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.