Dur­ing the last week, I’ve been out on my very first mul­ti-day cycling tour, and it was an awe­some adven­ture, see­ing all kinds of beau­ti­ful parts around the Wairara­pa and the South­ern Coasts of the North Island.

Since I’ve been back a friend men­tioned this great web­site, BikeEv­ery­where, whose Face­book page can be found here and which cer­tain­ly gets my tiny cycling advo­cate heart all a flut­ter. It’s sim­i­lar to some of the things the Welling­ton­ista has men­tioned in the past. Essen­tial­ly the idea is this:

“BikeEv­ery­where is an ini­tia­tive to encour­age more peo­ple to cycle (well, every­where) by help­ing cyclists nav­i­gate the busiest routes in and out of the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict.”

This excites me: it real­ly makes cycling more acces­si­ble to begin­ners by pro­vid­ing clear, sim­ple, acces­si­ble resources. One exam­ple is the videos they use to explain routes in and out of major Welling­ton sub­urbs. Launched right in time for Bike Wise Month 2013, BikeEv­ery­where also aims to raise aware­ness for how enjoy­able and reward­ing all types of cycling can be. For you that might mean join­ing the Lycra clad Velom­i­nati, with their sim­ple list of only 91 rules. More to my tastes would be fol­low­ing BikeEv­ery­where’s inter­pre­ta­tion of them.

I won’t get too preachy, because as I’m sure you all know, cycling is good for you, good for the envi­ron­ment, and good for your wal­let; ulti­mate­ly what real­ly mat­ters is that cycling is cool, and I know a lot of peo­ple think it’s a whole lot of fun.

If you’re won­der­ing how you can get involved, the best place to look is here; and if the idea of free food appeals, come down to the Go By Bike day this Wednes­day (the 13th) under the sails at Queens Wharf. Intro­duce your­self, I’m the guy with lots of curly hair and the blue Surly Long Haul Truck­er.

John Ander­son is a Welling­ton cyclist and slam poet. He is not affil­i­at­ed with Bike Every­where.