Author Archives: PN2K Team

Tykes for Bikes update

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Tykes for Bikes: 2018 update.

We are working on educating kids and youth about bicycle safety. This is a new field from which we have received lots of positive feedback. In the Spring-Summer of 2016, we ran a pilot program with kids in daycare from 5-12 years of age and our findings about their use of bikes have surprised us; of the 12 or so kids present, ALL of them raised their hands when we asked the question, "Who has a bicycle?" We are still working on iterative development of our Tykes for Bikes kids' program and creating our Tanuki music video. You can read more about Part I of the recording process in a previous blog post here.

We are now fixing up our website and cleaning up the Tykes for Bikes kids page!

Meanwhile, Ye and Carmel (co-directors) also worked out new lyrics a few years ago for "What Does the Tanuki Say?" (A cover for "What Does the Fox Say", but PN2K style). The tanuki was Phyo's spirit animal. We decided to turn the lyrics into a bike-safety rendition. Listen to the full song sung by Chu Chu: https://soundcloud.com/user-176455284/what-does-the-tanuki-say-by-chu-chu

Also, a glimpse of our Kids Bike Safety Video, created by Yaoming for the first half of the song:

Thanks to Yaoming for allowing us to make this recording happen. Thanks to Northeastern University for the use of space and equipment!

Goodbye to bad bikes

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Post-triaging workshop update: Thanks to the great ASA space clean out, we could tag bikes we wanted out of here! So we did. I must say, from a spectator’s point of view, the process was fascinating, watching students who knew some basics of bike repair get their hands dirty and strip away the good parts from bad bikes (under the supervision of Jacob and Miranda). The real magic was watching a lone frame being chosen, a spare front wheel added, then a spare back wheel — and voila! New bike. We cleared out a lot of space (and added two boxes of spare bike parts). MIT movers came by and said our office was “a castle” compared to some others. Guess we’re ready to start having office hours (soon)!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Bike Triaging Workshop)

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We will be holding a bike triaging workshop this coming Friday from 3-5 PM in our PN2K office. Jacob (LivableStreets Alliance; VBikes) and Miranda (CommonWheels) will be running the workshop and helping students to identify the good parts on a bike, the bad parts, and what might be ugly (but are still usable/not usable).

Join us! It'll be a fun clean-out and the start of our plan to begin "Frankensteining" together bikes. Plan is to tag all the parts and bikes we want to keep, and leave the parts/bikes we DON'T want to keep out so they can be disposed of this weekend. 

Enjoy food, learning, and community with PN2K! 

In case you missed Class 2….

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We're holding another session on Friday, February 9 from 3-5 PM. 

Class 2, again, focuses on practice-practice-practice and getting your hands dirty. Even if you have attended Class 2 previously, feel free to attend again. You can never get enough practice to start feeling truly confident and comfortable with a bike. If you practice fixing a road bike last time, try a mountain bike this time! Help each other. That's how you get better (and make friends). 

Photos from Class 2 are here. 

A notice will be sent to Class 1 attendees soon. Meanwhile, please mark your calendars. Food will be provided. 

Class 2: Practice, Practice, Practice!

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Class 2 on board! We recently held two Class 2 workshops to maximize attendance. During this class, Galen Mook from Landry's and Jacob Meunier from LivableStreets Alliance came back again to teach cyclists how to repair their own bikes and even experimented with bikes laying around the office. Practice was focused on "ABC" - Air, Brakes, Chain (plus tire truing and derailleur adjustments). Take a look at our photo album on facebook here. Final class will be after holiday in January or February, 2018. 

 

Class 1: Get the Basics!

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Thank you to all those who came! We had a great time and hope you did, too. We'd like to thank Galen Mook from Landry's Bicycles for his professional help and running the bike repair workshop, Class 1. For those who want to learn more, please see the photo album on facebook here.

Jacob, Dingfang, and Ye from PN2K mainly ran the show, with Jacob taking a more active learning and teaching approach. Thanks to all those from PN2K who helped organize this event! We look forward to Class 2 later next.  We will be holding two Class 2 workshop sessions to maximize possible attendance: Wed, Dec 13 and Fri, Dec 15, both from 3-5 PM in our MIT PN2K Walker Memorial office. See you there! 

Introducing: PN2K Bike Repair Workshops

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One of the main goals of our nonprofit is to instill confidence and self-sufficiency with biking. Therefore, we will be holding bike repair training classes in three sessions, taught by bike maintenance professionals. Class 1 will be the basics, Class 2 will be practice (practice, and more practice), and Class 3 will be actual fixing of (other's) bikes (under the supervision of a bike savvy repair professional). After you attend all three sessions and volunteer for x number of hours fixing bikes (under PN2K office hours), we will award you with our PN2K bike certificate and a free PN2K membership. 

Class one will be on Dec 6! Don't miss out. RSVP to the facebook event here

MIT PN2K Dec Bike Repair Training-Class One
Wednesday, Dec 06, 2017
3:00 - 5:00 PM
PN2K MIT Office
MIT Walker memorial, Room 50-032
(142 Memorial Dr, Cambridge, MA 02142)

Class One: Basics.
You will know bike safety tips and bike repair basics, such as brake adjustments, changing flat tire, etc. Galen from Landry's bicycles will take the lead of the first training session.
Class Two: Practice.
Lots of hands on practice-practice-practice. Prepare to to get your hands dirty.
Class Three: Real Deal.
Welcome to the real world! Helping actual cyclists fix their bicycle problems.

*******************************************
In collaboration with:
Landry's Bicycles
The Phyo Nyi Nyi Kyaw Memorial Foundation, Inc.
MIT UA Finboard

World Day of Remembrance (Bike Ride) 2017

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Photo credit: Kyle Ramey

Copied and pasted from the Facebook event page:

Join us for the 2017 World Day of Remembrance. Stand in solidarity to honor those who have been injured or killed by a road traffic crash. The vast majority of these crashes are preventable through engineering, education and enforcement. In numbers, we can recognize our loved ones, and also demand action from our elected officials. 

Please wear yellow. 

SCHEDULE
12:00 pm: Meet in Copley Square for the Memorial Bike Ride
1:30 pm: Gather at Charles St and Beacon St on the Boston Common for the Memorial Walk. 
2:00 pm: Rally on the steps of Massachusetts State House for the Memorial Vigil
3:00 pm: Head to a post-vigil gathering at CIC Boston (50 Milk St) 

More info about the Memorial Bike Ride:https://www.facebook.com/events/1320977614678150/

More info about the post-vigil gathering:
Attendees are encouraged to warm up indoors after the vigil at a reception hosted by MassBike at CIC Boston, 50 Milk Street, Boston -- the baristas at Render Coffee will be on duty. There will be ample secure and covered bike parking available near the Devonshire Street entrance. 

World Day of Remembrance is an annual, international event during which we gather as a community to reflect upon those we've lost and commit ourselves to improving our roads. 

#WDR2017
#safetyoverspeed
#crashnotaccident
#visionzero

These events are organized by the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition. Learn more at http://www.visionzerocoalition.org/

Brainstorming PN2K Bike Repair Training

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Team meeting: we had a productive and refreshing walk around JPond, followed by chili turkey hosted at Ye's place.  During our meeting, Miranda showed us the new PN2K bright green neon stickers recently designed. We love them, and we hope you will, too!

We did a bit of brainstorming on how we might want to revise MIT PN2K's activities to reflect our mission and better serve the growing number of PN2K members we have.  One problem has been that bike events require large-scale organization and requires everyone helping to be available. Volunteers who aren't working full-time (aka students) are often flooded by MIT homework and psets and unable to commit to organizing monthly large scale events.  Even more importantly, bike problems happen spontaneously-- sometimes requiring immediate attention (e.g., bike brakes not working, flat tire, etc.).  As frequently as our bike events are held, timing-wise, they are still suboptimal since a cyclist cannot just email us to receive immediate help (in which case, they are once again forced to either wait it out until our next bike event or take their bike to a shop and pay $40-$100+ for their repairs  (in which case, they throw up both hands in exasperation and yell, "Why do I bike??!") Well, that's not what we want.

So, Yaoming gave us his idea, which essentially boils down to this:

PN2K hires bike professionals (or recruits bike savvy individuals) who would train a focus group of 10-15 "bike apprentices." These apprentices would go through several steps of bike repair and safety training.  They would learn about PN2K, basic bike safety repairs, practice tons (on the bikes we have in the office), then help others under the guidance and supervision of these professionals.  This process leads to the possibility for our apprentices to obtain a PN2K Bike Safety certification.  These bike apprentices then become our instructors who train the next generation of bike apprentices.  As we increase the number of PN2K certified bike safety instructors, we can hold regular and flexible "office hours" in our PN2K office.  For our PN2K members, this means you don't have to wait for 30 days or until the next bike event for your regular bike needs.

We have a few people already interested in being part of the training process.  If you are someone who knows bike skills and would like to be part of the first generation of trainers, subscribe to our mailing list so you're kept in the loop with everyone that's going on.

Keep Calm & Pedal On~

PN2K BBQ cook-out

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Marshmallows.  Nature.  Grilled and seasoned avocado, salmon, tofu, corn, mushroom, peppers… Friends.  Being so full you’re in a coma for the next hour.  Walk in the woods.  Board games.  Conversation.  Community.

Bike Safety 101

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Dustin Weigl, one of our MIT PN2K bike safety guys, also represents bike safety for the Graduate Student Council.  He recently held a Bike Safety 101 presentation, which had about 70 sign-ups and attendees.  His presentation with Anna and the two MIT campus police officers was very on-point.  Until you host one of these presentations, you don’t realize how many people have questions about seemingly “simple” points on biking.  You realize that there is no such thing as what’s simple or not — just a difference in the range of biking experiences out there and that learning all the rules of the road is a process. For instance, one slide of the presentation struck me: It was titled “How to turn left?”  This slide struck me because the intersection depicted on the slide was the exact intersection on which Phyo had died.  He died likely making that left turn going down Vassar Street onto Mass Ave.  The truck likely struck him making a wide turn coming up to make a right turn from Mass Ave onto Vassar St.  Phyo did nothing wrong — Cycling is an experience requiring constant vigilance as safety requires not only you to be safe but others to operate responsibly as well.  Bike safety is important as much to motorists and pedestrians as it is to cyclists.

So how does one make a left turn?  There are two ways: move with traffic in the left turn lane (though I find this to be really unnerving if you’re in between cars; it helps if you’re at the front so you move before all the cars do).  On the Mass Ave & Vassar St intersection (or any extremely busy or high-risk traffic intersections), you can also stay in the biking lane on the far right side of the road and bike across the huge intersection and stop when you’re on the other side.  Then turn towards the street you were going to turn onto and wait for those traffic lights to turn green and simply bike straight.  This second method takes a few more minutes than the first, but it is far less stressful.

If you’re interested in helping to promote bike safety and teaching others bike safety tips, we always need more advocates.  Subscribe to our newsletter and say Hi to our officers at our next event.  Keep Calm & Pedal On ~

August Bike Event & Dumpling Party

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August bike event!  Summer's not over so naturally we decided to hold another bike event.  During one of our last MIT PN2K officer meetings, we decided that we should offer more options than the annual membership, particularly when sometimes we have 6-month visiting students at our event (and it doesn't make sense for them to purchase the 1-year membership).  So now our membership include a 6-month option for a $5 discount from the normal prices: 

One Year Membership Prices: 
student $15/MIT Affiliate $20/Non-MIT Affiliate $25
Half Year Membership Prices: 
student $10/MIT Affiliate $15/Non-MIT Affiliate $20

Our August event included: Bicycle Safety Check, Minor Repairs***, Bicycle Pressure Washing***, Bicycle Registrations, Clean U-­lock Station***, $20 Bike Helmets, $15 Bike Lights, $2 Batteries(CR2032), Free Food & Music 
(***PN2K membership purchase required. You can always buy your membership with us online or on-site. Our online store is now updated with the 6-month membership options: https://www.pn2k.org/product/buy-membership/)

As always, great event with lots of friendly faces, laughter, and free food/music and fun!  But we couldn't stop there.  We took the party indoors and had some festivities making more than 100 dumplings (about 20 from scratch!).  Look out for more fun gatherings to come.    

 

VBiking on the Esplanade

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We did our first trial run of a bike ride using a VBike.  We decided to keep to the Charles River bike path along Memorial Drive, given the new construction there in the past year (thanks DCR for all the renovations!) and the fact that we wanted to keep this ride more relaxed and social (conversing while biking).  We went around the Museum of Science on Charles River Dam Road and then looped back on the Esplanade.  We decided to stop for a quick break on one of the docks, which is where we met a ZipCar representative and his friends (one from the City Council) who saw the VBike and were instantly attracted.  They came over and asked questions, super intrigued by seeing something other than Hubway! (aside: the lack of docks along the Esplanade and the restriction on 30-minute rides makes using Hubway infeasible for biking along the Esplanade — one of the sadder things I discovered long ago).  Anyway, to finish off the trip, we decided to go for vietnamese cuisine at Pho in Boston, had great conversation, and called it a night.  Good times!

 

Yaoming speaks with Aditya about VBikes.  Aditya and his friends had questions about VBikes and dockless bike share.  Admittedly, I would be, too, considering if I had friends who didn’t own bikes, I would want them to have this option for riding along and down the Esplanade — one of the great joys of Boston.

VBikes (in the PN2K house!)

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Exciting news: recently one of our teammates went to interview David Shan, the owner of VBikes, a stationless bicycle sharing company originating in Dallas, Texas with headquarters in Garland, TX.  They were interested in our mission and work and heard about our dilemma and troubles using Hubway bikes for our long Blue Heron bike ride.  (We have been wanting to increase the number of bike rides we lead, but we are trying to encourage people without bikes — so you can see where our dilemma lies). After speaking with a VBikes company contact (Shawn), VBikes decided to partner and support our efforts.  We don’t know exactly where the collaboration will go but in the meantime, we are excited to announce that we have five new VBikes at the PN2K Office. Here’s Yaoming with our snazzy new VBikes! The great thing is that they don’t require kiosks and only cost us $1/hr to ride. I think we’ll need to take this out for a test spin soon! ~ Keep Calm & Pedal On

All the bike parts!

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Thanks to an Anonymous Donor who donated about 20-30 bikes to PN2K!  Admittedly, they are not whole bikes; some are frames, some have missing cables, some are missing the seats, etc. so don't expect just yet that we have a lot of bikes that can be borrowed 😉 Through our team meetings, however, we have discussed holding DIY workshops involving "frankensteined" bikes. This requires having bike parts, and boy, do we now have lots of use-able parts.  These bikes with their parts will reside in our MIT PN2K office space until further notice... One great thing is that we did receive at least one ride-able Giant bike that's in pretty great shape that we can fix up a bit and PN2K members will be able to rent/borrow for our bike rides!  Exciting stuff.  (Meanwhile, hey, does anyone know where we dispose of unused bike parts and frames?) 

Summer Island

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Join us for our June summer bike event, Summer Island. We'll transform the Student Center Plaza and Front Steps into our own little island as we perform free bike safety checks (a quick diagnosis to tell you what's wrong with your bikes). Be sure to grab one of our annual memberships for service on your bike-- for those who asked at previous events, we will have our pressure washer set up.  As always, our event includes free snacks, food, and drinks as always. Stop by to say Hi and introduce yourself to the PN2K community! 

PN2K Blue Heron Bridge Ride

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Did you know there was a hidden gem along the Charles River, called the Blue Heron Bridge?  For cyclists of all experience levels who live in the Greater Boston area, you must check out the Charles River Greenway, which begins at the McKenna playground in Waltham, MA.  For our cycling group, we had John Innes leading the ride with co-biking leaders from the MIT PN2K team (Yaoming, Tian, Rudy, Ye, Dingfang).  We were glad to welcome nine other cyclists in our group of 15.  We are proud to host this bike ride for four new cyclists (meaning they don't have bikes and it's basically their first times riding in the city -- we are honored their first time riding was with PN2K!)  We bought our four cyclists 24-hr day passes for Hubway; however, a word of caution: in a large group with new cyclists (or cyclists riding at different paces), we do not recommend depending on Hubway outside the main Hubway cities.  We love that Hubway promotes biking for short distances, but having to undock and dock bikes before every 30-minutes ended (sometimes docks were all full, and we had to find another dock nearby) and having to take four detours away from our trip to undock/dock bikes was logistically challenging and stressful.  Nonetheless, this was a great learning, teaching, and bonding experience.  For us, it's all about getting more cyclists out there, even if it means some trial-and-error.

Here's a shot of our group at the Blue Heron Bridge.  A beautiful ride on a gorgeous day! [PC: Yaoming, Dingfang] 

The great thing about holding these bike rides is that we have the chance to meet new faces, burn some calories, eat some snacks, enjoy the great outdoors, and learn new things about the cities in which we live (for instance, how long the Charles River Greenway bike path extends and how to take safe bike paths to reach specific destinations like restaurants or shops). Before our bike ride, we held a brief bike safety talk (thanks Rudy) and post-ride, we brainstormed a few things after this bike ride, including do's and don'ts for future (long) bike rides.  You can bet we discussed ways of encouraging new cyclists to bike with us without using Hubway in the future (sadly, four 24-hour day passes should have cost us only 4 x $8 = $32 but as our entire group including four cyclists went over 30-minutes four times, the cost of over-charges was 4 cyclists x 4 overcharges x $3 per overtime = $48. Total for the bike ride was a whopping $80 for which really should have been a free bike ride. Yikes! Well, thank goodness we had some UA Finboard funding to cover this, but $80 might have gotten us a (rudimentary) new bike for PN2K 😉  Besides this, we really enjoyed hanging out with everyone and seeing some old faces! We hope to ride with others again and hope more people will join us as our rides evolve. 

If you're interested in being one of our future bike leaders, please drop us a line at pn2kmit-officers@mit.edu.  We are always looking for more 3-season and winter bike riding leaders! 

Keep Calm & Pedal On! 

More photos from our bike ride on Facebook here.

“I feel great!”

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It’s always great to see familiar faces from our growing PN2K community.

We’ve been steadily growing since we started our first bike event a few years ago (see previous blogs). Expanding operations means needing a more sustainable funding model so we can provide a greater range of services to the biking and PN2K community (for instance, we’ve been wanting to sell customized water bottles, winter accessories, high visibility and useful PN2K biking gear, etc. forever!). This event was one of the first in which we tested out our new membership option ($15 for 1-year student membership up to $25 for non-affiliates). Three volunteer bike mechanics (Rudy, John, Felix) helped with minor tune-ups, while Dingfang, Yaoming, and Tian welcomed people to our event and answered questions of passersby. With MIT Finboard funding (thanks MIT Undergraduate Association!), we were able to offer free food (subway), snacks (bananas, chips, cookies, apples), drinks, and more. (Sadly, MIT Finboard does not fund projects like customized PN2K accessories and gear — and thus our look towards alternative, self-sustainable sources of funding).

We sold nine new memberships today and a couple of helmets. Fantastic! Remember that you can always purchase your helmets with us online too and pick them up at the MIT COOP.

Last, but certainly not least, a shout out to the Boston Bike Party guys and Peter Cheung especially for his continued support to our team — if you see him and his crew, be sure to give him lots of love from us! And remember: every second Friday of the month — Bike Party! Learn more about Boston Bike Party here.

Thank you to Landry’s Bicycles also (and Galen Mook) for donating a $25 gift certificate to Landry’s for our bike event! Winner of our raffle prize is Felix Arroyo.

“I feel great!” (– coined by Yaoming D.)

Keep Calm & Pedal On~
See other photos from our  May 28th bike event on facebook.

May is Bike Trivia time!

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Join MIT PN2K for our May bike event: Bike Trivia! Join the greater MIT and Boston biking community, including food and music -- free. We believe that riding your bike shouldn't be a safety hazard, and we also (like you) don't see the point of paying for bike repairs that cost more than what you paid for your bike! However, we do know that a number of you routinely ride around on bikes with faulty brakes or rusted chains; bring in your bikes and biking friends and one of our friendly mechanics/volunteers will give it a safety check to let you know what needs to be changed and how we would fix up your bike. Repairs in-store might cost $40, $80, or more than $100. At our event, your repair and workshop time will just be the cost of an annual membership ($15 students, $20 MIT affiliates, $25 everyone else). Memberships are sold each year and last till the end of the school year (membership for 2016-2017 ends on August 31, 2017). Your membership entitles you to join bike events and workshops we hold, as well as bike store discounts with local partners. Visit our Facebook Event page to learn more about our bike event and RSVP. 

 

Welcome to 2017!

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Welcome to 2017 PN2Kers!

In 2016 after the summer happened, our team and MIT PN2K officers received so many inquiries from you all, wondering when our next bike event will occur (OK, there was about 5-7 inquiries--which we consider a lot!) It made me realize the importance of MIT PN2K's mission of serving the biking community at MIT and the Greater Boston community (as our events are open to the public). So like any team, we had a different round of officers operating the club after last summer, and sadly, due to lack of communication, performance was low. However, we are rounding out another year and we shall learn from past experience in recruiting excited, dedicated, and high-performing individuals to our team. (I was actually just reading a post earlier today from Steli, a really charismatic fella I met at the Business of Software Conference in 2015, about hiring A+ players).

Last December 2016, PN2K was contacted by Dustin Weigl, the brother of Christopher Weigl, who was also struck in a bicycle-truck collision the year after Phyo's accident--same type of collision, also in December, also fatal. I can't help feeling inspired by Dustin's story. From his brother's accident, he started pursuing ways of making cycling safer in the city. Dustin is now a first-year master's student in the Technology and Policy program at MIT. It's a heart-wrenching story, and it took me back to painful memories of Phyo and when I had buried my head in my work with the PN2K Foundation, just to churn past that pain. Anyway, it's been fun reuniting the most committed members of the MIT PN2K Club, and we are all looking forward to hosting our next bike safety event on March 27, 2017. (You heard it here first!)

To keep up the work of the club, we are changing a few things up:

First, starting on March 2017, bike safety events will be open to members only. The services offered at the bike event require you to be a member with us, but the membership is affordable, allows you entrance to future bike events, and comes with benefits and discounts to select bike shops around town (see our Member Benefits page). Costs are $15 for students, $20 for MIT affiliates, and $25 for everyone else. (Purchase membership now)

Not long ago in January, we held our IAP social bike ride. It was great fun, and we even witnessed a car crash right in front of us! We were very lucky. Luckily, Tian and Frank (the two in the front) were alright. Luckily, Peter Cheung casually dropped in to ride with us that afternoon. Luckily, when a driver/witness next to us had said, "It was those cyclists!" Peter called that BS out immediately ("That guy [driver] ran the red light! He ran the red light!") Luckily, another witness at the intersection was part of Boston Police. Luckily, the guy who ran the red crashed into the car next to us, instead of Tian and Frank who were on the other side of the collision. The group of us talked it out and then decided to laugh it out at Bertucci's in Kendall. We had discussion from bike safety and infrastructure to politics and hiking. A great time with great friends over great food.

Not long ago in January, we held our IAP social bike ride. It was great fun, and we even witnessed a car crash right in front of us! We were very lucky. Luckily, Tian and Frank (the two in the front) were alright. Luckily, Peter Cheung casually dropped in to ride with us that afternoon. Luckily, when a driver/witness next to us had said, "It was those cyclists!" Peter called that BS out immediately ("That guy [driver] ran the red light! He ran the red light!") Luckily, another witness at the intersection was part of Boston Police. Luckily, the guy who ran the red crashed into the car next to us, instead of Tian and Frank who were on the other side of the collision. The group of us talked it out and then decided to laugh it out at Bertucci's in Kendall. We had discussion from bike safety and infrastructure to politics and hiking. A great time with great friends over great food. (Side photo: John helping to lube a cyclists' bike chain before our ride)

Join us for future bike rides and events! We're short-staffed so don't have the means to post all the exciting things we're doing on our blog immediately -- the best way to stay current is to join our mailing list (pn2k-bikesafety@mit.edu) and to join us as a member ($15-25). We're also currently building our MIT PN2K team for the upcoming 2017-18 school year. So if you feel you got what it takes to be part of an A-team, let us know what you want to bring to the table and nominate yourself (and friends) here (https://www.pn2k.org/mit-pn2k-nominate/). We need everyone to help, not just cyclists. G'luck and bike safe! 

~ Keep Calm & Pedal On 
Chief Jedi