November General Body Meeting (open to the public)
Fri, 09/20 @6-7 PM

Discussion highlights:

• Yaoming/Ye: shared how the interview went with Peter Furth. (video to be edited and shared under our Cyclists’ Corner page)
• Yaoming/Dingfang: shared the photos they took of when they first met PN2K during our Revolutions Resolutions Jan 2015 bike event! (full story in an upcoming blog)
• Next bike event will be held Sunday, Dec 6, 2:00-5:00 PM in the MIT Johnson Z Center Lobby
• Jay led team-brainstorming session for event theme: Penguins, moose, polar bears, elf, huskies, snowflakes
• Idea from Will: next event – will feature snowflakes where attendees can write down what they want to improve about bike safety
• From feedback: cut line earlier to finish on time (we almost did it last time!)
• Jay: Bike Trivia was very successful, so people weren’t waiting in line with nothing to do. Had lots of questions & answers

Bike Safety Chat:

• Making right turns (18 wheeler)
  • Yaoming demonstrates on blackboard the blindspot of an 18-wheeler truck (recreates Peter’s original drawing during video filming)
  • Ye demonstrates right turning, front/back wheels, how right-hook happens (from Peter F.)
• James: suggests filming blindspot of truck vs. cyclists on the road
  • Jay: maybe there is a video on YouTube; Dingfang: filming things at an intersection is hard because always moving; Yaoming: can put two cameras on either side, another on a cyclist
• Jay: drivers need to be educated – what to do to make driving test harder; incorporate cycling
• Nick: how we can make the roads safer for not only cyclists but also pedestrians and road users (additional things beyond Bike Trivia)
  • Jay: can modify some of the answers currently in the Q&A sheet to be clearer; we have a lot of good questions (which is partly why trivia was so successful)
• Sensor that detects car and bike motion (like when a car is backing up) – would be good for PN2K externship to design something (would be very technical!) other idea is to design gloves (waterproof, weatherproof, etc)

Log of Bike Accidents:

• James brought in some logs of reported bike accidents over the past few years
• PN2K cyclists’ corner section is now live – been advertised to our mailing list in today’s newsletter sent out (11/20)
• Jay Morgan — looks up biking lawyer booklets from Josh Zisson (bike lawyer); can email for cards

Finboard

• Overview: Team brainstormed ideas for what we need to add in our next UA Finboard budget (besides the usual three events per cycle)
• Idea that stood out: bike safety stickers for motorists disobeying the law (e.g., illegally parked in bike lanes) “How am I doing on bike safety? Call xxx-xxx-xxxx)
• Other ideas: Yaoming – Bike Safety cones to place on intersections to prevent cars from turning into the lanes; Nick – bright green safety jackets; cooler for drinks; portable speaker for bike ride

Bike Safety Kids Youth Program

• Received funding from Community Service Fund to run our youth education kids project.
• We received funding for approximately three events (snacks, water, transportation), as well as publicity, bright colored vests, polaroid camera & film for our “Bike Safety & Me” kids books, bike safety props for the bike video, money for bike safety learning materials and decal high visibility bike safety stickers
• Ideas: Jay – create a mat where kids can simulate biking, turns, etc.
• Bike Safety Video – Raul, an attendee from our last event, sung to “What Does the Tanuki Say” — need ~3 more people to complete song-editing; need to add the photos and footage from when Carmel visited for bike safety gestures

Future & Upcoming Dates

• Invite Peter Furth to MIT to speak and educate/engage the community on urban planning for cyclists
• Saturday, 11/21: Cranksgiving bike ride
• Sunday, 12/06: (tentative) MIT PN2K December bike event
• Wednesday, 12/16: Bertucci’s fundraising date

Externship with PN2K (details below) 

Title: Product Design Intern

Description: We are looking for charismatic, cheerful, creative, and high energy individuals who care about making a difference in their community. If you are passionate about improving bike safety (and in general pedestrian and road safety) on campus and within the Cambridge/ Boston communities, if you have an eye for designing sports and bicycle accessories, if you are interested in learning about how to go from market surveillance and talking to manufacturers to final product design and distribution, apply for our externship! You will have the opportunity to work one-on-one with a PN2K mentor throughout this externship. You will learn how to survey the bike safety needs in the MIT community, design a bike product to meet this need, learn how to find and negotiate with different manufacturers to create this product and then create a marketing and distribution plan for your product. You will be doing this under the support and guidance of PN2K, a non-profit organization created by MIT alums that is dedicated to improving bike safety in our local communities.

Please visit www.pn2k.org to learn more about what we do and what our organization is about. Please feel free to email us at pnnk-director@mit.edu for further questions/comments/concerns. Note, we can tailor this externship to your interests and skill level – just let us know in your cover letter! There will also be opportunities to expand this externship to a full longer term internship.

Dates: Monday, January 4, 2016 – Friday, January 29, 2016

 

Today, we interviewed Peter Furth, a professor in engineering at Northeastern University and a skilled speaker of creating safe transportation infrastructure in Boston. I saw this video, contacted him, and lucky for us he accepted our invitation for an interview as we drilled him on some major questions surrounding bike infrastructure, bike safety, and all the other questions that some leaders often dance around but never fully address head on. We took 15 minutes for set up and intro, then interviewed Peter in 45 minutes (did not really have moment where we stopped). The knowledge he offered was immense.

After the interview I asked Peter how he felt, as we did some intense questioning (“Sorry Peter for drilling you, but you offer a unique insight and knowledge that other do not have, and we wanted to be sure to capture that on video to share with those who need to see it the most.”) Keep an eye out for our video soon after Yaoming and Dingfang finish the edits. I, for one, am excited to see how we can use this video to move those in leadership positions into action.

This is Peter’s talk at Northeastern on creating successful bicycle transportation networks in Boston, if you haven’t seen it:

This was about half the group tha attended the BBP this past Friday: Dreams vs. Nightmares! PN2K led a convoy from MIT that left the MIT Student Center Steps (84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139) this Friday at 6:45 PM. Why a convoy? This allows for students who are local and do not feel comfortable biking down Mass Ave by themselves to ride in a group. We were lucky this time to have had several Boston Bike Party volunteer marshals to light the way for us and keep us safe: a shout out to Anne Marie Biernacki, Ken Smith, and Chris Allison. You guys were just being social, but thanks for keeping us safe!

So what is all this? Every 2nd Friday of the month, Boston Bike Party organizes this huge ride (for 300+ cyclists – sometimes even 700) where everyone dresses up to the theme of the event and goes on an organized ride around Cambridge/Boston. Not only is this a great way to meet other members of the greater biking community, but it’s a way to build solidarity and experience how it feels to be one with other cyclists, taking over the (right) lane, ringing your bells, shouting “Bike Par-ty!” and seeing others enjoy life in a recreational way while enjoying the eclectically compiled and booming music from the bike trailers. Basically, everyone who has experienced this with us has said it’s pretty awesome. In fact, Facebook even thought it was cool and made a Commercial Video for BBP.

Just because I will probably never be able to top this costume ever again, here is evidence of where my imagination and creativity peaked — I can’t even claim full credit for this as I managed to secure balloons from a previous event that was being taken down, but I did make that house (in 10 minutes) and managed to keep things tied together (30 minutes) and not actually float Up* and away while cycling through the Mass Ave/Harvard Bridge* – that’s something, right? (*note: not recommended unless you have a death wish)

After we reached our destination at Kenmore Square, our group (Dingfang, Yaoming, Jay Morgan, and a newly met member whom we named Puggles) gathered and feasted at Amsterdam Falafel.

Feel like you’ve missed out? Come to our GBM to learn more this upcoming Friday, 11/20 @ 6 PM in 1-132 (MIT), get your bike maintained/fixed (if it needs minor repairs) the first week of December, and then try out the December BBP!

Keep Calm & Pedal On

Official Dreams vs. Nightmares Boston Bike Party fb event page
MIT Convoy fb event page

Photo Credits to Amy L.

 

To combat the pressure-cooker/’drinking from a firehose‘ academic environment that is MIT, the Division of Student Life organized an event at the Zesiger Athletics Center for organizations and student groups dedicated to improving the quality of life at MIT. Groups that you could find included DAPER, MIT Medlinks, Student Activities Office, and more. There were tables that had free alcohol screening, 30-min massages, and therapy dogs. Everyone had free things to give away, and if you collected x number of signatures from every table, you earned a free “I love MIT” t-shirt. Of course, your very own PN2K bike safety officers were there as well, as part of what we do is help spread the message that biking makes you happy and brings you into a wonderful, supportive, and positive community!

Here is our bike safety officer, Will, present at the table for our event from 2-5 PM and sharing information about our events, upcoming meeting, and facts to keep you safe on your bike. He’s on campus, and he regularly  helps out people with random bike issues. Got a question? Will’s your guy!

Thank you students for dropping by and signing up with us. We had lots of interest from you guys about our next bike safety event and November General Body Meeting – remember:

Friday, 11/20 at 6-7 PM in 1-132, come and meet members of the PN2K community! Learn more about hanging out with us, cycling, and doing something fun for your community.

 

We told you we’d have bike safety trivia questions.

This past Sunday, we held our November bike safety event (indoors!) from 2-5 PM at the MIT Z-Center. In addition, we had our free power-washing outside, free bike safety check-ups and repairs by Bike Boom, bike registrations, free food, music, and a really great community of cyclists who were super upbeat!

Some changes we made to this event: 1) BIKE TRIVIA! From feedback, we realized that people did not like standing and waiting in line – so we thought, why not peer-educate?? So educate we did. In a previous blog, you’ll notice the chalkboard was covered with bike safety questions prepared as a team effort. Will Reyes, our Bike Safety Officer, prepared the final Q&A sheet and some handy tips that were distributed at the first table you saw walking in. 2) We implemented Will’s new indoor layout, completely different from what we had last year, which meant everyone could simply park their bikes and then mingle, eat, even dance. 3) We had glow-in-the-dark PN2K wristbands for everyone who answered five questions correctly plus raffle tickets for a pair of free bike lights – Thank you Jay Morgan, our newest volunteer, for totally owning your volunteer role on the first day!

Beyond Will and Jay, a huge shout-out also to Dingfang who interacted with every single person who walked in, helping them sign up with PN2K and taking their credit card payments when they wanted helmets/bike lights/membership/T-shirts, etc. She is truly agile and adept! Yaoming was Mr. Muscle-Man as he helped with all the heavy-lifting of boxes from home base to the event, plus all the photography to come, so the memories can live on! Mad props to Ari from Bike Boom for being awesome and come out to help on your day off (!!!) Thanks to Roy for taking care of some really poor conditioned bikes (one bike had an upside down fork) that were bought at the MIT auction (folks, saving money in the short-term is not always cost-effective!) Thanks to a really great dude called Raul who has single-handedly helped make our bike kids’ video a reality (by singing What Does the Tanuki Say — It’s for the kids!) and Rebecca from Xtecher for capturing all this on film. James, thank you also for being a hero for this young lady who had a trouble finding the hole in her tire – creative solutions: use soap and find the bubble! (For those who don’t know, James is also helping to make information on where bikes are stolen a thing – watch this space on our website under “Cyclists’ Corner” as this is further developed)

Till next time, Keep Calm & Pedal On!

Upcoming dates:
Friday, 11/13: MIT convoy bike ride to Boston Bike Party’s Dreams Vs. Nightmares. RSVP Here. Leaving MIT W20 @ 6:45 PM.
Frida, 11/20: Our big November GBM – come out and meet other PN2K members (6-7 PM in building 1-132)

Full photo album can be found by clicking here.

What’s all that on the board? Oh just a bit of bike trivia questions to keep you guys safe on the roads.

This Friday, our team and officers gathered together because we care about you. We care that you’re not standing in line for an hour with nothing to do during our bike event repair lines when you could be learning useful, life-saving tips on how to be a safe cyclist. This is a typical meeting – we introduce ourselves, share some fun mini-stories, have some munchies, and then address the feedback we get to make our events more productive and PN2K more pertinent to you.

See you this Sunday, 2-5 PM at MIT Z-Center for some BIKE TRIVIA! (there will be prizes) and see you Friday, November 20 from 6-7 PM (in building 1-132 at MIT) for our big November General Body Meeting – a great time to meet more PN2K members.