Play the Freewheelin Cycle Challenge Game!

Freewheelin and Humana Games for Health have partnered up to bring you the Freewheelin cycle challenge. This flash based game is hosted on the Humana Games homepage. It teaches you about health and fitness and encourages everyone to bike and eat right. The game will see upgrades as the year progresses so please come back to visit again later. Enjoy the game!

Find the Freewheelin Cycle Challenge Here!

We were also submitted to Digg by our friends at Pikagames, so please digg up the story! DIGG

We Won!

Another thank you is in order—thank you to everyone who voted for Freewheelin in the 2009 We Media Game Changers Award competition. We won! This is what they had to say about us:

Freewheelin’ for demonstrating that the Internet is not just something on your screen. Humana’s program challenges the fundamental assumption that health insurance is only for after-the-fact-care, and redefines it as a partnership in preventative care and holistic health. Its suite of digital tie-ins helps translate the ambiguous ‘whole health’ benefits of biking into tangible results that spur people to long-term commitment.

Other winners include Twitter, SocialVibe, and David Plouffe of the Obama campaign to mention a few. We Media will present the award at their February conference, and you can bet that we’ll be there in all our swag. From their website:

The awards are organized and administered by iFOCOS, the media think tank and futures lab that organizes the We Media conferences and global membership community. The awards highlight achievements through transformational communications methods, novel business models, significant social impact, innovative design and powerful visions of media for the connected culture. More about the awards at: www.wemedia.com/awards.

Thank you so much for voting! Way to go!

Thank you Freewheelin Volunteers

Last night the volunteers who ran Freewheelin at the conventions gathered in Louisville, Kentucky to commemorate our efforts this past year. Tim Blumenthal of Bikes Belong and Mike McCallister of Humana were present to thank the volunteers for making the program a success. Freewheelin has a bright future and we would like to take another opportunity to thank all those who made it happen. Thank you! We recently asked our twitter followers why they like to bike and were treated with the following responses:

@naimul It makes me feel the wind in my hair, while I still have it.

@MamaMtnBike I like to bike because it's fun, it relaxes me, keeps me in shape, it's social, I could go on and on...

@Human_After_All First it was transportation, then fitness, then with friends just having fun

@cyclelicious I like to bike because it feels good. I think I'm addicted to cycling

@GenKreton Bikinghelps me sleep better, keeps me in shape, it saves commute time in versus public transit, and most importantly, it's FUN.

@RatherBeBiking because it's fast & fun

@rickmurray it's an amazing cardio workout, it relieves stress and it's a great way to kick start the say

@dirkmshaw I like bikes bc it allows me to set and meet discrete goals, keeps me physically & mentally fit,scenery and carbon!

@thebikediva Because I can keep up with and even beat a lot of the boys when I'm riding my road bike, and I like to go FAST!

@kathilc I like to bike because of the physical and mental workout great friends to ride with and better for the environment I would ride my bike everywhere if I could! how can we make it safe to comingle with cars?

And that is just a sample. If you'd like to respond, please join us on twitter at www.twitter.com/bikesharing. We would love to hear why you like to bike.

Happy Holidays!

You may notice some snow flying around our page. This is intentional. Look closely.

If you're looking for gift ideas try these great pant leg clips for biking fun.

You can find them here: The MOMA Store



We here at Freewheelin wish you the Happiest of Holidays. Keep biking!

Found on Twitter

My Google Alerts didn't pick this up but Freewheelin was mentioned in an article in the Huffington Post.

And that means a handful of other U.S. cities will be playing catch-up in the next year to roll out their own programs. Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul have a one-up on other cities such as San Francisco, as Freewheelin' implemented temporary bike sharing in both those cities as a highlight of the Democratic and Republican national conventions this year. Freewheelin' also installed a small-scale bike sharing in Louisville, KY for the Ideafest convention.

Awesome. Thanks Grant Hill.

The full article can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-hill/tech-enabled-bike-sharing_b_142885.html

Still in the News

Its been a while since the conventions selected their respective nominees and now even the election is over. But freewheelin lives on and people are still buzzing about bikesharing in America. One great example is this post by David at The David Report. Freewheelin hasn't gone away forever though, we're still working with Mayors, University Chancellors, CEOs, and more to bring sustainable bikesharing to the rest of the country. Denver is enjoying their legacy system and we're talking to other cities about installing pilot programs. Updates will continue to flow at www.freewheelinwaytogo.com/community, and as we build this movement we welcome your comments and questions. Feel free to email us or comment on these posts and we'll get back to you soon. Subscribe to our twitter page, watch our YouTube videos, and get a feel for what the freewheelin experience is. Until next time.

Vote For Freewheelin

Vote for us as one of We Media's Game changers! Help Bikesharing get the recognition it deserves. Click here http://gamechangers.wemedia.com/2008/10/freewheelin/ and give us five stars, then put your name and email (never ever revealed or shared) and a comment if you'd like, and click submit. Thats it! We're ahead of Twitter right now!!!

Thank you!

UPDATE: This is what they said about us

Bike sharing was a hit when launched in Paris in 2007. It was cheap, convenient and eco-friendly. End of story? Not so fast. A U.S. health insurer changed the game and wrote a new story. Humana promotes its business agenda - lower health care costs - through a state-of-the-art bike sharing program tested during the 2008 U.S. political party conventions in Denver and St. Paul. Freewheelin promotes its social and business agenda through communication - made possible by wireless/mobile and social networking technology. When you ride a Feewheelin bike, wireless networks track your mileage and calories burned. Social networking tools help individuals track their personal successes and, by calculating reduced carbon emmisions, their contributions to the shared health and wellness of their community and the planet.

We have 265 five star ratings, please go to the site and vote for Freewheelin!

Biking around with a Full Metal Jacket

So maybe the title is a bit misleading, but if you haven’t been diligently following this blog (we have RSS!) you might not have seen the post we put up about the bike ride led by Actor Matthew Modine (of 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Weeds' fame) at the DNC. Matt Modine is a vocal biking advocate and we captured some great footage of him Freewheelin around on one of our Treks. It was really good to see someone using their celebrity to promote a great cause—biking, health, and environmental preservation.

So today I was cruising around on youtube, looking for clips of Mr. Modine at some sort of speaking engagement so that I could see if I could learn to mimic his voice for an upcoming video I’m making about the story Freewheelin in the world of Web 2.0 (in case you didn’t know, Matt Modine heard about Freewheelin through our facebook page and we used the blog, twitter feed, and facebook wall to promote his guided ride).

Lo and behold, I happened upon a video of him riding around on freewheelin bikes….a video that we didn’t make! I got very excited and wondered why we hadn’t heard about this video before. I wanted to blog right away! When I checked my gmail though, I found that the creator of the video had already emailed us and asked us to blog about it! So without further adieu, here is Matthew Modine in his latest smash hit, “Matthew Modine Bicycle for a Day at DNC.”



PS: The video can also be found on youtube here, where you should comment and rate it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyWgol5kZYc

PPS: While you’re on youtube why not subscribe to our channel http://www.youtube.com/healthentertainment

PPPS: While you’re subscribing to things, why not subscribe to our RSS feed, available below on the sidebar. Have a great day!

The Future of Freewheelin

Welcome Freewheelin fans, Humana Associates, Bikes Belong Volunteers, and Friends!

It’s been a while since we last posted, but to give you some quick numbers, our Bike Sharing effort at the Idea Festival in Louisville logged over 3,000 miles and 556 individual rides. The Mayor of Louisville and the Governor of Kentucky came out to pledge their support, both morally and financially, to make Louisville more biking friendly. Check out this summary from our own biking expert Tony:



But this isn’t the end of the road for Freewheelin. Bike Sharing is slowly spreading throughout the nation. The next step involves pilot program installations in Minneapolis and Denver. These stations will have a look and feel different from what you saw at the DNC and RNC and they’ll be completely automated. We have some big news coming down the line about the future of bike sharing in America, so stay tuned for details.

The story of freewheelin as you see it on this blog is narrow in scope. To read more about the freewheelin experience from a number of volunteers or to contribute your own stories, check out our flickr discussion board located here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/freewheelin/discuss/72157607228789910/

Freewheelin Rides Again

I remember a t-shirt from when I was in high school that read, "I'm back - by popular demand." Well, if a bikesharing program could wear a tshirt, THAT is the one that freewheelin would be wearing today.

Kicked off brilliantly by Tony Tomazic (see video above - Haiku is the ONLY medium that could have so efectively described the attributes of bikesharing), we're ready to take the Idea Festival by storm. For those of you who don't know, the Idea Festival is a global forum for innovators to come together and share ideas. Hopefully, really good ones. And certainly, ideas that will improve due to riding a free, brand-new bike around town.

As usual, the "way to go bloggin' crew" will be out and about, blogging, twittering and talking to people, so stay tuned. And if you're NOT lucky enough to be in Louisville this week, you can get a great sense of the experience through our live webcams . . . the ultimate in reality TV, brought to you all week at the Freewheelin Community page.

And don't forget . . . if you've experienced freewheelin in Louisville, Denver or Minneapolis/St. Paul, please share that experience with the community . . . we're collecting stories, pictures and videos at our flickr page (just click the linked button on the right . . . or follow this link if you're really lazy).

Making Moves

Things have been pretty exciting here in the innovation center. We're gearing up for Freewheelin 2.0. Freewheelin is coming to Louisville, KY for the 2008 IdeaFest. We're going to have over 300 bikes out in four stations for the entire community to enjoy! Just show up to the tent, register, and enjoy your free ride.

To kick off the event Louisville's Mayor Mayor Abramson joined Humana Chairman David A. Jones Jr. in welcoming bikesharing to the Possibility City at a press conference held in front of the Humana Building. The kind words were followed by a nice, breezy ride around the block. I have a good feeling about this week. Enjoy the video, made with a flip video camcorder. Warning, its really shake-full.




In other news: As the social media team, Greg and I are in charge of telling the story of our success bringing the networks of the internet news of freewheelin and enjoying the outpouring of support from bloggers, tweeters, facebookers and more. We're in stage one of making this movie (which will of course be posted here when its done), but we met with the production team and refined our script this morning. Here is part one of our adventure.



UPDATE: People are blogging about freewheelin already: http://www.consuminglouisville.com/2008/09/free-bikes-to-ride-downtown-du.php
Probably because of the news: http://www.louisvilleky.gov/BikeLouisville/News/2008/09-22-08-freewheelin.htm

And Lastly, Greg's perspective of the Freewheelin Louisville Kickoff

Fan Film Slide Show

Some awesome fan out there decided to make a slide show video and sent it our way. You can click through to watch in high quality. Please enjoy!

Funny Washington Post Video

I hadn't seen this yet--freewheelin was mentioned in a video by the Washington post, although they didn't identify Bikes Belong or Humana. Still pretty funny though.



Some other great coverage by TheWashCycle: http://www.thewashcycle.com/2008/09/us-freewheeling.html

And a Comprehensive look by Sustainability in Business: http://sustainability.netdirectbusiness.com/?p=76

There are many many many more blog posts about Freewheelin. Look up freewheelin, bikes, bikesharing, biking, DNC, or RNC at Technorati to find more.

From Dusk till Dawn

It’s the last day of Freewheelin at the RNC. Morning sunlight is just beginning to shimmer on the ripples in the fountain of Government Plaza and the first curious wonderers who haven’t tried Freewheelin are passing through our tent. They move like curious children at first—-peeking from behind the pant legs of their doubts, unsure if their money will be taken, skeptical of our motives. Some of them ask us why we’re here, whether our drive is profits and if we really care about biking at all. All of us are ready to answer these questions. Not because we’re prepared with scripted responses or the language of the corporate soap box, but because we know the rush of freedom a two wheeler gives us. We’ve lived and breathed the daily exhilaration possible only from motion not bound by our own two feet.

It’s beautiful in Minneapolis this morning. The sky is shifting from midnight black to a vast, cloudless slate of blue in slow, unnoticeable gradients. The sun floats up to its zenith and encourages a breeze that whips at our faces; cool, not icy, like cream or tapioca. It’s a self-sustaining pudding wind. Riding through the streets in this weather, past parks and rivers, up hills and paths, you really get a sense of your body’s inner function. Your heart beats as you pump; your breathing fills your ears. You’re aware of every nerve and sinew, every bead of sweat forming in pores on your back, and every vessel dilating as your legs scream in protest. When you really push it, you become conscious of each molecule of oxygen filtered through each cell in your blood.

The Freewheelin Ideal is bigger than the betterment of our environment or the improvement of our health. It’s about understanding how human beings have the power to change the world, starting with the way we understand our world. Once we know ourselves we look at the planet through unclouded eyes and recognize the beauty of nature in each blade of grass we've trampled and each budding seed we've passed. We appreciate the distances we cover and the magnificent wonder inherent in that space.

You think all of this understanding can’t come from a bike ride. And you’re right. All of this understanding comes from having an open mind. A free mind. The bike is just a vehicle for you to explore the space around you and experience it with liberated perception. We want to give you a way to feel that breeze on your face and appreciate the fact that you made your body move fast enough to enjoy it.

The sun will soon set on the last Freewheelin tent this Convention will ever see. Why not join us for a ride?

NBC personalities give freewheelin a whirl

Freewheelin's opening day saw lots of interesting things . . . not the least of which were rides from chief white house correspondent David Gregory (pictured here with Bikes Belong Executive Director Tim Blumenthal) and former NBC Nightly News host Tom Brokaw. Mr. Gregory checked his bike out (appropriately) from Government Plaza. Mr. Brokaw was in St. Paul at Upper Landing Park . . . luckily checking his bike out several hours before the station had to be closed due to protests.
That's the thing about freewheelin; you never know what each day will bring!

Freewheelin - On the front page of CNN.com

Check this great post from CNN . . .

Red Cross Recognizes Humana's Efforts

I had the pleasure of meeting Jan McDaniel, the CEO of the Twin Cities Red Cross, yesterday. We talked about freewheelin's plan to donate $10 for every freewheelin mile ridden, which we're both excited about. After some discussion with Jan's communications team, we were able to post our announcement on the twin cities' web site, and have made contact with the national headquarters as well. As of this posting, freewheelin has raised over $40,000 in just over a day for those displaced by Hurricane Gustav . . .

Freewheelin commits donations to support Hurricane Gustav victims

Freewheelin to donate $10 for each mile ridden on a freewheelin bike during the Republican National Convention, September 1-4, 2008

It's amazing how fast the world can change. A few days ago, we were riding high on the strength of our fantastic reception in Denver, where freewheelin riders took over 5,500 rides for over 26,000 miles. Today, our eyes have turned to the gulf coast, where Hurricane Gustav is threatening.

Freewheelin is all about doing good . . . for our bodies, our communities and our planet. And now it's about doing good for those who have already been victimized by Gustav - forced to leave their homes and possessions behind as many gulf coast communities are evacuated.

So we're donating $10 for every mile ridden on a freewheelin bike here in Minneapolis/St. Paul during the RNC. If we can ride as many miles here as we did in Denver, that's going to be a lot of help!

Keep watching this space for other ways to participate . . .

Freewheelin's Triumphant Entry to Minneapolis/St. Paul

Mayor Rybak leads the freewheelin movement into the Twin Cities
Originally uploaded by freewheelinbiker

Mayor R.T. Rybak led a group of 150 bikers into Minneapolis today to celebrate the arrival of freewheelin. There's a friendly competition now underway between the Twin Cities and Denver, which hosted the Democratic National Convention last week.

Back on July 24, 4 US congressmen - Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, James Oberstar of Minnesota, Thomas Petri of Wisconson and Zach Wamp of Tennessee challenged convention delegates to take 10,000 rides covering 25,000 miles . . . a tall order for 8 days! However, Denver rose to the challenge, taking 5,522 rides for 26,493 miles!

That's a high bar to be sure, but Mayor Rybak is seriously committed to bikesharing in the Twin Cities, and will have his citizens ready to roll - literally!

Globe Cartoonist Returns to the Scene

Ward Sutton, the Boston Globe cartoonist who produced our favorite-ever editorial cartoon, visited the Art Museum station again this morning. But this time, he was surprised to see his cartoon blown up and proudly displayed (as it is at ALL of our stations!) Mr. Sutton graciously signed the reproduction, and posed for a picture with the team.
Come back any time, Ward!