Greg Alpert

I have been teaching the "BTA way" for three years. It's immensely satisfying to come back from the community ride and see and feel the energy the kids have. To empower someone for life with their own "magic carpet" is an honor. When not teaching, my bike interests include, commuting, mountain biking, and Kinetic Sculpture Racing. In 2005 my daughter (9yrs) and I won the Overall trophy as well as first place speed at the Corvallis Da Vinci Days race! Ride a bike, save the world!

 

Meghan Betcher

Meghan, who grew up in a small town in Montana, wound up in Portland last summer after a winding path of traveling in South America, working in the woods, living on a mountain top, learning the secrets of winemaking, and earning a degree in microbiology/ecology. She enjoys the curious nature of kids and has frequently found herself involved with organizations where she gets to spend time teaching kids about things that excite her, such as watershed education (bugs mostly) and cider pressing and is now happy to share her enthusiasm for biking. Meghan has had an intimate relationship with her bike for years and has now given up her car completely and is fully embracing all of the excitement of biking in the city. She can most likely be found having an adventure outdoors, with a book, enjoying music or working on a creative project of some sort.

 

Paul Boring

Paul is very excited to join the BTA staff to continue helping people of all ages consider the bicycle as a fun, independent, efficient, and safe alternative to the combustion engine. As a mechanic and volunteer through cycling cooperatives in the Phoenix area, he loved watching kids learn how to use tools to fix their own bikes and was thus inspired to teach. He believes that if enough people can discover the benefits of cycling, perhaps our cities can be smaller, and their inhabitants healthier. Currently finishing his Bachelors in Literature at PSU, Paul also is a lifelong student of plant life, has elected a carless lifestyle, writes bad haikus, builds forts and feels safe enough in Portland to get back on his unicycle.   

 

Pete Collins [Pic coming shortly.]

Pete came to Portland this past fall for the Ph.D. program at Portland State University in Urban Studies. Prior to Portland, Pete was working at the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition in Boston as their Advocacy & Programs Associate. Now back in academia, Pete loves the BTA out here and enjoys the two-wheeled independence Portland allows with awesome bike lanes, bike boulevards, etc. When Pete is not on his Bianchi, he can be seen watching far too much basketball, enjoying Portland’s tasty foods and attempting to shread the gnar on the slopes.

 

Egon Dubois

Egon loves bikes. He has been cycling and tinkering for over twenty years and it's this passion for the bicycle and his love of teaching that got him involved with activism and education. He worked for "Trips for Kids" in Marin County since 1997 as a youth  instructor until he moved to Southern Oregon in 2004. Egon then joined the BTA and has been teaching "Bicycling Safely" in Ashland and Talent as well as helping organize Safer Routes to School activities and  events there. His favorite pastimes are mountain biking and building bikes for himself, his friends and their kids. He says he likes being around happy people riding happy bikes!

 

Adele Galebach

Adele relocated to Portland from the icy and baseball-infused otherworld of Boston in Fall 2007. Lured by mountains, big trees, big spaces and coffee, she basically found what she was looking for. Adele earned a degree in Art History and French from Boston University in May 2006. After moving to Portland, Adele came to rely on cycling as her primary mechanism of transportation as she commuted from one end of  town to the other to teach at an elementary afterschool program. On weekends Adele can be found venturing out in urban/rural exploration with her fiance (Brock) or standing in line at the REI garage sale. She also likes to garden, travel, draw, cook, talk about art, and dabble in other sundry craftsy endeavors.

 

Jonathan Irwin [Pic is on the way.]

Jonathan loves biking & working with kids young and old and feels very lucky to have joined the Safe Routes to School instructor team. Exposed to the joys of bicycle advocacy by organizing community bike repair, he is energized to join Portland’s BTA and wacky culture of the bike-enthralled. Jonathan uses his stationary time for books, vegan cooking, dancing & music-making, history geeking and running wild through Portland’s streets (while carefully waiting at crosswalks, of course.) The opportunity to make biking safer and a joy for young'uns as future commuters/human-beings is the best way he can imagine to channel his enthusiasm for bikes & people who ride them, along with large polyphonic renditions of Queen’s “Bicycle Race.”

 

Amanda Klepper

Amanda came to Portland from the forested wilds of Northern California nearly 7 years ago and hasn’t been able to bring herself to move since. She’s been biking since she was small, and even managed to count bike safety for PE credit in the 4th grade. After years of tumbling through rutted trails and lumpy fields, she is now thrilled to embrace the opportunities of (relatively) smooth city streets. Amanda’s worked in after-school education programs for the past year and a half and is looking forward to invading the school day and showing kids exactly how much fun they can safely have outside. She’s been to Russia and Nicaragua to study language and generally explore, and is wondering where to go next. She is often found happily banging on unsuspecting musical instruments, daydreaming or drawing pictures of animals.

 

Alexis Larsson [Bio is speeding its way to us st this very moment.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gregg Lavender

Gregg Lavender has taught bicycle and pedestrian safety and led after-school Pedal Power programs for the BTA since April 2007. He hears his favorite song everytime he guides Portland students down a hill - it is the "Yooooo Hooos" they sing from their bicycles on the way down. Before joining the BTA as a instructor, Gregg taught children at the Community Cycling Center, Cycles of Change in Oakland and Berkeley, and at a bike safety summer camp he launched. Gregg loves listening to stories at bonfires, hiking and camping with the woman he loves (Nikki), seeing live music shows, and traveling around with his backpack (28 countries so far). Outside of work, he is coordinating a large tree planting for the Friends of Trees in the Woodlawn neighborhood, and he is looking forward to the the Towards Carfree Cities conference coming to Portland in June, 2008.

 

Jaye Marolla

Jaye is in her fifth season as a bike safety instructor with the BTA. She began bike related work years ago with the Community Cycling Center which eventually led to travel in Ghana, West Africa working with the Village Bicycle Project as the Women's Program Coordinator. More recently Jaye spent the summer leading bike tours to the Oregon Coast and through the Willamette Valley. Jaye loves the enthusiastic bike culture Portland provides and the opportunity to share this instrumental, empowering, and life-changing knowledge with youth. On both a local and international level, Jaye finds the multi-faceted ways in which the bicycle is used as a tool for transportation, activism and enjoyment fascinating and inspiring. Currently Jaye is writing articles for an online journal about sustainable living and teaching English in Shanghai, China. The word on the street is that she's on her way to Thailand shortly.

 

Andy McKerrow

Andy McKerrow began volunteering for the Safe Routes to Schools program in 2005 after a long and prosperous career in bicycle service. He began instructing on his own in the autumn of 2006. His favorite part of the job is leading those kids who've never ever ridden a bicycle before on rides around their neighborhoods. After just a few days of practice they can often do all their hand signals and even look back over their left shoulder! They constantly remind him of the improbable ease and simplicity with which humanity the world over rides "2-wheelers". He also has no doubt that a number of his students will find their lives revolving around bicycles in a fun, healthy, friendly way that he knows all too well himself. Andy has been a bicycle commuter since he was 13 years old growing up in Baltimore, where his father was seemingly one of a few dozen bicycle commuters in the city of a million people. He moved to Oregon in 1994 to continue his life-long quest of experiencing every variety of bicycle use, whether utilitarian, competitive, skills-based, adventurous, or relaxation-oriented. He also enjoys backpacking, backcountry skiing, and snowcamping. Andy and his partner Elicia are currently bike touring through South America.

 

Tamara Peterson

Tam has recently relocated to Portland from Corvallis, Oregon. Previously, she worked to develop, administer and evaluate the Safe Routes to School program in Benton County/Corvallis, Oregon. Last year, she graduated from Oregon State University with a Masters Degree in Public Health and also holds a Bachelors degree in Special Education and Elementary Education. Tam has always enjoyed cycling as her main method of transportation and enjoys the bicycle friendly transportation community of Portland. She enjoys hiking and taking bicycle road trips (last summer, she bicycled to Black Rock City, Nevada, from the Willamette Valley.) Tam can often be found out-of-doors running, rock climbing, or playing in the woods at Forest Park. She enjoys volunteering as a board member for We Care, a nonprofit organization that offers one-time emergency assistance to Benton County families in need.