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MoBikeFed goes to Washington . . .

Submitted by Brent Hugh on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 4:07am
MBF Executive Director at the Capitol on the opening day of the National Bike Summit
MBF Executive Director at the Capitol on the opening day of the National Bike Summit
Most of Missouri's delegation--the largest ever from the state--has now arrived at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.

Several delegation members, including Virginia Blaine of Farmington, Karen Karabell of St. Louis, and Todd Antoine, representing Great Rivers Greenway, had their flights cancelled because of the "Great Snowstorm of '08" that hit St. Louis today.

If all goes well they will arrive tomorrow.

Here are a few highlights from the first day:
  • Largest National Bike Summit attendance ever--over 500.
  • Most bicycle dealers represented ever--over 70.
  • Almost all 50 states represented, and Canada, Australia, and United Kingdom (as far as I know there is not representative from Kansas--one of the few states lacking representation)
  • We have about 11 attending from or representing Missouri.
At the opening banquet, League of American Bicyclists President Andy Clarke had all heads of bicycle advocacy organizations stand up. Quite a high number were in attendance.

Opening banquet attendance at the National Bike Summit 2008Then he had all those advocacy organizations with over 1000, 2500, 5000, and 7500 members stand up.

What do you know--MoBikeFed was one of the FEW organizations represented with over 1000 members.

But we still have a way to go--several organizations have over 2500 members, 3 or 4 over 5000, and Cascade Bicycle Club and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition each have over 8500 members.

(SFBC has almost doubled since I visited SF in 2005--they had 4500 members then and were working on 5000. Now they have over 8500.)

You can read more about the National Bike Summit 2008:
Another highlight of opening day was parking my bike in the EPA's bicycle parking facility in the basement of the conference center.

The facility has over 500 members and can hold about 100 bikes. It was F-U-L-L--and that was before the National Bike Summit people arrived . . .

EPA's bicycle parking facility in Washington DC
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