Bike Blog

Today I took the day off from my day job to participate in an international effort to raise funds for the hurricane victims and relief efforts, so I took my bike taxi downtown this morning to give rides and collect donations.

It wasn’t the most successful day I’ve ever had, which surprised me a bit, because the weather today was warmer than most of the days we’ve had this week. But I found out that Buffalo’s downtown, even during business hours on a business day, is pretty quiet. I could ride up and down downtown streets without getting stuck in traffic, because there was no traffic. It was weird. It seemed like everyone was on vacation.

The first passengers I picked up were in a car that broke down on Main Street near Allen, and they wanted a ride to the lower west side. They made a donation (I was collecting donations for The Salvation Army’s hurricane relief efforts), and I headed back downtown to see if I could give anyone else a ride.

A few hours later, a young man asked for a ride for a few blocks to the library and made a small donation.

That was it.

When I got home, I received an email message that someone had purchased a gift certificate through my web site for a ride on the bike taxi for another day, so that more than doubled the total amount I had collected for the whole day.

I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m complaining, I’m trying to just present the facts as they happened. I’m not sure why today’s fund-raiser wasn’t more successful. I think there’s a few factors. One, and this I think is pretty major, but maybe I’m overestimating its importance, is that none of the newspapers or TV stations I sent a press release to responded or ran a story about the fund-raiser. Two, downtown is pretty quiet. I’m not sure why else, other than the fact that people are still not sure what is going on with a bike taxi in downtown Buffalo. I’ve never spent the day riding around downtown with it, so it wasn’t at all like the Thursday at the Square concerts when I would see the same people week after week.

I met a guy named Paul who introduced himself as a reader of this blog (hi, Paul!), and I saw a guy I know named Steve who rides bikes (I know him from Critical Mass), and a few people driving or walking past asked for my business card.

ride distance: 26.5 miles