What?
Ride Our Routes (ROR) is a summertime movement that gets you pedaling your bike along the nonmotorized network – through cities, villages, and townships – in and around Kalamazoo County. Joining this movement is as simple as riding your bike, individually or in small groups, and exploring 1st to 48th Streets, A to Z Avenues, and the many Shared-Use Pathways across our beautiful county.
What’s more?
Get a t-shirt to commemorate your ROR accomplishment and help advertise our region’s many bicycle routes. How? Participate in a summertime ROR event, organized by the Kalamazoo Bicycle Club (KBC), and earn a voucher for a t-shirt at a discounted price. NOTE: participants younger than 16 years old can earn a FREE t-shirt.
When?
Summer (June-September) of 2022.
Who?
YOU, your friends, and everyone else with a bicycle and a sense of adventure.
Where?
The map of routes in ROR, available in Google MyMaps via this link RORmap, guides bicyclists along many popular bike routes in Kalamazoo County. Routes include trails (e.g. Kalamazoo River Valley Trail – KRVT), existing bike routes on streets and roads (e.g. Lovers Lane in Portage and East Main St. in Kalamazoo Township), proposed bike routes (e.g. 11th St. in Oshtemo Township and Riverview Drive in the City of Parchment and Cooper Township), and many of the routes used regularly by members of KBC. (See “Backstory” below for more route info.)
Over 70 suggested route loops of different lengths (5-7, 10-12, 15-20 miles) are available on the KBC Ride with GPS (RwGPS) club account at this link https://ridewithgps.com/events/144468-ride-our-routes. This “Ride Our Routes” event in RwGPS will be available between June 1st and September 30th, when you will have full club member privileges to view and download routes. If you want to continue enjoying club member privileges for all routes in the KBC library in RwGPS after September 30th, you must be a member of KBC. See the KBC “Membership” page (https://www.kalamazoobicycleclub.org/members/) to join KBC.
Why?
ROR offers opportunities for bicyclists of all ages and abilities to be outside riding bicycles and exploring our remarkable bicycling infrastructure in the Kalamazoo area.
So… dust off your bike, lube its chain, pump up those tires, get outside, and ride, ride, ride. And remember – wear your helmet. We look forward to seeing you Riding Our Routes this summer!
Questions?
Contact: rideourroutes@kalamazoobicycleclub.org
Backstory about bike routes in ROR: The idea for Ride Our Routes grew from seeing a map of proposed bike routes in Kalamazoo County, created in early 2021 by the Road Commission of Kalamazoo County. That map, available at Non-Motorized Routes, shows proposed bike routes passing through and connecting every township in Kalamazoo County. What if a movement were designed to encourage residents (and non-residents) of Kalamazoo County to explore this growing non-motorized network in the Kalamazoo region? Accomplishing that entailed connecting the proposed routes with already existing, and signed, routes and shared-use pathways in the region, especially those in the cities of Kalamazoo and Portage. Those combined routes, plus a few more on which members of KBC frequently ride, yielded the ROR map. That map, displayed on the front of the ROR t-shirt and available at the link provided in the “Where?” section, portrays an extensive (dare we say impressive and inviting?) network of bicycle routes throughout, and a bit beyond, Kalamazoo County. ROR organizers hope you will make the most of that network by exploring it on your bike.
Thanks!: Kalamazoo Bicycle Club organizers of Ride Our Routes thank the Road Commission of Kalamazoo County, as well as the cities (especially Kalamazoo and Portage), villages, and townships in the Kalamazoo region for identifying, maintaining, and signing bike routes. ROR organizers also thank Kalamazoo Sportswear and Regalia for designing and printing the ROR t-shirts. The following entities have helped promote ROR: Parks departments of Comstock, Kalamazoo, Portage, and Kalamazoo County; Oshtemo Friends of the Parks; Road Commission of Kalamazoo County; local bike shops – Kzoo Swift, Pedal, and Zoo City; and Gazelle Sports. And…thanks go to YOU for participating in the ROR movement.