BVC ForwardFest Oct 19

[Colin Allen]

At the July BVC meeting, those present voted to set up a BVC booth at  
ForwardFest, a progressive community-building event that is scheduled for  
Saturday Oct 19th, at the Neal Recreation Center in Bryan.

The keynote speaker will be Jim Hightower, and numerous groups such as  
ourselves, Brazos Greenways Council, KEOS radio, and the Coalition for  
Support of the Public Schools will be setting up booths.

At our July meeting, several of you who were there volunteered to help  
staff a BVC booth. Anyone who has ideas for information sheets or  
displays that we can take to the event, please bring those ideas to next  
Monday's monthly meeting.  (Jean Marie will be sending an announcement  
about that meeting soon.)  If we can sign up a few new members at this  
event, that will also be a plus for BVC, and we hope to have the T-shirts  
ready by then to help persuade people to join.  Any other ideas -  
especially things that will be fun (e.g. a windtrainer challenge?) - are  
welcome.

The event will also provide an opportunity for us to try to revive some  
links to other groups that have overlapping interests with cyclists.  For  
example, we need to be on board with the Greenways Council in their  
efforts to get recreational green space around Bryan and College Station.  
 A few years ago there was substantial overlap between our two groups,  
but we seem to have lost contact, and this event will provide an  
opportunity to reconnect.  Also, it seems important that we should be  
working with public schools to improve bike routes to schools.

Finally, if you're willing to support the event financially (which  
includes an opportunity to attend Happy Hour with Hightower on the Friday  
evening before ForwardFest) please let me know and I can provide details  
of how to contribute. So far the organizers are about half way to their  
needed total of $5,000 to put on the event, and more help would be  
appreciated. No donation is considered too small to be of help (although  
there is a minimum for the Happy Hour with Hightower).

Cheers,
Colin