Hooray, the lady from Kazan who’s so involved with bicycles in the city and whom I met at the Wintet Cyclong Conference was finally able to come to a meeting at school. We laid out all our plans for her, step by step. We told her we would be starting with the bike rack and showed her the winning design. She liked what she saw and wants us to open up the club to students from other schools. And in a move which is typically Russian, she said we should have a full-blast dedication ceremony, ribbon-cutting opening for the bike rack. She is even going to send the local TV station to cover it! She also said that there training programs in Kazan like the one I’m doing for Bikeability Scotland. I’m going to see if the boss will send our phys ed teachers there.it would be so great, because certificates are so important here.
And she sent us links to tons of material which we can use. This is all such a big help to getting this program off the ground. And I even understand the TV camera aspect of it. Like me, She also wants cycling to become a “normal” means of transportation and, God knows, Kazan could use it with its traffic jams at rush hour. So the more we can popularize it, the more normal it will become. I just hope enthusiasm for the project doesn’t wane when I leave Russia for good next year.
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