Meet Directing Samurai. She is one of the spunkiest people I know, and I'm very fortunate to call her co-director at the PN2K foundation. She brings the enthusiasm and creativity to so many of our ideas, as well as the impetus to take chances and move our foundation forward. This weekend, she visited Boston/Cambridge and met our entire MIT PN2K team in person. I was so excited to finally present Directing Samurai's PN2K shirt to her (you can see that the photos radiate the same excitement). She also geared up with the elbow, knee, wrist guards that we will be selling for $20 on our website and at our events, and after she realized she was overdosed on hype and no longer jet-lagged, we decided to go shopping for some surprise appreciation gifts for the team. How did we get to our destination point? We biked.
So here you see Carmel on a Hubway bike, sporting our black PN2K multisport helmet, looking super chill. (Like this helmet? We're selling a limited number here)
After meeting with everyone, we did some video shooting for our kids bike safety event - Before Carmel arrived, we were online and video chatting about ideas for a kids bike safety video. What we came up with is a hoot... Neither of us are cut out to "sing" the lyrics to our song on camera, so if you or someone you know wants to be a PN2K video star, shoot us an email. However, we did get some nice footage to show basic safety instructions for kids, like looking both ways before crossing the street, how to lock up a bike (safely! and with a U-lock), signaling, wearing your helmet, bike lights, safety gear, etc.
Finally we went out for food with the team. What you see above is a little something we encountered after crossing the Harvard Bridge along Mass Ave (which, by the way, was ridden with congested traffic and vehicles in bike lanes by motorists who were clearly not following the letter or spirit of the law). While locking up our bikes, I noticed two things: (1) cars were cutting across the bike lane in the intersection, even as greenly painted as it was (2) there was a huge cone lying unused, neglected, and clearly abandoned beside me. I took up the cone, placed it at the intersection (the cyclist there at the time looked really confused; I guess cyclists aren't used to being cared or looked out for!), and stood back and admired the spectacle. It was amazing. Dingfang noticed first the immediate effect that one single cone placed at the intersection created - all of a sudden, cars and buses steered clear of that bike lane (or rather, that cone!) It makes sense right? During driving tests and all during practice, you're trained to not knock over a cone -- but never to avoid driving in a bike lane. Well, no one ever said the DMV was perfect and fair to all road users.
All in all, a grand time was had by all. We did a mini-photo shoot before Carmel left, and Dingfang and Yaoming even took time off Sunday afternoon to interview Carmel before she left. That will go down in my books as one of the most fun, effective, and productive weekends to date.
Keep Calm & Pedal On!