On top of providing quality products and exceptional service to every customer and cycle enthusiast, Salem Cycle is a proud supporter of several local charities. We believe that a bright future begins with education, strong values, determination, and the support of a unified community. We applaud those organizations which provide aid to these causes.

Listed below are several of the letters of thanks that we have received from the various organizations we have helped.

Here are several letters that we have received lately to thank us for our various contributions to local and national charities, events, and educational facilities. Please click on the thumbnail to see (and read) a larger image:

Help for Abused Women and Children	Help for Abused Women and Children
Salem Public Schools - Horace Mann School	Reader's Choice Awards
Mass Red Ribbon Ride 2006	Salem State College
Temple Shalom	The National Multiple Sclerosis Society
2006 North Shore Wellness Fair

Spokes people
By Dinah Cardin/ dcardin@cnc.com
Friday, November 18, 2005

For many, the crisp fall season is the perfect time to drag that rusty bicycle out of the garage and take a Saturday morning ride. But for Rondi Anderson, there is no end to biking season and there are no Saturday morning pleasure rides.

Instead, the 47-year-old Salem resident is a year-round bike commuter. From Derby Street to Salem Hospital and the several clinics where she works as a midwife, Anderson pedals through traffic, rain and snow.

"As long as they don't have to go more than five miles, anyone should be able to ride their bike wherever they want to go," she says. "I probably have a personality toward soap-boxing anyway, but I tell people that I save money by not paying to go to a gym, I stay in shape, I'm not polluting or contributing to global warming or the war in Iraq. It's good for the bones and preventing osteoporosis."

Those are just a few of the reasons bike commuters give for leaving their cars at home, or in Anderson's case, not owning a car at all. Soaring gas prices are certainly not the least of the reasons people are turning to pedal power.

"I definitely save money, there's no doubt about that," says Stu Beaulieu, who rides to his auto body restoration shop on Bridge Street from his home near Derby Street, while his girlfriend rides to her job at Collins Middle School.

The main benefit for Beaulieu is that he feels more motivated when he gets to work.

"It gives you a few minutes to think about nothing, a few minutes by yourself. It's not to cheat gas prices, I just like it."

Although the U.S. has long been lapped by Europe in terms of using bicycles as a form of transportation, the trend is slowly catching on in Salem. In a city where everything is packed into only a few square miles, bike enthusiasts say everyone can get exactly where they want to go in a matter of minutes ... if only everyone was on a bike.

Stop by Salem's commuter rail station weekday mornings and there are bikes of every size, shape and color - including the urban taken-a-beating kind - chained up and left by those jumping on the train. Avoiding the battle for an early-morning parking space can be reason enough.

And with the nation's dependence on foreign oil, high car insurance premiums and gas prices recently spiking at $3 a gallon, ask Anderson if she feels a tad bit smug and she'll tell you: "I feel totally smug all the time."

Promoting pedaling

Bike shop owners certainly have an interest in seeing Salem become more of a bike city. Jimmi Mahalares, of Pure Bicycle Center on Broadway, says that with safer driving conditions in town, more bike paths and better public education for bikers and drivers, Salem could stand a chance of becoming more of a bike commuting community like Cambridge or Somerville.

"When gas went up, more people started using bikes for commuting, without a doubt," he says. "It's been mostly people dusting off old bikes and getting them repaired. A few hardcore people have been out there despite rain in October."

At the 8-year-old shop, Mahalares has been trying to educate commuters about layering their clothing.

"A lot of technology now has come into cycling to keep the wind off," he says.

He would like to see city officials take an interest in a more secure way of locking bikes away from vandals and thieves.

In his effort to promote cycling, Dan Shuman, of Salem Cycle on Washington Street, says he has offered bike racks to downtown businesses "at cost" with little success. He sells all kinds of bikes, commuting equipment, maps for area bike trails and a guide called Bicycling Street Smarts.

Shuman began working on bikes when he was 13 and bought the 20-year-old store six years ago. So hardcore is the biking atmosphere around this place, one of Shuman's employees bikes to the Washington Street store on a circuitous route from Medford.

More evidence that the trend is catching on is that Salem Cycle recently sold out of folding bikes for commuting, and in the shop window an "Extra Cycle" is currently featured, which comes with a small wooden platform attached on the back that can be used as a passenger seat (with a designated spot for the passenger's feet) or for toting just about anything, within reason. With a grin, Shuman swears the manufacturer even makes a battery-powered blender attachment.

Tirelessly, he works to promote the idea of incorporating biking into the daily lives of those around him. One common request is that the city find the money to promote safer biking in Salem.

"There's money available for any town with a plan to use it," says Shuman, "and we don't have a plan."

But, perhaps, that is about to change.

Salem's narrow, congested streets might not be conducive to sharing the road, but new bike-friendly state legislation means drivers are going to have to play nice.

The state's Registry of Motor Vehicles will soon provide more awareness of biker's rights and encourage drivers to be on the lookout for bikers, including checking side mirrors before opening car doors, one of the most common hazards for a biker.

The RMV has started a Share the Road Study Committee, which held its first meeting this past July. One of the committee's objectives is to explore ways in which motorist-bicyclist interaction can be improved.

Another recent victory for bikers was the endorsement, on Nov. 3, of a Bicyclists' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, which would promote smart city biking and safer sharing of the road, by the Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security.

Officials gearing up

State Rep. John Keenan participates in the popular Pan-Mass Challenge to benefit the Jimmy Fund every summer and trains for months leading up to it. On Beacon Hill, bike paths and bicycle-friendly communities are getting a lot of attention these days, he says.

In the ongoing effort Salem officials are making to bolster the creative economy and encourage people to both live and work in this community, bicyclists can play a real role, says Keenan.

"Anything we can do to take more vehicles off the road is beneficial to traffic and congestion issues and the environment," he says. "In a situation like this, where so many live and work in the same city, it's something that should be encouraged. It's certainly part of a livable community."

The state Legislature has also examined funding a "Safe Routes to School" program that encourages safer walking and bicycling to school, and includes funding for the construction and improvement of bike lanes, paths and sidewalks.

Mass Highway has adopted engineering guidelines, in keeping with a law passed in the mid-'90s, that encourage bicycle lanes early in the design process of road construction and maintenance.

City Councilor-at-Large Mike Bencal is a strong advocate of bicycling. The retired air traffic controller does all his errands by bike, including carrying groceries in his side bags. Bencal guesses he'll rack up about 2,000 miles this year. He is part of the North Shore Cyclopaths, who ride together every Saturday morning, and of which former Salem Mayor Sam Zoll is a founding member.

The city needs to make things easier for bikers, like having more bike racks near the pedestrian mall, says Bencal. At one time, Salem purchased new bike lockers for the train station, which would have offered more theft protection for train commuters, but the lockers sat in a storage facility that were eventually vandalized, he says.

This city used to host a bike race called the Mayor's Cup. Bikers, including a few professional racers, and an Olympian one year, recalls Bencal, would line up all around the Common. The race, which was last held in 1986, brought huge crowds.

For recreational biking and commuters, many bike paths have long been in the works, led by advocacy groups, connecting Boston with the North Shore along abandoned MBTA rail beds. Frustration for many bikers though, is the fact that the existing path that connects Salem to Marblehead crosses busy Loring Avenue and takes riders to Canal Street.

Bencal introduced an order to the Council that would have set up a citizen's committee to handle bike paths in the city, but the support wasn't there, he recalls, adding he would like to see the new mayor take an interest in making Salem more bike-friendly.

"We need some direction form the corner office that would allow Salem to take that step forward," he says. "There are too many cars on the streets now and one way to alleviate it is all get on bikes."

Bike advocates say the revolution is cyclical: More people on bikes will mean safer roads for bikers and promote even more people getting on bikes.

"It's catchy," says the 50-year-old Bencal. "It's an exercise we can do well into our 70s, because it's so non-abrasive to our bodies.”It may take $6 a gallon for gas before people really get behind it here," he says. "There has to be a push from the governmental side."

Mayor-elect Kim Driscoll says she is all for resurrecting the plan for a citywide bike path that would be both on and off city streets.

"It adds to the quality of life," she says. "I look at it as more of a recreational benefit, and if we can get folks to work that way, that's just icing on the cake. I don't know if can get everyone out of their cars and on their bike. If we make it safer, we stand a chance of some people using their bikes as a mode of transportation."

When Driscoll's family lived in South Salem, they used the existing path that goes from Loring Avenue to Lafayette Street and to Marblehead.

The numerous bike paths out on the West Coast are so popular, says Driscoll that homes built on them in Oregon are highly sought after. State money is probably still available, she says, which could be tapped into for converting more abandoned railroad beds in the area to bike paths.

As city officials debate opening the pedestrian mall to vehicular traffic, and with a new mayor setting the tone dealing with ongoing traffic issues, Salem cyclists hope their voice will be one that is heard above the din of engines and horn blasts.

Reprinted with permission from Community Newspaper Company Dinah Cardin Salem Gazette November 18, 2005