Wheelie Good Podcast!

Tracy Berman is the kind of person who decides to compete in a triathlon without knowing how to swim. She likes biking on sand and through snow. After just a handful of bikecamping overnights, she figured, “why not spend seven days biking home from Traverse City?” Tracy first bikepacked in 2018 using not much more than her usual commuting rig, and after seven years of throwing herself into challen...

Garret Potter lived in 20 homes—in nine states and in Tokyo—before he graduated from high school, and one of the few constants in almost all of those places was building bike jumps. The mental therapy of cycling takes many forms, and in Garret’s case it involves hours of sweaty labor—shoveling and tamping and wayfinding—so that more jumping enthusiasts can catch filthy air. Garret gave up jumping...

Molly Kleinman arrived in Ann Arbor in 2005 and never expected to stay past graduate school. But after she bolted up a few ladders of engagement , she landed on the Transportation Commission and was elected president of the Ann Arbor District Library Board of Trustees . Another factor that pulled her into the Treetown Vortex was the bike lanes that heralded Ann Arbor’s emerging bike culture. When...

Bike riders and coffee drinkers are each an energetic bunch, and at the center of that sizable overlap is John Roos, founder and chief trike-pedaler at RoosRoast . John has been a devoted bike guy since he was a young kid growing up on East Jefferson St., and much of his penchant for coloring outside the lines was formed while riding headlong into obstacles. Winning races helped John affirm a few...

Patria Vandermark is a study in contrasts. She doesn’t much care for cold weather, but she loves camping in the snow. Her latest passion is for ultra-endurance fat biking, but her Instagram handle is skinnytires . And although she grew up mostly indifferent to cycling, she quit her engineering career to “build her life” around the sport, as both a ride organizer and a sales rep for Seven Cycles ....

If you ask Missy Stults for some encouraging statistics toward Ann Arbor’s carbon neutrality goals , she’s ready to reel off a few dozen off the top of her head. As the director of the Office of Sustainability and Innovation (and an avid bike commuter), Missy is gearing up for the fifth annual A2ZERO Week with a full head of steam and a lot of advice for cyclists to help keep the momentum going. T...

Christopher Becker is not a doctor. He’s not a lawyer, an urban planner, or even a state legislator. But he is an avid cyclist who damaged his knee badly in a crash with a delivery truck , and during these years of recovery he has learned a ton about how to fight within the legal system and get his life back to normal. Ann Arbor’s Vision Zero goal has not only failed , the numbers of traffic injur...

Kari Alsager has been racing the clock since she asked her mom to time her heats through the obstacle course at her fifth birthday party. She’s a career athlete who has played all the sports and raced all the races, and she started bike commuting along the B2B Trail when she and her doctorate in physical therapy moved to Michigan Medicine in 2013. Right around that time, Kari joined the Ann Arbor...

May 7 is Bike & Roll to School Day , when children all over the country ride to school in a bike bus shepherded by volunteer neighbors and parents. Andy Burkhardt started one at his daughter’s elementary school last year ( you can, too ), and despite no prior knowledge and minimal expectations, 60 people saddled up. The benefits are everywhere: The kids love the vibe and the exercise, the parents...

As the son of two Lansing attorneys, Peter Houk learned early on that looking out for the public good is lodged in his DNA. From his work with Walk Bike Washtenaw to being appointed to Ann Arbor’s transportation commission to opening cases on A2Fixit , Peter advocates for policies that make life safer for vulnerable road users and processes that enforce them actively and equally. He’s also loves c...

The Dutch half of Suzette Wanninkhof , inherited from her father , doesn’t remember a time when bikes weren’t a big deal in her family. It’s easier to embrace your wheels early in life when you grow up in the flat tropics of southern Florida, but she’s managed to (mostly) adapt enough to live car-free in Ann Arbor for the last eight years. This pedigree also helps explain how quickly she took to l...

Filmmaker and professor Jennifer Proctor is the director of “ The Loop of Pain ,” which will be featured at the Bicycle Film Festival on Saturday, March 1, at 7pm at the Michigan Theater. Born in the birthplace of mountain biking , Jennifer believes cycling and film nerdery grabbed hold of her psyche at around the same time in her early life. Reels and wheels are “historical cousins,” and she sees...

It’s a funny thing about crashes. If you’re in a car that collides with another, you’re showered with gifts and sympathy. But if you’re on your bike, you get blamed for being in the road in the first place. Such was Brendt Barbur’s revelation during his six-month rehabilitation after his bike slammed into a New York City bus, when he decided that cycling needed an image makeover. The result was th...

As both an avid mountain biker and a 26-year veteran of the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s office, Jeff Carek has spent much of his career easing frictions between cyclists and law enforcement. And after three years as the Education Director of the League of Michigan Bicyclists , he has been elevated to interim executive director and is a candidate to take over permanently later this year. In a state...

The Ann Arbor City Council is on a bike-friendly roll lately, having decided to build a protected bike path along Miller Avenue and keep existing paths clear of trash bins . These improvements are thanks in part to the efforts of freshman councilor Dharma Akmon , who has been a big advocate of cycling since the days when she couldn’t afford a car. Dharma is also a Managing Director at the Institut...

The woman formerly (and still somewhat currently) known as Hula Hooping Hannah is Hannah Stanton-Gockel, a candidate for a Master’s degree in UX Design & Research at the University of Michigan School of Information. And as an urbanism influencer and carless bike commuter, she has started social media presences on YouTube and TikTok that focus on universal access to road infrastructure for people o...

It’s easy to understand why cyclists of every skill level—from weekend jaunters to professional triathletes—wait at least three months to be bike-fit by Maxine Bratus. She still loves the process after 19 years because cycling makes her feel like a badass, and that badassery grows when you’re at your most stable in the saddle. Bike fitting involves technological appreciation for the bicycle and ph...

Each year, Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations hosts its downtown Green Fair , and this Friday, over 100 presenters will take over Main Street to showcase their efforts toward community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030 . The Bicycle Alliance of Washtenaw will be one of those presenters, helping our friends at Human Electric Hybrids launch the city’s new cargo bike lending library. W...

One of the reasons Nate Phipps co-founded the Bicycle Alliance of Washtenaw in 2017 was for the simple reason that he friggin’ loves bikes. They’re elegant, efficient, and they benefit just about every facet of human life. And he knew that if enough of the other 360,000 county residents loved bikes even half as much as he does, he’d be on to something. We’re also proudly announcing the imminent ar...