Bike events race into Downtown Pittsburgh

The soaring price of gas wasn’t Barker Carter’s No.1 reason for attending BikeFest’s kick-off… The soaring price of gas wasn’t Barker Carter’s No.1 reason for attending BikeFest’s kick-off event on Downtown’s 7th Street.

Carter, a biker from the North Side, came Downtown Friday night to Bike Pittsburgh’s BikeFest because he, quite simply, “loves bikes.”

A mass of riders, cruising in on an assortment of road bikes, joined him to celebrate bikes and bicycle culture at the opening bash for the 10-day event.

While Carter came to celebrate riding, others came not only to celebrate and advocate.

Carnegie Mellon University student Sara Strano said that this was her first BikeFest. She came to the event to table for the Student Sierra Coalition, a student division of the Sierra Club.

“We are collecting pledges, asking people to pledge to vote to hold our leaders accountable for environmental issues, especially climate change,” she said. “We’ve gotten a number of students to pledge.”

Pitt student and former co-president of Pitt’s Free the Planet, Lindsay Blotzer, joined Strano at the table. Both had ridden their bikes to the event from Oakland.

Still catching her breath from the ride, Blotzer said, “I hope I never have to own a car.”

Eric Boerer, membership director of Bike Pittsburgh, the group organizing the 10-day festival, said the annual event is an exercise in both bike advocacy and environmental awareness.

While at the entrance, attendees were surveyed to see who came in what form of transportation so that BikeFest could make it a carbon-free event by purchasing carbon credits to outset any fossil fuels used.

Once inside, attendees were greeted with road bikes that hung from ceiling posts and dance lights that twirled like tire spokes.

Other local organizations tabled, including Friends of the Riverfront, Free Ride and Venture Outdoors, which had a bicycle tire bowling at its station.

BikeFest festivities continue through July 6, with such planned events as Cream-Cycle Alleycat Race, Independence Day Populaire and Bike Commuting 101.

BikeFest coincides with Pa. tour

BikeFest comes right at the heels of several popular biking events, including the Tour of Pennsylvania and the upcoming Allegheny County Mountain Bike Festival.

The tour, part of the celebration of 250 years of Pittsburgh’s naming, which ended on Sunday in a Downtown closed-circuit loop, was a 450-mile cycling race from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

Pam Golden, spokesperson for the Allegheny Conference, the organizers of the tour, said the community is interested in biking, but not for environmental reasons alone.

“As part of the tour, we want to encourage healthy nutrition and exercise,” she said. “Biking is something people can do with the family to get active and healthy.”

BikeFest made an appearance at the tour by providing a bike valet at the closed-circuit loop on Sunday to encourage biking – instead of driving – to the event.

Brookline biker Mike Letson said he rides his bike in the city, and it isn’t all that bad.

“Some of the drivers are a little rude, but I guess it depends on time of day, like if they’re coming back from work or not,” he joked. “But all in all, it’s pretty good.”

“The bicycle is a pollution-free mode of transportation,” he said. “The externalities that go with driving, such as air pollution, you don’t have that with cycling.”