Cycling Over Sixty

Outdoors for All

• Tom Butler • Season 2 • Episode 58

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Host Tom Butler is just one prep day away from embarking on the challenge he’s been planning for over a year. With the clock ticking, Tom shares his strategy for avoiding burnout and maintaining energy throughout the ride. However, not everything is going smoothly—Tom discusses some last-minute bad news about a road closure that could impact the safety of the route.

Joining Tom this week is Taylor Moseley from Outdoors for All, an organization dedicated to making outdoor activities accessible to everyone. Taylor provides insightful information about the organization and how they help people with special needs enjoy cycling through adaptive bikes and supportive programs.

Tune in for a mix of last-minute preparations, expert insight, and inspiring stories that highlight the inclusive spirit of cycling.

Link For Tom’s Route on Ride with GPS: ridewithgps.com/routes/27011187

Thanks for Joining Me! Follow and comment on Cycling Over Sixty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cyclingoversixty/

Consider becoming a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty

Please send comments, questions and especially content suggestions to me at tom.butler@teleiomedia.com

Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com

Tom Butler:

This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season 2, episode 58, outdoors for All, and I'm your host, tom Butler. Welcome back to the podcast. Welcome back to the podcast If you're a new listener. This is where I share interviews that I have on a wide variety of health topics. As I pursue staying fit later in life, my focus is on being able to ride a bike as late in life as I can, so I also talk with people about all kinds of cycling experiences. Before I get to this week's conversation, here's an update on my journey. On August 3rd of 2023, I did an interview with Nick Deshaies. He recommended that I consider riding US Bike Route 10 across Washington as a challenge for Season 2. It's been over a year since that interview and next Monday I launch off to take on that ride.

Tom Butler:

I'm certainly not overconfident in my ability to complete this journey. I'll have support from my wife, kelly, who is driving the route. If I was carrying everything on the bike and camping along the route, I would feel very pessimistic about my chances. The 400 plus miles of the route done over five days isn't that intimidating. However, the 25,000 feet of climbing is. I still have no way to assess how I will hold up. I'm a slow climber so that means that I could be on the bike for 10 to 12 hours a day. I just really don't know how the strain of that much time on the bike day after day will add up over five days. Currently I feel confident that I can make it through the first three days and I'll most likely at least start out on the fourth. But five miles in on the fourth will tell me just how much I have left in my legs. The first five miles go up 1,044 feet. That day is a total of 7,389 feet of elevation. For someone who struggles with climbing it's going to be a tough day. At this point I only have one more prep ride. However, I'm viewing the first day of the ride as more of a warm-up Day. One is pretty flat, so I'm going to ride it slowly and save my legs for the second day. If you're interested in the route I'll be riding, you can find a Ride With GPS link in the show notes.

Tom Butler:

I did something different to prepare physically for the ride. I took a lot of time off the bike. It seems like in general my legs are slow to heal, so I wanted to give them a lot of recovery from our three-day Port Townsend tour. Pretty soon I'll find out if that was a good strategy. I have a plan to not overdo it.

Tom Butler:

On the ride I'll use heart rate as a gauge of intensity. My plan is to keep my heart rate under 140 beats per minute for as much of the ride as possible. When I am climbing I won't be able to do that, so I'll look to stay under 150 beats per minute. I think if I hit 160 beats per minute I will step off the bike and let my heart rate drop. For a couple points of reference, I think 170 beats per minute is probably 95% of my max heart rate. If I spend much time over 160 beats per minute, I think I'm putting myself in danger of wearing out my legs before I complete the ride. Another point of reference is that my average heart rate on the Seattle to Portland ride was 127 beats per minute. I'm quite sure that it won't be that low for this ride.

Tom Butler:

There aren't a lot of water stops on three days of the route To stay hydrated. I'm not relying on Kelly being able to find me when I need water. Instead, I'm carrying 96 ounces of water. I have 36 ounce bottles in the cages and a 24 ounce bottle in the saddlebag pouch. For me, that means about four hours of riding before I need to fill up.

Tom Butler:

I did get a piece of bad news this week and thanks Judson for giving me a heads up on it. Unfortunately, part of State Route 20 is going to be closed Now. The part that is closed doesn't change my route, because US Bike Route 10 uses a different road for that section anyhow. However, the bad news is that, because of the closure, all the traffic on State Route 20 will be routed on the same roads that are used for US Bike Route 10, and that road basically has no shoulder. That might turn out to be the worst 12.5 miles of the whole trip, even though that section is designated as a US Bike Route of the whole trip. Even though that section is designated as a US bike route, I'm pretty confident that bicycle rider safety didn't factor into any of the detour planning.

Tom Butler:

For anyone interested, I will do updates on Instagram. My plan is to do three updates a day. However, I know there will be some areas that I have no self-service, so midday updates might get uploaded to Instagram at the end of the day If you haven't joined the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club consider doing so. This week I talked about wind noise reducers and Matt and RG contributed to a discussion about emergency messengers. The club continues to grow and gets better all the time. Once again, I will state that I love to see ride pictures. Thank you to all who have taken the time to upload images.

Tom Butler:

On the topic of emergency messengers, I did consider getting a spot gen 4, but I also looked at the Garmin inReach. There are great messengers out there and some have live route tracking. However, in the case of this, ridelly won't be able to get updates because she won't have cell coverage for a lot of the ride as she drives it. Emergency responders like police could get notified by the messenger, but I think it is probable that someone driving the road would be my best hope for getting out of a remote place if I get injured. I do think I will get a messenger at some point in the future. However, that's. That's the update for now, but please send up some positive thoughts for me on Monday morning as I launch on this adventure.

Tom Butler:

To me, outdoors for All is one of those organizations that, just by hearing their name, you feel like they must be doing good work. One of the things that I'm most thankful about is that I don't have any physical obstacles to jumping on a bike and riding. I'm so glad that Taylor Mosley joined me for a conversation about how Outdoors for All make it easier for people that need an adaptation to get out and enjoy cycling. Here's our conversation. I'm joined today by Taylor Mosley with Outdoors for All. Thanks for coming on, taylor.

Taylor Moseley:

Hi, tom, thanks for having me.

Tom Butler:

The bike is a special device, in my opinion, and I like hearing about ways the bike can be used to impact the lives of people. I see Outdoors for All as an organization impacting a lot of lives, including with bike programs, and I'm glad to have an opportunity to shine a light on the work that Outdoors for All is doing in the community.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, I definitely agree with you. I think you know bikes are a big part of my life and I think just being outside in general is really helpful for a lot of people. So, yeah, glad to talk about it.

Tom Butler:

Introduce people to Outdoors for All.

Taylor Moseley:

So Outdoors for All is a nonprofit and we're dedicated to enriching the lives of children and adults with disabilities through outdoor recreation. So what I usually tell folks is, if there's a sport that you can buy equipment from REI, we adapt it for all kinds of people to use. So we have all kinds of specialized equipment for different physical disabilities. We also provide a lot of behavioral support for different like cognitive and developmental disabilities, like folks with autism and things like that, and we also just serve a lot of folks that are aging and aren't comfortable participating in the kind of standard ways that most people are used to. But our sports include skiing, rock climbing, kayaking, cycling. We run day camps in the summertime.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, like I said, all those sports that you go shop for at REI.

Tom Butler:

How long has Outdoors for All been around at REI?

Taylor Moseley:

How long has Outdoors for All been around? So we started in 1979. We're about to celebrate our 45th anniversary and we originally just started as Ski for All was the first name of the organization. So we just did skiing with a few people up at Snoqualmie Pass and then, you know, kind of went along that track for the first 15, 20 years and then in the 90s we started adding the other sports. So we started doing adaptive cycling and then rock climbing and kayaking. We had our name change in the 2000s to Outdoors for All and now, yeah, we run programs year round.

Tom Butler:

And you're in the Seattle area, is that it? Or do you guys do programs kind of all over?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, so our office is based in Seattle. We're actually about to have a new main office in Bellevue, but a lot of our operations are in Seattle. But we we take our programs all over the state of Washington. We have a few trucks and trailers full of bikes and different equipment that we take as far as Spokane down to Vancouver, up to Bellingham and Blaine area. So you know, in pretty much every direction we're putting on programs and then we run our ski programs mostly at Stevens Pass and Snoqualmie Pass, but we'll sometimes go do some one-off events in, you know like at Mount.

Taylor Moseley:

Baker, or maybe out at Wenatchee at Mission Ridge or something. But yeah, we serve the whole state of Washington.

Tom Butler:

Being around that long, there's been an opportunity to really see what getting people outdoors and getting them active, the impact it has. On the website you talk about transforming lives through outdoor recreation. What is meant by transforming lives?

Taylor Moseley:

That's a good question. I think it's kind of hard to define. You know, like we talk about reporting metrics because we get a lot of grants and stuff and like how do we know that we're transforming lives? And I think you know the short answer is that it's. It's just hard to kind of define that.

Taylor Moseley:

But I think anybody who has experienced joy in the outdoors, who has done things with their family, even if not in that specific environment just riding bikes together as a family for the first time, or being able to include your kids in a day camp situation that's safe and inclusive of their needs I think it doesn't have to be anything huge. It's mostly just providing opportunities for these folks to participate in what a lot of us consider just regular day to day. You know, like biking is a part of my everyday life and that's not the case for a lot of people. A lot of pictures in our programs and we see the smiles and we give out lots of high fives and there's just lots of camaraderie and it's all of those kind. You know there's a lot more than just the sport aspect of how we're transforming lives.

Tom Butler:

I'm thinking there must be an element of achievement, that you see that people doing something maybe they even thought it hard to imagine how they would do it and then being able to do that activity and achieving something.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, totally, you know. We get folks in that are doing sports for the first time, kids that are coming in for the first time, adults that have moved to the United States from another country where there were no adaptive recreation opportunities. We also have folks that come in maybe with a new disability, who have had an injury or a stroke or something that's happened to them later in life, so their disability is new to them and they're relearning how to live their entire life and to see folks and to see families come in and we have these aha moments all the time of like I can still do this thing that I used to love and it looks different, but I get the same satisfaction. I get to be outside, I get to enjoy this with my friends and family.

Tom Butler:

That's fantastic. So what is your specific role there?

Taylor Moseley:

I am the cycling program manager. We're a nonprofit so we all wear a lot of hats, but for the most part I oversee the maintenance on the bike fleet. I make a lot of equipment purchases. I manage a lot of the back-end administrative work for our cycling program. So we have a program during the summer with the Department of Transportation where we do free bike rentals all summer. So I manage that. We work with Seattle Public Schools to get the bikes into the schools. That's one of the programs I do. We also we're about to kick off our fall cycling program, so we've got a gravel biking series coming up. We're also doing a learn to ride a two wheel bike for kids and adults really that are learning to ride a two wheel bike for the first time. So basically anything that involves the bikes I'm involved with in some way the resident bike guy, I guess.

Tom Butler:

Well, that's pretty awesome. I'm thinking you must have a background in cycling.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, I mean kind of by accident. I started riding my bike a lot in college just to save money and I ended up getting a job at kind of like a consignment an outdoor consignment store that had a bike shop. So I learned how to work on bikes there and then when I moved to Seattle, I got a job with the city bike share, worked there for several years, worked part time as a mechanic, and then actually came to Outdoors for All for a seasonal position during the summer and they ended up keeping me on and I've been here for about five years now.

Tom Butler:

So it's a very different way of using bikes or being involved in the bike industry. It seems like you see a real different aspect of cycling.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah for sure. Growing up I had a parent with a disability for several years. But I'm from Atlanta originally and there were just not a lot of opportunities for adaptive cycling, or maybe it just wasn't publicized much. It's a really exciting area of cycling that I think is growing right now.

Taylor Moseley:

There's a lot to know and things are changing a lot. There's new things developing and coming out. Every year there's something new. I have seasonal coordinators that come help me run the rental programs during the summer. Most of them, similarly, have never had any experience with an adaptive bike before, but it functions similarly, but it just maybe looks a little bit different. So those folks are also. It's just. It's just another area of cycling that you don't really get a lot of exposure to otherwise.

Tom Butler:

So when you talk about the rental programs, is that mostly adaptive equipment or is it broader than that?

Taylor Moseley:

Mostly all of our adaptive equipment here is available for rentals. But specifically the program I'm referencing is we call it the Adaptive Bike Share Program and it's a partnership that we have with the Seattle Department of Transportation and essentially what happens is some of the money that the bike and scooter share operators in the city. They have to pay a permit fee to operate here. Some of that money comes to us essentially in the form of a grant to provide adaptive bikes for people with disabilities to come and they can ride seven days a week from 10 am to 6 pm. So they're kind of it's a lot of the city's efforts in trying to make a more inclusive bike share program. Where you know those bikes and scooters are on demand, you can get one any time of the day in most places in Seattle, but that's just. Those don't work for everybody. So that's where we come in and can provide. You know we have all kinds of different trikes, hand cycles, tandems, so we can get all those folks involved if they wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Tom Butler:

There's a program out there that a lot of times they'll go to assisted living centers and they'll have a cycling rickshaw that they'll use. Do you guys do anything like that?

Taylor Moseley:

Similar. It's not not, you know, not just for, like, retirement homes or assisted living places, but we, you know, like I mentioned earlier, we have these trailers. We have several trailers that are just full of, you know, a pretty wide range of adaptive bikes and that's. We take those to all kinds of groups. So I think we work with about 100 partners within the state of Washington, mostly in western Washington. We do go out east several times a year as well, but, yeah, we bring out bikes to do demos for folks, you know, just for the day for them to ride. They can be like local parent groups that are reaching out to put together a day for like a group of kids.

Taylor Moseley:

It might be a school we work with, like some bigger organizations like lighthouse for the blind or yeah, just these local like transition homes where you know, like high school age kids are kind of becoming adults so they're living in like kind of a a group housing situation, so like we'll bring bikes to them for the day just to ride and have a good time nice are.

Tom Butler:

Are there group categories that you work with and do you do like different activities for for different groups? I'm thinking of one group, like two group categories you already talked about, and it's elderly writers and also younger writers.

Taylor Moseley:

Not necessarily. I think one thing that you know our leadership team has been doing for a long time is trying to they try to foster this idea of like inclusivity. So a lot of our programs are just open to people of all ages and all abilities, whether that's physical disabilities or developmental and cognitive disabilities. Our programs are typically not specific. We are kind of Thinking about the idea of offering some more specific programs you know to, mostly for the peer group kind of support. So not everybody wants to be on a ski lesson where there's also kids around, you know, or maybe vice versa. So we are like moving maybe a little bit more towards doing that.

Taylor Moseley:

But we've definitely, you know, historically have been more in like the realm of inclusivity, realm of inclusivity. But you know, we also do like military vet specific programming where obviously, like, we're working with adults in those situations and they might, you know, it could be a group of veterans that are all that have all been diagnosed with PTSD or it could be a group of veterans that are all dealing with some sort of like limb difference and amputation or otherwise. So yeah, we really we kind of do both. I think sometimes we work with very specific groups and then sometimes, like with our rental program here, it's just open to everybody.

Tom Butler:

I'm guessing that there's kind of a team of professionals that are involved. There's maybe you and others that really understand the equipment and the bikes, but it sounds like there might be others that have different skill set that they bring to facilitate a great ride experience.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, I mean the whole organization. You know, we have people that are raising money, we have people that are marketing our programs. Like I said, my background is largely as a bike mechanic and customer service and we only have about 22, I think, full-time, year-round staff members, but we bring on about 30 seasonal staff during the summertime and then throughout the year we work with about 800 volunteers to help us deliver our program. So a lot of our programming is kind of led by the staff here. We do the trainings, we kind of provide support when needed, but our day-to-day lessons, like our ski lessons, our bike lessons, where folks are working one-on-one with somebody, those are largely led by our volunteers and some of our volunteers have been with us since the very beginning, which is always so amazing to me.

Tom Butler:

Yeah, and again, I think that points to kind of the impact that they're seeing right, Because I'm sure that they're coming back because of the experiences that they have and how much people are enjoying and how much people are kind of expanding their horizons maybe or having the aha moments you know of wow, you know that was a great experience.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, for sure it's kind of hard to have a bad day around here.

Taylor Moseley:

I think when you're out delivering these programs and not in any way to like nobody here is really in it for themselves, I think you know just to make ourselves feel good, like we all really truly want the staff and the volunteers. We just want folks to be able to get out and enjoy these things that we love to do so much and it's there's so many barriers for folks to come out and enjoy this stuff, like you know like I mentioned earlier that that we kind of take for granted our day to day lives.

Tom Butler:

Can you elaborate a little bit more on how you're sure that participants with various disabilities can engage in outdoor activities, and I'm thinking particularly with bikes?

Taylor Moseley:

You know, a huge part of what we do is we provide equipment. That's. You know, a lot of people with physical disabilities like they need specialized equipment in their day-to-day lives, if you're thinking like wheelchairs and other mobility devices like walkers, crutches, prosthetics, any of that kind of stuff. It's the same thing for biking. So you know we have we have a fleet of about 250 bikes. We have all kinds of different adaptations for different disabilities. I always hit on.

Taylor Moseley:

It's very similar to when you or I might go in for like a bike fitting at a shop when you're getting a new bike or something, and they're looking at all the touch points on the bike. So can you use the brakes and the handlebars? Can you safely use the brakes and stop the bike? Will your feet stay on the pedals? Can you use your feet to pedal, or do you need a bike where you use your hands to pedal?

Taylor Moseley:

For some of our participants it's just not always safe for them to control a bike independently. So do we want to put somebody on a tandem bike and we have a few different options for that too. So largely, I think a huge part of what I do is making sure that our adaptive equipment is up to date and a lot of times that comes down to like various straps. We might move all the like hand controls for a bike to the left side or the right side. If somebody has some weakness or a limb difference, yeah, it largely just comes down to equipment, I think. And then, as far as you know some of our other, you know, if we have kids or adults with, like different behavioral challenges or learning disabilities or anything like that, like we all kind of have experience working in those situations and use like some de-escalation techniques and just try to make our spaces as safe as possible for those folks too.

Tom Butler:

Trying to imagine what it's like. Do you pretty much know who's coming on a ride, or do people kind of show up and then you have to problem solve as they come? How does that work?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, it's a bit of both Like. Again, we work with these groups where sometimes it's all limb difference it's all people that have had an amputation of some sort but a lot of times it's just an open program like the rentals we do here from from our office. Anybody could show up at any time. I put flyers and stuff up all over the city to get people out to do this, and so we kind of have just like a stock of parts and different adaptations for the bikes and lots of different bikes available and people can kind of find their favorite one and then hopefully come back and keep using the same thing.

Tom Butler:

Where do you see it going as far as having the equipment to accommodate different people? Do you think there's a lot of innovation that's going to happen to continue to expand that, or do you think it's pretty much there?

Taylor Moseley:

I'm sure, with materials development and it's going to get. It's going to keep getting better. Like any other, like any other bike related thing, things are getting lighter weight, they're getting faster. Hopefully they're getting more inexpensive. That's a huge part of you know a lot of the stuff that we use here. You know you can go to the store and buy a hybrid commuter bike for 500 bucks and you can ride it for a long time, but you know an entry level recumbent trike is going to run you about $2,000. So you know my hopes for the long term are that there's more mass production of some of these types of bikes to bring the cost down, to make it more fiscally accessible for people to enjoy and have their own equipment. But yeah, I think it's always getting better.

Taylor Moseley:

There's a lot of innovation and I think really within the past 10 years it's gotten safer and more standardized.

Taylor Moseley:

For a long time we've had a lot of bikes in our fleet that were people made in their garages.

Taylor Moseley:

Somebody saw a need. One example is that we have we have these bikes in our fleet for a long time called JTBs it stands for just two bikes and this guy in Minnesota had just he was buying these Kestrel, recumbent two wheel bikes and building parts and welding on brackets to connect two of them side by side so that you know somebody, people can ride a tandem without having to worry about balance and also to be able to like talk to the person next to you and see what they're doing and see if they're having any problems while they're on the bike. So, and we had a bunch of those for a long time and now there's kind of a more widely produced version of that that comes from a pretty major bike wholesaler here in the States, but it's just not super well known, so I think you know. Another part of the innovation is just getting the word out that this stuff exists and that cities and nonprofits are making this happen for people.

Tom Butler:

And from your perspective, do you see that happening on a national level? Is there more awareness of the need for that equipment and the benefit and the impact and all that?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, for sure. You know. I think during the pandemic I think everybody realized how important being access to public spaces and being outside is. But we get calls pretty regularly and emails from different cities that are looking to do some sort of adaptive bike share program and they want to know how we did it. Where does the funding come from? What kind of bikes do you use?

Taylor Moseley:

And there are some big cities that have been doing this before us. Really, we started our cycling center 11 years ago and our previous executive director based the idea for that off of what he saw down in the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a program down there doing something similar, so he, you know, kind of copied that and brought it here. Detroit's bike share program has implemented an adaptive component where folks can go ride bikes, I think on the weekends or maybe just by appointment. But you know the MoGo Detroit bike share has a fleet of adaptive bikes. The Portland Oregon bike share works with a local shop to provide adaptive rentals for people that need three wheeled and four wheeled bikes. So it's definitely like gaining traction. There's smaller cities reaching out to us about how to do it. There's bigger cities that have reached out. It's definitely it's growing for sure.

Tom Butler:

I really appreciate protected bike lanes, but I'm thinking for the work you guys are doing, then that element of being separated from traffic is even a bigger thing. Is that an issue? What are you doing as far as bike routes and bike route planning?

Taylor Moseley:

We're fortunate that we're in Magnuson Park. You know it's a big flat park. There's lots of places to ride here, just right out the door of our cycling center, which is great. We're also adjacent to the Burt Gilman Trail, so people can literally hop, you know, leave our office and go 10, 20, 30 miles in either direction and have fully protected bike paths. So that's great.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, anytime there's an opportunity for a protected bike lane or a dedicated path that makes folks feel safer, they're going to be more likely to ride, and particularly for you know, a lot of our recumbent trikes and hand cycles, they're a lot lower to the ground and just not as visible. So that's an even. You know, the visibility part of being on the street with cars kind of plays an even bigger role. You know, I think a lot of times when you see a recumbent trike on the trail or on the roads where they have a big flag on the back, I see this woman every, almost every day on the Burt Gilman trail that has like a, a twirly flag thing on her bike and like three or four flags and streamers and stuff, cause they're just not as visible.

Taylor Moseley:

So, yeah, definitely having that protected infrastructure. And then, you know, for some of the kids that come in, I think the parents really appreciate that we're in a park where there's not a lot of traffic, there's not a lot of more experienced cyclists kind of zooming by when their kids are just trying to, you know, get a little bit of exercise in down by the water or something. So, yeah, being in this park in particular is a huge plus for us.

Tom Butler:

I think that's the same location as Cascade Bicycle Club. Do you guys collaborate at all with Cascade? Do you have a relationship with them?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, so I mentioned one of my hats here is I manage the let's Go program, or the adaptive component of the let's Go program, which is basically Seattle Public Schools has a PE class curriculum for bike and pedestrian safety. That Cascade runs for third through eighth grade students and we provide the adaptive bikes for that program. So we don't visit every elementary school but we visit with our adaptive bikes. We go to about 35 of the elementary schools in Seattle and several of the middle schools to bring in adaptive bikes and that's all with Cascade. It all it aligns with the Cascade curriculum that they have put together. We did a little bit of kind of consulting with the curriculum to make sure it's adapted for, you know, kids that need like a slower pace or a different learning area or something like that. So yeah, we know, we know Cascade, we're good friends with them.

Tom Butler:

Now the let's Go program is a statewide program and I think that's actually a Washington State Department of Transportation program. Is that correct?

Taylor Moseley:

Man, it's changed a lot. So the let's Go program that I've been speaking about is just Seattle Public Schools, a Seattle Department of Transportation, but there is part of the recent transportation levy I can't remember it's the Washington Traffic Safety Commission or which I don't know. There's a huge grant. I can't remember it's the Washington Traffic Safety Commission or which I don't know. There is a huge grant and Cascade is, they're essentially a grant manager for the statewide expansion of the let's Go program. So yeah, eventually every third through fifth grade student in the state of Washington will have the opportunity to go through this bike and pedestrian and pedestrian safety curriculum pedestrian safety curriculum.

Tom Butler:

I just think that's fantastic, that you know there's the awareness and the desire you know and the expertise to make sure that resources are provided for students that need you know, to have the experience adopted for you know, for their physical abilities. That's wonderful.

Taylor Moseley:

Totally yeah, and I had a really good. You know, they just started this statewide expansion this past year and we were kind of consulting with them a little bit and actually went out to OMAC, which is, like you know, North Central Washington, kind of out the middle of nowhere, and they had just done a fantastic job of using some of their grant money to purchase additional adaptive trikes for kids at their school. And there all the communication that happened between the PE teacher and the physical therapist for the district and the special ed department and the families, like it was just this really amazing story that I was not really expecting from, you know, such a rural area, but it was really great.

Tom Butler:

You mentioned a post-trauma program for veterans and I'm wondering if you talk internally like that, there's inherently a therapeutic benefit to getting people outdoors. Is that something that you consider?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, I mean, we're not therapists, no-transcript where you know we take a group out, they do something that's exhausting or, you know, physically demanding and as a group, and they get to experience some teamwork maybe that they've been lacking since they were in the service, or they get to have, you know, conversations with folks about their experiences since they've been out in the service or they get to have, you know, conversations with folks about their experiences since they've been out of the service. We don't, we don't, you know outline like this is what we're going to do and talk about when we run these kinds of programs, but just, you know, providing a safe space where people can kind of talk about these things organically. It just kind of happens.

Tom Butler:

Do you do some like longer tour events or are they more shorter things?

Taylor Moseley:

most these days it's mostly shorter things.

Taylor Moseley:

Um, we are kind of getting more into gravel biking, so not, like you know, multi-day trips or anything. We have discussed that with some other groups before, like wounded warrior project, expressed some interest in maybe trying to do a multi-day trip, but there's just a lot of logistics with both groups into putting one of those on. But for about 10 years we did a Seattle to Portland military veterans cycling team. So we'd have a group of like anywhere from 15 to 25 vets come in. They would kind of train throughout the springtime, all in preparation to do the Seattle to Portland bike ride in the summer and we would support that ride and most folks are successful at completing that every year. So we did that for a long time. But the funding for that has been harder for us to find Some of the VA grants and things have gone away since the pandemic. So hopefully something we can bring back in the future. Personally I'm definitely very interested in doing some overnight tours and trips and things like that, so I would be very on board with that.

Tom Butler:

Yeah, I'm thinking of the Winthrop gravel tour that Cascade does. It seems like that would be. You know that's a three day experience. It seems like that would like be a good target. You know, I I'm, you know to to be able to bring people out and do that, um, so I'm just throwing it out there. Anybody listening like. If you want to fund just a really fantastic thing, you know, think about calling up Outdoors for All and donating some money to a multi-day gravel experience. Do you have some experiences in mind that kind of highlight what you've seen as far as the impact the experiences can have on someone?

Taylor Moseley:

There's. There's a lot, but I think we've had one woman in particular over the past few years has been coming to participate in our programs and I think she actually started out in our ski program.

Taylor Moseley:

But she, she was born or she was diagnosed with polio and has had that. You know she's an immigrant, has come from outside the country and didn't really have an outlet for, you know, sport or anything. And then she found us and started coming into the cycling center. After she did a season of skiing with us, started coming into the cycling center. She came in, like you know, once or twice a week, could ride a half a mile to a mile kind of here around the park before she got tired. And she's been coming to ride with us for about three years now and she can go out and easily put in 10 to 15 miles on the bike. Now she has told us that she feels physically stronger, even in her day-to-day activities In the ski program. She's gotten a lot stronger at, you know, controlling the ski on her own. And even her she's told us that her doctors have noticed a change in her physical stamina and her physical ability. So you know, I think it's just a really good example of somebody much later in life that was able to come in and kind of make a change that they never really thought about before.

Taylor Moseley:

Another recent one that we've had is we had a young man come in and he kind of he finished our whole kind of series or he's in the process right now where he did a learn to ride, a bike program. So he kind of gained confidence on two wheels, learned how to ride safely, and then he did our gravel biking program, which kind of steps up the endurance a little bit. We go ride on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail and the Palooza Cascades Trail. So you know, he did that, did great, and actually today he's starting with our mountain biking program up at Doofy. So it's just been like a really cool progression to see him go through all the steps of becoming like a really well-rounded and strong cyclist. And he's like, honestly, he's one of the best like volunteers that we have out on these events with us. He's hyping everybody up and just having a good time and it's just like, yeah, it's really heartwarming to see somebody go through all those kind of steps.

Tom Butler:

That is fantastic you know again it's kind of like the best of humanity when you see that kind of excitement and discovery and kind of pushing their boundaries. That's fantastic.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, and I mean really another huge one that I mentioned earlier is just the families that come in and realize that they can ride bikes together as a family for the first time. I think that's a really powerful one that, again, so many people just take for granted. Learning to ride a bike is such a ubiquitous part of American youth and it's just not always possible. So I think when families come in and again that aha moment of like, oh my God, like we can come here and ride bikes. Maybe we buy our own bike down the road so we can all go ride together as a family. People will rent bikes from us and take them on vacation. So, yeah, that's just another really powerful moment that we see in all of our programs, but cycling too.

Tom Butler:

I love that Now you're talking about families. There are times when parents are a little bit fearful. I mean, this might be the first time that they've really conceptualized that their child could get into biking, into an adaptive kind of bicycle. Is there sometimes fear involved with that?

Taylor Moseley:

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure, I think, especially if there's kids that have had more kind of medical issues or maybe a history of getting hurt or maybe not exceeding or not excelling in the way that maybe their parents hoped that they would or thought that they would, and, honestly, like that's a big challenge for us. Like that's kind of a you know, kind of a poke a carrot stick, I don't know which, I don't know which one it would be, but for us that's like, oh man, like you know, we really want to make this happen for them.

Taylor Moseley:

But yeah, there's definitely families that come in. I've heard parents straight up say like my kid can't do that or like they can't ride this bike or that bike. And we'll, we'll make it happen as long as we'll. Obviously we're going to make sure that they're safe and you know we might be right there with them, helping them pedal for the first time or use the brakes or whatever it takes. But you know, all those little, all those little bits to promote independence for those kids is just huge. And then you know, when I go into the schools and there's, you know all these or crutches in class. They're out there like riding the coolest bike that's in the classroom, because it's this, you know recumbent trike that nobody's ever seen before, just doing laps around everybody else and participating in their friends or cheering them on and like it's just such a really. It's a really great. Um, yeah, it's just another really great thing for the for those kids to come out of their shell and feel like they can do something kind of independently on their own.

Tom Butler:

I love that, and I also wonder about people who you know. If you've ridden a bike a certain way and you're very familiar with the bike, and then, because of an accident or whatever, and then you're getting on a different kind of bike, I mean, it seems like there could also be some anxiousness there as well. Is that the case?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, definitely. We have folks that have come in that were avid cyclists and then got in an accident and sustained like a brain injury or maybe even a spinal cord injury and are, yeah, now using something totally different, and so enough people can be kind of frustrated and, you know, with the setbacks that they've had. And to come in. And they come in to ride a bike with us and we're trying to get them fitted. We're like, okay, we'll need you to get out of the seat again or we need you to get back in the seat. We're going to swap out these pedals or we're going to make this change to the, the controls on the bike.

Taylor Moseley:

Like, yeah, not only are people apprehensive, you know, about looking different and being on a different bike and maybe getting back out and riding independently for the first time, but, yeah, also like just trying to do the same thing and maybe being afraid of not succeeding or like not being successful in it, and I think taking that first step is really hard for a lot of people. So it's, yeah, it's, it's a huge growth moment, even for people just to come in and say I want to keep doing this. This is something I used to love to do and I want to figure out how to keep doing it.

Tom Butler:

So yeah, for sure. Activity is so vital for health. Over time, more and more and more, there's been more attention on being active, staying active, and so you guys provide, you know very valuable thing in that respect where you're enabling people to stay active. Do you have relationships with healthcare organizations where they understand the value of keeping people active?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, absolutely.

Taylor Moseley:

You know we're really close to Seattle Children's Hospital here and they'll send kids that are, you know, have just gotten out of surgery or recovering from you know, some kind of cancer treatment or whatever it might be, sometimes come over here with them or recommend that they come over and just try a bike, just sit on one.

Taylor Moseley:

And you know, similarly, like we were talking about with the adults that are apprehensive teenagers are especially apprehensive about looking different and trying something new but we have kids that come over from there, from Seattle Children's Hospital, that are recovering from you know, various things We've also done some work with, like the VA, like the military programs I mentioned and kind of. We're just, we're just always trying to stay in touch with any physical therapist or any kind of in-home service that we can be in touch with, just to, you know, spread the word that our programs are out there. You know we don't typically go to a hospital and put on an event or something like that, but we just, you know, we try to have folks know as best they can that we exist and that they can come out afterwards and keep riding with us.

Tom Butler:

You've talked quite a bit about volunteers. Is there a lot of opportunities for volunteers to get involved. Still Are you guys maxed out? Are you always welcoming people? Come and volunteer? How's that?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, we're always looking for volunteers. You know we have thousands of pieces of equipment that need maintenance, that need just to be moved around, that we're moving here and there. We're cleaning constantly. And the bikes, the bikes in particular, you know we have about, like I mentioned, about 250 bikes in the fleet. I have a group of three volunteers that come in every Tuesday just to go through a trailer of bikes and do the kind of ABC quick checks on everything to make sure that things are still safe after a week of use.

Taylor Moseley:

But yeah, we need instructors for all of our cycling programs. So gravel biking, learn to ride mountain biking. We partner with Evergreen Mountain Bike so they bring some instructors in. But yeah, all of our programs are mostly run by volunteers. They're the ones teaching the lessons. We're just there to kind of support what's happening and put out any kind of fires that come up, I guess. But yeah, like we need folks to drive vehicles because transportation is a huge barrier for people with disabilities if they aren't able to use a car on their own. We have buses, we have some ADA buses with the lifts on them that we can, you know, pick people up and take them to the program. So we need drivers for those, yeah, ski instructors, rock climbing instructors, drivers equipment maintenance, you name it, man, we need we need all the help we can get basically.

Tom Butler:

And again, I think that volunteering for Outdoors for All is an opportunity to see people experience something really magical, and I you know so. I think it's a wonderful way to you know, whether you're behind the scenes and you're doing maintenance or driving or instructing, whatever you know being a part of something that's really making a magical difference for people. I think that's amazing.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, it absolutely. We couldn't do any of it without the volunteers that we have and and you know, like you alluded to earlier, the folks that have been around here for 20 or 30 years. There's a reason that they keep coming back. It's, you know, they make, they build a great community with the other volunteers and they know it's a it's a worthwhile investment of time.

Tom Butler:

You think it's possible for a like a cycling club someplace? If they're hearing this interview and they're like this is really cool, we're nowhere close to Seattle, but in our community could we do something? In our community could we do something? Would there be a possibility for a bicycle club to do something, or is the infrastructure needed so big that it's pretty hard to do something small?

Taylor Moseley:

No, I think you can, definitely. You know a couple adaptive bikes and you can run a small program. It doesn't have to be huge. We have basically four.

Taylor Moseley:

I usually say we have like four different kinds of bikes in our fleet. We have like recumbent trikes, which a lot of people have probably seen before, pretty much standard bike workings, just, you know, in a reclined position. So we have a bunch of different kinds of those. But you can get by with like one recumbent trike or two. Maybe we have therapy trikes which are they're all the kind of hallmark of a therapy trike is that they're fixed gear, so when the pedals are moving the feet are moving. So for folks that have trouble with coordination to make the pedals turn, um, this can provide some kind of like passive therapy and some input into their muscles so they can gain strength. Um, also, they just have a lot of support, usually for the trunk or for your core to help hold you up on the bike. And they're very basic, usually just a single speed, fixed gear, one brake. So that's the second kind of trike that we have. The third kind would be a tandem, which can come in any form pretty much. I mentioned that we call them, social tandems or the side-by-side four-wheeled tandems. We love those because you can have a good time with the person you're riding with. A standard two-wheeled inline tandem can also be great for somebody with a visual impairment or, again, somebody who wants to pedal but maybe doesn't have the kind of like awareness to use the brakes and like shift the gears and things like that in a safe way. And then we also have we have tandems that are basically just like a wheelchair on the front so we can put almost anybody on those bikes and then have somebody in the back kind of riding with them.

Taylor Moseley:

And then the fourth kind of bike that we have in our fleet is a hand cycle. So there's recumbent hand cycles, there's upright hand cycles. You know an upright hand cycle is going to reach a pretty wide range of people. So I think you know, with like three or four bikes, any, any bike club could start like a pretty solid adaptive bike rental program, especially if you had a few recumbent trikes. That's something that you could really like, especially if you had a few recumbent trikes. That's something that you could really like. You know Cascade, for instance, could easily introduce, you know, recumbent options for some of their riders because those bikes use the same parts and pieces as most standard two wheel bikes do.

Tom Butler:

So yeah, it doesn't take a huge.

Taylor Moseley:

The bikes are expensive, but you don't have to have you know, you don't have to have 250 to make it happen.

Tom Butler:

What are the funding sources that make Outdoors for All happen?

Taylor Moseley:

We have two like kind of big fundraisers every year that we put on. So we have a gala auction in November and then we have kind of a it's like an end of winter party slash, raffle, poker run kind of thing that we do in the spring. So those are kind of our big like proper fundraisers. And then we have folks on staff that are just writing grants full time. So you know, we're always kind of trying to forecast the money that we're going to need for the following year, based on what grants are available and what the cycles look like for those grants. But sometimes we receive grants for up to $500,000 to put on specific programming, or that money might also just be earmarked for financial aid where we charge a fee, a registration fee, for our programs, but then sometimes we have our own financial aid available, so folks only have to pay about 10% of that cost.

Taylor Moseley:

But yeah, a lot of it comes from grant writing. We get some in-kind donations from here and there, but yeah, a large portion of our money comes from grant writing. Most of my job is paid for with contracts, one with the Cascade Bike Club, like I mentioned, and the other from the Department of Transportation to run the Adaptive Bike Share Program. So it's a good mix, which I'm sure is a healthy thing for an organization of our size to have kind of constant streams of funds. As well as these kind of bigger things that we're looking at, we also get smaller grants all the time, you know, like one $2,000, maybe enough to buy, you know, one bike, one specific bike for somebody with a visual impairment, or a new set of helmets for one of our programs that's promoting, like you know, brain injury awareness or something like that. So we're kind of constantly getting grants of all kinds of sizes to fund our programs.

Tom Butler:

When you guys talk about the future, do you have goals for expansion or how does that look like as far as moving forward?

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, we're in an exciting kind of period of growth and expansion right now, Pre-pandemic. We ran a capital campaign and raised some money and we're finally able to use some of that now We've been able to. We had to shift plans and make some changes, but we just opened a brand new adaptive cycling center at Lake Sammamish State Park. So it's very similar to what we're doing here at Magnuson Park. It's a, you know, it's open seven days a week during the summer and people can just drop in and ride a bike for as long as they want to. We've got I don't know, like 15 bikes out there and it's been very well received this summer. And now we're also starting to add in some kayaking programs and paddle boarding programs, since we're right there at the lake too.

Taylor Moseley:

So that's you know, that's a new place where we have some opportunities, and hopefully within the next year or two we're looking for another site down in Pierce County, so Tacoma, maybe working with another nonprofit there to put on similar things, or maybe having our own space. We're not totally sure what that's going to look like yet, but we're trying to have this sort of hub and spoke model, if you'll excuse the bicycle pun, if you'll excuse the bicycle pun of yeah, we have our main office and then we have these smaller satellite offices, Because, again, we're so heavily equipment-based, moving the equipment from A to B is a massive expense. So if we can have a small fleet of bikes here and a small fleet of bikes over here, it makes it a lot easier for us to deliver more programming and to get the cost down to deliver those programs too.

Tom Butler:

Now you talked about a couple things. That seems like great ways to get to know what you guys are doing Go volunteer. That would be a great way to see what you guys are doing in action. And then you also talked about your fundraisers, which obviously you know. People are going to learn a lot about what you're doing and, you know, have an opportunity to contribute what you're doing. What are some other ways to kind of see what Outdoors for All is doing and to follow your work?

Taylor Moseley:

You know we have a website so you can folks can get on our website and kind of check that out and see what programs we have coming up. There's tons of photos on there. You can see the kind of volunteer opportunities and the descriptions on there. You can see our fundraising events that are coming up and the dates for all those and and you know, any, any opportunities to help out there, but also, I think, just any. You know, just get on Google and search adaptive cycling. Watch the Paralympics man. The Paralympics are going on right now. You know there's there's cycling events happening right now that you've never heard of. So I think that's, you know, just knowing that that stuff exists and it at a really high level of performance too. It's pretty incredible, so incredible. So, yeah, yeah, check out the paralympics. It's happening right now. Get on the website. Just search for adaptive sports, adaptive cycling, on google. Look at pictures, look at how much the bikes cost. It's pretty outrageous that it's.

Tom Butler:

It's so expensive for, you know, certain folks to just go and ride a bike well, I think that that's an awesome partnership and maybe it exists, but it's like maybe Seattle should be sending the most cyclists to the Paralympics of any other city.

Taylor Moseley:

Oh yeah, I mean I would love that. We don't typically perform at that high of a level with our programs because we're serving a lot of people. But yeah, I mean, if somebody is interested in achieving those goals, we could certainly at least help in the beginning stages.

Tom Butler:

Well, I think that you know, I would see kind of a feeder program where Outdoors for All is helping young people kind of experience cycling, and then there could be a program that then is a little more focused on the competitive side of it. Again, that would be. I think that'd be an awesome thing to brag about, that Seattle has the most. I'm sorry other people from other cities, but I'm I'm perfectly happy with anybody listening to compete with that. You know everybody. Let's get everybody working on their city sending the most cyclists to the Paralympics. That would be fantastic. But yeah, I think that's fun. So if anybody listening wants to make that happen, let's do that that. I want to point out that I think the website looks really good. You know, I don't know who works on your web development there, but I think that the website looks really good and yeah, it's a great place if you go to outdoorsforallorg and ways to give. And then there is an events and the gala auction looks like it's november 9th so that's not too far away, so can you dig it?

Tom Butler:

looks like it's the groovy theme for the gala, so yeah, get that on your calendars if you're in the Seattle area. Or if you're not in the Seattle area and you want to come in and see an exciting organization, do that too. Taylor, I really appreciate the time. I'm so glad that I got ahold of you and you're willing to come on, because from the first time I saw Outdoors for All, I was just really curious about everything that goes on there, and I got to learn so much cool stuff today. So thanks for taking the time to do this.

Taylor Moseley:

Yeah, I appreciate it Tom, like I said I think just having the knowledge out there and spreading is so important. I tell people that everybody's got an aging parent or a grandparent or the cousin or whoever that would that could benefit from what we do here and the bikes that we have and the other, the other activities we do. So knowledge is power. Just spread the word.

Tom Butler:

I love. It All right, well, I'll talk to you later.

Taylor Moseley:

Alrighty, thanks, tom.

Tom Butler:

Bye, now Bye. I'm really touched by imagining the look on someone's face when they realize that they can get fitted to a bike that is adapted to their needs. Almost everyone we have on the podcast associates the bicycle with freedom. It must be truly rewarding for the staff of Outdoors for All to be part of helping people experience that freedom, especially if they have believed that they wouldn't be able to find a bike that they could ride before getting fitted at Outdoors for All. I have in-laws who are interested in my cycling adventures, but I'm sure they believe that their time on a bike is over. I really think I need to visit Outdoors for All and get them on side-by-side tandem bikes. I think that would be incredibly fun.

Tom Butler:

Next week's podcast will be a bit different Because I'm on the road all week. I won't have a chance to interview someone. I will make recordings each day of my ride and on Friday I'll upload all the recordings. I won't be putting much time into the production, so the podcast will be a little rough. I will also try to share some videos when I upload the rides each day to Strava. I hope, like me, you are doing some rides that are a real challenge. I think we all should be looking to push against what people expect of us as we get older and remember age is just a gear change.

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