Everything's Better on Bikes
Nicole Freedman, NEMBA
NEMBA Trail School, June 2024, Middlesex Fells (MA)
The Summer Olympics in Paris are upon us, so how appropriate that today I’m going deep with the first Guides Gone Wild former Olympian, Nicole Freedman, now the Executive Director of NEMBA, the New England Mountain Bike Association.
As you'll hear, Nicole’s Team USA experience is impressive, but even more amazing to me are the decades of devotion she’s applied to making bikes, and bike transportation, a bigger part of our everyday lives.
Nicole was the city of Boston’s first-ever 'Bike Czar'; during her tenure, she helped transform Boston from the three-times designated 'worst cycling city in the country' (according Bicycling Magazine), into a national leader in cycling accessibility and safety.
After some additional stints leading both urban and rural active transportation initiatives, in 2022, Nicole took the helm of NEMBA - only the third Executive Director in that organization’s 35 year history. NEMBA is a community of mountain bikers committed to creating epic riding experiences, preserving open space, and guiding the future of mountain biking in New England through its 35 chapters across all six New England states.
It’s almost like we’re e-biking our way through this conversation, we cover so much ground! From metro-west to Stanford to Sydney to Seattle, with multiple boomerangs back to the Boston area, all with the goal of making bikes the new normal for commuters, conservationists, and casual riders alike (no hot dog costume required!!)
Links from our conversation (not chain, the other kind!):
New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA): https://nemba.org/
Kingdom Trails Association (VT): https://www.kingdomtrails.org/
Hub on Wheels (not happening any more, likely a victim of COVID, sigh - but here's link to a Hub on Wheels FB page showing info and images from 2019): https://www.facebook.com/HubOnWheels/