Five years, 115 interviews, 500,000 words of transcribed testimony, and a year-long writing sabbatical later, the book is done.

When I last wrote in this blog, I still didn’t quite know when (or if) I would ever attempt to write this book. In fact, it was around the time of the previous entry that I had almost decided to abandon the project. Perhaps not the entire Vanbikes exercise, but…a book? And a book about cycling advocacy? C’mon. Even some of the people closest to me were less than encouraging about the prospects of this topic being worthy of anything more than these blog posts.

Then things changed—in my professional and personal lives, and in the world. 2020 was a year of turmoil for billions of people (hyperbole, meet reality), but for me, amidst the churning waters, unstable ground, and darkening skies, there was an opening. I saw an opportunity to create some space in my life for this project again. And in 2021, with the support and encouragement of loved ones, I went for it.

Writing Vanbikes: Vancouver’s Bicycle People & the Fight for Transportation Change was both the most challenging and most gratifying independent project of my life. The end result is a book that satisfies a lot of my creative and intellectual passions, but more importantly I believe it tells an important story. Many stories actually.

First and foremost, it’s a Vancouver story—about how this young, attractive, and very green city transformed over 25 years into an urban paradise. A cycling city.

It’s also about how it might never have happened if not for the efforts of two different groups of people; one pushing from outside government, and the other negotiating from the inside. Activists and advocates.

And it’s about everyday people in communities, and their struggles to get the attention of engineers, planners, and politicians—in the city, the region, and the province—focused one of the most consequential issues of the last century. Transportation, and how we move.

As told by many of the people behind the scenes of this decades-long, systemic change, Vanbikes is a story of the plans, politics, and protests that helped elevate cycling from a ‘do-if-you-dare’ sport to a solution for the workplace commute, and from a child’s activity to a symbol of mainstream, west coast culture.

Vancouver’s bicycle people helped transform new ideas about urban life into a new reality. Vanbikes is about how it all happened over 25 years, and where things stand today— from city hall committees, the local bikeway network, and downtown bike lanes, to education programs, cycling events, bike- friendly media and, of course, Critical Mass.

If you choose to buy it (or borrow it from one of Vancouver Public Library’s 21 branches, where it will be available in hard copy by end of August 2022), I hope these stories entertain and inform you. I hope you see my passion behind it all. And I hope you’ll tell others to check it out as well.