BRATTLEBORO — During Gallery Walk, on May 6 at 8 p.m., visit the Hooker-Dunham Theater on Main Street to participate in an evening celebrating cycling culture.
The Putney Bicycle Club will present the film Riding Bikes With The Dutch by Michael Wolfgang Bauch. The films tells the story of a family that travels to the Netherlands for a year and experiences a way of life quite different from their lives in the urban sprawl of freeway-laden Southern California. Find out how much fun and wonderful life can be when this family trades in four wheels for two.
The second part of the evening will be a slideshow by Dave Cohen entitled Extreme Utilitarian Bicycling. Dave will present a historical (and at times hysterical) examination of how human-powered vehicles have been used for functions you may have never imagined possible.
See bikes used for funerals, freight delivery, snow plowing, firefighting, landscaping services, warfare, tree climbing, transporting wheelchair users, and many other applications. You will get a look at some of the most interesting utilitarian cycles on the market today and consider why it so important to rethink the role of the bike in our current lives.
Cohen has been an environmental entrepreneur, educator, and activist. Among other things, he founded the Pedal Express Cooperative in Berkeley, Calif., a human-powered cargo delivery service capable of hauling loads as much as a half ton.
He has conducted presentations on bicycle transport for schools, organizations, and institutions on the West Coast and at conferences in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Fresh out of graduate school in counseling psychology, Dave is now embarking on a career as a counselor, with a specialty in ecopsychology.
To promote local cycling culture, information will be available on the new bicycling law in Vermont, the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition, local advocacy efforts, and signups for local rides. The Bicycle Commuter Guide will also be available.
The Brattleboro Energy Committee and Brattleboro Climate Protection are spearheading local efforts to promote other ways of traveling than the single occupant vehicle. Volunteers will be registering participants for Way to Go Vermont!, a program that will be encouraging people to to bike, walk, bus, or carpool to work from May 16 through May 20.
The local goal is to sign up more than 1,000 Windham County residents. If you would like to sign up beforehand, visit Waytogovt.org.
Tickets for this event are $5, and door prizes will be provided by Brattleboro Bike Shop, Burrows Specialized Sports, and West Hill Shop.