• The object of this contest is to design a logo for Riding in Mississippi Mills (RIMM), a group devoted to transforming Mississippi Mills into a great place to cycle. The chosen design will be featured online as well as on all our publicity materials. In addition to this prestige and visibility of your design, the winner will receive a cash prize (amount to be determined soon).

How to Enter

• Submit entries by email in jpg format to bicyclerimm@gmail.com
• Include your name, age, postal address, phone number and email address.
• The deadline for entries is February 28, 2010.
• There is no fee to enter the contest.
• Everyone is eligible to enter. There is no limit on the number of submissions per person.
• Although we can’t imagine this situation occurring, RIMM does reserve the right not to select a winner if no submitted logos would be appropriate.

Guidelines

• Flexibility is a key requirement, including the need to resize easily and to look good in black and white as well as color. The final version of the logo will need to be suitable for high quality printing.
• The logo must contain the acronym RIMM and the words Riding in Mississippi Mills.

Judging and Selection of Winner

The winning design will be selected by RIMM. The winning designer can take a few days to do any last polishing he or she didn’t have time to finish, and then we’ll put the logo into production

First place goes to  Stewart Boston for Gichombe’s Bicycle, a poignant account of an elderly servant in Kenya who is bereft when his cherished bicycle is stolen.  Mr. Boston wins $250 for his composition.

Second prize, a $100 Miller’s Tale gift certificate,  goes to Pete Parsons  for Crosswind, a blood-chilling tale of a deadly ride in the park.

Third prize, a $50 gift certificate, is awarded to Kirsty Schut for her story Of Baked Beans and Bicycles, a romance in which a bicycle and a can of beans change the course of one family’s story.

Thanks to our three judges: Gillian Mills, who teaches kindergarten in Pakenham, Jacob Berkowitz, an Almonte based author and Chris O’Brien, owner of the Miller’s Tale.

To read the winning entries, click on the story titles.

The big story of the day was all about Pamela Griffen, the 77-year-old cyclist from Carleton Place, who started cycling at age seven with the South Bristol Bicycle Club in England. The full 100-kilometre route was more than her usual ride, but Pamela was determined to go the distance and she came out all smiles at the end.

Bicycle Month organizer Jeff Mills kept Pamela company for the ride, which started out at the Old Post Office in Almonte at 9 am. From there they rode to along the Appleton Side Road to the hamlet of Appleton, the first of four hamlets they would ride through.

From Appleton they took Concession Road 8 to Wolf Grove Road. A left turn on Wolf Grove took them to Tatlock Road,  where they turned right to head to the hamlet of Clayton. The wonderful folks at the Clayton General Store were hosting a BBQ for the occasion, featuring hot dogs with fried onions! Clayton Cares, a local community group, also organized a bake sale, which was much appreciated by hard-working cyclists.

After Clayton, Pamela and Jeff rode along Clayton Road to Concession #8, took a quick visit to the Mill of Kintail, and then proceeded to County Road 29 and then Blakeney Road for the stop at Hamlet #3, Blakeney . From there it was a leisurely (??!!) ride along Blakeney Road to Hamlet #4, Pakenham, where they learned that many tour riders had been enjoying the fine  home cooking at Watt’s Cooking for lunch.

Pamela has been a Bicycle Month booster from Day One, and we couldn’t be more proud of her. Here’s what her cyclometre looked like at the end of the day:

Michael Bhardwaj, the charming  host of CBC Radio’s In Town and Out, interviewed Bicycle Month organizer Jeff Mills, and if this blog works the way it’s supposed to, you should be able to hear the interview by clicking here:

Michael Bhardwaj Interview

Meanwhile, Ottawa Citizen columnist Susan Riley, who also happens to be an avid cyclist, reported on her outing in Mississippi Mills. Here it is:

Geared up

First bicycle month is rolling along in Almonte area

If you want to keep your cycling holiday really local this year - or spend a day or two getting in shape for a longer adventure - consider nearby Mississippi Mills. People in the municipality around Almonte have declared June bicycle month. And they aren’t kidding.

BY SUSAN RILEY FOR THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
Bicycle month organizer Ruth-Ann MacKinnon pauses beside
the Mississippi River on the birders’ route.

From bicycle-inspired art and a short-story contest centred on bikes, to public lectures, free bike repairs and storefront displays celebrating two-wheel travel - not to mention a lively website, www.mmbicyclemonth.ca - the municipality is joining what is becoming an international movement towards active, green tourism.

It’s an ambitious schedule for an inaugural year: bike month has already featured “birders on bicycles,” a guided ramble along country roads that turned up 45 species; a lecture on how the bicycle is enjoying its second golden era; the launch of The Bicycle Show, an exhibit of local painting and sculpture at Almonte’s Mill Street Gallery; a bike rodeo for kids; and, last Saturday, a 65-kilometre ride to Parliament Hill, organized by the Almonte United Church as a fundraiser. (The 60 registered riders raised money for a bicycle ambulance for a town in Malawi, Africa.)

Also coming up on the agenda: a bike-related movie night, a breakfast ride to the local legion, another to the weekend farmers’ market, a session in Pakenham on family bike mechanics and a writing contest with a $250 prize. (See the website for more details.) There is also a “critical mass” ride next Friday (June 26), leaving from Baker Bob’s in downtown Almonte at 6 p.m. and travelling, as the brochure says, “who knows where?”

But bicycle month’s main draw is the 500-square-kilometre municipality’s quiet country roads, picturesque villages, informal picnic venues and meandering rivers. It is a smaller, land-bound version of Prince Edward County - only closer. At least seven different routes for visitors are detailed in a brochure. They include:

Tour de Mississippi Mills (100plus kilometres, paved): From the Old Post Office at 55 Mill St., Almonte, this trip follows side roads through hamlets, including Appleton, Blakeney, Clayton and Pakenham - with a detour to the Mill of Kintail. Passing through farmland and rolling hills, this isn’t a particularly arduous course and traffic should be light. If you like company, join the Tour de Miss Mills leaving Almonte at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

The Naismith Loop (22 kilometres; gravel and paved): This starts at the Mill of Kintail and passes through farmland and a maple forest to the hamlet of Clayton, with its welcoming General Store.

Verna’s Textbook Tour (42 kilometres, mostly paved): From the Five Arch Stone Bridge in Pakenham, this route traverses flat farmland that was once the bottom of the Champlain Sea and rocky hillsides with vistas of the Lanark Highlands and White Lake. It is named for local historian, naturalist and geologist Verna McGiffin.

Pizza Hut Ride (11 kilometres, paved): A short spin through the countryside around the town of Almonte - and past the new municipal building, known locally as Pizza Hut for its evocative red roof. You can leave your car at Almonte’s Old Town Hall, 14 Bridge St.

Reva’s Museum Tour (41 kilometres, mostly paved): Includes stops at the Mill of Kintail’s R. Tait McKenzie Museum and Dr. James Naismith Collection, the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum and the North Lanark Regional Museum.

Birders on Bicycles (18 kilometres, mostly paved): Starts at Groundz coffee shop on Mill Street in Almonte and loops along forested side roads, past wetlands and rolling pasture through Blakeney and the Mill of Kintail and back to town.

Burnt Lands Mountain Bike Trail: (18 kilometres, gravel): Leaves from the traffic circle at Appleton Side Road and Ramsay Concession 11A and runs adjacent to the Burnt Hills Alvar.

Unfortunately, the trails aren’t marked, but free maps (look for the Mississippi Mills Bicycle Month brochure) are available at most stores and restaurants in the Almonte area and, in Ottawa, at Mountain Equipment Co-op and some bike stores. If you are lost, or confused, visit the info centre at Almonte’s Old Town Hall.

Bicycle month was inspired by local resident Jeff Mills, a keen recreational cyclist, who read about similar events, including bike months in Toronto, Vancouver and several American cities, in the cycling magazine, Momentum.

“I decided we don’t have to live in Toronto to do these things,” he says.

He recruited Ruth-Ann MacKinnon, a more recent convert to the joys of cycling, and others. They approached local council, school and business representatives and got a universally positive response.

Hundreds have become involved in what amounts to a campaign to bring tourists to the area, cut carbon emissions and establish Almonte as a cycle-friendly destination (which makes it a local trendsetter).

If you live in Ottawa, it takes less than an hour to drive to another, more bucolic world. If you’re really keen (and fit) you could even ride there. Think of all the emissions you’ll be saving.

Susan Riley writes a political column for the Citizen and is an avid recreational cyclist.

“The roads will be prepared especially for bicycles, the grades being very slight. The roads will be kept clean, as by that time the horses will found be only in zoological gardens. The improvement in the rider will be equally marked. From the continued and increasing use of the wheel a race of people will be evolved that will take to cycling as readily as a foreign immigrant does to politics. We may expect an average speed of 30 miles an hour on the road and 60 miles on the track. The use of the machine will be universal.
Children will be taught to ride as they are now taught to walk. The suburbs of our great cities will extend from 60 to 100 miles in every direction. All patents will have expired, and such large quantities of bicycles will be manufactured that the cost will be nominal and within reach of all. There will be no more crowded tenement houses. The artisan, who will work only four hours a day, will live with his family in a cosy little home in the suburbs, where he can see the sunshine and breathe the fresh air. The use of the wheel will have so improved the stamina and physique of the race that the only cause of death will be old age and accidents.
Everyone will own a bicycle. Those intended for distance travel will be run by small but powerful storage batteries, which may be charged at automatic electric stations by connecting the battery to a dynamo and dropping a coin of small value in a slot. With machines of this character it will be possible to attain a speed of 150 miles an hour.
The bicycle will not be used in war for the simple reason that as dyspepsia will be unknown, everybody will feel so well and be so good-humoured and disinclined to quarrel that there will be no one to go to war.”

Like proud parents running alongside their child, holding the seat, then with a gentle push casting her off under her own pedal power and proudly watching the rite of passage, the organizing group of Bicycle Month is grinning from ear to ear. This month-long celebration of self-propulsion is launched and heading down the road under its own steam.

Day 13 started with a bicycle rodeo at R.Tait McKenzie School. This event put together parent volunteers, high school students, two health nurses and three OPP officers. Children, their parents and even grandparents started arriving before the tents had been set up, new bicycle helmets set out and pylons strategically placed. Fifty child-sized helmets were checked for defects and fit and those that were not up to scratch were replaced with a new one donated by Canadian Tire and private donors. These new riders learned valuable lessons about road signals and bicycle safety and all with an emphasis on fun.

The Mississippi United soccer team arrived dressed in

their jerseys as if en route to a game.  After their serpentine ride through the pylons, they were off with coach and parents in tow on the Bicycle Month “Birders route.” Their tour included a planned stop for a picnic lunch in Blakeney and a visit at the Mill of Kintail, an 18-kilometer ride. I hope these youngsters have visited the Community Challenge page of Bicycle Month and added their kilometers pedaled to our community total.

Click here for this growing total and see the total amount ridden and the carbon dioxide saved! Add your June rides to the total!!

The destination for most of the trips that Canadians make in their cars are within 8 to 11 km of their homes. The drive time may take less than six minutes. Cars are generally less fuel efficient on short trips than long ones because they have not fully warmed up.  Such distances are within easy reach of someone on a bicycle, especially when

they involve minimum carting (going to the post office or bank or picking up a loaf of bread) or when the objective is simply to get out of the house.

It all adds up. If Canadian motorists eliminate one of these short hops (a six-minute drive per day) we could save at an absolute minimum 2.8 million tonnes of emissions per year or about 1.2 billion litres of fuel used.

Each time you go for a ride during Bicycle Month, enter your distances in our Community Challenge chart (click here). We’ll add it all up and convert to co2 saved.

check kilometres per day here

check totals here

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