After an excellent night's sleep in Tim's downtown Toronto apartment (which apparently was interrupted by our host's drunk ex-girlfriend calling to be buzzed in from the lobby – I slept through all of that), we began Day 2 with a refreshed outlook on life. The breakfast of tofu scramble and home fries at the Campus Co-op House was awesome, and we were ready to locomote.
Carl went to Meeting Facilitation first off, which was complementary with the Battlefield:Consensus course that he attended the previous day. Everyone has an inner facilitator, and if one person dominates, then the vibe can skew the points that others want to make and stifles the creativity of the group. It's important to recognize that, and several other co-ops had established styles that would work. One group took a straw poll at the beginning of each meeting to establish priorities for the meeting. Also, they shifted facilitators every few meetings (not necessarily assigning, but letting someone present themselves) to keep things fresh; also, having a spotter to assist by keeping track of who would like to comment and contribute to the discussion. Another idea is that instead of using your voice to demonstrate approval (which could derail someone's point), simple sign language can be used (curved finger = I've got a question, finger-wiggle to demonstrate approval, etc.) to accomplish the same thing without being invasive.
I went to a two-part course on volunteer orientation led by the Boise, Idaho, co-op staff. The two parts of the course followed the two-part orientation that Boise requires for anyone that wants to be involved in their shop as a volunteer. The first part focused on the importance of having an orientation program for shop volunteers, as well as the conceptual training that they provide in their first session for new volunteers. They've found that having some structure to their volunteer training makes their volunteers more effective because they understand what the purpose and mission of the shop is, as well as having some basic mechanical understanding of the bicycle. It also serves a purpose for the shop by “weeding out” those who really aren't very interested in volunteering or would be doing it for reasons other than wanting to help people.
The second part was a hands-on demonstration of what the Boise group does for their second volunteer orientation session. They just go through pulling a stem, taking off the pedals and cranks, and using a chain tool to remove and re-install a chain. Their main emphasis is that there's a proper tool for each task, and that the tools must be properly used in order to avoid problems.
I think that greater volunteer care is one of the areas which we could really improve in our shop. I'd like to personally spend some time over the next couple of months focusing on getting a regular volunteer orientation set up for new volunteers, following up with those who've expressed interest in volunteering on their membership form, finding a volunteer with non-profit accounting experience who'd be willing to help us put together for independent 501(c)3 status, and getting more volunteers involved at the CBP.
Carl went to the Bikes & Universities session for his second session of the day.
I wasn't really excited about any of the sessions directly following lunch, and I was really behind on blogging, so I skipped that session and holed up at a branch of the Toronto Public Library to let some of my hard-earned Canadian tax dollars pay for my free WiFi. It was a beautiful experience. Here's the view out of the second-floor window, which unsurprisingly featured a Tim Hortons:
Carl was a good organizational man and attended both of the afternoon sessions, catching Bike Advocacy/Working with the City and Earn-A-Bike Programs.
I was a little late getting to my final session of the day: Facilitating a Paid Position at Your Shop. It was led by a grant-funded employee of the Bike Kitchen in Los Angeles. There are several models for staffing shops, from Bicas in Tempe, Ariz., where pretty much everyone is paid (13 employees), and they make anywhere from $8 to $14 per hour, depending on level of responsibility, to Bike Kitchen, which is all volunteer with the exception of the single grant-funded employee. I'd say the majority of the shops represented at Bike!Bike! Are 100% volunteer-run, mostly because they feel it's important to their mission to charge little or nothing for their services, or they have higher expenses because of their location. The biggest takeaway I got from this session is that any decision to pay someone(s) must be arrived at by a collective, democratic or consensus decision, and that it's helpful to get advice from a financial expert on whether or not the shop's finances are healthy enough to support a paid position.
SATURDAY EVENING
Carl and I met up and headed to dinner at the house of a friend of our host's, Jacqueline. Jacqueline and her housemates were also hosting several Bike!Bike! Attendees, from Montreal and Atlanta. They lived near a sunken park called the Christie Pits and had an amazing backyard with grapevines, tomato plants, and other vegetables. It was truly a beautiful thing. We enjoyed a great dinner of pasta, vegetables, and homemade bread, all of which originated in Ontario. We also enjoyed some local beverages, as well as some Corona courtesy of NAFTA.
Altogether too soon, it was time to head out to a local anniversary ride to commemorate the 2003 East Coast Blackout. Our host, Tim, whose birthday coincided with the blackout, had pleasant recollections of the beautiful hospitality and community demonstrated by Torontonians (?) when the lights went out. Pleasantly buzzed, we rolled down to a park at Bloor and Spadina, where several hundred cyclists were gathering to take part in the ride.
I'm accustomed to the 20-30 riders which make up a healthy C-U Critical Mass, so this was something different than I'd ever been a part of. We rode several miles along the bar-lined streets of southwest Toronto in a large group, corking intersections and doing a good job of staying together, although the sheer quantity of riders meant that we still stretched out for several blocks.
Then, just when things were running out of steam, a pre-planned meeting with a percussion band and fire-twirling troupe on a dead-end street occurred. Everyone dismounted from their bikes, and let by a steady drumbeat and rings of fire from half-dressed fire-twirlers, we marched a block down the street to a railroad underpass, which we occupied for 10 minutes or so, stopping automobile and streetcar traffic. It was really a joyous scene, which I hope comes through in the video below:
Before we upset any motorists beyond repair, we marched back to the dead-end street and set up a more permanent party. The drum-pounding and fire-contortioning continued in conjunction with some energetic dancing on the “darkest street they could find” for better than an hour.
Carl and I were pretty wiped out by that point and weren't going to survive the additional dance party planned at Bike Pirates afterward, so we took our leave and rode back to Tim's apartment. We took a little detour into a fountain park in downtown Toronto to take some pictures:
We lived to tell the tale of the remainder of our ride, although Carl had a close call when he hooked the rearview mirror of an SUV on Queen Street. After spinning a little Richard Hell on Tim's hi-fi, we called it a night – me a little earlier than Carl, apparently.
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