I fell in love with cycling since my late 50’s San Francisco Bay-area Schwinn cruiser days. As an adult, bikes have kept me happy, in good health and engaged in community activities for over 30 years. Cycling the back roads just north of Ashland Oregon, where I spent my 10 to 18 years, rooted my love for good.

Professionally, I started out repairing and selling bikes when I was 21 in 1979, in Tigard. By 1981 I was wrenching at Portland Oregon’s Bike Gallery (then called Eastside). Between 1984 and ’88 I lived fall-winter (burr!)-spring in Ann Arbor Michigan, putting in thousands of miles on my “3-speed snow bike” on narrow, rutted, icy roads - and finding perfect slopes to slalom down by bike, when not in class or wrenching at AA’s local pro shop. I learned a lot of respect for polypropylene and goggles in those years. Summers I’d return to wrench and teach bike repair to junior staff at the Gallery or Tailwind – a family bike shop in Beaverton at the time.

In 1992 I joined City Bikes Cooperative for a year, loving especially fixing bikes on the sidewalk with swarms of kids that would be eager to learn and try out their bike fixing skills. This inspired me to start the Community Cycling Center in early 1994.

At the Center I taught several hundred children and a few hundred adults (half women, half men) bike handling and repair: helping a group of girls learn how to stop and start in a parking lot, flat fixing classes to ten adults at once, wheel building for more senior volunteers, hosting wonderful bike rodeos, etc etc.

In 1996 both Renew America and the Robert Rodale Institute (publisher of many cycling books, and Bicycling magazine) each gave the CCC national awards for the education programs I’d designed and ran. I flew to DC to receive them, and came close to giving a student-built Yellow Bike (the CCC had a part in the Yellow Bikes craze) to Bill Clinton, but settled for a great group shot in front to the White House with a bunch of D.C. cycling advocates and a friendly White House bike security guy.

Since leaving the Center in 1998, I’ve stayed active leading rides and teaching bike repair with my daughter’s school, and at low-income community centers leading rodeos and bike fixing workshops.

In the summer of 2008, I felt compelled to return to bikes more fully, what with crash increases, the cost of gas, the health of people and ecologies suffering world-wide by our dependence on cars. I asked friends and acquaintances what kept them from riding more. In addition to bike paths which are loved, they wanted 1) coaching to gain skills and 2) others to ride with. I’ve designed BIKEmpowered around both of these needs.

My goals for BIKEmpowered are to offer detailed riding and repair coaching both in person and on the web, to help like-minded cyclists find each other and to support their goals to ride safely and often.

Every responsible cyclist makes our world a better place. I love adding my joy of cycling education into the mix. Suggestions and questions? Great! Send me an email.

Safe and empowered cycling to all!

Brian Lacy