Mayor's Bike Ride

From Graham Howard:

Last Wednesday I attended The Mayor's Bike Ride, a community event held at John Ball Park in down town Grand Rapids. This gathering built on the success of a Grand Rapids Bicycle Summit, an event aimed at making Grand Rapids more bicycle friendly, which was held a week earlier at the GVSU campus.

Local cycling supporters, enthusiasts, businesses, racers and families came by John Ball Park on Wednesday to support and to help showcase what is a very strong and enthusiastic cycling community in Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell attended the event as well and led two bicycle rides, a one mile kids ride around John Ball Park and a 5 mile ride through downtown Grand Rapids.

Roughly 150 people attended the event and probably about that many brought out their bikes and went on the ride around downtown. There were kids on training wheels, BMX racers, mountain bikers, fixed gears, tandems, bikes with dogs in crates strapped on the back and even a few guys perched up high on old fashioned bicycles. The event was a great way to get Grand Rapids bicycle lovers of all sorts in the same place at the same time and will hopefully lead to steps towards creating bicycle lanes on Grand Rapids streets, among other things, and a more bicycle friendly Grand Rapids.

Photos by Josh Duggan
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