Bicycle Friendly Town Guaranteed

Quickly snapped a shot of this very large framed photograph that was hanging in a Mechanic's garage. One sure fire way to promote a bicycle friendly - green - environmental city. Honest to God, I had no idea that nude bicycle rallies even existed until I got home and Googled it.   Apparently, it even happens very close to me in Toronto. Where the hell have I been?  It's a worldwide, annual event.

I do have a love affair with a Peddy Friday lifestyle and started a pinboard too.

75 Most Bike Friendly Cities in the World

The 20 Most Bicycle Friendly Cities

America's 50 Top Bicycle Friendly Cities

Canada's Top 5 Bicycle Friendly Cities

11 Most Bicycle Friendly Cities in the World - Travel

Bicycle Friendly Community Org

What is bicycle friendly you ask? More deets HERE.

Patti Friday, Photojourno, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'.

Beach Superhighway

Our 'Beach Town' is so flat and I am not denouncing it to the world as boring. It really is flat. The terrain. It's geography. And! It's a very long, skinny place to live.  It stretches along the longest freshwater beach in the world. All this leads me to my main point.  Wasaga needs a 'Beach Superhighway'. For bicycles and pedestrians.  They did it in Denmark. Why not here?

From good.is:

"Imagine a city fed by dozens of miles-long bike super highways, separate from roads, streetlights, and harried drivers. Imagine living 10 miles outside a metropolis and zipping home from work—faster than you would in a car—on a solar-lit, asphalt ribbon, eliminating one ton of your personal carbon load annually. Witness the latest reason that Copenhagen is officially a bike commuters' Shangri-La: a bike super highway connecting the city to the suburb of Albertslund.

This bike super highway is just the first in a network of 26 total that will feed Denmark's biggest city—a web of bike-only avenues intended for utilitarian commuting, not just weekend joy riding. The Swedes have their own plan in the works for an inter-city bike highway as well. London also has a network underway, with one bike-only road complete and six more expected by 2015." 

Every day in Greater Copenhagen, roughly 500,000 people choose the bicycle, in one of the world's richest countries. Here's some footage of rush hour, Copenhagen style.

Bikes already make up around 50 percent of all traffic in Copenhagen, but the authorities think they can raise this even further by creating new cycling highways, making it easier to race through the Danish capital.

"COPENHAGEN — Picture 11 miles of smoothly paved bike path meandering through the countryside. Largely uninterrupted by roads or intersections, it passes fields, backyards, chirping birds, a lake, some ducks and, at every mile, an air pump.  The cycle superhighway, which opened in April, is the first of 26 routes scheduled to be built to encourage more people to commute to and from Copenhagen by bicycle. More bike path than the Interstate its name suggests, it is the brainchild of city planners who were looking for ways to increase bicycle use in a place where half of the residents already bike to work or to school every day." - NYTimes

Let's be honest. Not too many of the 16,000 residents here actually commute that far to work.  Let's think of this future Beach Superhighway as a tourist attraction, (connecting kids to their schools) health benefit, environmental statement, a way to increase quality of life and property values and finally, for the happiness quotient. 

This would not take too much to do. Dot the entire bicycle highway with many trees and it would become a cooling mini-climate-controlled zone too. It could integrate public art, resting gardens, benches, repair kiosks and  a perfect place to stay active, healthy and socialized! Viva La Beach!

More interesting information on 8-80 Cities. 


Patti Friday, Photojourno, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'.

Image Bobbin Bicycles via Adeline Adeline

Peace Love Create Art 

Patti xo 

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Tucked In Toronto Part 1

 

You can find enough visual inspiration to fill a month of creativity.  These are the sights I saw; witnessing the vitality and diversity of amazing T.O..  Within 1 city block!  Queen St. West and John St.  All this. Tucked inside Toronto.

Blueberry Trail Wasaga Beach

Hiking this morning in the extra-crisp Spring air was exhilarating and relaxing.  The stillness of the forest canopy and the mess of Winter's fury lay strewn on the landscape floor.  Life was evident and birds greeted me. The sun kissed my face and my heart skipped a beat. 

Wasaga Beach offers some of the most exciting nordic ski terrain in Central Ontario with 30 kilometres of trails. Expert skiers are challenged on the groomed and track set "High Dunes Trail", or you may choose a more leisurely ski on the "Blueberry Trail".

The Wasaga Nordic Centre offers modern equipment rentals, light refreshments, warm-up shelter and outback ski shelters to warm up a lunch on a crisp winters day. A quiet skier will be rewarded with wildlife viewing as white-tailed deer and winter birds are abundant. Call the Trail Centre at (705)429-0943 for trail conditions, rental and ski rates and general winter program information.

In the winter, the Dunes area of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park provides a spectacular 800 hectare backdrop to 30 kilometres of cross-country ski trails. You will ski through a mixed forest of oaks and towering pines and see a variety of birds and mammals on groomed and track set trails. We also offer an 8 kilometre skating trail.

Located just off Blueberry Trail near the O.P.P. station in Wasaga Beach, the Nordic Centre is the focal point of the cross-country ski area. The Centre is equipped with washrooms, a snack bar offering light snacks and beverages and a fireplace. Modern ski and snowshoe equipment is available to rent, along with ski wax and accessories.

Wasaga Nordic provides 7 challenging trails for novice and expert skiers.

Ski and snowshoe rental equipment in all sizes

Warm up shelters on trails

Private and Group lessons

Group rates

Onsite waxing facilities

Check Park Activities for More!

Wasaga Nordic Centre operates from 9 am to 5 pm daily. Contact 705-429-0943. Trail conditions can be obtained by calling 1-800-ONTARIO or on-line at www.OntarioParks.com

Information provided by the Wasaga Beach Provincial Park website.