Letter to the North Carolina Bicycle Pedestrian Advocacy Group

Hi to all:

I'm the "inline skater" that suggested Walk'n'Roll NC (or Walk&Roll NC with a big fat sexy ampersand). I also have skin, breathe, walk, drive, eat, sleep, and much more.

To those brave enough to speak against inline skaters being included in the NC Bike Ped coalition or whatever your current name, thanks for saying what you're thinking. I'd rather deal with open discrimination than secrets and lies. Thanks for your courage. I'm sure many agree with you.

However, I worry when a minority sets an example by excluding a smaller minority. This seems to make the majority feel better about their exclusion of you.

Have you bought your Share the Road license plate yet?

Thanks to those who do not agree with you too!

Particularly, I feel Walk'n'Roll includes people in WHEELCHAIRS, who are significant pedestrian-speed traffic not on foot. (The speed of shared path traffic seems to be a major factor, and more of a factor than the actual mode of transportation, especially in terms of feelings of danger or annoyance.)

The fact that Walk'n'Roll includes inline skating and other forms of human powered motility--even ones I don't participate in--is a wonderful bonus to me.

Planning for inline skaters and wheelchairists seems smart for cyclists to do, since these folk might bolster your arguments for wider paths, better lane design, better signal technologies, better ramps, safer crossings, even bridges to carry human powered traffic across poorly designed roadways (can you say Battleground/Westover/Lawndale abandoned railway?). That would be great for everyone. I know restrooms and stairways and entrances to public buildings are a lot nicer now for ALL of us because of accommodation laws for the few.

Yes, cars roll, and motorcycles are called bikes, and pediatricians are called peds.

So what if cars roll? Are we not interested in their concerns for our safety? We should consider the needs of motorists (even pediatricians) when designing multiuse pathways and roadways. We should consider their concerns for parking on the street. We should consider their statements that "this road is too narrow for you to be on!" and help them see HOW we should widen it for the most safe use by human power and by motorists as well.

It is precisely because we have not considered the needs of motorists IN CONJUNCTION WITH human powered transportation (particularly the massive increase in size and weight of the average vehicle) that they scream so vehemently at you when you are on the roads.

Take a look at the crossings of the Pinellas Trail from St. Pete to Tarpon Springs, or the economic prosperity of the adjacent properties to the Silver Comet Trail from Smyrna to Rockmart, GA (so far), if you want examples of how better, wider, safer trails and HPV lanes can make money for fat rich cigar chompers about to bust a vein over a steak while giving you what you want and zapping a community to life economically.

I have 20,000 photos on roadskater.net waiting for you, even if you don't skate.

And let's not forget that most of us are also motorists. In fact we often drive insane and wasteful distances to get to safe, sane places to roll by human power.

I understand you guys had a process and when I suggested the name I knew that. I was invited to join after I did not attend the meeting because I did not want to annoy anyone with concerns of inline skaters or other wheeled forms of transport. The survey gave no method of entering other names than those already presented. I felt there would be some who just wanted bike paths, not multiuse paths, and sidewalks, not multiuse paths.

Later, some of these same people would complain that there was not enough room, not enough planning, poor coordination, lousy communication, and that the bike lanes and rail trails were just too narrow for all the people wanting to use them. Imagine the amount of money spent on sidewalks never used because they are not inviting, they go nowhere, or they are outright dangerous.

Most people will take a better alternative if it's there. Even more will take a fun alternative that's safe.

I just wanted to share my thoughts because I like naming things and making up slogans. My favorite of those i suggested is Walk'n'Roll not because it's cutesy, but because it INCLUDES rather than excludes. I think successful movements tend to be inclusive, at least until they get some power.

And I'm absolutely certain there are many out there who think we should share the roads and paths we all pay for, and even let people who don't pay for them use them, like visitors from other countries, even.

For example, I just returned from an 87-mile roadskate from Athens, GA to Atlanta, GA, where police from several jurisdictions cooperated to provide safe intersection crossing, especially in Gwinnett, DeKalb and Atlanta. It took me 7 hours and 38 minutes, an hour slower than my best time and an hour and ten better than my worst in 9 official and 2 unofficial previous excursions. What a pleasure to have people share the road, especially to be cheered on by the police and the VAST majority motorists!

• First Male: 4:30:56 19.3 mph avg. Aaron Richard Arndt
• First Female: 4:41:40 18.5 mph avg. Martine Charbonneau

I'm not a skateboarder, but I dislike the exclusion of skateboarders based on mode of transportation rather than on specific bad behavior observed legally by an officer of the law. Skateboarders may not matter to us now but they'll be running our country when we are in the home. And as long as they are as skilled and polite as the LEAST skilled or polite bicyclist or pedestrian (even a 5-year-old-Barbie-biker), to ban them is arbitrary and capricious, thus in my limited understanding, unconstitutional.

Another reason I like Walk'n'Roll is it sounds good, and giddy endorphin-juiced people would shout it like they do Rock'n'Roll, given half a chance, say at a Walk'n'Roll Human Powered Transportation Festival. I'm all for following proper processes, and what's important is that you have a coalition. I support the goals of your coalition, and I will gladly not work for your coalition or share my ideas or effort if you prefer. It's the easiest thing to do. I'm plenty busy with our Tour to Tanglewood effort, next year being our 10th time at this wonderful, warm, welcoming event for a cause other than ourselves.

Would you like to donate to people who can't enjoy human powered transportation in the ways you do via the roadskater.net team? Check this out:

• http://nationalmssociety.org/goto/roadskater.net

But if you include roadskaters, you will be including a powerful force and one that represents the fondest wishes of many of your children. You want them to have safe transportation alternatives to the automobile, right? Even if they don't really enjoy biking or walking?

Go to your local park. See the kids react to bikes going by. Then look at their reaction to late-forties skaters coming by in sync on the wheels they love. I can see the future if we don't stifle it.

If you should decide to limit the size of your movement by excluding wheelchairists or others using wheeled transportation by choosing a name that fails to include them, that is certainly your right. There is no requirement to share feelings of or efforts for empowerment. I meant no disrespect to anyone by offering my suggestions for names, and I understand the needs of cyclists and pedestrians can be perceived as different from those of other human powered transport if one wishes to see it thus.

But I stand for inclusion. We had 18 cyclists on our Roadskater.net team this year at Tanglewood. Why would I not welcome and encourage them? I think we share more concerns than we don't, and it is a choice whether we look for where we agree or where we disagree, where we are alike and where we are different.

In fact, in my opinion, while a mountain bike is a bike, inline skaters have more similar road and pathway surface and other needs to road cyclists than do mountain bikers, even those on the road.

If I sound mad, I'm not. If I sound like I care, you bet. If it sounds like I spent hours writing this, I did.

My heroes have shown me to keep my eyes on the prize, to be the change I wish to see, and to do unto the least of these as I would for my hero, that you might just be killed for doing what you believe in with all your being, and that there's no better way to live than to be willing to die (not to kill) for a cause when one life can change so many in spite of or even because of the loss of that life.

Still I hope I won't die for this or any cause, ever, ha!

Thank you to so many cyclists who have shared the road and who have inspired us, and who have yelled out "Roadskater.net!" (like "Walk'n'Roll!") as they flew by us on training rides and at the tour.

And I wish your coalition the best, whether or not you choose to include me in your dreams. You are still there, included in my dreams.

Skateylove, Blake