Join the New River Valley Bicycle Association at 1:00pm this Saturday for a special screening of Road to Roubaix, at The Lyric Theater in Blacksburg.

Admission is just $1 for the general public, and free for NRVBA members.

Road to Roubaix is a documentary about cycling’s most prestigious one-day race, the Paris-Roubaix. 160 grueling miles of Belgian cobblestones, mud, grit, and often bitter cold and rain, make it arguably the toughest race too.

So come to Blacksburg this Saturday, and enjoy a great cycling film on a big screen, in the company of fellow cyclists. Make a day of it — Blacksburg is surrounded by world-class riding, and has a great little downtown with fun restaurants, bars, and cafes.

For more information, contact Jerry Ford of the New River Valley Bicycle Association.

Finally, this treat is home grown — Masterlink Films is from northern Virginia!

Update: we just heard that the film’s directors will be at The Lyric for this event, and available for a Q&A session after the film. They’ll also have DVDs for you to purchase. It’s great to meet anyone who has experienced Paris-Roubaix first-hand, let alone made a film about it!

Please complete this survey on bicycle signage for roads and trails:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2bdmAJQR4_2f7OrJANA0wbg2Q_3d_3d

It’s a little long — they say 12 minutes. But your honest input is needed to help choose the best signage for the the Manual On Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), the national standard for traffic signs and road markings.

Your participation in this survey is requested by Jeff Miller, President and CEO of the Thunderhead Alliance for Biking and Walking; and
Donald Meeker of Meeker & Associates, representing the Society for Environmental Graphic Design.

Please complete this survey ASAP, as the results must be tallied by Wednesday, Jan. 7.

Though some of us may be back at work, the holidays aren’t over yet. By devoting just a little of our holiday free time to bike advocacy, we can really accomplish a lot.

“Promote Bicycle Transportation” At Change.Org

The deadline is tomorrow, and as of today, fewer than 1000 votes are needed for “Promote Bicycle Transportation” to make it to the final round of voting for the “Top 10 Ideas for America.” Use the widget on our site, or follow this link:

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/promote_bicycle_transportation

Change.Org is a web-based, national public input campaign by the incoming administration.

Prepare Your Comments For The Commonwealth Transportation Board

The Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) is the parent entity that directs all transportation policy in Virginia, overseeing our roads (VDOT), rail and public transit (DRPT), airports, and port facilities. If you have an idea about how these agencies should be doing things, or working together better, the CTB is whom you should be telling it to. You’ll have that opportunity real soon, at a series of public input meetings. For more information about what you should ask for, how to go about it, and when and where the meetings are, see our recent post about the January 2009 CTB Public Input Meetings.

Identify Your Shovel-Ready Projects

This is aimed at local government officials and staff, and key citizen volunteers. There’s much talk about an upcoming economic stimulus package focusing on transportation infrastructure. Ready-to-go projects that need only to be funded will probably be favored, as this will put the most people to work the soonest. Bike-ped projects are usually simpler and cheaper than roads, bridges, etc., and thus easier to pull together in a short time, if funding were available. Well now it might be, so let’s identify likely projects in our own communities, and get the details in order for our grant applications.

VBF is now on Twitter, as user “vabike.” Currently I have Twitterfeed set up for the blog posts on this site. (This is actually a test post to see how that works.) I’m not sure how else we’ll be using it, but I’ll monitor it for now. So spread the word, and if you want our attention just give us a tweet @vabike.

Update from Carlton Reid (via Twitter!): BikeBiz.com has an article about the bike industry on Twitter.