Six local cyclists have just returned from a fantastic week of learning and cycling in Washington D.C. The six were chosen by Partnership 2000 to represent the region.

Their goal was to encourage biking tourism in our region and to learn about cycling infrastructure and tourism in the U.S. Each day the group rode along different types of trails and routes with members of the Washington Jewish community and met with experts from municipal planning departments and cycling advocates.

They also presented two evening workshops on "Israel as a Cycling Destination" one at the International B'nai B'rith Headquarters in Washington D.C. and the other at the Jewish Community Center in Rockville, Maryland.

While in the US, they met with an impressive array of organizations involved in Biking such as: Bike the Sites, the Washington D.C. Parks and Planning Commission, Rockville Department of Parks and Recreation, the Potomac Peddlers, the Montgomery County Parks and Recreation department and Trips for Kids.

On Sunday, June 17th they rode in Virginia with 100 other cyclists from the Washington area and ended up at the Israel Street Festival in Reston, Virginia, where they set up a booth and distributed hundreds of flyers on cycling in the region and on the upcoming Tour de Beit Shemesh/Yehuda Hills Cross Country Mountain Bike Competition 2-day biking event October 11-12, 2007.

"My goal was to learn a lot and to encourage at least 20 people to come to the region to biking with us in the Tour de Beit Shemesh", says local biking activist, Yitz Triester.

Eitan Hevrony, Chairman of Samson Riders Biking Club says, "We were very inspired by the people we met in Washington and what they are doing to develop biking infrastructure in their cities.

We hope we will be able to implement some of what they have done in Washington and make the roads more bicycle friendly."

Says Shlicha Reeva Ninio "the Washington Cycling committee were very proud of what we achieved and I think we made a dent in a community that we have never been engaged with".

The  members of the cycling mission, Renee Halpert, Yitzhak Triester, Sima Menora, Udi Kaplan, Eitan Hevrony and Gidi Bashan were chosen due to their activism in the Partnership 2000 Bike Forum, the Samson Riders and other local organizations.

We are proud of their dedication and look forward to seeing the fruits of their labor in the near future.

To learn more about biking in the region and to pass on information to your friends and relatives who bike, go to: http://www.bikeisrael.com/020_FrmYehuda_en.asp