Feel the wind brush against your face on a sunny day. Go zipping down the road with friends and strangers. Surround yourself with members of your community.
It advertises itself, but it’s made even better with a delicious slice of pie.
Bike for Pie, Squeaky Wheels’ premiere annual event, is back again this summer.
“It’s quite an effort to put together,” said Ross Hathaway, president of Squeaky Wheels. “Because you have sort of a music festival, a food festival and an organized bike ride all together.”
With up to 500 riders and 70 to 90 freshly baked pies, this local celebration has reappeared for over a decade. Squeaky Wheels is a bicycle advocacy nonprofit that pours funds back into the community. This year, the net proceeds of Bike for Pie will go towards supporting the purchase of the property at Port Gamble containing the Stottlemeyer mountain bike trails.
“That’s a marvelous area, and it would be a tragedy to be lost,” Hathaway said.
The biking bash will be held Sunday, Aug. 7. Riders must check-in from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. at Town Square, where there will be live music and pie from 11 a.m. to
1 p.m. after riders have completed their bike route.
“There’s two routes. One is a 32-mile challenge route,” Hathaway said. “And then there’s the 8-mile family ride. That’s the way we make it family friendly so that there’s something for everybody.”
The idea of Bike for Pie came from Chuck Beek, a pie lover and Squeaky Wheels member.
Why pie? Beek noted the dessert’s mass appeal, and the name seemed catchier than possible alternative treats.
“I was biking down the road one day about 15 years ago thinking, in my role as a Squeaky Wheels board member, how to encourage more kids and families to choose bicycling as a form of transportation and recreation. It was then I conceived Bike for Pie,” Beek said.
The pies are prepared in the Pane D’Amore Artisan Bakery kitchens by a group of several volunteers. They are made from fresh fruit purchased from Town & Country Market: peaches, apples and mixed berries.
Some of the apple pies might even be made from Bainbridge Island apples, since they’re coming in early this year.
The local and well-loved gypsy jazz band Ranger and the “Re-Arrangers” will be performing live for the bike riders to enjoy while eating their sweet reward.
The event has grown tremendously over the years, becoming an island tradition.
“Initially it was informal,” Hathaway said. “It was a bunch of people deciding to sort of go for a bike ride together, as bicyclists often do, and each baking a pie and having a smörgåsbord together. Then it became a community event and fundraiser. And it grew from that.”
Bike for Pie even draws in families of bike riders from Seattle.
“It’s a marvelous event for all ages and abilities, and it’s just a good community fabric event,” Hathaway said. “There’s been a couple of times we’ve thought, ‘Gosh, this is an awful lot of work. Are we gonna do this again next year?’ and every time we hold the event people have so much fun that we just have to do it.”
First and foremost, Bike for Pie is for fun. But it’s also to advocate bicycling, a form of transportation that has many benefits.
“Once you start riding on a regular basis, you oftentimes wonder why you didn’t start earlier,” Hathaway said. “You get the exercise and the fresh air. You get to see your friends and neighbors and the environment, the changing of the seasons. The smell of things, the sights and the sounds that you just don’t get in the car.
“It’s a really, really fun way to get around the island and enjoy where we live.”
Bike for Pie
The annual tasty trek offers riders the choice of either a 32-mile challenge route or an 8-mile family course. Live music and pie will follow, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 7 at Town Square.
Riders must check in from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m.
