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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:07 - 00:00:27:29
Jim Sayer
My original idea was to go from London to Istanbul myself, solo, and then my daughter, my older daughter Samantha said, I'd like to go. Said my wife said but she knew our daughter was gone. She said, I'd like to go. So we changed the route entirely. They changed the route entirely. So we went from Amsterdam to Rome. So we went north south, and we did it over a couple of months, and we took our time and it was a fantastic trip.
00:00:28:00 - 00:00:31:26
Jim Sayer
We just enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We worked with friends like Fabian.
00:00:31:28 - 00:00:56:22
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simon and that is Jim Sayer, former executive director of the Adventure Cycling Association. And we're going to be talking a little bit about his journey to adventure cycling, not only the organization, but also getting out and riding longer trips around North America, Europe and other fun places.
00:00:56:22 - 00:01:13:28
John Simmerman
But before we do that, I just want to say, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. Hey, super easy to do right here on YouTube. You can just click on the join button down below. You can also leave YouTube. Super. Thanks. Or you can navigate over to Active Towns.
00:01:14:01 - 00:01:24:06
John Simmerman
Click on the support tab at the top of the page and there's several different options. Okay, let's get right to it with Jim.
00:01:24:08 - 00:01:28:07
John Simmerman
Jim Sayer, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:01:28:09 - 00:01:31:06
Jim Sayer
You're welcome John. It's good to be here Jim.
00:01:31:06 - 00:01:52:15
John Simmerman
I always love our conversations. And this is going to be no different than our our fascinating phone conversations that we have. And when we're able to get together in person. I love giving my guests just this opportunity to to give a quick introduction. Jim, who the heck is Jim Sayer?
00:01:52:18 - 00:02:03:03
Jim Sayer
Geez, I'm trying to figure that out. It's been a long time getting to this point. I, I don't know. Gosh. I'm just.
00:02:03:06 - 00:02:07:03
Jim Sayer
Oh man, this is like the hardest question of all. This is the, you know.
00:02:07:06 - 00:02:21:04
John Simmerman
Yeah, this is this is this is the pass and fail part of the interview. So this is the test of being able to, you know, that 32nd you know of guess. Yeah. Who who am I now.
00:02:21:07 - 00:02:49:00
Jim Sayer
This question, this question can be answered objectively and subjectively I know. Anyway, so I'm a long time lover of the outdoors and adventure and adventure travel, and I've just had so much luck in my life being able to move between wonderful places and meet wonderful people like you. And I'm not just buttering you up, John, but just throughout my career and and my life.
00:02:49:02 - 00:03:18:18
Jim Sayer
So I'm a native Californian, born and raised in San Francisco and also in Lake Arrowhead, San Bernardino Mountains, but grew up and did a lot of my school stuff in California, and then after that was able to work primarily in public service, nonprofit sector, worked in Congress as a legislative aide for a while, and also briefly for US Environmental Protection Agency as a as an appointee.
00:03:18:19 - 00:03:56:09
Jim Sayer
But overall, running the thread that runs through so many of my experiences, personal and professional and volunteer is love of place, love of the outdoors, love of adventure, love of active travel, an active life similar to so many of the guests that you have on your on your podcast. So I'm at that point now, though, where I've worked through a number of regular jobs that were all consuming, and for the last six years I've been doing a mix of nonprofit consulting and a lot of volunteer work, and then living life with family and friends.
00:03:56:12 - 00:04:08:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. Well, I think I knew that you had the whole Southern California connection that that I have as well, but I had no clue that you were up in Lake Arrowhead for a little bit. That's wild.
00:04:08:26 - 00:04:32:15
Jim Sayer
Yeah, it is wild. I and I was born in San Francisco. In fact, I remember seeing my parents showed me the index card because I was born at UC San Francisco. This is definitely pre-digital. This was this was my birth record. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you see San Francisco, but. And then after a few years, my family moved south and my dad worked in San Bernardino.
00:04:32:15 - 00:04:51:14
Jim Sayer
But for whatever reason, they decided they wanted to live up in Lake Arrowhead was a half hour commute, you know, several thousand foot climb. And so that's where I did a lot of my school work. And but yeah. So yeah, after that went to UC Santa Barbara, you know, as a gaucho, but also to the University of Edinburgh.
00:04:51:15 - 00:04:54:12
Jim Sayer
I got to go for a year of my college experience.
00:04:54:13 - 00:04:55:08
John Simmerman
Oh my gosh.
00:04:55:09 - 00:05:07:28
Jim Sayer
Yeah. And that's the place that actually clinched. That was the place that really it was my junior year. It was the education abroad program. And I just I got lucky and got into this program. And then I thought for sure they were going to send me to England.
00:05:08:01 - 00:05:08:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:08:21 - 00:05:39:15
Jim Sayer
Because you applied for the UK and I played up my English connection because, you know, part of my heritage is English. And then they sent me to Edinburgh and I was so disappointed at first. Edinburgh. I didn't know how to say it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Edinburgh or something. But it ended up being the most amazing experience because I got to I got great housing right on the Royal Mile and anybody who goes the knows where that is.
00:05:39:18 - 00:06:02:00
Jim Sayer
We were like 100 yards from the gateway to the castle at the top of the Royal Mile. Yeah. And they had just it was almost Harry Potter where they had refurbished this beautiful old court building for students for living. And but it clinched my love for cities because we were in we were in the ancient city of Edinburgh.
00:06:02:00 - 00:06:21:26
Jim Sayer
But then you had the new town, the quote unquote, Newtown, which was built mostly in the 1800s. That's just adjacent a lot of those beautiful crescent streets. And then you went out a little further, but you also in Edinburgh. What's cool is you've got all the integration of, of nature. You have Arthur's Seat, which is a little old volcanic knob.
00:06:21:27 - 00:06:44:04
Jim Sayer
That's right at the base of the Royal Mile, right near the palace. I think it's Hollywood Palace. God, I didn't go in this direction. But anyways, so, you know, you're really close to you're close to the outdoors in an urban setting, and then, of course, you can shoot right out to, you know, the North Sea, over to the ocean, up to the islands, the highlands.
00:06:44:07 - 00:07:05:08
Jim Sayer
That was part of the mountaineering club. So, you know, often on weekend you go up to Ben Nevis or you go out into the Highlands for, you know, just great adventures with a bunch of kindred spirits. So, I mean, you know, and you would go, you'd go, like on a beautiful ridgeline out of Glencoe and you'd be on this knife's edge ridge and you'd be balancing and being really careful.
00:07:05:08 - 00:07:22:13
Jim Sayer
And then you drop down a slope of scree straight to the pub. They really know how to do it, you know, it's like so anyways. Yeah. Edinburgh. So yeah. Yeah, I'm a Californian, but I've had my, my opportunities to go all through Europe and the world and I got to talk.
00:07:22:13 - 00:07:57:09
John Simmerman
About a little bit because you went and explored Europe by bike with part of your family. I do want to just give a shout out to Edinburgh. I had an opportunity to be there just a couple of years ago, and I produced six of different videos on that particular area there. And in fact, you know, the Colton Tunnel was is a wonderful rail trail type of conversion that really helped bring some vitalism back to a couple of little villages along that, that rail corridor.
00:07:57:09 - 00:08:27:20
John Simmerman
And then the tunnel itself is just this beautiful, beautiful situation where it was a damp and dark place. And then they they brought in just some artistry and they, they just absolutely transformed this tunnel. And it's just such a great story because they engaged the community to make this happen. And yeah, just I can't say enough about it.
00:08:27:20 - 00:08:56:28
John Simmerman
And they're working hard to try to make the the on street network enhanced and beautified and safer, most importantly safe and inviting. So yeah, folks, I all include a link in the show notes below for that particular playlist, the Edinburgh playlist. But I want to pull this photo up of you and your beautiful family here. Family that gets out and rides together, stays together and and thrives.
00:08:57:00 - 00:09:10:26
John Simmerman
And yeah, to your point, I think before we hit the record button, you were talking a little bit about how the family has like recoils and is pretty much intact in the Missoula area. Is that correct?
00:09:10:28 - 00:09:36:00
Jim Sayer
Yeah. We're we're we're very fortunate in that way. I'm not sure exactly why it happened the way it did, but all the kids, all three kids, we have three daughters and they're all in their late 20s now, but they were all born in San Francisco also my wife. Okay, well, I was born in Seattle, but we were living in San Francisco and I was working for a nonprofit and eventually at EPA.
00:09:36:06 - 00:10:02:12
Jim Sayer
But they all born there. And and then we moved from San Francisco to Truckee, which is right near Lake Tahoe, another fantastic mountain town. So it was there for four years, heading up a group called the Sierra Business Council. Wow. And love living there, and made organization one of those kind of bridge organizations that was started by a friend of mine and the they were pursuing the triple bottom line for the Sierra Nevada region.
00:10:02:12 - 00:10:24:03
Jim Sayer
How do you create great communities? We had actually put a guide together that won an American Planning Association award on how do you build cool communities in a rural setting, because there was a lot of a lot of resources like you'd see with strong towns now for more urban or suburban settings. But this was in a more rural setting and honestly, fairly conservative politically.
00:10:24:03 - 00:10:40:18
Jim Sayer
The Sierra Nevada region is kind of the conservative side, along with parts of the Central Valley of California, and we also bridged into Nevada, too. But we were there for four years before I saw the job announcement for Adventure Cycling Association in Missoula. Yeah.
00:10:40:20 - 00:10:51:21
John Simmerman
And that the rest is history. The rest is history. And we're going to talk about we're going to talk about that in a little bit really quickly. Just give give some quick introductions of the family here. I'll zoom in just a little bit here.
00:10:51:22 - 00:11:04:21
Jim Sayer
Yeah. Thanks. So that's me, the big ugly one with the red hat. And then right next to me is Lucy, who's getting married in a week. Actually. Hear him? Azula. Yay, Lucy.
00:11:04:22 - 00:11:05:16
John Simmerman
Congrats.
00:11:05:18 - 00:11:28:20
Jim Sayer
Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. We we had one daughter, Samantha, who's in the red shirt, fourth over from the left. And and then we ended up having, we got a bonus child, as we put it, we had twins unexpectedly. So that's Lucy and then her sister Keelan on the far right. Wendy's in the middle, the proud mom. So yeah.
00:11:28:21 - 00:11:42:21
Jim Sayer
And so Lucy and Keelan live in Missoula, and Samantha just moved back in state to Bozeman. So she she was in Minneapolis for a little while, but now she's back. So it's great having everybody here in state.
00:11:42:22 - 00:12:09:26
John Simmerman
Yeah I love it I love it. Yeah. It's funny you should mention both Truckee and Lake Arrowhead. So my connection to Lake Arrowhead was my family had a place up there for years. There was always that connection with Lake Arrowhead. So when I was going to school at USC in Los Angeles and, you know, my family has deep roots in Los Angeles, dating back to the 1800s.
00:12:09:28 - 00:12:43:12
John Simmerman
Fourth generation Angelino and I used to spend all my weekends up at Lake Arrowhead. Like even during college, I would be up there. The family was fortunate enough to have a property right on the lake, and so I would be down at the the the lake dock and studying my organic chemistry and, and physics and, and all of that because I was, I was trying to, you know, go the pre-med direction and disease prevention and health promotion was was always in my mind.
00:12:43:12 - 00:13:10:01
John Simmerman
And that's kind of the origin story of how we ended up with active towns as, as an entity. But yeah, dating all the way back there and then I grew up, believe it or not, because the family moved from Southern California, my, my, my mom, dad and sister and I all moved up to Northern California in 72. I think it was after the big earthquake and we lived in Lincoln.
00:13:10:01 - 00:13:33:10
John Simmerman
So right at the beginning of the foothills, going up to Lake Tahoe. And and then I spent my high school years as a volunteer ski patrolman at Boreal Ridge, right near Truckee. And so I spent all my time hanging out in Truckee, too. So there you go. Yeah, yeah, Truckee and Lake Arrowhead. See, I learned something new. That's why I love having these conversations.
00:13:33:10 - 00:13:57:27
John Simmerman
And I love having my guests give that little bit of personal backstory because I'm like, oh my gosh, we have all of these interconnections. And I think that's part of what's beautiful about really connecting with people and getting to know them a little bit more is you just there's all of these new connections and just fascinating things. I had no idea that you worked for the EPA for a while, too.
00:13:57:28 - 00:13:59:04
John Simmerman
So good stuff.
00:13:59:07 - 00:14:19:16
Jim Sayer
Yeah. No, it's a you know, and it's funny too, because I can hear the love of California in your voice, because obviously there's the whole debate about places and staying or leaving. You know, it's a Wallace Stegner thing, you know, the stickers and the oh, God, what is the stickers? And the I forget what the other one is.
00:14:19:18 - 00:14:19:27
Jim Sayer
Oh, yeah.
00:14:19:28 - 00:14:23:25
John Simmerman
But the people stick with it and stay with it or jump and go, yeah.
00:14:23:26 - 00:14:49:27
Jim Sayer
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like the The Clash said, you know, should I stay or should I go. And, and a lot of people feel compelled when they leave a place or they have to justify it. You know, they have to rationalize, why am I leaving California. Oh God. The taxes and the crowd in this and that. But I still just have the I love California in so many ways that the people and the cities and the places and the landscape, oh my gosh.
00:14:50:03 - 00:14:54:08
Jim Sayer
So but we as you can see, that's Missoula in the background.
00:14:54:10 - 00:15:06:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. From California to Missoula. So it was the job with Adventure Cycling Association then that sort of prompted the move. What year was the move that you moved to? To Missoula.
00:15:06:28 - 00:15:34:10
Jim Sayer
We moved. Right. We landed as a family at January 2005. So yeah, 20, 21 years ago. And, you know, it was just a good combination of things. One thing I learned about from Truckee and this is looking down on Missoula towards the rattlesnakes. But one thing I learned in Truckee is I really love the landscape. Sierra is my kind of my heart mountain range.
00:15:34:12 - 00:15:58:18
Jim Sayer
You know, I love it. The backpacked and been all over. But Truckee was. I realized I didn't want to live in a resort town. I mean, like I had definitely was at right. And Truckee was very much that. And what was interesting about Truckee, too, is that it was actually the bedroom community for all the people who worked in the Tahoe Basin, because it was just so expensive to get housing over there.
00:15:58:18 - 00:16:27:14
Jim Sayer
So over in Truckee, you had quote unquote affordable housing, rental and ownership. And I was literally there 2001 to 2005, when Truckee turned over from being majority owner occupied to majority non owner occupied second home. So that was that was just at the beginning of the arts. And and it was a huge concern then it's even more so now.
00:16:27:14 - 00:16:49:14
Jim Sayer
It's really I mean that was also when the basin, Tahoe Basin had been kind of built out in a lot of ways for resorts and everything. So all of a sudden all that had spilled over to the Truckee side. It's about ten miles away. So you had the Ritz Carlton going in over by North Star Resort and all that stuff was happening.
00:16:49:14 - 00:17:08:08
Jim Sayer
So I realized I'd rather live in a and rather and also our family was very young. Kids were little. I'd like to live in a community that was just more like a regular place, you know, that wasn't dependent entirely on tourism. So Missoula was quite an amazing place to come to for that reason, in addition to the job.
00:17:08:08 - 00:17:10:13
Jim Sayer
So it was a nice combo.
00:17:10:15 - 00:17:32:28
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I love it. And I lingered on this particular image where for the listening only audience, we were sort of up on an undeveloped area, probably on a trail network sort of area, and then looking down on the community here of Missoula. This reminds me a lot of what I just saw. You know, I was just in Boulder, Colorado, and it was just on the Foothills Trail.
00:17:33:00 - 00:17:40:22
John Simmerman
You can look right down on the community. And Missoula is also a university town, correct?
00:17:40:25 - 00:18:03:26
Jim Sayer
It is, in fact, right now in that photo you're looking from Mount Sentinel, which rises up 2000ft. It's kind of a nice interim. There's a series of of kind of hilly mountains around the called the sapphires. And Mount Sentinel is one of those, and it has a big M on it too. But you're looking. University of Montana, which is a very compact campus.
00:18:03:27 - 00:18:25:21
Jim Sayer
It's one of the cool things about it. It's only about 250 acres, which by epicenters is is small. And you can see there's an oval there. And the university hall with the green, the green roof, but in the background is a city. And it really it's integrated nicely into the community and adjacent to all this fantastic open space.
00:18:25:21 - 00:18:50:14
Jim Sayer
So in all four sides of the community are just amazing. And then this is in front of my house, but this is the university neighborhood, which, for better or worse, has become probably the most desirable neighborhood. It's kind of like in Boulder where you get, you know, these amazing central neighborhoods with the sidewalks and the trees and the views.
00:18:50:16 - 00:19:13:26
Jim Sayer
You're looking actually right towards the university. And that's not sentinel right there. So and you're on the Clark Fork River because as people know, this is this is the place of a river runs through it because Norman McLean, he actually lived, grew up in Missoula. And his his heart River was the Blackfoot River, which is about six miles away from this photo.
00:19:13:26 - 00:19:38:07
Jim Sayer
It's a tributary to the Clark work and drains into that, and the Clark Fork then drains into Lake Pandora, which drains into the Columbia, which goes goes west to the Pacific. But that's that literally is. I yesterday walked up to the top of that in a driving hailstorm. I did a loop. It's about a four and a half mile loop from my front door, and it's extraordinary just to have that for hiking.
00:19:38:07 - 00:20:02:21
Jim Sayer
And you can bike the back side of it. No biking allowed on that main face, but just incredible outdoors just from our front door. That's also from Staten Island. That's Wendy. But so Missoula is a place where you can literally, I think one of the most interesting things to me, because I've worked in land use, housing, land conservation and, you know, active transportation most of my career.
00:20:02:24 - 00:20:26:02
Jim Sayer
And, I mean, if you go back to that picture that you were just showing me and Wendy, you're looking down on Missoula and it's a fairly compact city. I can get around to anything I need by bike in 3 or 4 miles in most places for kind of utilitarian things, and you're on the flats, but around you are different mountain ranges, from the bitterroot to the rattlesnakes.
00:20:26:07 - 00:20:50:18
Jim Sayer
So you can do that for recreation pretty easily. But there's a lot of talk about the 15 minute City. And I know you've talked a lot about it on your podcast, but I've always like for the last several decades, talked about the 50 Mile City. Like what also. So the 15 minute is about what do you need in your everyday stuff like, you know, goods, supplies, school, entertainment, what can you do in a 15 minute walk or bike ride?
00:20:50:21 - 00:21:20:09
Jim Sayer
But I think the 50 mile is was interesting and instructive for me because you go beyond just those things, but you also start to look at like local agriculture, local recreation, local tourism, like, could you could you live your whole life within 50 miles of where you are? And how would you, how would you, how would you plan and create a community and a region that would really serve people well if that were if that were the case?
00:21:20:09 - 00:21:42:27
Jim Sayer
So I am, I think, Missoula, you know, I don't think there's any 50 mile city in America, maybe the world, who knows. But you know, think about what? Where do you get your supplies? Where do you get your your agriculture? Where do you get your sustenance, your recreational sustenance and all, you know, do you have to get in the car and travel a great distance to get that stuff?
00:21:42:28 - 00:21:50:00
Jim Sayer
Or do you rely on on the transportation system to bring things in? So yeah, yeah. So we're.
00:21:50:02 - 00:21:53:21
John Simmerman
Speaking of getting stuff. Here you go. You're picking up some stuff.
00:21:53:27 - 00:22:24:16
Jim Sayer
Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And that burly bike trailer I love those. That's probably one of the top five purchases in my life. I bought that 27 years ago. And it's it was for the kids. But now I use it for Christmas trees or groceries for sure. You can carry up to 120 pounds. And in that in that picture, it's we were able to go to home resource, which is our local, you know, it's basically our reuse center.
00:22:24:16 - 00:22:51:12
Jim Sayer
And they and so we were able to find all the wire wire mesh we needed to protect a new tree we have on our boulevard. But amazing place, amazing nonprofit. And again, that one I can ride over to a bike trail, go on a tunnel under major road and pop out right at home. Resource. They have a little gate off of the bike trail, right into their two acre property in the heart of the town.
00:22:51:15 - 00:23:02:21
Jim Sayer
They got it before the real estate boom, thankfully, but. But anyways, it's a amazing place and it's so easy to get to and I can just do this kind of stuff.
00:23:02:24 - 00:23:24:10
John Simmerman
Let's do this. I like that we, you know, we just had this overhead here and we kind of looked down on it. You talked a little bit about, you know, the ability to sort of live, you know, in a 15 minute city kind of spirit of thing, you know, being able to get to a place like a reuse and a resource, the home resource facility.
00:23:24:13 - 00:23:56:06
John Simmerman
Let's talk a little bit about the the zoning reforms and the changes that kind of need to take place, because one of the biggest challenges with many of our communities and most of North America. Of course, is that we have all sorts of restrictive zoning that has been adopted sort of blindly, city after city after city. And along with the single family zoning issues, we also had parking minimum mandates that also.
00:23:56:06 - 00:24:32:12
John Simmerman
So it's A12 punch. Donald Trump and I talked about this a lot, is that you can't just address the one reform that needs to happen, the parking reform, but you also need to think about the zoning and the, you know, the actual, you know, hey, can we make it legal to have a cool little shop like this within easy walking and biking distance, a cafe, you know, we made it illegal to build not only housing, but we also made it illegal to build and have within our neighborhoods and in our communities, small businesses that could be useful.
00:24:32:18 - 00:25:02:04
John Simmerman
You know, the corner drugstore, the cafe, the coffee shop, the reuse store, you know, all those types of things. Talk a little bit about how you have sort of and I don't remember. I don't recall just how busy you were and engaged you were during your ACA days, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. But, you know, talk a little bit about what you're passionate now about within the city and how Missoula is sort of helping lead the way.
00:25:02:07 - 00:25:09:00
John Simmerman
I hope, you know, for North America with some of these changes that need to happen.
00:25:09:02 - 00:25:27:20
Jim Sayer
Yeah. Gosh, it's a long story. I when I moved to Missoula, I had worked for a nonprofit in the Bay area called Greenbelt Alliance, which originally started as a Nimby group to stop developments on the fringe of the Bay area, what was then the fringe of the Bay area, and that started in 1958. And they did amazing things.
00:25:27:20 - 00:25:38:19
Jim Sayer
They protected Napa Valley, they protected Napa Valley, originally wanted to be the San Jose of the North. They wanted to subdivide the entire valley to five acre ranch heads.
00:25:38:21 - 00:26:17:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. Can I can I jump in and interject something just right away so I don't forget this? Is that you? You framed it as a Nimby group saying, no, let's not, you know, let's not develop this, you know, this area which should be preserved. Because normally when we think of in urbanism, when we think of NIMBYs, we think of the NIMBYs that don't want us to do this, you know, the zoning reform, and they don't want to see their neighborhood character change and having more housing available within their quote unquote neighborhoods they're fine with.
00:26:17:12 - 00:26:39:08
John Simmerman
Oh yeah. Let's yeah, go ahead and and get rid of that. You know that. Yeah. Let's extend it and continue to sprawl outwards. So I just wanted to, to to bring up the point that we use, we throw that term around a lot the Nimby group of saying etc.. But Jane Jacobs was an MTU. She didn't want to have an expressway go through the middle.
00:26:39:14 - 00:26:41:18
Jim Sayer
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know her part of Manhattan.
00:26:41:18 - 00:27:02:25
John Simmerman
So I just wanted to to. Totally to say that because sometimes it's appropriate to be a Nimby and say, yeah, I don't want a free an expanded freeway going through this neighborhood. We needed more NIMBYs to push back and fight against the destructive things that happened. But at the same time, those very same Nimby esque types of behavior.
00:27:02:25 - 00:27:11:19
John Simmerman
If you're resisting parking reform and zoning reform, then it makes awful really, really difficult. So I just wanted to put that out there.
00:27:11:20 - 00:27:12:22
Jim Sayer
Yeah, totally.
00:27:12:24 - 00:27:37:09
Jim Sayer
And, you know, I think if I've learned anything because I've gone through a lot of life now, is that within all of us, you know, there's a duality, right? You know that sometimes we're going to be Yim, sometimes we're going to be Nimby. Xinjiang is is the perfect embodiment of of the way we as humans are. Right. And a lot of it hinges on our self-interest, too, let's be honest.
00:27:37:10 - 00:28:06:01
Jim Sayer
But so when I say Nimby, you know, it is definitely a shorthand framing. But, you know, the group started out trying to protect some watershed lands east of of the in the eastern and East Bay and one and then did a whole variety of other things. But then in about 25 years, in the early 80s, not long before I joined the group, they did first of its kind, environmental group does a study called up.
00:28:06:04 - 00:28:29:22
Jim Sayer
And the whole point was, how can we in the Bay area meet housing demand without sprawling? So they came up with five strategies which everybody knows today like 80 use build, you know, mixed use on commercial strips, you know, just a whole variety of things that now we are seeing through the movement the s of my backyard. And so that's that's fantastic.
00:28:29:24 - 00:28:51:21
Jim Sayer
And so I came out of that, I came out of Edinburgh, I came out of a love for cities that are walkable and bike and accessible. And so when I moved to Missoula, I knew for one thing, they had a much better framework for that kind of lifestyle than than most American cities. I mean, it's very compact in general.
00:28:51:24 - 00:29:17:28
Jim Sayer
There are some sprawl, but not as much as you'd see in a lot of other places. And the demand for housing and everything was in the central neighborhoods to those were the higher value neighborhoods, even when we first moved here. So. So over time, even though I had a super busy job and family, my volunteer time, even when I was working at a venture cycling more than full time, was for alternative transportation.
00:29:17:28 - 00:29:55:27
Jim Sayer
We founded a group called Bike Walk Alliance for Missoula, and it was our local nonprofit to advocate for biking, walking disabled folks and their access. And then also I was helping in a more informal way with friends on the city council, as we just slowly made little changes in our code and everything, like we had a huge donnybrook of a fight over 80 use accessory dwelling units, and this was about 12 years ago, and I was one of the few people and the only person in my old neighborhood to get up and support ADUs.
00:29:56:00 - 00:29:57:07
Jim Sayer
In the city.
00:29:57:09 - 00:30:09:12
Jim Sayer
Yeah, yeah, it was just. But the council, to its credit, passed it by like one vote, I think. And then and they put all these owners restrictions in on the ads and, and so.
00:30:09:13 - 00:30:10:15
Jim Sayer
Hardly anybody did.
00:30:10:16 - 00:30:31:14
John Simmerman
Can we lean into that for just a second, since you were in the midst of that and you were like the, you know, the lone person within your little group there in your neighborhood to, to to speak in favor of it. I'm assuming that the resistance, especially in a college town, I'm assuming the resistance was related to traffic and parking.
00:30:31:16 - 00:30:53:25
Jim Sayer
Well, on the surface, or maybe in, in, in vocalized arguments, maybe. You know, I think it was just an, you know, a change thing. You know, it's like, you know, you know, my neighborhood has been this way. You're going to put a little unit in the back or you're going to add more people. I mean, you know, they had all these restrictions, like you had to have a parking pad on your property, which made 90% of these untenable.
00:30:53:26 - 00:31:24:03
Jim Sayer
Now, after a few years, they realized how owner assay were, and they stripped out all these requirements. And in fact, when they reformed the Adu portion of our code, you can now do not only a separate one outside of your existing building, but you can even make it up to 1200ft². It used to be only like 4 or 500ft², and now you can actually build a home that could be used for a lot of different families or individuals or couples.
00:31:24:03 - 00:31:26:00
Jim Sayer
So but anyways, yeah, so I.
00:31:26:00 - 00:31:27:20
Jim Sayer
Did I think the reason why I.
00:31:27:20 - 00:31:39:07
John Simmerman
Think the reason why it's so important to like. Tease that out is not saying that that concern is necessarily legitimate, but it is the concern that gets vocalized.
00:31:39:08 - 00:31:40:20
Jim Sayer
Oh yeah. Absolutely.
00:31:40:24 - 00:32:06:25
John Simmerman
And what we end up finding out is, oh, it wasn't as bad as we thought. And oh, you know, that we don't need these onerous additional conditions to be able to be in place and restrictions, etc.. It's like, oh yeah, if you build more housing near meaningful destinations and it's safe and inviting to do so, people are going to walk and bike to their meaningful destinations.
00:32:07:02 - 00:32:18:13
Jim Sayer
Exactly. So that's what this, this headline and this story is about is. So when I was doing that other stuff, when I was at Adventure Cycling, I left there six years ago.
00:32:18:16 - 00:32:19:00
Jim Sayer
Yeah.
00:32:19:03 - 00:32:21:21
John Simmerman
Oh my gosh, has it been that long?
00:32:21:23 - 00:32:23:08
Jim Sayer
Yeah.
00:32:23:10 - 00:32:34:27
Jim Sayer
About about three years ago. The city of Missoula. Well, it's a long story, but in Montana in general, the state at the state level, there's a bipartisan effort to boost housing development in our city.
00:32:34:28 - 00:32:35:12
Jim Sayer
Wait a minute.
00:32:35:13 - 00:32:39:28
John Simmerman
Say that again. Say, say that again. Slower this time.
00:32:40:01 - 00:32:57:03
Jim Sayer
The state of Montana has actually been moving forward on reforming their Land Use Planning Act to to push, I mean, not just encourage but push our, our major cities like 20,000 and up even.
00:32:57:03 - 00:32:58:14
Jim Sayer
Even the part I want you to say.
00:32:58:15 - 00:33:01:12
John Simmerman
Again, slower is bipartisan.
00:33:01:14 - 00:33:04:06
Jim Sayer
Oh yeah, it's kind of shocking.
00:33:04:08 - 00:33:27:24
Jim Sayer
It is. It is one of the few issues that there's been a fair amount of agreement. And so in Montana, they began this work about five years ago to update our Land Use Planning Act, and then Missoula itself. All the major cities are supposed to reform the growth policy and their development code to do certain bare minimum things.
00:33:27:28 - 00:33:55:24
Jim Sayer
And so that includes housing and existing neighborhoods, not just ADUs, but even I can now on our our home site, add 1 or 2 units that could be deeded out as separate separate units. So yeah. Yeah. So not just as Naidoo that's part of your deed but so anyways it it's all pro density. And so in February our city council unanimously and it's a Liberal leaning council.
00:33:55:24 - 00:34:22:22
Jim Sayer
But even our more conservative council members they voted unanimously to adopt a very far reaching code. It's without a doubt the best in Montana. And it's one of the best in the US. I mean, we're a town of only like 80, 85,000, but it includes all sorts of up zoning across the city. There's no more single family housing except for an where you have hos, you know, the.
00:34:22:24 - 00:34:23:08
Jim Sayer
And when.
00:34:23:08 - 00:34:39:16
John Simmerman
You say, I want to make sure that we're clear on this, there's no there's no more single family exclusionary zoning. Correct. I want it because whenever we say there's no more single family, it almost leaves some people going, well, I like my single family home.
00:34:39:18 - 00:34:39:22
Jim Sayer
Right.
00:34:40:00 - 00:34:54:24
John Simmerman
We're not saying you can't have that or that's not what we're saying. We're just saying exclusionary zoning has been removed. In other words, we're we're letting the landowners decide, you know, how they use it. It's it's pro property rights.
00:34:54:26 - 00:35:27:15
Jim Sayer
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we we worked. So I've been part of a group and it's been really fun to as a volunteer with Pro Housing Missoula, we're a small group and we're a subset of one of our community land trusts, Front Step Community Land trust. And it's so it's primarily volunteers that got together to advocate for this much more progressive, much more pro density type of code, and even to the point where we worked with Partner Reform Network, and we had them do briefings virtually.
00:35:27:15 - 00:35:50:20
Jim Sayer
And one of one of the staff came in person, and we were able to have them brief our council and local leaders. And it definitely helped because in final adoption, we were able to get rid of parking mandates not only for residential, but for commercial. So we have zero parking mandates now for any kind of development in Missoula.
00:35:50:25 - 00:36:14:14
Jim Sayer
So yeah, and there are actually threshold requirements at the state level now for residential and commercial to where you can't overdo it, you can't require so much parking that it just makes these projects untenable or using your land and a crazy way. So the state has that. But we went way below that. And so, so any particular form network was a great resource.
00:36:14:14 - 00:36:34:12
Jim Sayer
And so this just got adopted in February. So now now is the hard part. The I mean that was hard. But now it's a really hard part which is implementation. You know, who who are the developers are going to step up and start doing stuff. And we're going to see projects that are controversial because they will be changed.
00:36:34:12 - 00:36:52:10
Jim Sayer
And I'm nervous about it, you know? I mean, we'll see how it goes. But I'm just I've worn my colleagues that, you know, hey, this is you're going to have a project that's going to hit and it it may be even really ugly, and it's going to be 3 or 4 storeys in a place that's permitted for that.
00:36:52:10 - 00:37:11:10
Jim Sayer
And it'll take all the boxes, and we're going to have to figure out how do you make the case for that, even if it's not exactly what you would want to see next to you or, you know, so I think that's the hard part is, you know, we're we're now working with the Incremental Development Alliance to another great group.
00:37:11:10 - 00:37:35:25
Jim Sayer
And, and they're all about how do you build ADUs, how do you build small units, how do you do a lot of things that are happening in Southern California right now, where people are building a lot of new units in their backyards? And how do you how do you mesh that in with your adjacent neighborhood? Right. So, so I think we're we're at the both scary and exciting time now because people do LA Missoula.
00:37:35:25 - 00:37:43:13
Jim Sayer
It's a great city. It's a great surrounding area. But now we're going to see what happens with this change. Yeah. There you go.
00:37:43:16 - 00:38:19:03
John Simmerman
So I got the Incremental Development Alliance website up. So folks these are great folks. These are these are a collection of these incremental developers that are looking to try to, you know, take some of the thickening up of, of opportunities for both residential and commercial and, you know, doing that incremental development that needs to take place. You know, just think of any, any particular community, think about your network, think about, you know, areas because of parking minimums.
00:38:19:03 - 00:38:56:10
John Simmerman
You've got all these surface parking lots. Guess what? These could be opportunities for gentle density and thickening up the housing stock. And that's what an incremental developer does. So both the parking reform network and the Incremental Development Alliance, really good peeps, really good people doing some some wonderful work. I want to go to this one. You know, I know that this is kind of looking down on the campus itself, but I challenge anybody, you know, take a look at your community, take an overhead look and look down, and you'll be astounded by how many surface parking lots are out there.
00:38:56:10 - 00:39:31:19
John Simmerman
And so these are all great opportunities to try to thicken up and, you know, add additional housing stock. And when you have a delightful, desirable community, like a Missoula, like a Boulder, Colorado, to to have land just sitting there as a surface parking lot is just an assault on affordability. And the fact that you are in a situation where, you know, you know, two thirds of your of your children are able to move and live right in, in Missoula.
00:39:31:19 - 00:39:57:10
John Simmerman
And then, you know, the third is just down the road in Bozeman being close by. That only happens if it's if it's affordable, if it's possible for the that next generation to be able to stay put. And one of the key factors that I like to always reference is that when we talk about affordability, when we talk about housing affordability, it's housing plus transportation.
00:39:57:10 - 00:40:22:04
John Simmerman
And so that's why it's so important to not only make sure that we're adding more housing in our close proximity to meaningful destinations, but we also make sure that people can live without having to be, you know, addicted to or held hostage by a car and have to drive everywhere for everything. And that brings us around to transportation.
00:40:22:04 - 00:40:23:11
Jim Sayer
And for sure.
00:40:23:15 - 00:40:46:09
John Simmerman
I can't remember if Higgins Avenue corridor plan was the one that you and I talked about a couple of years ago, where you were bouncing ideas off of me about what I had seen from my travels around North America with active mobility infrastructure. But but talk a little bit about this. Describe this for the listening only audience and introduce Higgins Avenue to us.
00:40:46:12 - 00:41:06:26
Jim Sayer
It's a Higgins Avenue. I was just giving somebody a walking tour of downtown Missoula today. So we were looking at this and and I've gotten to the point now where I have to be very careful on these, John, because, you know, when you take somebody around and you, you show them how cool Missoula is now, and then you say, oh, it's going to even get better.
00:41:06:26 - 00:41:09:28
Jim Sayer
And then they want to move here. It's like, no, now I get.
00:41:10:06 - 00:41:11:28
Jim Sayer
Now here's, here's, here's.
00:41:11:28 - 00:41:24:28
John Simmerman
Here's the thing that I want to do. I want to send this out officially. From an active towns perspective, you should want more people at the party. You should not be one of those those NIMBYs that are like.
00:41:25:01 - 00:41:25:21
Jim Sayer
No, no, no.
00:41:25:21 - 00:41:26:18
John Simmerman
No more housing.
00:41:26:18 - 00:41:27:02
Jim Sayer
No more.
00:41:27:02 - 00:41:29:02
John Simmerman
People don't come. You know.
00:41:29:04 - 00:41:29:09
Jim Sayer
We.
00:41:29:09 - 00:41:58:13
John Simmerman
Got enough. I think we have to we have to. I know you're saying this in jest, but I it is worth saying seriously, there's the difference between a good party and a bad party. And this is an analogy that Strong Towns uses. And when they talk about if everything is based on car addiction, each additional new resident is like, you know, another person at a bad party and a bad party.
00:41:58:13 - 00:42:06:15
John Simmerman
The bad party analogy is that it was a potluck, but a whole bunch of people came and didn't bring anything. And so.
00:42:06:18 - 00:42:06:25
Jim Sayer
You know.
00:42:06:26 - 00:42:19:16
John Simmerman
Your resources start getting, you know, getting thin. And it's like, you know, it's kind of a bad party now because you didn't participate. You didn't you didn't come to the party with with your resources.
00:42:19:19 - 00:42:22:00
Jim Sayer
A good party is. Yeah, it's yeah.
00:42:22:01 - 00:42:43:14
Jim Sayer
But it's the same. And it's the same for real estate too. I mean, one of the, one of the challenges in our, our country, of course, is, you know, housing is not a right. Right. And so and so we have this situation where, you know, people can own one, three, five, ten homes. In fact, we across the alley from us, our neighbors are selling their house and moving.
00:42:43:14 - 00:43:06:28
Jim Sayer
They sold it in nanoseconds, but they were close. The first bid they got was from somebody who has like three other homes. They have a nice place in Manhattan. They have another place like in some other mountain range, and fortunately they lowball the offer and another family is moving into it, but they probably would have only been there a few months of the year.
00:43:07:00 - 00:43:29:13
Jim Sayer
Right. And so, you know, all these dimensions to the housing situation and as you said, the same with with, you know, is it going to promote vehicle traffic or is there the opportunity to have multiple choices. And so Missoula, our goal has very much been to try and create all those choices. In fact, our transit system, I think for 7 or 8 years now has been free.
00:43:29:13 - 00:43:53:16
Jim Sayer
So we have a free, free bus service all over town, which is it's really good. It's almost entirely electrified now, and they just want an award for that. On the bike walk front, we have we have a we're like almost every other city. We have a mishmash, you know. So what you want for biking and walking is a connected at, at a street level system.
00:43:53:16 - 00:44:18:10
Jim Sayer
And then ideally you have that complimentary trail system that's completely, you know, motor vehicle free except for maybe e-bikes, but so you want those two systems to complement each other and to be complete. And in most cases there are breaks in both of those systems. Right. So so Higgins is our main street that runs north south through downtown Missoula.
00:44:18:15 - 00:44:37:10
Jim Sayer
It connects one of our high schools all the way up to what are called the XS, which are at the base of our North Hills, which is a popular destination for hiking and just hanging out. And it's a real mess. If you look at the image on the screen on the left side, that's the way part of it is right now.
00:44:37:10 - 00:45:01:12
Jim Sayer
It's just four lanes, no bike facility, so-so sidewalk. It's awful. Speedway. But then literally you just go across a bridge in the river and then you'll get kind of a mix of four. Then it goes to three lanes where we have a few blocks with separated bike bike lanes. So it's a real mix. So we were one of the beneficiaries of a raise grant under the Biden administration.
00:45:01:12 - 00:45:26:06
Jim Sayer
And the infrastructure bill got 25 million to basically completely redo Higgins. So it will be a 4 to 3 conversion. It'll have separated bike lanes consistent the whole length of it. Good sidewalks, everything we need, all the the good intersection treatments, not only for just regular pedestrians, but people that have mobility issues where they're in a wheelchair on shuffle your feet, you got cane.
00:45:26:07 - 00:45:49:18
Jim Sayer
You know, the 8 to 80 philosophy of how do we serve all people and all users on Higgins? And we're also able to do other improvements in downtown on some of the cross streets. But yesterday I was at our public works hearing for our City Council for final adoption of the plan and construction plans. And so it was adopted 10 to 1.
00:45:49:19 - 00:46:17:26
Jim Sayer
That'll go to our council in a few days for final approval, but I'm sure we're going to get about the same vote. So starting this fall and into next year, this street will go undergo a major transformation. And I'm so excited because I've been working on it for 20 years, actually, ever since I moved to Missoula, because it was just, you know, you knew in three seconds when you went to that street that it's a bad street and it could be so much better, because as you can see, we have all that zero lot line building.
00:46:17:27 - 00:46:34:20
Jim Sayer
You know, we have all these retail right on the sidewalk. And of course, you don't want to have a four lane speedway right next to that. Right. This is a place where you want and enjoy and stroll, and you want a place for bicyclists to be able to move and stop and move and stop and go to shop or see friends or whatever.
00:46:34:20 - 00:46:46:02
Jim Sayer
So this is a very exciting project for Missoula. It's definitely going to close some of the big gaps that we've had for many decades and just make a good, a decent system a lot better.
00:46:46:06 - 00:46:47:00
Jim Sayer
Yeah, yeah.
00:46:47:01 - 00:47:11:27
John Simmerman
Well, I'm assuming the image on the right is just sort of a design schematic of it. I hope it's not final design because there's an opportunity for a protected intersection here. And, you know, just up the road from you. They're in Canmore, Alberta. They've got a wonderful I think it's Alberta. Canmore has a beautiful Dutch inspired protected intersection.
00:47:12:00 - 00:47:46:22
John Simmerman
It looks like there would be plenty of space for that. But the point really is and I think I think what you're really describing is the situation that exists, you know, throughout most of North America. Again, when we look at this overhead of of what Missoula is and you've got, you know, all these beautiful, you know, attractive tree lined residential streets, you know, that probably existed before there were restrictive covenants and restrictive land use and all that.
00:47:46:22 - 00:48:11:28
John Simmerman
So you probably have some of the older neighborhoods that did have corner stores and did have little shops in the in the downtown adjacent area there. And those streets are most likely low volume, low speed types of environments. And so that can also be considered part of the bike network or active mobility network, and not have to do this.
00:48:12:00 - 00:48:56:01
John Simmerman
The Dutch mantra is they use 30km as their their threshold and say that, you know, hey, if if motor vehicle traffic is encouraged to travel 30km an hour or more, then you have to have separated and protected infrastructure. Or if it's an intense environment like the downtown area, they'll they'll want to have that protection and separation. But those quiet, low volume, low speed residential streets that could be just overnight, could be with a little bit of traffic diversion, could be turned into just wonderful feet, as they call it in the Netherlands, a bicycle priority street.
00:48:56:01 - 00:49:10:28
John Simmerman
And again, 30km/h is the speed limit on those in the United States. Where our mantra is 20 is plenty, just like in the UK. And so those are wonderful opportunities to to really open up an entire network overnight.
00:49:11:03 - 00:49:26:27
Jim Sayer
I'll say to that, and I know we want to talk about some other things, but I think the other thing we have been doing, it's really hard in Montana in general to experiment. So many of our main roads are governed by our Montana Department of Transportation, which is fairly conservative.
00:49:26:28 - 00:49:29:21
Jim Sayer
Is that is Higgins a? Yeah, absolutely.
00:49:29:22 - 00:49:50:02
Jim Sayer
And and MDT has has been really good. Our staff on our city staff have been great building relationships with them and, you know, working with them through the whole process. And so I kudos to our State Department transportation on this project. They've been willing to do what the city has said. This is what we would like to do.
00:49:50:05 - 00:50:13:02
Jim Sayer
Yeah. To your point about like just creating a whole network of other opportunities for those flow streets, we've definitely been working on that with city staff, and we are a pretty fiscally constrained state to, you know, you see this depending on where you are. Like, we don't have a sales tax. So, you know, it's income tax, which our government has been slashing.
00:50:13:03 - 00:50:39:27
Jim Sayer
And so property tax carries a lot of the load. And you know we've seen an uptick in that. But that's going to stabilize. Probably not. So we don't get a whole heck of a lot of money to do improvements. So like when we got that raise grant that was crucial. But our staff and local citizens have been doing a lot to create really inexpensive little bike boulevards, pedestrian improvements on our residential streets.
00:50:40:01 - 00:51:01:12
Jim Sayer
So that's been a good thing to to give people alternatives, because it's not just those marquee projects like the one we looked at, but it's trying to create a network of of low traffic volume, low speed, you know, opportunities for cyclists. So we're getting there and I think we're going to have a bike walks home at the end of the year to kind of look over the last 20 years and see how we've done.
00:51:01:12 - 00:51:06:07
Jim Sayer
And then where are all the gaps? What do we have to do over the next, you know, next 20 years?
00:51:06:14 - 00:51:06:28
Jim Sayer
So that's a.
00:51:06:28 - 00:51:09:24
John Simmerman
Bike walk summit for the entire state?
00:51:09:26 - 00:51:35:18
Jim Sayer
No, it'll probably be for Missoula. We did one. We did one. When I got here, I co-organized one with some friends who I'd met in October of 2006, and we had 100 people. And that's what created Bike Alliance for Missoula, which lasted about ten years. And then we did a lot of good projects, and it kind of faded like a lot of good restaurants do, or good nonprofits, you know, they were around for a little while and then.
00:51:35:18 - 00:51:50:09
Jim Sayer
But I think we're at that point now where we've kind of got a lot of good things in place. And now what are the next 20 years going to look like? Who's a new leadership to? We got to like, you know, you've got to constantly, you know, re-air and cultivate, you know, new leadership, you know in this field.
00:51:50:10 - 00:51:52:22
Jim Sayer
So yeah. Yeah. Well speaking.
00:51:52:22 - 00:51:53:01
John Simmerman
Of.
00:51:53:01 - 00:51:53:04
Jim Sayer
A.
00:51:53:04 - 00:51:53:14
John Simmerman
Of.
00:51:53:14 - 00:51:54:14
Jim Sayer
A younger.
00:51:54:14 - 00:52:12:21
John Simmerman
Gem, we've got a series of photos from you on your job. So again, you, you were enticed away from California to go to work there. Missoula. We talked quite extensively about the activities that you were doing there in Missoula outside of your job. But your.
00:52:12:21 - 00:52:13:03
Jim Sayer
Job.
00:52:13:03 - 00:52:22:10
John Simmerman
Was this the Adventure Cycling Association? Walk us through this series of images and what you'd like to say about the ACA.
00:52:22:12 - 00:52:22:28
Jim Sayer
Well.
00:52:23:06 - 00:52:44:06
Jim Sayer
Well, when I got to adventure cycling, it was formerly known as Bike Centennial 50th anniversary this year. So this was a it was a game changer for biking in the bike industry in in North America. If you go back to the other picture though, I will say this is in Philadelphia. And I'm like, I'm blanking. But that was the mayor on the right.
00:52:44:08 - 00:53:05:16
Jim Sayer
And he did a ride with East Coast Greenway. And Patrick stars the guy in the middle, and he's a long time friend. He was the regional director for them. And they're building a continuous off road trail, you know, from Maine to Key West. And so I was a keynote at a conference they held, and then we did a bike ride around Philly.
00:53:05:19 - 00:53:34:02
Jim Sayer
And boy, I was uncomfortable in my suit, but but you know, we make sacrifices, right. But adventure cycling, you know, is focused on bike travel. We're we're the group that's outside of the city. So we have this amazing network of advocacy groups in the US. Right. And so I'm grateful that we were able to focus on kind of the exurban rural areas and all the connections between cities and building partnerships.
00:53:34:02 - 00:53:55:27
Jim Sayer
So, so some of these pictures go back a couple just really fast because we'll skip through. This is Peter DeFazio, who was the congressman from Eugene, Oregon. And that's why he has a bike because they're manufactured there in Eugene. But he was the influential lead Democrat on the Public Works and Infrastructure committees over a long and really productive career.
00:53:55:28 - 00:54:22:14
Jim Sayer
Just a and a great, very humble. So, you know, in my job I would get to meet with, you know, mucky mucks like Peter and then little girls like this. This is a daughter of Fernando in Austin, Texas. And this was when I spoke in Austin about we can tell I'm a much younger man, probably about 15, 18 years ago.
00:54:22:16 - 00:54:53:28
Jim Sayer
And she wanted to be a she wanted to be on the microphone too. So that's what we did. You know, you got to play it, play to your audience. But we got out there and really connected with people and created partnerships, and this was one of the best ones. John Jarvis was the head of the National Park Service, and so Jenny Sullivan in the middle was my first hire at a venture cycling, and she moved into creating our advocacy program, National Advocacy Program, where we created partnerships with National Park Service to improve biking to and through the national parks.
00:54:53:28 - 00:55:21:10
Jim Sayer
We created a partnership with Amtrak to improve how you get your bikes on and off Amtrak's rolling stock. Very successful. So a lot of times now when you see bike hangers and everything, that was the result of the work of Jenny and others who who worked with Amtrak. So our goal was there were so many groups working within their individual cities, right to, you know, improve the bike lanes and all of that urban infrastructure.
00:55:21:10 - 00:55:43:19
Jim Sayer
And we were the ones that were working on the connections between the cities where the US bicycle route system. And then we also worked with our friends. If you go on that back picture that was in the Alps, actually, but we were a member of the Adventure Travel Trade Association because, you know, bike tourism and travel, you know, that's a component of adventure travel.
00:55:43:21 - 00:56:00:21
Jim Sayer
You know, whether it's climbing up a steep rock face to, you know, just, you know, biking, hiking, anything. And so this was one of our little side excursions during the conference, riding up and around in the Alps near Lucerne, Switzerland.
00:56:00:22 - 00:56:01:27
Jim Sayer
Now, there's a, there's.
00:56:01:27 - 00:56:05:18
John Simmerman
A joke associated with the your your shorts here too.
00:56:05:20 - 00:56:08:01
Jim Sayer
Oh I actually.
00:56:08:03 - 00:56:09:09
Jim Sayer
Well everybody laughs.
00:56:09:12 - 00:56:12:00
Jim Sayer
Which because the, the joke.
00:56:12:00 - 00:56:12:19
John Simmerman
Is, is you.
00:56:12:20 - 00:56:13:00
Jim Sayer
Wore.
00:56:13:01 - 00:56:14:04
John Simmerman
Them until you wore.
00:56:14:04 - 00:56:15:10
Jim Sayer
Them out.
00:56:15:13 - 00:56:22:14
Jim Sayer
Those shorts. Yes. And I still wear Patagonia board shorts. This is their ad, you know. And they are really great. No shammy, but.
00:56:22:16 - 00:56:23:09
Jim Sayer
You know.
00:56:23:12 - 00:56:23:25
Jim Sayer
But we.
00:56:23:27 - 00:56:26:00
Jim Sayer
Get out there and you don't need it.
00:56:26:02 - 00:56:46:24
Jim Sayer
No need this guy, this guy is Giles Snyder. And so we definitely did a lot of outreach in media. But you hear him all the time on NPR. He's a newsreader. But the reason I met him is because we had started a program called Bike Overnights, which was, how do you promote, you know, adventure cycling and bikes. Antennae were known for cross-country, three month, 4000 mile rides.
00:56:46:24 - 00:57:08:28
Jim Sayer
And so this is also that bridge between doing your everyday two mile ride at home to how could you do like an easy, quick adventure just because you don't have the time or because you just want to try something new? So we created a bike overnight program that people could figure out their own 1 or 2 night trip from their doorstep or near town or wherever.
00:57:08:28 - 00:57:48:26
Jim Sayer
And so Giles did his own bike overnight on the I think it was on the CNO because he lives in Harpers Ferry. So he did a really fun one. He wrote up an article for us, a blog post for adventure cycling, and then we ended up meeting and doing an interview and really good guy. So yeah. And then we went around and this was actually in Quebec, which to me is if not the but it's, it's, it's deserving of the gold standard here in North America with, you know, their city networks, but also the Greenway which is their, their regional network of bike routes across all the problems.
00:57:48:28 - 00:57:49:15
Jim Sayer
Yeah.
00:57:49:18 - 00:58:17:02
John Simmerman
Quebec has some amazing tours, bike tours that they do that they produce. But you know, right there in Montreal, they just have an amazing weakened of activity. I think it just happened in June where they have a tour where they they ride on Friday night and then Saturday as a recovery day. And then Sunday. It's a big, huge community ride.
00:58:17:04 - 00:58:22:25
John Simmerman
But yes, all around Quebec as a province, they they have some great, great routes.
00:58:22:25 - 00:58:47:04
Jim Sayer
And so that was actually a that conference. And this was classic like they had I was there actually for the ribbon cutting in 2007 for Velo for the route. And they did that. I think they did it near Quebec City. And we had gone all around the province and seen facilities. But now this was in 2013, and I think they were kind of like around, hey, what's next?
00:58:47:04 - 00:59:18:09
Jim Sayer
So they pulled together a big conference. So I talked about bike tourism across all of North America and even globally, because we've also been connected in with European Cyclist Federation, other kindred organizations. Bella Quebec is similar to adventure cycling in that we had similar business models where both non-profits and similar missions to like how do you make it biking easy to your corner, your corner store, or, you know, to the market all the way to around the world, right?
00:59:18:10 - 00:59:20:02
Jim Sayer
You know, that's the way it should be.
00:59:20:04 - 00:59:22:10
Jim Sayer
Yeah, yeah yeah.
00:59:22:12 - 00:59:27:25
John Simmerman
Bye bye bye bye. I want to get this group shot here so you can you can tell us about this one here.
00:59:27:26 - 00:59:51:22
Jim Sayer
Yeah. Again this is like that bike overnight concept. One of our members, Brian James Kirk, hit on this fantastic idea in Philadelphia. And he called it Bike Out. And he Brian I think was in his mid 30s when he hit on this idea. This was back this was 2017. And he said hey let's do a bike overnight and let's make it as easy as possible for people to go.
00:59:51:24 - 01:00:12:00
Jim Sayer
And so I think there were like this was the second time they did it. So I missed the first one. But I went out with this group and I think they had about 400 people. And they were they were writing all sorts of bikes. We started right near the Rocky Balboa statue, you know, at the art museum, and we started there.
01:00:12:00 - 01:00:32:15
Jim Sayer
And then we rode out about, I think it was about 30, 35 miles to a farm. It was a regenerative farm. And they had set up everything for meals and all. And then your gear was carried by a truck and we all rode out together. And I would say half the people had definitely never done any kind of bike trip whatsoever.
01:00:32:15 - 01:00:51:27
Jim Sayer
And, you know, we had a bunch of cheap, crappy bikes. We had people on really fine looking bikes. But it was it was just like it was just so well executed and they continued doing it. I hope they're still doing it now. But it was just it was so great. And the age two was definitely it was fantastic.
01:00:51:27 - 01:01:02:22
Jim Sayer
It was one of the things that we were looking at with, you know, our bike overnights was like, how if you're limited resources or if you're new to this, how can I just get out there and do it fast?
01:01:02:24 - 01:01:03:19
Jim Sayer
Yeah, yeah.
01:01:03:20 - 01:01:43:26
John Simmerman
The bike overnights program is, you know, one of those suites of those experiences, finding creative ways to get, you know, this concept of what started out, like you said, the bicentennial as these long, long, long tours of of being able to to and that's what adventure cycling as an organization as it as it eventually got renamed as that, you know, became known for and these extensive maps that, you know, have all these routes that are planned up, but then eventually it comes into having these loops and you've got other types of things and shorter trips and all of that.
01:01:43:26 - 01:02:11:18
John Simmerman
And then now as, as you can kind of see in this particular image that's in the backdrop here of the landing page is also routes that might be not on roads at all, but on trails. And so really trying to diversify. And again, celebrating the 50th anniversary of this, again, you had mentioned that you've been, you know, away from the organization, stepped away seven years ago.
01:02:11:18 - 01:02:16:22
John Simmerman
But I know that you hold this organization close and near and dear to your heart.
01:02:16:25 - 01:02:17:15
Jim Sayer
Talk a little bit.
01:02:17:15 - 01:02:27:20
John Simmerman
About the organization and, you know, anything else that you want to say about adventure cycling, where we are at right now in 2026?
01:02:27:22 - 01:02:54:09
Jim Sayer
Well, it's it's an interesting time because as, as as I said, I left at the beginning of 2020, which was a little bit fortuitous because, you know, the pandemic hit. And so I've done nonprofit consulting, I've been involved with many nonprofits. I've been a board member on nonprofits, from Amnesty International to the Bike Walk Alliance from Missoula, you know, small to huge.
01:02:54:12 - 01:03:18:26
Jim Sayer
And so you just see, as I mentioned earlier, some go through changes. And after I left, the organization has gone through a lot of changes. They've gone through several executive directors and they've also, you know, you know, changed some of the business model. But I think they're kind of they've gotten stabilized. They're they're moving forward on a lot of really great projects, on advocacy, on routes.
01:03:18:26 - 01:03:48:02
Jim Sayer
They just released a cool new route called the Golden Gravel, which is primarily gravel. And it honors both the trends that we're seeing, you know, towards people wanting to ride on dirt more, and also even the earlier routes that adventure cycling did, including the Great Divide Mountain bike route, which is an iconic route that came out in the late 90s and now is the site of an amazing race, the Tour Divide, which is going to start, I think, in about two weeks.
01:03:48:03 - 01:03:50:07
Jim Sayer
I think. Yes, yeah.
01:03:50:13 - 01:03:54:02
Jim Sayer
Starts in Banff and goes all the way to the New Mexico Mexico border.
01:03:54:08 - 01:03:55:19
Jim Sayer
Or actually it might actually be.
01:03:55:19 - 01:04:04:27
John Simmerman
Happening now. I think a friend of mine from from Oregon is making her way up to Banff right now. So maybe either that or she's she's heading out early. But yeah, it's.
01:04:04:27 - 01:04:06:01
Jim Sayer
It's definitely.
01:04:06:03 - 01:04:32:02
Jim Sayer
It starts like mid to late June. But so much cycling is moving forward. I'd say the biggest controversy that we got got known for in the last year is that we do have an iconic building in in Missoula. It's a headquarters building. It was a former church that we renovated and expanded over over the years, because eventually we got to 40, 43 staff.
01:04:32:02 - 01:04:51:13
Jim Sayer
When I got there, we had 20 staff, we grew to 43, and all but 1 or 2 were in Missoula. So we just this is the this is the rendering of the building as it was as it is now. And so that on the left that whole wing was completely renovated and redone and expanded. So we had room for everybody.
01:04:51:13 - 01:05:25:27
Jim Sayer
You can see the courtyard. We had a lot of really cool common spaces, and it was considered kind of the church of bicycle travel because it really felt like the sanctuary. And it's also at the juncture of many of the roots of adventure cycling, the Trans Am and the Lewis and Clark and the great parks north. And so we would have literally over a thousand riders a year that would come through, and they would get their picture taken and they'd go on the Wall of Fame, which with old, old school Polaroids, converted a digital Polaroids.
01:05:25:27 - 01:05:48:07
Jim Sayer
But as you came in, you'd see that. You'd see the cyclists lounge, and in the cycle lounge you had free ice cream, free drinks, a place to hang out, a place to get internet back when that was a thing. So. So the building was purpose built and renovated. And then about a year ago, a decision was made by the the board to sell the building.
01:05:48:07 - 01:06:09:28
Jim Sayer
And it was it was a shock to many of us who had kind of built it up over the years. And it was a real shock to the members, because ultimately, not to belabor it, but the this was a staff not long before I left, or a big chunk of them, and you can see all the bikes on the walls and, you know, they range from ancient to recent bikes.
01:06:09:28 - 01:06:37:02
Jim Sayer
And so anyways, the board and organization put the idea of selling the building to the members for a vote. And ultimately, as of the end of January, the members strongly objected to it. And so the board immediately said, we honor that, that choice by the members, we're going to pull it back off the market and we're going to move forward as an organization.
01:06:37:02 - 01:07:01:28
Jim Sayer
So I think that was a pivot point for the org, because it had been going through some hard times financially, and I think that was one of the main drivers for selling the building. But then they heard back from the members that this is a valued asset. It's a valued place. It's to some people, a holy place because thousands of people had gone through there as part of their bike travel experience and didn't want to see it sold.
01:07:01:28 - 01:07:23:09
Jim Sayer
And just from a business point of view, it was probably a good idea to keep it to for a lot of reasons I won't go into. So anyways, as of January, they pulled it off the market myself and a number of past staff leaders and also the four founders of the organization who are still really active and very much wanting to be part of the organizations.
01:07:23:12 - 01:07:56:14
Jim Sayer
And, you know, coming decades. We had a dialog with the board about how we can all move forward after this proposed building sale, and it's been really productive. The board is very interested in moving forward. The staff is doing some really great work now on everything from roots to communications to tours. So I'm really feeling like the organization's getting to a good place, and I think we're going to be able to move forward and keep building York because as you know, as we've already talked about, nonprofits are not easy.
01:07:56:20 - 01:08:20:00
Jim Sayer
You know, you've got to find ways to, you know, make payroll and support the organization. And I think the biggest thing for not just adventure cycling, but everything. I'm wearing a hat because I'm a treasurer of the Montana Environmental Information Center. It's our main statewide enviro group here in Montana, started in the 70s, just like Bicentennial. Like so many nonprofits out of the 60s.
01:08:20:01 - 01:08:47:06
Jim Sayer
There was like the big The Big Bang theory of, you know, the Cultural Revolution of the 60s in the US. And then a lot of it manifested as these nonprofits in the 70s, and they're mostly membership nonprofits. Right? So, so and it was really tied to the boomer generation, you know? And so what you're seeing now is what will be the future of nonprofits in general, you know, will they continue to be membership organizations?
01:08:47:06 - 01:09:16:09
Jim Sayer
How will they be supporting themselves? Is it just foundations? Is it so I think Adventure Cycling still has a membership base. It's shrunk, but I stabilized and I'm excited for them to be able to rebuild that base. But that's not going to solve all the problems in the future. So so I think, you know, we're going to have a the board and staff announced they're going to do a 50th anniversary gathering in Missoula in October, late October.
01:09:16:16 - 01:09:36:22
Jim Sayer
So I just want to put that out there. They're working through some of the things right now. But I do know I'm just seeing so much excitement from people who are traveling around the nation and around the world by bike. Some of them are doing epic things, like Leo Wilcox, who's on the board of Adventure cycling and is doing her round the world.
01:09:36:22 - 01:09:38:09
Jim Sayer
She's trying to set a record.
01:09:38:10 - 01:09:39:14
Jim Sayer
For any humans.
01:09:39:15 - 01:09:39:26
John Simmerman
Yeah.
01:09:39:27 - 01:09:40:26
Jim Sayer
She just she.
01:09:40:26 - 01:09:42:07
Jim Sayer
Just started from Chicago.
01:09:42:08 - 01:09:44:15
Jim Sayer
From Chicago? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:09:44:16 - 01:10:04:22
Jim Sayer
She's heading she's heading east. And though she was in Ontario and she'll head east but she's on the board. But so she's doing that really epic thing. But I'm also seeing all the people that did Bike Centennial 50 years ago. And they are either writing or reconnecting and celebrating. For many of them, it was just like the most impactful thing of their lives.
01:10:04:24 - 01:10:26:16
John Simmerman
So I want to go through a series of photos here, Jim, because when you retired, when you stepped away from adventure cycling, I remember you telling me that now it's time for me to get out there and write some of these things, because you had done some of the, the, the shorter things and you had done some of the.
01:10:26:18 - 01:10:47:00
John Simmerman
But it correct me if I'm wrong, do I am I remembering this correct? It wasn't until after you had stepped down that you actually had the time to be able to invest, you know, this amount of time, because it's a lot of time and energy to be able to do a cross country and touring around North America. Is that the case?
01:10:47:01 - 01:11:21:28
Jim Sayer
It is not actually the case because it's only partly true, because cycling is just a great organization to work at, because I love the activity and the mission and the people. But also we had when I got there, we had a good personal policy and we kept making it better, including something called bike respite. And so if you did a bike trip, you could take an extra week off beyond your normal PTO paid time off, and then after five years, you could take two extra weeks, and after ten years you could take four extra weeks as long as it was for a bike trip.
01:11:22:00 - 01:11:42:26
Jim Sayer
And so it is true that it was. It was always hard to get away for a long trips, but twice actually three times during my time there I was able to do long trips. One was the Pacific Coast ride and you featured a picture of our family with bikes and trailers. We did that. We did the whole Pacific coast when I turned 50 and Wendy turned 50.
01:11:42:27 - 01:12:01:15
Jim Sayer
My wife with the three daughters and they were all young. They were only like 13, 11, 11 and they carried their own gear. So adventure cycling gave me, well, I, I earned it too. But I used my bike respite and time off for a two month trip down the Pacific coast. Right. And then it was a working group.
01:12:01:20 - 01:12:03:12
John Simmerman
I mean, you know, clearly.
01:12:03:13 - 01:12:21:20
Jim Sayer
I did, I did actually, and that lots of donors, I did some outreach, but but overall I rode with and then another trip was with my daughter Samantha from Missoula to the Pacific coast. And then look at that was when you were a young man and and I was young to this was our southern and we did the Southern Tier.
01:12:21:20 - 01:12:44:16
Jim Sayer
My daughter Lucy and I in 2017 rode the Southern Tier from my mom's place near Long Beach, California, down to San Diego, and we turned left and then we rode across. And here's Austin, you know, good old Barton Springs. And we stopped there. I saw my dad, who lives near Austin, and you guys a bunch of friends, and then went all the way to Florida.
01:12:44:16 - 01:13:06:19
Jim Sayer
So those were all during my time with adventure cycling and and then I was able my, my goal had been to do the whole perimeter of the US and obviously in segments. And so there was a picture at the start where I was holding my hand up, and that was on the bridge going into Charleston, South Carolina with my daughter Lucy.
01:13:06:19 - 01:13:30:02
Jim Sayer
I also I take I also did the trip during my time at adventure cycling from Charleston to Key West with her. So that was also during my time. But then I rode from Maine to, to Charleston. That was also during my time at adventure, and it was right before I left. So I actually I did almost everything except the only one I did not do was from Maine to Missoula.
01:13:30:02 - 01:13:50:12
Jim Sayer
And so that's what I did. I was going to do that. I was going to do that in the pandemic year in 2020. And then of course, didn't have it. So 21 I did that and that, that, that closed the circle. This one is an additional ride I did the following year from Missoula. I wrote all the way out to the Olympic Peninsula, and then I looped back through Portland.
01:13:50:12 - 01:14:11:21
Jim Sayer
And this is Megan Remy, who I know you've had on your podcast, and she's fantastic. And we met through the National Bike Summit and our long time friends now, actually, we met in Cambridge, mass. When she lived there before she moved to hood River. And and so she met up with me and we rode from Portland to Head River to four years ago.
01:14:11:21 - 01:14:23:04
Jim Sayer
So. So I keep doing these trips and I can't help myself, man, I just want to keep doing it. Maybe I'll ride around Hawaii with you and and Laura someday.
01:14:23:08 - 01:14:25:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah.
01:14:25:09 - 01:14:45:10
Jim Sayer
As you said. You know, we this year, we got to Europe again. So, I had an original idea to write across Europe because I've written all over North America and other parts, but I was going to do it solo and then. And that guy actually is one we stay with in Brussels. He's the efficacy director for the European Cyclist Federation.
01:14:45:12 - 01:14:45:27
Jim Sayer
Fabian.
01:14:45:28 - 01:14:46:28
John Simmerman
Wow. Yes.
01:14:47:00 - 01:15:05:27
Jim Sayer
Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And he hosted us at his home in Brussels. But my original idea was to go from London to Istanbul myself solo. And then my daughter, my older daughter Samantha said, I'd like to go. And my wife said what? She knew our daughter was going. She said, I'd like to go. So we changed the route entirely.
01:15:05:27 - 01:15:32:07
Jim Sayer
They changed the route entirely. So we went from Amsterdam to Rome. So we went north south, and we did it over a couple of months, and we took our time and it was a fantastic trip. We just enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We worked with friends like Fabian. Also, there's I think I gave you another picture of a family that we're with and it's the price family.
01:15:32:08 - 01:15:33:21
Jim Sayer
Monica Price.
01:15:33:24 - 01:15:35:02
John Simmerman
Oh, here, let's listen to this.
01:15:35:02 - 01:15:35:27
Jim Sayer
Real quick.
01:15:36:00 - 01:15:45:03
Jim Sayer
Into pavement path to corn fields and other fields. But then the mountains in the background. Just extraordinary.
01:15:45:03 - 01:15:47:03
John Simmerman
I love this excitement in your voice.
01:15:47:04 - 01:15:50:26
Jim Sayer
Very cool. Yeah, a couple months. Oh, yeah.
01:15:50:28 - 01:15:52:07
Jim Sayer
Ecstasy.
01:15:52:09 - 01:15:54:03
John Simmerman
Ecstasy. That is.
01:15:54:03 - 01:15:55:13
Jim Sayer
So cool. Yeah.
01:15:55:15 - 01:16:06:20
Jim Sayer
Yeah, it doesn't get any better than that. This is. This was actually in Italy, riding north towards Trento and the Dolomites. It's actually on my daughter's birthday, and she was so grateful for it.
01:16:06:27 - 01:16:09:09
John Simmerman
I think this has got good audio too.
01:16:09:12 - 01:16:09:21
Jim Sayer
Yeah.
01:16:09:22 - 01:16:18:21
Jim Sayer
I love these little towns. Is this real too? Yeah. And bike. Yay!
01:16:18:24 - 01:16:25:08
Jim Sayer
Here we go. Out of the little town and into the big countryside. What a day.
01:16:25:10 - 01:16:26:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, what a day, what.
01:16:26:22 - 01:16:27:08
Jim Sayer
A day. Yeah.
01:16:27:09 - 01:16:50:12
Jim Sayer
This is the day where we crossed the Apennines. So we were on down near the Adriatic coast, and that was probably our toughest climb of the trip. This was on the coast in the Netherlands after we left Amsterdam. And so we worked with a lot of friends on figuring out a route and connecting with people, doing some warm showers stays, the warm showers network and.
01:16:50:14 - 01:17:15:00
Jim Sayer
But we started by circumnavigating with the help of our friend Fabian around the perimeter, and then came back in to Brugge and Brussels, down to Paris. And then we went south and then over into Germany and across the Alps and into Italy and and Italy. This is an amazing family. And they touched, they took a lot of boxes.
01:17:15:00 - 01:17:39:24
Jim Sayer
It's Monica Price and her husband, and they have taken over along with her sister, Maria Elena Price, who's on the board of Cycling now. I recruited her years ago. They, her dad and mom, the couple on the right, that's Rick Price and Paula, his wife. And they started experience, plus a bike tour company back in the 70s. And they focused mostly on.
01:17:39:26 - 01:18:08:09
Jim Sayer
They lived in Fort Collins, Colorado, but a lot of their trips were mostly in Europe, as Paul was from Italy, in fact, from this town of friends and so small town over near the Adriatic, just inland from the Adriatic. So as part of our trip, we wrote down, we went from Milan all the way across near Venice. We went to Ferrara, which is the city of bicycles, and then we cut over to where was it.
01:18:08:10 - 01:18:16:04
Jim Sayer
Then we got over to the Adriatic and and then we cut up and over the Apennines, and then through a whole series of hill towns until we got to Rome.
01:18:16:08 - 01:18:19:13
John Simmerman
Yeah. This is, by the way, this is my favorite photo of the whole.
01:18:19:13 - 01:18:21:27
Jim Sayer
Thing right here.
01:18:22:00 - 01:18:32:00
Jim Sayer
Well, this is our day going into Rome, and. Oh, man. Oh, you buy these slabs of pizza? Oh, it was just nirvana, I tell you. That was so good.
01:18:32:01 - 01:18:40:18
John Simmerman
So let's let's have you describe this for the listening only audience, because it's just it's too good not to to put words to this.
01:18:40:20 - 01:19:00:07
Jim Sayer
Oh, I don't even know what to say except that we, we literally had we had just finished almost all the writing. We were about to go in a room. It's kind of cool because Rome is a terrible city for bicycling in many ways. But along the river there's a bike way, so you can basically ride right into the heart of Rome car free.
01:19:00:08 - 01:19:21:06
Jim Sayer
It was amazing. And so literally we are on the cusp of doing that. But before that, we had found this fantastic pizza shop. And so we go in there and this woman, she's just firing up the slabs, putting them in the oven and then putting them in a box. And then we went over a few blocks to this park and we were just just taking in the aroma.
01:19:21:06 - 01:19:36:19
Jim Sayer
And I have a for those just listening, I have a look of bliss and I guess ecstasy. And my wife also Wendy is is sneaking in there pulling the cheese off of the first piece. So we devoured all that pizza and then.
01:19:36:19 - 01:19:37:04
Jim Sayer
We rode.
01:19:37:04 - 01:20:00:18
Jim Sayer
The last like probably 20 miles straight into in the room where we spent the last few days. And then we went into Rome. But my goal had been to get to the Mediterranean, and Rome is not right on the Mediterranean. So my daughter Samantha and I, a couple days later, road by ourselves to the coast. It's I forget about 30 or 40 miles.
01:20:00:18 - 01:20:25:02
Jim Sayer
And there's not a great way for bicycles to go directly from Rome. You have to do a bunch of gravel even. I have some amazing pictures and video of us doing gravel, probably for about 20% of the ride. And fortunately I had, you know, fairly wide tires. And my daughter was just borderline. But it wasn't it wasn't great to get out there.
01:20:25:02 - 01:20:47:00
Jim Sayer
You'd think there would be a better way. But but we did and we made it. And so we went all the way from the North Sea to the Adriatic Sea, and then to the Mediterranean Sea. And so, yeah, so that was our trip and that was great. And we learned a lot about Europe and bicycling, which is generally amazing and getting better all the time.
01:20:47:00 - 01:21:15:22
Jim Sayer
And then we were inspired also when we created the US bicycle route system here, where designated routes on a mix of trails and roadways across the US that's slowly growing. But Euro Bello is the network that they're developing over in Europe, and I think they have about 17 routes now and we use pieces of them. I still want to go back, not this year because two daughters are getting married.
01:21:15:24 - 01:21:48:04
Jim Sayer
But next year I want to go back. And ideally, do you know that west to east from maybe London, this down below or something like that? I mean, a lot of people. The most popular route in Euro Velo is Euro Velo six, and that starts in the lower river valley on the Atlantic coast of France. You can kind of see it there is that one in the middle and right through Nantes, which is now a bicycle city to the city of Nantes and amazing place.
01:21:48:04 - 01:22:09:00
Jim Sayer
I've been there for a conference that I spoke at, and then you ride straight across the middle of Europe and you end up on Euro Europe. Six you end up north of Istanbul on, I think in Romania on the sea. Yeah. You can see it there if you go over there and then you can find ways to get to Istanbul too.
01:22:09:01 - 01:22:29:25
Jim Sayer
So I've always wanted to go, so that would be my destination. And actually that is not a hard route by and large, because a lot of it goes through river valleys. It just keeps connecting. So. So we'll see. I'm not sure I'm trying to figure it out, but that's my goal is to to maybe do that and and get across Europe that way too.
01:22:29:26 - 01:22:37:21
John Simmerman
But yeah, I want to give a shout out to you had mentioned warm showers. So I want you to explain warm showers.
01:22:37:24 - 01:23:01:22
Jim Sayer
Yeah. They're a global nonprofit. I've been a member, donor user, a host for 20 years. And it's a it's a global network of people who like to host cyclists or be hosted by cyclists. So it's kind of like couchsurfing for cyclists. It's a nonprofit. It's technically free, but you can make a donation, which I encourage everybody to do.
01:23:01:22 - 01:23:29:24
Jim Sayer
And then you host other cyclists as they come through your town. So you get on the network, you say what you can provide, whether it's just your backyard, a shower or a bedroom, whether you'd be willing to provide meals. There's no expectation of remuneration, no payment. But it's all about like creating community at a global scale. And so I've been doing it for quite a while, both hosting and staying with people.
01:23:29:24 - 01:23:51:25
Jim Sayer
And I've just met so many wonderful people. And I think the interesting thing about our experience there was that we only did about 6 or 7 warm showers days, because once you get past 1 or 2 people, it's a little harder to find folks who will accommodate a larger group. So we didn't do as much, but but the ones we did were just extraordinary.
01:23:51:26 - 01:24:11:27
Jim Sayer
You know, just meet these fine people and you learn so much so fast about their community and, you know, and it just feels great to go to a place where you're welcome with open arms, and they just treat you like a hero for having made this journey to their home. And so warm showers, I love it. It's a great group.
01:24:11:27 - 01:24:24:00
Jim Sayer
It's very much complementary to what adventure cycling does, but they actually provide help you find places to stay, and it's a beautiful community building effort across the globe.
01:24:24:02 - 01:24:46:18
John Simmerman
I love it, yeah, the word that comes to mind is heartwarming. Warm showers, warm heart. I mean, it's just it's such a positive thing. And what a wonderful way to bring this conversation to a close because it's so, so uplifting and heartwarming. Jim, this has been so much fun. This was in the works for a couple of years.
01:24:46:18 - 01:24:59:07
John Simmerman
We have been bantering around this idea to talk about these adventures that you have done. If you were to leave the audience with one final pearl of wisdom, what would it be?
01:24:59:09 - 01:25:27:23
Jim Sayer
Gosh. Well, the nice thing about getting older is it makes you appreciate all the adventures you have. And and, you know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, health span now, which I think is a wonderful new trend. You know, it's it's been there for a while, but it seems to be coming more to the fore. And as you know, many of us know that, you know, your house fan is going to be improved by being active and in your everyday life, but also even in, I think, these kinds of trips that you can do.
01:25:27:24 - 01:25:47:19
Jim Sayer
And the other thing I did learn, I will say the other gem I've learned because I have now a lot of friends in their 20s and 30s who are thinking about becoming parents or are our parents, and they always ask, what's your advice? Because you seem to still have a relationship with your kids, and we do good relationships and we're grateful for it.
01:25:47:19 - 01:26:07:08
Jim Sayer
But the one thing I told them is, you know, adventures like this, you know, are, are, are super helpful where you basically in a confined to this each other for a long period of time. But actually I also said the other thing is like, you know, a lot of emphasis on quality time, but I think it's quantity time.
01:26:07:08 - 01:26:32:25
Jim Sayer
Quantity time yields quality time by being out there all the time, getting together as much as you can. That's when that those relationships build and emerge. And that's that is not like a huge insight, but it's like it's often forgotten. I don't know why why people forget that. But this trip was everything, you know, it ended up being, you know, two months where we together all the time and having each other's back.
01:26:32:25 - 01:27:07:03
Jim Sayer
And I think it did help, you know, even though not everybody is like still an avid cyclist, it just built those relationships and trust and love. So those are all some of the things that I learned. And I like you, John. I am grateful every day. I'm grateful every day for the course of my career and life. Took the places and the, you know, the activities because, you know, we can always, you know, adventure cycling, all these nonprofits I worked at, we're all great people, but they all had their hard parts to their, like any organization.
01:27:07:03 - 01:27:28:25
Jim Sayer
But I will say that it's just, you know, to be able to do these things on behalf of these kinds of missions where you're helping people realize their dreams, it's the best. So anyways, thanks for finally being so dogged in determined to make this happen. I appreciate it. And you're right, it was. It wasn't as painful as I thought.
01:27:28:25 - 01:27:29:28
Jim Sayer
So no.
01:27:29:28 - 01:27:35:24
John Simmerman
No, it's been great. Again, Jim Sayer, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
01:27:36:00 - 01:27:37:19
Jim Sayer
You're welcome John, thanks to you.
01:27:37:20 - 01:27:53:02
John Simmerman
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01:27:53:02 - 01:28:11:21
John Simmerman
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01:28:11:21 - 01:28:31:25
John Simmerman
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01:28:31:25 - 01:28:44:12
John Simmerman
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