The Bluegrass and Beyond

A followup to my Friday column:

Pedal Power bike shop’s sale Saturday to benefit Shifting Gears didn’t last long. All 200 used bikes were sold well before noon.

“We were able to put money into an account to keep the program going and still write Kentucky Refugee Ministries a check for $3,000, which will provide for two households until self-sufficiency,” said Brad Flowers, who started Shifting Gears.

Shifting Gears provides restored, used bikes to newly arrived foreign refugees to give them some basic transportation. The bikes come from donations and trade-ins taken by Pedal Power.

Kentucky Refugee Ministries works with the U.S. State Department to resettle officially designated refugees who legally immigrate to Kentucky. It tries to provide them with furniture and other necessities until they can get settled and find work.

Response to Shifting Gears has been so strong that Pedal Power had many more bikes than it could restore, and it needed to clear out about 200 to free up space and raise money for spare parts.

Restoration labor is donated by Pedal Power employees and volunteers from the local cycling community. Last year, about 80 bikes were donated to refugees, with some children’s bikes going to The Nest, a social service agency on North Limestone.

The extra adult bikes were sold for $25, $50 or $75 each, and spare parts were sold for $1 each, “whether it was a wheel or a cable,” Flowers said.

“There was one guy that bought two bikes and 10 or so parts to fix up for people in his neighborhood who didn’t have bikes,” he said. “There were several international students from UK.”

A half-dozen volunteers from the bicycle group LexRides helped work the sale.

“As the number of (refugee) arrivals increases (from an average of 100 a year recently to about 200 a year currently) and as funding stays flat it is creative partnerships like this that will allow them to continue to provide basic services for these folks as they become oriented,” Flowers said.

Today I have updates on two previous columns, plus a tip on how you can help a new neighbor while scoring a cheap set of wheels.

You may remember the story of Gordon Burnette of Lexington, a tool-and-die maker and amateur art sleuth.

After a neighbor died and her house was sold, Burnette noticed several old, beat-up paintings on the curb. One showing a mare and foal caught his eye. Written on the back was the mare’s name, the artist’s name and June 1882.

Gordon Burnette and Genevieve Baird Lacer with the Thomas J. Scott painting Burnette found on the curb. Photo by Tom Eblen

Impressed by the painting’s quality, Burnette had it restored. Then he began a quest to learn more about the mysterious Thomas J. Scott, one of the top equine artists of the 19th century. He also created a Web site (www.thomasjscott.com) in hopes of identifying other Scott paintings, many of which have been lost over time.

Since the column appeared in May, the Headley-Whitney Museum has agreed to host an exhibit next year of paintings by Scott and his more-famous teacher, Edward Troye. And Burnette has heard from several people with Scott paintings who had no idea what they had.

A Louisville woman bought one at an auction, where it was propping open the door.

The strangest call came from a Lexington woman with a painting almost identical to Burnette’s, only smaller.

“She was so thrilled because she had had this painting all these years and didn’t know who the horses were, who the artist was or where it came from,” Burnette said. He thinks it was the study for his painting, or a copy made for a subsequent owner of the horse.

Where had the painting been hanging all these years? About three blocks away.

Money for Tanzania

Like Burnette, Flaget Nally had no intention of embarking on a quest. But that’s what happened as she was ending a three-year stint as a Catholic lay missionary in Tanzania.

Flaget Nally

A group of nuns asked Nally to raise money for them to build an English-language boarding school for as many as 800 girls of all faiths in a part of Tanzania where girls rarely have a chance to be educated. The Bardstown native had no idea how to do that — or even if she could.

Nally formed Giant Steps for African Girls (www.educateafricangirls.org), which held a fund-raising walk in Lexington last April and other events around Kentucky. So far, it has raised more than $104,000. About $50,000 of that has come from the Lexington area.

A cheap set of wheels?

While writing about Bike Lexington in May, I mentioned Shifting Gears, a partnership between Pedal Power bicycle shop and Kentucky Refugee Ministries, a multi-denomination Christian group that works with the U.S. State Department to resettle legal refugees.

Shifting Gears takes good-quality bikes, which are either donated or taken in trade by Pedal Power, and fixes them up to give to refugees, many of whom have no other transportation. Shop employees and volunteers fix bikes; others are sold to raise money for parts.

The goal is 52 bikes a year. “We’ve been able to beat that every year,” said Brad Flowers, a partner in Bullhorn Marketing who started Shifting Gears in 2003 while working at Pedal Power.

Last year, more than 80 bikes were given away. In addition to adult bikes for refugees, children’s bikes are given to The Nest, a non-profit social service agency off North Limestone.

Pedal Power owner Billy Yates said community response has been so strong that he has far more donated bikes than Shifting Gears can fix. They’ve filled his shop’s attic, and some have to go.

Beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday, Yates will be selling about 200 of the bikes for between $25 and $75 in the parking lot of his shop at Maxwell and Upper streets. There also will be bike parts for as little as a dollar each. All proceeds go to Shifting Gears and Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

“This sale will raise money to allow us to continue fixing up some bikes and give us some space to get more organized and efficient,” Yates said.

Organizers of the Legacy Trail, a 9-mile bike and walking path being developed from Lexington’s East End to the Kentucky Horse Park, are seeking your help in choosing a logo.

The public is being asked to vote among three logos. Register and cast your vote at www.mylegacytrail.com. Or you can text your chosen logo’s name (see chart below) to (859) 797-4900.

Those who register will be included in drawings for a $500 gift certificate from Pedal the Planet bike shop, a $250 gift certificate from John’s Run Walk Shop and a $100 gift certificate from J&H Outfitters.

Voting began yesterday evening at Thursday Night Live at Cheapside downtown and will continue through Aug. 13. The winning logo will be announced at Thursday Night Live on Aug. 20.

There seems to be a fund-raising walk, run or bicycle ride for just about every cause, charity and disease.

So when Ed Stodola was looking for a way to raise money to restore the Grand Theatre in downtown Frankfort, the avid cyclist decided to organize a ride.

But what a ride.

The Grand Autumn Bicycle Ride Across Kentucky is a three-day trek that covers 11 counties and more than 200 miles, from the Ohio River at Carrollton to the Tennessee line at Dale Hollow Lake. Dip your wheels at each end.

In each of the past five years, the ride has attracted no more than 35 riders, but Stodola is hoping for the maximum 60 this year. For more information, go to www.gabraky.com.

So far, the GABRAKY has raised more than $68,000 for the Grand Theatre’s $5 million renovation. It has not been a lot of money in the Grand scheme, Stodola admits. But it has provided cash flow at critical times during the seven-year effort.

“The ride also helped keep the Grand efforts in the public eye,” he said, explaining that the first ride, in 2004, came when other fund-raising efforts had plateaued.

Organizers are planning the sixth ride for Oct. 9-11, with a couple of differences.

Instead of “Grand,” it’s now the “Governor’s” ride, reflecting its designation as the Beshear administration’s first Kentucky Adventure Tourism bike tour. Also, the theater’s renovation is almost finished. An open house is planned Aug. 7.

The Grand on St. Clair Mall was built about 1910 as a small vaudeville house and enlarged as a movie theater in the 1940s. It closed in 1966, and the building was put to other uses, from a dollar store to an auction house.

There was an effort to restore the Grand in 1983, but it failed. Then, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Frankfort citizens began looking for a project to build community spirit. They remembered the Grand.

Since then, several other restoration projects have begun in downtown Frankfort, which has many beautiful old buildings. “I think it’s going to have a transformational effect,” Stodola said.

The renovated Grand will show movies, host concerts and be a venue for small stage shows. None of its 420 seats is more than 50 feet from the stage.

“We’re going to market it as Kentucky’s most intimate performance venue,” said Bill Cull, chairman of the non-profit Save the Grand Inc., which owns the building and is managing the restoration.

Cull and Stodola gave me a tour of the theater last week as workmen were installing seats and putting on other finishing touches. Sections of original plaster from the 1910 vaudeville house and 1940s theater have been preserved as part of a beautiful, modern theater that includes a small art gallery upstairs.

A mid-1800s house that shared a wall with the theater also has been restored. It will be used for administrative offices and performers’ dressing rooms.

The project was put together with a patchwork of government money, grants, corporate and private donations, volunteer labor and, of course, money raised from the bicycle ride.

A concert by R&B groups The Platters and The Coasters is planned for the theater’s grand opening on Sept. 25. Other bookings so far include the New York Theatre Ballet’s production of Sleeping Beauty.

Singer John Sebastian will perform at the theater during the Alltech Fortnight Festival on the first night of this year’s GABRAKY. And when the cyclists ride south the next morning, they can take a little pride in having helped the Grand’s marquee light up the Frankfort sky again.

How’s this for a summer adventure: Dozens of young people are riding bicycles across the country and meeting in Washington. There, they plan to lobby their members of Congress and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on climate-change and environmental sustainability issues, such as bicycle transportation.

Six of the travelers, ages 16-21, arrived in Lexington from Shelbyville on Monday afternoon. They had started in Pueblo, Colo., a month ago, averaging about 50 miles a day with all of their gear loaded on their bikes.

The trip is called The Trek to Reenergize America, www.trektoreenergize.org, and this group is chronicling its trip on its own Web site, www.fromthesaddle.org.

“We’re excited to be here,” said Remy Franklin, 18, of Taos, N.M., who will be starting Dartmouth College as a freshman in the fall.

Franklin and his five companions were camping Monday night in the Southland neighborhood, in the yard of Tim Buckingham, a staff member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and a member of Lexington’s Bike Polo league. Buckingham invited some of his cycling friends over and put on a cookout for the visitors.

The travelers planned to meet up with other groups Saturday in Charleston, W.Va., and together make their way to Washington by July 26.

Franklin said the group planned many of its overnight camping stops, but not all of them. “A number of times, we’ve rolled into towns and just met people,” he said. “We’ve been pretty well taken care of. Everyone has been so friendly when they find out what we’re doing.”

The group found itself in Louisville last weekend during the annual Forecastle Festival, which featured Widespread Panic, The Black Crowes and other musicians interested in environmental activism. The travelers didn’t know about the festival, but a Louisville host called the promoter, who gave them free tickets.

“People are so generous to us,”  said Lucy Richards, 20, of Durango, Colo., who will be a freshman at Stanford University in the fall. “We meet tons of people every day and tell them about what we’re doing. There’s so much interest in the environment and climate change.”

Travelers Lucy Richards and Remy Franklin do a video interview with Shane Tedder, sustainability coordinator at the University of Kentucky. At right is Brad Flowers of Lexington.

At age 25, Ben Sollee has gained a national following with his heartfelt songs, his soulful voice and his unconventional cello technique.

Sollee can do amazing, unexpected things with a cello. He’s doing one this week, and it also involves a bicycle.

“I was looking for something a little bit different in touring,” he said. “I had gotten in this habit of flying to one side of the country and flying back for one gig, then hopping in the car and driving six hours for another gig. The pace was inhuman. I wasn’t really feeling the places I was at anymore.”

Sollee is feeling those places this week.

Oh, is he feeling them.

Last Wednesday, Sollee and two friends began riding bicycles from his Lexington home to the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festval at Manchester, Tenn., where he will perform this weekend.

They rode from Lexington to Frankfort in a steady rain, and Sollee gave a concert when they arrived. The next morning, they officially began the 330-mile Pedaling Against Poverty Tour.

Each day since then, the trio has ridden about 50 miles a day, stopping to play concerts in Danville, Berea, Somerset and Cookeville, Tenn. Another show is planned near McMinnville, Tenn., on Wednesday. Then they ride to Bonnaroo.

In addition to making a statement about environmentally friendly music touring, Sollee said the trip is intended to promote the anti-poverty charity Oxfam America and Xtracycle, the California company that made the bikes he and Marty Benson are riding.

The stretch bicycles have 24 gears, disc brakes and a cargo platform in back. Sollee has his cello case strapped to one side. His gear is strapped to the other side for balance.

Benson is videotaping each day’s progress and posting it on Xtracycle’s Web site.  Benson’s sister, Katie, is with them on a regular road bike.

“Considering I hadn’t really ridden much before this tour, it’s going great,” Sollee said Monday. As he talked on his cell phone, Sollee pedaled Ky. 90 through Wayne County. His voice was occasionally drowned out by the swoosh of a passing truck.

“We had a really hard day going from Berea to Somerset … hauling about 60 pounds of gear up all those big hills,” Sollee said. “Heading into Somerset I didn’t think I was going to make it. We pulled in eight minutes before show time.”

There have been a few minor breakdowns and a couple of wrecks without injuries. Sollee ran off the road near Harrodsburg while trying to ring a bell on the back of Benson’s Xtracycle. It’s a game: Whoever rings the other’s bell the most pays for dinner at the end of the trip.

“Marty rang my bell today and wrecked his bike,” Sollee said. “It was sweet revenge.”

Sollee said he has learned several things on the ride, such as how roads are graded, how diet influences stamina and the importance of pacing yourself. And he has learned it is hard to draw a crowd at small-town concert venues.

Usually, Sollee is good at drawing crowds. National Public Radio named him one of the top 10 “unknown artists of the year” in 2007. He became a lot better known last year with two CDs, If You’re Gonna Lead My Country and Learning to Bend.

He performed on ABC-TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! in March and was among those who played at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday concert last month in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Sollee was the featured performer at February’s “I Love Mountains” rally in Frankfort. His next project is a CD with Daniel Martin Moore to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining.

It is an impressive resume for a native Lexingtonian who not that long ago was studying at Yates Elementary, Winburn Middle, Lafayette High and the University of Louisville school of music.

When I called again Tuesday afternoon, Sollee had 45 miles under his belt for the day and was eight miles from Cookeville.

“We’re within spitting distance,” he said. “We made really good time today.”
With Bonnaroo only two days and about 75 miles away, Sollee seemed to have gotten a second wind.

It’s hard to know if Sollees’ Bonnaroo performances will be as high-energy as usual. Life on the road is hard on a musician, especially when he has to pedal his cello up all of those big hills.

Check out Marty Benson’s daily videos from the trip:

Toddlers in trailers. Tykes on training wheels. Boys and girls on their first “real” bikes. Racers on titanium and carbon fiber. Grandmothers on cruisers. People of all ages and sizes on ancient Schwinns and Huffys.

They were all at Monday’s Bike Lexington celebration.

The downtown event was moved to Memorial Day this year to coordinate with the Bluegrass Cycling Club’s 32nd annual Horsey Hundred tour. That ride brought more than 1,700 cyclists from across the nation to ride Central Kentucky countryside on Saturday and Sunday.

Despite threatening weather, more than 700 people came out for the main event, a 10-mile family fun ride through downtown and the University of Kentucky campus. Toward the end of the ride, the skies opened and everyone got drenched. Nobody seemed to mind.

Many stayed through the rain for bike raffles and to hear Mayor Jim Newberry and Urban County Council member Jay McChord talk about how trails and bike lanes are a big part of Lexington’s plan to become the healthiest and most bicycle-friendly city in Kentucky.

But council members weren’t just speaking, they were riding. George Myers was pulling his 28-month-old daughter, Aubrey, in a weatherproof trailer. Doug Martin rode with his 9-year-old son, Reynolds. Chuck Ellinger, who racks up a lot of miles most weekends on the same model racer Lance Armstrong rides, was on a $10 garage sale Huffy.

Between rains, people watched races and a bike polo demonstration.

The bike polo teams had just returned from Dayton, Ohio, where they placed 4th and 8th among 27 teams at the 6th annual Midwest Bike Polo Championships. Bike polo started in Lexington about three years ago. Games are held each Sunday and Wednesday evening on four converted tennis courts at Coolivan Park.

A dozen groups had tents on the courthouse plaza, showing the diversity of Lexington’s bike culture.

One was Cycle 4 Sunday, a group organized by first-year UK physical therapy students to raise money for Surgery on Sunday, an outreach to needy people by Lexington’s medical community.

Another was Shifting Gears, a project of Pedal Power bike shop and Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

I did the family fun ride on a 25-year-old bike I bought last year with a donation to Shifting Gears.

Pedal Power, the main sponsor of Bike Lexington, takes donated bikes, refurbishes them and gives them to KRM, which distributes them to foreign refugees who have recently settled here. More than 100 bikes have been given away so far.

Pedal Power owner Billy Yates said he has another 200 donated bikes in his shop’s attic, awaiting repair by his mechanics and volunteers from the Pedal Power racing team. He’s looking for some donated storage and work space so he can get more of the bikes to refugees sooner.

“Bikes are like gold for these refugees,” said Katie Weber of KRM. “It provides a way to run errands, and it opens up so many doors for jobs. They can ride to work, or ride home or to work from the bus line.”

One popular attraction was Berry Pedalers, which lets people help make themselves a fruit smoothie on two blenders powered by converted bicycles.

“He builds the bikes and I tell him what color to paint them,” said Jarah Jones, an art teacher at Sayre School who runs the business with her husband, Shane Tedder.

“It’s a really fun way to get people thinking differently about food, power and transportation,” said Tedder, who is UK’s sustainability coordinator.

Berry Pedalers is a regular at the Lexington Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, selling bicycle-blended smoothies made from locally grown fruit and berries.

“Lexington has completely changed when it comes to bicycles,” Yates said. “Look at the diversity here; it’s amazing. You have families, kids, racers, commuters. The common denominator is bikes.”

Arthur Ross, Madison's pedestrian-bicycle coordinator, led a bike tour that included five Urban County Council members. Photo by Tom Eblen

One of the most popular optional activities during Commerce Lexington’s trip to Madison, WI, was a bicycle tour of the city’s extensive trail network.

It didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect Tuesday afternoon: sunny and in the 70s.

About 50 Lexington visitors paid to rent bikes for a 7-12 mile ride. The group included five six Urban County Council members: Kevin Stinnett, George Myers, Doug Martin, Chuck Ellinger, Jay McChord and Tom Blues.

Madison is regarded as one of the nation’s best cities for bicycling and walking, with a 150-mile network of trails. Many of the trails are popular recreation facilities, especially those around the lakes on either side of downtown Madison.

But what was notable was how trails and bike lanes have been integrated into Madison’s street and sidewalk network. It’s not a novelty; it’s serious transportation and a tool for better connecting Madison’s neighborhoods, businesses and public venues.

The city requires new developments and buildings to have parking facilities for bicycles as well as cars. And when it snows — as it does a lot here — trails are cleared as quickly as streets, because so many people bike to work, said Arthur Ross, Madison’s pedestrian-bicycle coordinator.

In addition to commuters and recreational riders, many people now run errands on bikes and a growing number of businesses are using them to make deliveries, Ross said.

While some neighborhoods have resisted new trails, fearing they would bring in a “bad element,” there’s no evidence of that. Ross said property values of homes often rise after trails are built near them.

Ross noted that trails are especially important in cul de sac neighborhoods. The intent of cul de sacs is to isolate people from the impact of automobiles and traffic, but they shouldn’t isolate people from each other, he said.

The key to successful integration of trails, bike lanes and roads is public education and good design that minimizes traffic conflicts. That was evident during the trail ride, as intersections where the trail crossed streets were carefully marked for both drivers and cyclists. Most roads also accommodate bicycles.

Halfway through the tour, the group stopped for lunch at Strand Associates, a Madison-based engineering firm with a vice president who lives in Lexington, Mike Woolum. Strand is doing the design work for Lexington’s Legacy Trail, which by the end of next year will connect downtown Lexington with the Kentucky Horse Park.

Lexington’s Yellow Bike program, which allows people to borrow bicycles for short trips around downtown, is beginning its third year.

The idea is to provide fun, quick transportation for short trips, improve health and reduce automobile traffic and parking hassles. The program was started and is funded by downtown businesses.

Two years ago, a similar program on a grander scale was launched in Paris (France, not Kentucky).  Now, London (England, not Kentucky) has announced a similar plan, also on a grand scale, with 6,000 bikes to be placed at stations all over the city. Plans call for the system to be up and running by next year.

“Much like hailing a cab, people will be able to pick up one of 6,000 bikes, and zip around town to their heart’s content – not only a quick, easy, and healthy option, but one that will also make London a more liveable city,” Mayor Boris Johnson told The Guardian newspaper.

This may be a weekend for horses, but it’s the start of an entire month for bicycles.

May is bicycle month. Learn more and have your say at the Mayor’s Bike Task Force public meeting on Tuesday, May 5, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Downtown Public Library.

Participate in the Ride with the Red, which benefits the American Red Cross Bluegrass Area Chapter, on Saturday, May 9.

The month’s biggest events will be Memorial Day weekend, with the Bluegrass Cycling Club’s annual Horsey Hundred ride on Saturday and Sunday and the annual Bike Lexington festival downtown on Monday.

For a complete calendar of events, visit the Bike Lexington web site.

Second Sunday, the effort to get Kentuckians off the couch and exercising in the street, is gearing up this week for a statewide event in October that will be bigger and better than last year.

Second Sunday organizers will rally at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort to promote the effort. House and Senate resolutions supporting Second Sunday will be introduced by en. Katie Stine, a Republican from Southgate,  Rep. Tanya Pullin, a Democrat from South Shore, and Rep. Susan Westrom, a Lexington Democrat.  Gov. Steve Beshear also plans a declaration.

A major street was closed for the afternoon last Oct. 12 in 70 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and more than 12,000 citizens got out to walk, run, bike, rollerskate and participate in other health-related activities and programs. In Lexington, Limestone Street was closed from Third Street to the Avenue of Champions and it was filled by more than 2,000 people, including Mayor Jim Newberry, several Urban County council members and their families.

This year’s statewide event is planned for Oct. 11, although promoters hope to open a major street to pedestrians in some communities more often – ideally, on the second Sunday of every month. Related activites are being organized throughout the year.

The Second Sunday movement began in Bogotá, Colombia, and has been copied by many other cities, including New York. Kentucky’s Second Sunday last year was the nation’s first coordinated statewide event. It is being coordinated by the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture’s extension service, and the statewide coordinator is Diana Doggett of the Fayette County extension office.

Jay McChord, an Urban County Council member and one of the forces behind Second Sunday, sees the event as a low-cost, fun way to get notoriously unhealthy Kentuckians to be more physically active and more involved in their communities.

Saturday morning was cold and gray, but more than 40 people came to Cheapside before 8 a.m. for a five-mile bicycle ride on the first section of the proposed Legacy Trail from downtown to the Kentucky Horse Park.

The group rode five miles out to Coldstream Park, where another 50 or so people came out to comment and offer suggestions to developers of the nine-mile bicycle and pedestrian trail.

“You go to these things and you always see the bikers and walkers, but we’re getting support from everybody,” said Keith Lovan, a city engineer who is project manager for the trail. “They all see something in it for them.”

The city is building the trail almost as a linear park to provide recreation and education about Lexington’s history and culture. The Bluegrass Community Foundation’s Legacy Center is supporting the effort as one of two things it hopes will be tangible legacies to Lexington from the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

More than $3 million has been raised to build the basic trail from Newtown Pike at Citation Boulevard through Coldstream and Maine Chance farms to the Horse Park before the equestrian games. A site plan will be completed by January and construction will begin next summer. In later years, the trail will be completed in and around existing streets downtown to Cheapside.  For more information about the trail, go to: http://legacycenter.ning.com

(Click on photos to enlarge and see captions.)

Something exciting is about to happen along the Newtown Pike corridor between downtown and the Kentucky Horse Park.

It will happen in nearby fields and just over the hills. Along Cane Run Creek. Up through the Lexmark campus and Coldstream Park, across the University of Kentucky’s Maine Chance Farm and past the Vulcan limestone quarry and Spindletop Farm.

In the 700 days left before the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, the city of Lexington will build a basic version of the Legacy Trail, a nine-mile bicycle and pedestrian path that is a key piece of the city’s Greenway Master Plan.

What will the Legacy Trail be? Planners see it as a human connection between urban and rural Lexington, a place for recreation, art and education. But they really want to know what you want the trail to be.

This week, a series of public meetings are being held with “stakeholders” — more than 300 nearby property owners, neighborhood groups, community and arts organizations.

Beginning at 8:45 a.m. Saturday, there will be a public event called “Party on the Trail” at Coldstream Park to start publicizing the route and to ask for suggestions about what amenities should be developed around it.

“It has got to be more than a ribbon of asphalt,” said Steve Austin, director of the Bluegrass Community Foundation’s Legacy Center. “It’s got to be a story about who we were, and what this place was and is. It’s a story about where we’re going to go and who we’re going to become in the 21st century.”

The idea of a trail from downtown to the Horse Park has been batted around for years. David Mohney, a UK architecture professor, had noted that much of the property between the two was in very few hands. The major landholders are Eastern State Hospital (soon to become the Bluegrass Community and Technical College campus), Lexmark, the University of Kentucky and Vulcan Materials.

Commerce Lexington’s 2007 trip to Boulder, Colo., showed local leaders how important bicycle and pedestrian trails could be to improving a community’s health and quality of life. Mayor Jim Newberry made the Legacy Trail a priority. Activist Marnie Holoubek, Urban County Councilman Jay McChord, UK Agriculture Dean Scott Smith and others started making things happen.

Keith Lovan of the city engineering department is overseeing the project. And its unofficial cheerleader is the Legacy Center, which is using money from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and other sources to see that the trail and an East End neighborhood revitalization project are accomplished as legacies of the 2010 Equestrian Games.

So far, more than $3 million has been raised to begin trail construction between the Horse Park and the intersection of Citation Boulevard and Newtown Pike. Initially, at least, much of the rest of the trail into town will run on existing pavement.

Austin took me on a tour of the route earlier this week. Several of us plan to ride it on bicycles before the party Saturday morning — if it isn’t raining too hard.

The Legacy Trail would begin downtown at Cheapside Park, go west on Second Street to Jefferson Street and north through what is now the Eastern State property to the Northside YMCA on Loudon Avenue.

Austin said planners are working with Lexmark on a formal agreement to have the trail go through its campus. “Lexmark has been a good partner so far,” he said.

Lexmark’s property holds one of two keys to the trail’s success: a private bridge that crosses New Circle Road. After crossing the bridge, the trail would run through Lexmark property along Cane Run Creek and other property near Newtown Pike to the intersection with Citation Boulevard.

Eventually, planners hope to build a bridge across Newtown Pike so the trail can continue seamlessly through the Coldstream campus and city park, which would have additional trail loops.

Once the trail leaves Coldstream Park and goes onto Maine Chance Farm, it meets another obscure piece of infrastructure that has been a godsend to trail planners: a small box tunnel under Interstate 75 that connects to the north end of the farm and the Spindletop property. The trail would probably enter the Horse Park at the campground.

Eventually, planners hope to connect the Legacy Trail to other trails and to the proposed Isaac Murphy Park in the East End neighborhood. McChord would like to see it go south from downtown, all the way through Jessamine County to the Kentucky River. To the west of downtown, Van Meter Pettit is planning the Town Branch Trail through the proposed Lexington Distillery District, another potential connection.

Linking Lexington’s urban and rural neighborhoods in ways that don’t require motor vehicles would be good for our health and sense of community. It also could help us and our visitors learn more about Lexington — and not just the usual history lessons from the 18th and 19th centuries.

More than 1,000 years ago, Fayette County was home to the Adena people, who left behind a huge mound of earth not far from the Horse Park. “Could we tell the story through landscape architecture and earthwork?” Austin wondered. “Could we tell the story of the pre-settlement environment — what trees and grasses were here?”

Austin also would like the trail to have kiosks explaining more recent history, such as how Lexmark’s forerunner, IBM, led an economic shift toward manufacturing in Lexington in the 1950s at the campus that gave the world Courier typeface and the Selectric typewriter ball.

Who knows what you might be able to learn about your city someday, simply by lacing up your shoes or climbing on a bicycle.

Kentuckians are among the nation’s least healthy people. All of the surveys show it. Many of us smoke, most of us don’t get enough exercise and almost all of us have a deep and abiding love for fried, salty and sugary food.

We also know Kentucky is a poor state, with little money available to build gyms, pools or trails for walking and biking.

All of that is why many people who attended Lexington’s first Bike Summit a year ago were struck by a presentation from Gil Peñalosa, the former parks director of Bogotá, Colombia.

“He said, ‘You have the best bike and pedestrian infrastructure in the world already in place. You just have cars running up and down it all the time,’” Urban County Councilman Jay McChord recalled.

Peñalosa is famous for starting Ciclovia, an event that since 1976 has closed 70 miles of Bogotá’s streets to motorized traffic for seven hours each Sunday so people can come out to walk, bike, exercise and socialize. (Click here to see a short video of former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa discussing these issues.)

Several American cities have followed Bogotá’s lead. On three Saturdays in August, New York City banned motorized vehicles from seven miles of Park Avenue, all the way from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park. Thousands of New Yorkers came out to walk and roller blade and to ride bikes, skateboards, strollers, wheelchairs and even grocery carts.

No state has tried such a thing — until Kentucky, this Sunday.

The event is called Second Sunday, and between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., at least 1 mile of a prominent street will be closed in 71 of Kentucky’s 120 counties for a street party that focuses on health and fitness.

In Lexington, Limestone will be closed from Third Street south to the Avenue of Champions. There will be a band playing at each end, and musicians will stroll through the crowd.

The courthouse square will be have a health fair and games for all ages. There will be stationary bikes for those who don’t want to ride in the street, and tandem bikes for those who want to ride with someone whose eyesight is better than theirs. There will be tai chi and bike polo demonstrations, a stroller workout and a dog bone hunt.

At 4 p.m., police will escort ambitious cyclists who want to ride out to Paris Pike — some even plan to ride to Paris and back.

“We want to make this a 21st-century parade where there are no bystanders,” said Diana Doggett, a University of Kentucky extension agent in Fayette County.

Lexington’s effort has been championed by McChord and Mayor Jim Newberry, with a lot of work being done by Doggett and Kenzie Gleason, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, among others. A dozen Lexington companies and organizations have signed on as sponsors of Second Sunday, and the Downtown Lexington Corp. has coordinated with businesses on and near Limestone to be open.

UK’s Cooperative Extension Service, which is coordinating the statewide effort, put out the challenge at a meeting in June that included teams of officials from 50 counties. Doggett said the response has been overwhelming, and many counties that couldn’t get something together for Sunday are already planning events for the second Sunday of October 2009.

The initial goal is to make Second Sunday an annual event. Or maybe a monthly event. In some places, it could even become a weekly event, giving small towns a hook to attract visitors.

McChord sees even bigger possibilities.

One of his interests is building more walking and bike paths. McChord, 40, grew up in the south Lexington suburbs and remembers how important the ball fields built at Shillito Park in the 1970s were to him.

“So I’ve thought, what could I do that my daughter’s generation would look back on?” he said.

McChord decided it was building recreational trails. His first effort has been a proposed 8-mile, multi-use path in his south Lexington district that he’s calling the HealthWay trail. It would connect Waveland State Shrine, Shillito and Wellington parks and major shopping centers in the area. He’s also among those working to create the Legacy Trail, which would connect downtown Lexington to the Kentucky Horse Park.

With the small amount of money now available, it would take forever to build a decent multi-use trail system in Kentucky. For example, McChord said, state officials last year had $13 million in various funds to build bike and pedestrian trails, but got requests for $75 million. And many counties didn’t bother to ask, because they knew funds were limited.

So, what if Kentucky could tap into more of the millions and millions of dollars that private foundations across America give each year to promote health, wellness and community life?

“What Second Sunday is designed to do is make a national statement that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired,” McChord said. He thinks Kentuckians could use Second Sunday “to cast ourselves as the lovable big loser” — like the characters in the popular weight-loss TV show.

“At the end of the day, we can take our biggest liability and turn it to our advantage,” he said. “We can make a statement that allows us to ask for help.”

So, think of Second Sunday as a first step — or pedal stroke — to a healthier Kentucky.

If you never ride a bicycle, please stop reading this column.

That’s right; move on to the next story.

I want to speak to my fellow cyclists, privately.

We all know that rural Central Kentucky is a cyclist’s paradise — the gently rolling landscape, the vast web of small, lightly traveled roads and the gorgeous scenery.

In the past few years, thanks to the Newberry administration and the Urban County Council, Lexington has made a lot of progress toward becoming a more bicycle-friendly city.

Each week, it seems, I see new bike lanes on roads that need them. Several bike paths and trails are planned. It’s a good thing: Each time gasoline prices spike, I see more people riding bicycles to work, to run errands and to get themselves in shape.

So what’s the biggest thing holding back cyclists in Lexington? We are. Not all of us, of course, but more of us than we would like to admit.

I ride my bicycle about 2,000 miles a year in Central Kentucky, and I drive several thousand more miles.

Sure, I occasionally encounter rude motorists when I’m cycling. I have had drivers cut me off, pass too close, pull out in front of me, honk, holler and glare. I was even hit once by a lit cigar stub thrown from a passing truck’s window.

Some people in oversized pickups seem to think they have a constitutional right to drive 50 mph on a country road too narrow for a center stripe. Other drivers think the roads belong to them, and cyclists should stick to trails and sidewalks — even though riding a bike on the sidewalk is often dangerous, and sometimes illegal.

Last weekend in Bourbon County, a woman in a red Honda passed our single-file cycling group going up a blind hill on a double-yellow line. Then she stopped in the middle of the road to chat with a buddy going the other way, forcing us to ride slowly between them. Then she passed us again on another blind hill. What a fool.

Honestly, though, I see more dangerous cyclists than dangerous drivers.

Admit it — you do, too.

Sad to say, some of them are my Lycra-clad brethren, who should know better. They ride in packs across the road, rather than two abreast, as the law requires, or single file, which is safer. Others blow through stop signs and act as if stoplights are for other people.

Most of the offenders I see, though, are people who don’t take bicycling seriously. Or they seem to be new at it. They ride on sidewalks. They ride on the wrong side of the street. They weave through traffic and run stop signs and lights.

Some of them don’t wear helmets. Others wear headphones or earbuds. I guess that’s so they won’t be bothered by those big, noisy trucks whose drivers might not be able to see them.

Many cyclists I know have never been shy about yelling at dangerous drivers.

But shouldn’t we do the same when we see dangerous cyclists?

For those who don’t know any better, tactful correction might help them learn. If they just don’t care, maybe they need to know that others do. And, of course, nothing is more effective than modeling good cycling behavior yourself.

If you care about everyone sharing the road more safely, be willing to speak up and be a good example. Better yet, get involved in local bicycle safety and education programs.

There’s a list of organizations and efforts on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s Web site.

In May, certified instructors organized several bike safety clinics around town. The University of Kentucky is offering bicycle education classes for students, faculty and staff this fall.

City officials have applied for a grant to offer a more extensive “share the road” program next spring, said Kenzie Gleason, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. I hope they get it.

Sharing the road more safely will make Lexington a better city for everyone, but cyclists must take the lead.

It could be a matter of life and death. Maybe even yours.

CORRECTION: I overstated the case when I said it’s illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk in Lexington. It’s only illegal in the downtown business district. You can ride a bicycle on a sidewalk elsewhere in Fayette County, but it should be done with great care, especially if pedestrians are around. Here’s the exact law:

Sec. 18-155.  Riding on sidewalks.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Click here for bicycling resources in metro Lexington.

Click here for information about Kentucky’s bicycle laws and rules of the road and safety advice.

Click here for information about the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission.

Click here for information about safe cycling in Louisville.

Click here for information about the Bluegrass Cycling Club

Click here for information about the Louisville Bicycle Club

Click here for information about Ashland Cycling Enthusiasts.

Click here for information about Central Kentucky Cyclists in Campbellsville.

Click here for information about Central Kentucky Wheelmen in Elizabethtown.

Click here for information about the Bowling Green League of Bicyclists.

Click here for information about Pennyrile Area Cyclists in Hopkins County.

Click here for information about the Chain Reaction Cycling Club in Paducah.

What a beautiful weekend!  I had a great ride Saturday in Madison County with the Bluegrass Cycling Club.  I wish I could have gotten back out on Sunday. We don’t often get perfect weather like this in mid-August.

The rural Bluegrass is a great place for recreational cycling. Lots of well-paved, lightly traveled backroads and beautiful countryside. Riding in the city of Lexington isn’t as much fun, but it’s getting better all the time.  That’s a good thing, because I’ve seen a lot more people riding bikes to work and shop since gas prices soared a few months ago.

The New York Times had this story Sunday about how the increasing popularity of cycling is resulting in more clashes between cyclists and motorists. The story begins with an anecdote from Louisville. I’ve found most central Kentucky drivers to be polite and safe around cyclists. (Unfortunately, I see more examples of cyclists not obeying the rules of the road.)

Universities around the country are doing more to promote bicycle use, as this Associated Press story explains. The New York Times also recently featured UK’s innovative Wildcat Wheels bike loaner program in this story. Wildcat Wheels is a project of UK’s sustainability coordinator, Shane Tedder.  You can read more about Tedder’s work in this interview with Taylor Shelton of the GreenKY blog.

I’m back after a week’s vacation. Each year, several friends and I go to Bike Virginia, a five-day bicycle tour through a different part of Virginia.

This year, about 1,800 of us were riding around Bristol and Abingdon, in far southwest Virginia, with a swing into Kingsport, Tenn. The scenery and weather were spectacular, and the company was even better. I rode a little more than 350 miles, including 100 miles one day. Bike Virginia is both physically challenging and mentally refreshing. It’s hard to think about everyday worries when you’re focused on pedaling up the next big hill. And southwest Virginia has a lot of big hills…

So, what happened in Kentucky while I was gone? A lot, apparently. Over the next few days, I’ll be catching up on CentrePointe and other issues and writing about what comes next.

By the way, Commerce Lexington has posted videos of the main presentations made during the Leadership Visit to Austin, Texas, in early June. While the other 274 Kentuckians on the trip were listening, Mark Turner, the chamber’s senior VP for communications, was capturing the speakers on video. Lucky for you; there are a lot of good ideas on those videos. Click here to watch them.

DANVILLE - In high school, I was a band geek.

Since then, I’ve mostly been a newspaper and bicycle geek.

But once you’re in a high school band, especially a marching band, you never seem to get it out of your system.

Just ask the dozens of musicians in the 18 bands performing at the Great American Brass Band Festival this weekend. Not to mention the several thousand people here to listen to them.

“For me, the great thing about this festival is seeing all the younger players coming out, having a great time and producing a great sound,” said Jim Drake of Frankfort, who started playing trombone in fifth grade, switched to tuba in ninth grade and is still playing in two brass bands.

Danville always seems to look like a Norman Rockwell painting, but never more so than each June when the brass bands come to town. People from all over the country set up lawn chairs around one of three stages and listen to bands like the ones most American small towns had a century ago.

“I’ve heard this is our 10th year, but I’ve lost count,” said Dan Shields, who plays tenor sax in the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis.

“All of the people are here for the music,” he said. “It’s a language that people should learn and not forget, even if they don’t keep playing. It makes them a more educated listener.”

In addition to free public performances, the festival included a Chautauqua Tea on Thursday, a Brass History Conference on Friday and a big parade down Main Street on Saturday.

You can still catch some of the action Sunday, when the main stage at Centre College will have performances from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. The annual balloon race, postponed Friday because of bad weather, has been rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Stuart Powell Field outside Junction City.

The bands range from Ameriikan Poijat, a Midwestern band that plays Finnish-style, to the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers, a four-man combo from Lexington led by Dick Domek, a University of Kentucky music theory professor who plays a mean piano.

There are several military bands - the Hellcats from West Point, the U.S. Army Brass Quintet and the U.S. Air Force Reserve Band. Plus crowd favorites from an earlier era of military bands: the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., and Saxton’s Cornet Band from Kentucky, which use antique instruments to recreate Civil War-era music.

In honor of the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial, the history conference this year focused on music from his time. It included a re-enactment by the Olde Towne Brass of Huntsville, Ala., of a concert Lincoln and his Lexington-born wife, Mary Todd, attended. Saxton and Excelsior both played a popular tune that they noted, ironically, was one of Lincoln’s favorites: Dixie.

As a bicycle geek, I was fascinated by the 18 riders from the Ohio Wheelmen, who led the parade on big-wheel “bone shakers” and other two-wheeled relics.

“This is a unique parade,” said Del Nichols of Findlay, Ohio, the group’s leader. “There’s a higher class of people who come here because of the music.”

Back when I was a band geek at Lexington’s Lafayette High School in the mid-1970s, there were two musicians we all looked up to: Trumpeter Vincent DiMartino, who was then at UK and now teaches at Centre, and euphonium virtuoso Earle Louder, then a professor at Morehead State. They each performed solos in concert with us, and we were awed by how they could make their instruments come alive.

Now, DiMartino and Louder moonlight as the directors of the festival’s host band, the Advocate Brass Band of Danville, which is sponsored by the local newspaper. The band played Saturday evening at the festival’s Great American Picnic, and will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday.

If that wasn’t enough to make me love the Advocate Brass Band, there was this: Former director George Foreman spent years having the band explore the great heritage of newspaper music. Yes, newspaper music.

The most famous example is John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March, which was commissioned in 1889 for the U.S. Marine Band to play at an awards ceremony for the newspaper’s student essay contest. The march became one of Sousa’s most popular, and started a trend.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, newspapers across America commissioned marches. It was like the 19th century version of a TV marketing jingle. Foreman documented more than 300 newspaper marches, and under his direction the band recorded four CDs of them.

There’s even a Lexington Herald March, written in 1936 by Robert B. Griffith, a UK student who went on to direct the University of Louisville marching band. Click here to hear a short clip of the Lexington Herald March. Click here to find out how to buy the Advocate Brass Band’s CDs.

If you have time Sunday, drive over to Danville. It just might make a band geek out of you, even if you weren’t one in high school.

Photos, top to bottom: Mick Gould of the Ohio Wheelmen leads out the parade Saturday. Members of the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., play on a wagon in the parade. Dick Domek of Lexington plays with the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers. Natalie Fieberg, 3, of Danville, watches Dan Shields of the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis run by during the parade. Photos/Tom Eblen

About 1,700 cyclists from across the eastern United States are attending the 31st annual Horsey Hundred bicycle ride Saturday and Sunday. The ride, sponsored by the Bluegrass Cycling Club and based at Georgetown College, offers rides of between 34 miles and 104 miles through Scott, Woodford, Fayette and Bourbon counties. Bethel Presbyterian Church, above, was a rest stop for some of the routes. Below, cyclists coast down a small hill on Falcon Wood Way. Photos/Tom Eblen

Lexington is never more beautiful than on a sunny spring day, viewed from the seat of a bicycle. It looks even better when everyone else is on a bicycle, too.

This was Bike Lexington weekend, and everyone downtown seemed to be on two wheels.

The fun began Friday evening along Euclid Avenue with the prologue of a three-day stage race that attracted more than 150 racers — and several times that many spectators.

“Three restaurants in Chevy Chase told us last night they had never been so busy on a Friday night — and their road was closed,” said Joe Graviss, a McDonald’s restaurant franchisee who helps sponsor a local racing team.

What makes Bike Lexington special isn’t the racers — it’s the average folks who come out on all kinds of bikes.

“This may be my most enjoyable day of the year in Lexington,” said Mayor Jim Newberry.

The main event was the Saturday bike rally, which attracted more than 1,000 people to the courthouse plaza.

Corporate sponsors Humana and Pedal Power and Pedal the Planet bike shops set up festival booths, as did cycling organizations.

Bicycle police officers were there, as well as the fire department’s new Bike Medics, showing off their rigs.

The idea behind Bike Medics is to quickly reach an ill or injured person at a crowded event. A paramedic on a bicycle can administer first aid and prepare the person for evacuation on a small utility vehicle.

“We can do everything on these bikes that we can do on these trucks,” said firefighter Anthony Johnson, whose bike packs held a heart defibrillator and other equipment, along with emergency drugs. “It also makes it less likely we’re going to hurt somebody else like we might if we tried to take a truck into a crowd.”

The Brain Injury Association of Kentucky fitted and gave away 250 bicycle helmets. And the Yellow Bike program, which offers public loaner bikes downtown, signed up new members.

Shane Tedder served up fruit smoothies on his bicycle-powered blender, which he and welder Patrick Garnett built from old bike frames.

In remarks to the crowd, Newberry said promoting bicycling for fitness, recreation and transportation is a priority of both his administration and the Urban County Council.

“We’ve made some significant improvements, and we’re going to do more and more,” Newberry said.

Lexington has 19 miles of bike lanes on streets and 12 miles of trails, Newberry said, and more are planned.

Newberry and at least two council members were among the estimated 800 people who participated in the 10-mile family fun ride through downtown and the University of Kentucky campus, around Commonwealth Stadium, out Richmond Road and back. That were about 100 more participants than last year, said Kenzie Gleason, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.

People of all ages and sizes, riding all kinds of bicycles, cruised through the cool morning breeze on a course closed to motorized traffic. There were many children and more than a few senior citizens.

“You can see biking has really taken off in Lexington,” said councilman Chuck Ellinger.

Councilman Tom Blues, who like Ellinger is an avid cyclist, predicted that more people will bike as more trails and lanes are built — and as more people realize that Central Kentucky’s rural roads are a cycling paradise. Rising gas prices won’t hurt, either.

Bruce and Jessica Rishel of Versailles brought their two young children to Bike Lexington last year, and they’ve been eager to come back ever since. “She thinks the courthouse is for bike festivals,” Jessica Rishel said of her daughter.

The Rishel children — Anemone, 5, and Alex, 3 — wore helmets and rode tiny bikes with training wheels for the kid races. Their parents pulled them in a bike trailer on the family fun ride.

As I got ready to start the 10-mile ride, I pulled up beside Jim Hilke of Paris, who is something of a legend in the Bluegrass Cycling Club. Hilke turns 78 next week. He has already ridden 700 miles this year, and he’ll get in another 1,300 or so before Christmas.

Because cycling doesn’t pound your body like running and some other sports, it can be a lifelong activity.

Hilke said he’s starting to slow down, what with arthritis and all. But I think it’s a ruse: The last time I rode with him, it was all I could do to keep up.

As the family fun ride started, Hilke pulled out ahead of me, and I thought of little Alex Rishel riding in his bike trailer somewhere back in the crowd. In 75 years — at Bike Lexington 2083 — he just might be the next Jim Hilke.

Top photo: Shane Tedder, right, built the bicycle-powered blender with help from welder Patrick Garnett. He made smoothies with help from Jake Samson, 13, who supplied the pedal power.

Bottom photo:Bruce and Jessica Rishel of Versailles came with son Alex, 3, and daughter Anemone, 5. Photos/Tom Eblen