Board Member Profiles

Kim Lisagor , San Luis Obispo County Bicycle Coalition

Residence: San Luis Obispo since 2002.

Occupation: Occupation: Freelance journalist and author covering consumer travel and the outdoors for Outside magazine, USA Weekend, Men’s Journal, Mother Jones, LA Times, whoever else will have me. I also teach journalism at Cal Poly every once in a while, and an online feature writing class through UC Berkeley Extension.

Cycling History: The neighborhood bully dared me to ride my pink Schwinn (banana seat, sparkly tassels) down the hills graded for development behind my parents’ house. He wiped out; I didn’t. I was hooked. Bikes were my preferred mode of transport until, for some reason, cars became cooler. It wasn’t until I started traveling to places where more people get around on two wheels than four that I started to appreciate bikes as viable vehicles for grown-ups. Now I ride whenever possible and wonder why so many Americans choose to drive instead.

What do you ride: Most often, my first real mountain bike, a Trek Singletrack, adapted for commuting with skinny slicks and a rear rack. Mountain bike: a Specialized M3 girl bike. Road bike: a spiffy custom hand-me-down from Linda @ Bob Trailers. Bike Happening bike: an Austrian Sears three-speed.

My Vision: Ideally, SLO as a bicycle utopia with bike paths only (roads for cars can go underground) and giddy commuters dinging bike bells with downloadable tunes (hey, if they can do it for cell phones, why not bells?). Barring that, I’d be happy if Bob Jones stretched from SLO to Pismo, bike boulevards and rail trails criss-crossed the county, and more residents committed to doing their short trips by bike. I’d also like to see ecotourism become a major source of local revenue so that our economy becomes dependent on maintaining and improving the quality of life.

—Kim Lisagor