Spokes Canterbury secretary George Laxton recently helped with an interesting bike event in Upper Riccarton; in this guest post he recounts the action…
A few weeks ago Spokes Canterbury (with the support of Ninja Valley Christchurch and Bush Inn Mall) ran a bike valet parking event in Ōtautahi Christchurch and what a day it was!
We had over 100 people turn up on two wheels of many forms including, bikes, scooters, and even a Cargo bike with two excited Ninja Valley ninjas onboard…
Prep for the day
Prep for this started a few months ago with adventure playground Ninja Valley reaching out wanting to organise a bike valet similar to their Kirikiriroa Hamilton branch. Anyone who turned up on two wheels early on a Sunday morning got one hour of free play at Ninja Valley. While this event has been run successfully in Hamilton before, this was our first rodeo and with little experience we were a bit apprehensive whether we could pull it off. But we forged ahead and, with a generous member donating some bike stands and Riccarton Racecourse Market offering to store them while we were not using them and yet another member organising their work truck to pick up and collect them, we were ready for the day!
How the day started
The day didn’t start out too great with us being locked out of the building and unable to get in to start setting up. We welcomed (but were unable to park just yet) our first excited bike valet participants just before 8am, when the event was meant to start at 8:30am! Well the early bird catches the worm – what do early ninjas catch? However, after not too long we managed to get inside, set up, and started to welcome people in. At this point, quite a queue had formed so we had to work double-time. Bikes and scooters were lined up around the corner and down into the car park!
Conclusion
A huge thanks to the volunteers who really put in the effort to make this day possible! Without them this would not have been possible. Also a huge thank you to Ninja Valley (for providing the free hour of play) and to Bush Inn mall (for allowing us to set up our bike stands inside the mall in an empty store). It was a lot of fun talking with everyone who turned up, and it shows how building a safe connected cycling network allows events like this to flourish. If you’d like to get involved in our next bike valet day, you can let us know by contacting secretary@spokes.org.nz.
Would you like to have a bike valet parking service at your event?