On Sunday, the rides are 34, 50 or 70 miles. There will be lunch and plenty of rest stops both days, plus a party in Midway on Saturday evening. For more information and registration, go to www.bgcycling.org.

Saturday: The Bike Bash takes place at Cheapside Park in downtown Lexington from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. There will be music by the Matt Duncan Band, “slow” bike races and a stunt show by professional mountain bike rider Mike Steidley.

Monday: Several thousand cyclists will converge on Courthouse Plaza in downtown Lexington for the annual Bike Lexington events. This free day of fun, sponsored by Pedal Power Bike Shop, includes a car-free, 10-mile family fun ride through Lexington that starts at noon. Other activities include a bike safety rodeo for kids at 10 a.m., bike races all afternoon, vendors and more. For more information: www.bikelexington.com.

If, like me, you’re a fan of Debra Hensley and her always-fun-and-interesting “Social $timulus” events, mark your calendar for Friday, July 8, from 5:30 p.m. until 9 p.m.

The insurance agent and former Urban County Council member will be highlighting the North Limestone neighborhood, which has seen a strong revival in just the past couple of years. The featured non-profit organization for this event will be Broke Spoke Community Bike Shop, which I wrote about in this column.

Like all Debra’s previous events, I’m sure it will be a great way to meet new people and learn new things about Lexington. Here is a column I wrote about the idea behind Debra’s project. And here is her first “movie trailer” for this event, “Gearing up for good”:

It is Monday afternoon as I write this, and outside my office window, Lexington looks like a giant snow globe. Fat flakes are pounding the icy pavement, and all I can think about is how much I want it to warm up so I can ride my bike again.

Spring will come eventually. When it does, Lexington will be an even better place for bicycling, thanks to many people’s hard work.

The Fayette County Public Schools was awarded a $20,775 grant last month from the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission to expand its bike-safety program. The money came from voluntary fees paid by people buying “Share the Road” license plates.

Last year, many of the school system’s physical education teachers were trained by certified instructors from the League of American Bicyclists. The next phase of the program includes purchasing 70 more bikes and helmets to teach all third-, fourth- and fifth-graders how to safely ride a bike.

City officials recently finished “complete streets” guidelines for adding bike lanes, whenever possible, to new and renovated streets and roads, said Kenzie Gleason, Lexington’s bike/pedestrian coordinator.

Lexington has 25 miles of bike lanes, including recent additions to South Limestone, Vine Street, Polo Club Boulevard, Todds Road and the Newtown Pike extension. An additional 15 miles have been funded. Those bike lanes will be added as part of improvements to Maxwell Street and Clays Mill Road this year, and to Southland Drive next year.

Lexington also now has 22 miles of bike/walking trails, including the new Legacy Trail. Six more miles of trails have been funded and are in development. Twenty more miles are being studied or designed but are not funded.

The Legacy Trail’s initial eight-mile section, from the YMCA on Loudon Avenue to the Kentucky Horse Park, has been popular since it opened in September. When it has been too icy or snowy for bikes, friends tell me they have seen people cross-country skiing there.

An extension of the trail from the YMCA to the proposed Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden at East Third Street and Midland Avenue has been delayed until completion of an archaeological survey. Organizers always knew the great 19th-century African-American jockey’s home was near the garden; now they think he might have lived on that very spot.

Two couples from Scott County — Dick and Christie Robinson and Keith and Leslie Flanders — are soliciting support to extend the Legacy Trail from the Horse Park to the Cincinnati Bengals’ training center in Georgetown. The distance is less than most people might think: about three miles. But it would make this the Bluegrass’s first multicounty trail.

Bluegrass Tomorrow also is pushing the idea of a regional trail system. Chairman Blaine Early said the non-profit “smart growth” group hopes to facilitate plans among its 18 counties to build new trails and connect with those that exist elsewhere, including Lexington and Versailles.

Meanwhile, The Fayette Alliance has asked Vice Mayor Linda Gorton to appoint a Bike Trails Task Force to bring stakeholders together to figure out how to design and finance recreational trails throughout Fayette County.

An extensive trail system could be “an extraordinary economic development, quality-of-life, tourism and transportation tool for our city and state,” said Knox van Nagell, director of the land-use advocacy group.

“I’m super-excited about this,” said Gorton, who expects to appoint the task force by the end of February.

But one thing Lexington won’t see soon is another public bike-sharing program downtown. Last year, the city received a $175,000 federal grant that officials hoped to use for an automatic kiosk system to replace the Yellow Bike program that was launched in 2008 but was abandoned last year.

“The more we learned about bike-sharing systems, it was obvious that that amount of money was not going to cover the equipment and ongoing operations,” Gleason said. More study is needed to develop a plan to make such a program pay for itself after creation.

Instead, Gleason said, the grant will be used to install sensors to detect cyclists and trigger traffic signals at key intersections around town. That would be helpful because most current sensors were designed for big motor vehicles and don’t notice a bicycle. Cyclists gripe about that almost as much as they do about snow and ice.

Pedal Power Bike Shop, Lexington. Photo by Tom Eblen

As we begin 2011, a slide show of some of my favorite photos of 2010.