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On behalf of Expert Village, I'm League of American Bicyclists cycling instructor Randy
Victory, and I'm here to tell you about advanced cycling. What we did here in Cottonwood, Arizona,
is started out with just simple letters to the editor. And that was probably our first
six months of effort, was making the community more aware that we were out there and wanted
better facilities. The next thing we started to do was get involved with the city council.
We went to two or three city council meetings, let them know that there was a need, and let
them know that we wanted to see action. A couple of us started to go to Verde Valley
transportation planning organization meetings, and became members of that, and now have chairs
on that board. So, getting involved in those committees really goes a long way towards
getting facilities. Be ready for a pretty long struggle if you have nothing in your
community. It's taken us about four years, and that's actually pretty quick. Most communities
you can expect five to ten years before you see real meaningful change. So, building a
strong coalition is another thing you can do. We, inside of about a year, had 250 members
signed up, and that really gave us a lot of political firepower.