BIKEmpowered! Bike Coach Brian Lacy on Shifting Our Emotional Gears

On a bike map, 33rd avenue looks like a safe bet for bridging I-84 and thus crossing the border from the Southeast to the Northeast quadrants of the city—and it is, if you know what you're doing. I thought I did, but on a recent cool morning, my newcomer's geographical knowledge proved me wrong.

Things go along fine until 33rd turns into Glisan, spitting me into the labyrinth of the Laurelhurst neighborhood, and pretty soon back onto 39th—which I had tried desperately to avoid. Suddenly I can’t tell north from south or recognize any significant landmarks, and I find myself wishing I had a prompter to stage-whisper my next move. 

Or, at the very least, that I had remembered to bring my bike map.

Portland enjoys a reputation as one of the bike-friendliest cities in the country, its title as Bike City USA only recently usurped by Minneapolis. Yet for all the buzz and cyclophile culture, getting around the city by bike can still present challenges for the novice and seasoned rider alike, whether it’s a matter of deciphering your route, fitting your bike, learning to signal, or overcoming a fear of riding in thick traffic. Or maybe all of the above.

This is where a bike coach steps in.

BIKEmpowered: Meet Bike Coach Brian Lacy

“What's a bike coach?” I had asked my friend Mia Van Meter, City Repair volunteer coordinator and community organizer for all things related to sustainability. She had casually mentioned working with a bike coach, and said she was consequently biking more and feeling more comfortable riding in traffic.

I was intrigued, so she set up an interview with Brian Lacy, founder of BIKEmpowered and a long-time friend of hers.

Great! Now if I can just figure out how to get there…

I finally turn myself around, get back onto 33rd, and pedal hard up the hill toward Townshend's Tea on Alberta, just minutes before Lacy arrives.

A trim, neat man with a mass of brown curls and delicate silver-rimmed spectacles, he's one of those creative types whose enthusiasm for life is immediately palpable. He extends a hand in warm greeting and presents me with a hand-poured beeswax candle. A natural teacher, he makes his living by coaching both biking and urban beekeeping.

Van Meter arrives a short while later, and over a pot of peppermint tea, we sit down to discuss the joys and challenges of helping people get over their fears and onto their bikes.

Lacy founded BIKEmpowered, his one-man-band bike coaching business, in 2008, but he has been an avid cyclist and cycling advocate for years—even before he knew he was one. Scratch the surface in his bio only slightly, and you'll learn he's behind the founding of several great programs in Portland.

Arriving on the scene in 1976, he began work at the Bike Gallery, then a small bike shop dedicated from the start to getting more folks on bikes. In the early '90s, he heard about Jan Vander Tuin, a cycling advocate at the Center for Appropriate Transport in Eugene, who founded the Human Powered Machines project, an apprenticeship program where teenagers can acquire skills for a career in bicycle building.

Lacy wanted to do something similar, so he contacted Jonathan Nicholas of Cycle Oregon, and proposed several programs combining education, bicycles, and community. With $5,000 seed money, he began a summer riding program and other educational programs, eventually founding the Community Cycling Center (CCC) in 1994.

He worked at the CCC for several years, honing his abilities in management and teaching, and developing a passion for the power of education. A central facet to the useful, healthy skills he believes youth should be taught is the value of self-sufficiency. This has led to a focus on human-powered transport and homegrown food.

In the late '90s, he took a year off to help found Growing Gardens, a non-profit which grew out of the Portland Home Garden Project, and offers workshops in basic urban gardening. Youth Grow, an education and service-learning program, followed soon after. Now under the leadership of Deb Lippolt, Growing Gardens continues to do great work as a thriving, award-winning organization.

When asked about his hyperactive creative impulse, Lacy laughs and admits he has to seek a balance. He and Van Meter compare it to a mutual friend's mad-scientist tendency to start several projects at once, and Lacy pantomimes a frantic stirring of many bubbling pots. He says he's learned to slow down, to “temper, temper, temper,” as he puts it.

That seems essential to the model for the sustainable, education-based programs Lacy has replicated in these local organizations, where a steady flow of new students and a rapidly-changing environment require the long-term commitment of staff and community supporters.

The Evolution of BIKEmpowered

“I never really left the bike community,” he insists, as he describes the evolution of BIKEmpowered. “What I wanted to see was a class that was low-tech, easily understood, and sort of low-testosterone, you know? So that people who were so-called “out of shape” and not into the techy gear stuff could really feel comfortable.”

He started searching YouTube videos and local community courses for accessible, basic how-to tutorials in bike safety, skills, and repair. Finding a dearth of information, he decided to fill in the gaps through one-on-one coaching sessions.

“Before [BIKEmpowered],” Van Meter says, “you could take a class at the CCC, but I just felt I wasn't really with my peers. It was all these jocks, even the women, and I just thought, 'Oh this is for other people. This isn't for me.'”

She wasn't alone in her need for hype-free local guidance. About 200 people have come through BIKEmpowered classes since 2009. Lacy teaches an average of five classes a week, ranging from 4-6 hour small group courses, to eight hour courses for larger groups, sometimes split up over a weekend, or as a one-day Saturday session with a break for lunch. Classes are held in his basement, where a combination of stands and a bolt system enables him to 'fly' six bikes, so 4-5 students can work at once. Students can also elect to set up one-on-one sessions to tackle specific issues or focus on certain skills. For Van Meter, the challenge was simple: she wanted to bike, but she just didn't like biking.

“I associated it with my wrists hurting,” she says, since she was riding a bike ill-matched to her body. “We drew up a list of all the things that were keeping me from getting on my bike. What felt to me like excuses, things I was really beating myself up about, Brian saw as signs that we needed to change something and make it work for me.”

“I call them hurdles, and we pull them apart,” Lacy says. “My whole goal with coaching is to get it to be automatic for people, so they're not consciously thinking about all these things: how to balance when they're signaling a turn, stuff like that. You practice. You get it in your body, and then everything gets more natural.”

He describes a quiet and reserved student who had developed a strong fear of biking in traffic—most of all balancing to signal a turn. Lacy drew a chalk line in an empty parking lot, and had her practice signaling while following the line as best she could.

“Initially, she just wouldn't signal,” Lacy says. “But then I discovered she could turn her hand over on the handle bar—just this very small movement, just turning over her hand. So we built from there, step by step. By the end of our lesson, she could signal.”

“That's kind of what it's going to take to get our culture on bikes,” Van Meter says. “Step by step, and one at a time.”

Transitioning to a Bike Culture

Lacy outlines some possible approaches toward that transition, such as programs for youth which emphasize employment and provide economic incentives for cyclists. He believes that community health, school, hospital, and church organizations each have a role to play in this transition, and can help create new cyclists in lasting and meaningful. But he emphasizes the complexity of making a shift to reliance on bikes and public transport.

“It's fundamentally a cultural issue,” he says. “We've got to connect all of these things to our lifestyles. It's a responsibility thing, not a blame thing. It's about information and community support. What are we going to give our grandchildren? My daughter turned fourteen in August. It's all very emotional.”

When we talk about some of the more difficult areas of Portland to ride in, both Lacy and Van Meter zero in on the southwest, generally a wealthier area with winding roads that are challenging for safe cycling. Lacy describes talking to people about cycling at a neighborhood meeting in that quadrant.

“It's sometimes hard for people to understand the cycling mindset without hearing it as paranoia,” he says. “You have to balance two things: your skills, and your awareness of the road. Part of you is always listening and looking. Because I've got these skills, and that intensely observant part of me, I know I can enjoy my ride. You always assume there might be a car about to cross your path or come up behind you. That's not paranoia—that’s the sweet spot, when you can ride anywhere.”

While he's all for creating more bike pathways, if that's what will get more people on their bikes, he's more interested in education as a means of increasing cycling. He wants to see more education of both drivers and cyclists, so that we can use existing roadways together, like they do in Europe.

“Many drivers and cyclists get into the rut of blaming the other for unsafe behavior—and both can be right,” he acknowledges. “As roads get more crowded, the economy skids, and gas prices get higher, tempers will flare more brightly unless there's overt re-education about the true costs of cars, and bikers start practicing 'be nice to drivers.' We'll get more converts with honey than vinegar!”

Spoken like a true beekeeper and long-time activist.

Before Lacy leaves, en route to Oregon City and then the Southeast, he describes an alternate route home: 26th and 28th instead of 33rd. The ride is far more pleasant, and as I coast beneath the shade of tall old trees, I think about the wisdom of experience, and how essential the sharing of that wisdom will be to the strength of future generations. I think about Lacy as a veritable Johnny Appleseed, tossing out the seeds of inspiration, watching what grows.