While doing some research for the GASP tour, which I note will mark it's fifth anniversary this summer, I was reminded of the first time I visited Unity, where we will arrive on day four of GASP 2009.It was a mid-summer weekend in 1996, and I was teaching a CAN-BIKE course for staff of the health region.
On Saturday, we wrapped up the first day of the course and I returned to my hotel room for a short break. Coincidentally, I happened to be in town on the same evening that local merchants were conducting a "midnight madness" sale. The stores were going to remain open until late into the evening. Some of them moved merchandise out onto the sidewalks to display.
The town had recently completed a "Main Street" upgrade, one of those infrastructure projects funded by the federal government. The downtown streetscaping had been revamped: wide, brick sidewalks, nostalgic lamp standards, upgraded storefronts. I had noticed earlier in the day that every street corner had bicycle racks.
I wandered onto Main Street just around sunset. The late-day sun cast a golden light on everything it touched, complemented by an azure sky overhead. For some reason, a marvelous magenta light bathed the entire scene, bringing normally cold, dark shadows to a life of their own.
But most amazingly, in that magical light at that mysteriously still time of the day, were the bicycles. Bicycles everywhere. People were riding bicycles down the street, gathering from the residential neighbourhoods surrounding the town centre. There were boys and girls on mountain bikes. There were dignified adults on three speeds. There were people of every age and size on bikes of every kind, old and new. They were walking bicycles on the sidewalks, strolling leisurely as they gazed in the store windows. Every bike rack was full, each bicycle neatly inserted and left unlocked as its rider wandered off to inspect the merchants' displays. In response to tiny notices I had seen earlier reminding people not to park bicycles against buildings, where they might block access for pedestrians and others who needed mobility assistance, not a single bicycle blocked anyone's path, so fastidiously were they tucked into their parking spaces. There had to be 300 or more of them downtown that evening, in a town of 2500 residents.
It occurred to me that you couldn't get a scene like that in a Disney movie.
Unity celebrates its centennial in 2009, just two weeks before our visit during GASP.
So, what do you remember as your most magical bicycling moment? Tell us in your comments, below.
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