The Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition annual membership meeting will
be this coming Thursday, November 5th, 7pm, at the Ann Arbor REI store on
the northeast corner of Ann-Arbor/Saline Road and Eisenhower Parkway. The
meeting will take place in the meeting room in the back of the store. The
meeting is open to anyone and everyone, WBWC member or not, interested in
bicycling and walking in Washtenaw County.

The membership meeting will be split into two parts, first being a short
“work” session, followed by a showing of the recently released short film,
“Pedal Power”. During the business meeting, you the members will have a
chance to elect new WBWC Board of Directors members, along voting on
proposed changes to the WBWC Articles of Incorporation.

Going back to the "fun" part of the WBWC annual meeting, in the film Pedal
Power, it is explained that the bicycle, a humble nineteenth century
invention, is challenging the fossil-fuel automobile as the conveyance of
the future. It’s the ideal city machine, light, portable, and cheap.
Non-polluting. Good exercise too. Urban dwellers around the world are
turning to bikes as the car turns them off. But with bicycles coming of age
as a serious mode of transportation there are a few problems. Bicycles and
automobiles have to share the same roads, a recipe for conflict, and many
potential cyclists just won’t ride in the city because they see it as too
dangerous. Add in the plague of bike theft and a lot of cyclists are simply
leaving their bikes at home.
The film wraps around the story of Igor Kenk, a man variously described as
the Greatest Bike Thief in the World, The Fagin of Queen Street, or the
cyclists' Robin Hood. His well-publicized bust in Toronto pushed bike theft
onto the front pages of newspapers across the country and around the world.
Toronto, meanwhile, is grappling with whether to really embrace bike
culture. What does it take to be truly bike-friendly like Amsterdam, Paris,
or even New York City? A series of character mini-narratives propel the film
through a study of what makes a city "bikeable". For more about Pedal Power,
including film clips, visit
http://www.cogentbenger.com/docs/pedalpower/video.php.

Bob Krzewinski
WBWC Board Member