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Never too young: ACA's Executive Director Jim Sayer tandems with daughter Samantha It's the Big One: the Adventure Cycling Association, the country's largest and most respected bicycle touring and advocacy organization. Several of the 43,000 members (as at 2005) own Bike Fridays, and just recently the staff of Adventure Cycling purchased a Bike Friday to take on business trips. We'd be hard pressed coming up with a better endorsement of our little wheels! Here's an interview with Executive Director, Jim Sayer.
Jim, who are you? What's your cycling background and current habits?
Executive Director of ACA. Avid cyclist since about 10 years old. Regular bike commuter, especially in SF and Truckee, CA (near Lake Tahoe and Reno) and now in Missoula. Past volunteer with the SF Bicycle Coalition. Started a popular bike tour in the SF Bay Area: Go Greenbelt! -- 475 miles and 27,000 feet around the Bay Area to celebrate Earth Day and the Bay Area's magnificent greenbelt of farmlands, parks and other open space.
For the uninitiated, What is the ACA?
 Adventure Cycling is America's largest bicycling organization with nearly 43,000 members. Founded in 1976 as Bikecentennial, our mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle. We help people explore the landscapes and history of America for fun, fitness and self-discovery. We do a variety of things. We publish some of the best cycling resource guides in the U.S., including our magazine Adventure Cyclist and the Cyclist's Yellow Pages. We publish some of the best bicycling maps in the world, covering more than 33,000 miles of fantastic bicycle routes. We run inexpensive, high value tours throughout the U.S. and Canada, from self-contained trips across North America to one-week, fully supported tours, in places like the Columbia Gorge, the Northern Rockies, Utah's red rock country, and New England. We partner with other national cycling groups to advocate for more federal and state resources for bicyclists and walkers. And we provide some of the best bicycle travel gear in the business -- at discounted rates to our members -- from panniers to clothes to maps and guides. |
If folks are wondering how to join Adventure Cycling, it's easy. You can join by calling 800/755-2453 or going to our website at www.adventurecycling.org. Basic membership is $33 a year. We also have over 1,000 Life Members, who have pledged their souls (not to mention at least $750) to Adventure Cycling.
How did ACA come to own a Bike Friday? Why a Bike Friday? Why not a different brand of folding bike?
Our staff is doing more traveling around the country (by plane) and we thought it would be wonderful to have a convenient, high quality folding bike to take along with us. Why BF? Great reputation, especially among riders on our bike tours around the U.S. We also have a long-standing relationship with BF, which has advertised in Adventure Cyclist for years.
What did you and your staff plan to do with it?
We're riding it! I've personally enjoyed riding it around Boston and Chicago and have experienced the Bike Friday magic -- people stopping me to ask about "that interesting looking bike." We'll be setting our New World Tourist up for Adventure Cycling Board members later this month -- they're very interested in trying it out.
Do you get much attention when you ride the bike in public? What do you think of that? Do you think it is the same as if you were riding a regular bike?
Any kind of unusual bike draws attention. It's one of the pleasures of cycling.
We've done some cross promotion with ACA recently - and you mentioned you felt Bike Friday and ACA were similar in culture in some way. Tell me more about this.
We both seem to have members/customers who love bike riding just for the joy of it - and obviously, we both have fans who love to travel. And they love to hear about other people's travel adventures - that's why so many people tell us how much they look forward to getting their Adventure Cyclist (we get lots of calls when it arrives even a little late) and also why there's growing interest in Bike Friday clubs - for riding and for sharing.
ACA is known as the #1 Cycling organization in the USA. It has 43,000 members. Who are they in the main?
A wide variety, based on my interactions with about a thousand so far (and that's in less than a year). They're from all over the U.S. (and the world, but mostly from the U.S.), young and old, and devoted to adventurous journeys.
Who do you want to attract, and where would you like to see the ACA go and grow? How would you like to see Bike Friday involved?
We want to keep opening the door to new riders. We are creating new routes through areas that haven't been as focused on bicycling. For example, we're developing an Underground Railroad Bicycle Route, from the Deep South to Lake Huron in Canada. It's a fabulous route that we're developing in cooperation with the Center for Minority Health at the University of Pittsburgh.
We're interested in attracting more African Americans to cycling, especially for health reasons. We're developing more avenues for younger folks to get involved, including a forthcoming guide to creating kids' cycling tours and a new family tour that will be an awesome but accessible journey through the Colorado Rockies. We're also putting together some other terrific tours - including our first-ever supported cross country ride, from Seattle to DC. (Tongue in cheek, we're calling it AC to DC.)
Where do you hope to see the bicycle fitting in to American life in the next 10 years? How do you think ACA can further that?
There are phenomenal opportunities to boost bicycling's role in American life, as gas prices shoot past the $3 mark, as the boomers shoot into their 60s and focus more on their long-term health, as the world looks for transportation that doesn't burn hydrocarbons, and as more people seek new ways to reconnect with their communities. Bicycling can help in all of those regards.
Adventure Cycling is part of a national coalition funded by Bikes Belong, the bike industry's trade group, to increase funding for cycling and pedestrian facilities and awareness. We found greater receptivity than ever in Congress to our lobbying for added funds - and there are now billions of dedicated dollars for cycling and walking, including a new federal Safe Routes to Schools program. Adventure Cycling will play an important role in this coalition effort. We strongly believe that when America bikes, America wins. (I had to throw at least one slogan in there.)
Favorite cycling drink? Food? Destination? Piece of apparel? Piece of equipment? Special Tip? Jim, if there is anything else you want to add, be my guest.
I have been riding since I was a kid and the one thing I've learned is that there is no single best anything, especially when it comes to cycling. The beauty of cycling for me is the serendipity, discovering completely unexpected foods, drinks, vistas, routes, people and more - just by hopping on a bike and riding down a trail or road. I was not surprised when I read a recent survey that placed the bicycle high among the world's greatest inventions.
Any chance of seeing the ACA Bike Friday featured against the visitor's wall shot in the ACA magazine?
You never know, Lynette - thanks for planting the seed.
Jim Sayer Executive Director
Adventure Cycling Association Inspiring people of all ages to travel by bicycle (800) 755-2453 x201 toll free, (406) 721-1776 x201 phone, (406) 721-8754 fax www.adventurecycling.org
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OTHER LINKS
Adventure Cyclist Magazine's glowing review of the Pocket Crusoe by John Schubert
Some of our advertising in Adventure Cyclist magazine
For more information, follow this link http://www.adventurecycling.org.