Salty Spokes Keeps Wheels Spinning in Sitka

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Category: News

Created on Monday, 04 November 2024 15:46

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By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
    Though days are growing short, programming for bike riders is full this fall, with classes at Mt. Edgecumbe and Pacific high schools, bike-and-brew rides, and maintenance workshops, hosted by the nonprofit cooperative Salty Spoke.
    Activities for high school students are a high priority, said Salty Spoke youth program coordinator Laura Tirman, who helped organize bike maintenance and safety classes for them.

Laura Tirman, Salty Spoke youth program coordinator, helps kids in the 4-H program work on their bicycles this past spring outside the Salty Spoke Lincoln Street headquarters. (Photo provided by Laura Tirman)

    Tirman said Salty Spoke also reaches out through such organizations as the Sitka Sound Science Center and 4-H Alaska Way of Life, which is hosted by the Sitka Conservation Society, Salty Spoke’s parent organization.
    “We recently started working with Sitka Homeless Coalition, and so we’ve been offering open hours specifically for their clients to help them either get a bike if they don’t already have one, or fix up a bike they can use, because transportation makes a huge difference,” Tirman said. An all-season homeless shelter is being developed about a mile from town at the upper end of Jarvis Street.
    “Our goals now are to be offering more community programs,” Tirman said. “I’ve been doing a lot of youth programming that we’re hoping to do more with the community, and we’ve started doing the monthly bike-and-brew rides, Tirman said.
    Founded in 2020, Salty Spoke is a membership-based cooperative, with a workshop open 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Saturdays, where members have access to a variety of bicycle tools and the knowledge of a cadre of volunteers. The workshop is an outbuilding formerly housing an art gallery behind Beak Restaurant on Lincoln Street.
    More information is published at https://www.saltyspoke.com/. There is a fee to join the co-op but no set price. The co-op suggests that people pay two times their hourly wage for an annual membership, Tirman said.
    “We never want funds to be a barrier, so we will work with individuals if that’s an issue,” she said.
    Members learn how to work on their own bikes, but donated bikes also are accepted, repaired and made available to new owners.
    The organization plans to expand its bike maintenance training, Tirman said. “Changing a flat tire, greasing a chain, checking your brakes – those are kind of the three big things that we talk about,”  she said.
    Salty Spoke’s bike-and-brew rides are held on a Sunday once a month, starting on Harbor Drive at the Salty Spoke location behind the Cable House.
    The cyclists ride different routes to their destination, ending their ride at the Harbor Mountain Brewery on Sawmill Creek Road.
    “Sometimes we ride straight to the brewery,” Tirman said. “Other times we’ll do a longer ride on the Cross Trail, but they’re just informal, fun rides that are meant to get people together who like to bike and to bike in numbers, because I feel like everyone feels a little safer when we’re together.”
    The next bike-and-brew ride is slated for Sunday, November 17.
    While that event is for cyclists 21 and up, Salty Spoke also is involved with education in two local high schools and, with the city Parks and Recreation department, at Blatchley Middle School. The nonprofit has a program for Pacific High School’s Friday enrichment program, in which groups of four to six kids take their own bikes, or work on other bikes, at Salty Spoke.
    “We teach them everything from changing flat tires to stripping bikes that can’t be used anymore to be able to recycle some of those parts,” Tirman said.
    At Mt. Edgecumbe High, Salty Spoke helped organize a bike club for girls and non-binary students.
    “We developed this curriculum that included everything from bike maintenance to bike safety to empowerment in the outdoors and confidence building” Tirman said. “We find that to be really important, especially working with a population that is a lot of times left out of biking.”
    The MEHS student handbook states that students may only ride bikes once they have completed a bike safety course, and the students are required to wear helmets.
    Inclusivity, Tirman added, is a key goal of Salty Spoke.
    “We really try to cater to all the different types of bikers, because there are people who bike just for recreation, but then in Sitka, there’s a lot of people who are biking as commuters or for their daily life. And so our goal is to make that a safe, inclusive place,” she said.
    “This time of year, we’re really stressing safety, especially with weather and darkness,” Tirman said. Riders are encouraged to have lights and reflectors and wear bright colors.
    Salty Spoke has absorbed the Sitka Cycling Club, and while it’s centered on bicycle maintenance, it’s also an  advocate for safe cycling infrastructure.
    “I think we envision a Sitka that can be even safer,” Tirman said.
    She said the group has worked with Sitka Trail Works to identify short- and long-term goals for improving trails for all users, especially for creation of a multi-use path along Halibut Point Road similar to the one on Sawmill Creek Road.
    “In the short term, can we get signage, paint the lines again, clear the roads a little bit better,” Tirman said.