This years Human Powered vehicle gathering was held at Pioneer Valley Co-housing, (aka Coho) and most of it took place on Saturday, October 7. I had decided to hold the event there after meeting John Fabel and Mary Kraus, two of the founding members of Coho, at the 2005 event. After the Rally in 2005, John and Mary rescued me from a potential drowning (or at least an extremely miserable night) as my camping gear was completely soaked after the previous 24 hours of rain. They offered to let me stay in the common house at Coho, and John suggested the possibility of doing the Rally there. Since I would like to see HPV's used as sustainable transportation, I thought holding the event at Coho would be a great way to introduce people to a sustainable (and seemingly very pleasant) way of living at the same time.

For this year, my Wife, Elyse had agreed to come to the Rally and help me out with logistical support, but we had to drive down separately because she was scheduled to work the day before and I wanted to be sure to get to Coho early enough to get things situated for the following day. Fortunately I was able to catch a ride down with Karl Stewart, a Portland bike mechanic and fellow HPV enthusiast and his wife, Maggie (thanks for the lift Karl and Maggie!). After we arrived at Coho, Karl and Maggie headed into town, while I decided to stay at Coho to get a sense of where everything was (it had just finished pouring rain when I was there the last time, a year before) and greet those people who were already there. Before too long, (and just like last year), Dave Shank from Buffalo, NY, pulled up in a white cargo van. This year, he pulled two velomobiles out, though - the Versatile that he'd had the previous year, as well as the kit built Flevobike Alleweder (FAW+) that he'd gotten from Velomobile USA out of Midland, TX.

People continued to arrive as the afternoon wore on, and it was fun to see new faces as well as some of the people that I'd met before roll in and get set up for the next day's activities. That evening a group of us piled into a couple of cars and drove into Amherst to have some supper - as it happened at a local brew Pub (whose name escapes me).

After dinner we returned to Coho and people began to head off to bed. John Fabel grabbed a few of us to help make poles in the Coho Workshop for the tent that he had designed that was then sewed by a friend who made hot air balloons (and whom I believe is also a coho resident), only the week before - just in time for the Rally. Afterwards, I planned to turn in for the night, since the next morning was going to be very busy with preparations for breakfast and the rest of the days activities. But10:00 came and went and people continued to arrive, but still no Elyse and Abby (my 2 year old daughter). At about midnight, they finally drove in, much to my relief - they had gotten turned around after it got dark and it took a while for Elyse to find the place.

Early the next morning I drove into town to pick up the supplies for the morning Bagel Breakfast and pizza dinner, getting back just in time to get things everything set out in the Common Building for 8:00 and to start signing people in. Although I was tied up with that process, I did pause to look around and it did seem as if people were enjoying themselves with much bagel munching, coffee and juice drinking, and conversatin' going on.

While I was busy inside, John Fabel rounded up volunteers to help him put up the tent .

A picture sent to me of the scale model of the tent made by John a couple weeks before the rally.
At a scale of 1"=1', the baby (John's daughter) would be 30 feet tall :-)

The ride portion of the rally was scheduled to head out at 10:00, and as departure time approached, I headed outside to put out the word to gather at the end of the road leading into Coho for some instructions and distribution of maps (graciously prepared by a volunteer from Coho). A great variety of cycles queued up for the ride and then set off, as one fellow, riding what I found out later was an M5 Lowracer, fully enclosed within a homebuilt fairing played the "Call to the Post" (the bugle call played when throuroughbred horses line up at the gate) on a small trumet he had inside the fairing. During the ride, I heard him play various different tunes as he passed - anyone know who he is?

Before the ride (1)	Before the ride (2)	Before the ride (3)
Start of the ride (1)	Start of the ride (2)	Start of the ride (3)
The Bugler (who was that faired man?) (picture courtesy Dave Shank)	Early in the ride (picture courtesy Dave Shank)	Fall foliage on the ride (picture courtesy Merrill Gay)

The destination of the ride was the Montague Book Mill - a fantastic old mill that has been converted to a used book store/cafe overlooking a scenic waterfall. At last years rally, some of the riders who lived in the area led us to the mill, and it was so nice that we had to do it again. The Montague Book Mill

The Montague Bookmill (picture courtesy Merrill Gay)

Waterfall at the Bookmill (picture courtesy Merrill Gay)

By the time I returned to Coho from the ride, some people were already back and were already well involved with swapping test rides and talking HPV's, so I decided to introduce David Gordon Wilson, a little later.

David Gordon Wilson is an MIT professor Emeritus who is considered to be one of the founders of the modern human powered vehicle movement, so it was quite an honor and thrill to have him accept my request to serve as the keynote speaker of the Rally. Among his HPV related accomplishments: he served as the president of the IHPVA (International Human Powered Vehicle Association), co-authored Bicycle Science, and was instrumental in the design of the Avatar 2000, one of the first modern commercially produced recumbents.

Thanks to David Duennebier and Geoff Adams, David Wilson's talk was recorded. Click here to listen to the MP3 file.

(picture courtesy Karl Stewart)

(picture courtesy Karl Stewart)

At about 5:00 those who had signed up for the Pizza Dinner came back inside the Coho Common House dining room where we had some semi home made (Boboli) pizza's prepared by Elyse.

Support staff

After dinner we headed back over to the Coho shop for the Zotefoam fairing workshop/demonstration conducted by non other than the Zote Guru himself, John Tetz.

Following the Demo, it was probably close to 9:00 PM - a very full day! In my estimation, a day well spent, though.

For more information on Cohousing, please visit the Pioneer Valley Cohousing website.Coho was a great location for the rally - it had a central meeting hall with kitchen, a circular path suitable for test riding HPV's without worrying about car traffic, camping on-site, and some great open minded people who were into the concept behind the rally. I would like to extend many sincere thanks to the Cohousing folks, and most especially John Fabel who contributed much to the success of the event. John's new consulting company Jottra (sp?) even contributed funds toward sponsoring the event.

A partial list of attendees:

• John Bailey of MA with his Quest Velomobile and Flevobike Racer
  
• Dave Shank of Western NY with his kitbuilt Power Assisted Velomobile USA Flevobike FAW+ and his Flevobike Versatile velomobile (blogs listed here)
  
• KRASH of Ohio with his new Velo-kit velomobilization kit ($875 and retrofittable to many tadpole trikes)
  
• Josh Kerson of Runabout Cycles (Florence, MA) with his electric assisted trikes
  
• Pioneer Valley Recumbent cyclists, including Peter Lindenauer, Kelly Slough, and Rick Roberts
• Merill Gay with his self designed and built no-weld aluminum tadpole trike
  
• Steve Mosca (NJ) with a BionX assisted Go-One
  
• Ed Cunningham (ME) with his self built solar electric assisted upright
  
• John Tetz with his self designed and built zotefoam velomobile (for more info, see the MARS website and for a couple more of the inside of his rig click here ).
• Of course, I was there as the organizer and also representing my recumbent/HPV shop Wildfire Human Powered Vehicles with a Greenspeed GT3, a Steintrike Nomad and a selfbuilt Toureasy Clone.

News on 2007 Event coming soon!