Musings from 2026 8th July
PSEditor. It is a Wispr Flow dictation
Something to work with Tom Butler
Discovery vs. Rediscovery
My visit with Tom Butler was coming more from rediscovering my cycling career in my twenties and what that felt like and what a wonderful thing that was. In reality what I found is a person, Tom, who is in the midst of a discovery cycle. He had diabetes, 60, decided to take something up. A son-in-law challenged him to ride the what was known as the STP. Seattle Tacoma Portland. He went and entered a cycle cross race, which is definitely not trivial.
He is on the discovery side of cycling. He is on the side of not hanging out at all. Wily is a competitive cyclist or an over 25-year-old competitive cyclist that goes out, rides in pelotons, and through drafting picks the pace up. It all ends with somebody winning. In this discovery cycle it turns out to be entirely different. I spend time spinning with David Svini, which is a Zoom-type session, and I mostly do that in the winter time. The rest of my exercise is walking. What he's proposing is entirely different. I'm slowing down a degenerative process. He's slowing it down but he's learning something new about his body and that's entirely different than me lamenting where I used to be and pretending like I'm still a competitive cyclist when I'm really on spinning gear and watching other people with the David Finney program participate. The studies are rampant about how exercise, at different levels, with different cadence and distance, makes a difference. What is missing, and I am trying to find with the Silver Peloton, is that element of belonging, of meeting up, of having a croissant, a doppio macchiato. Having one of those kinds of experiences is what's additive to what I see is the Silver Peloton. How Tom is approaching it is: how do you make this longevity-increasing element, which is physical exercise, expand into belonging to the group, promoting solidarity? He has decided to figure out a way to go after the over-60 aging audience that's never been fit, never experienced exercise, and that's his challenge. What he's looking for to change is very impressive. As a scout for Silver Peloton, I was left fairly speechless and without questions. This was a new paradigm. Tom's academic career is around planning, urban planning. It even turned out that my brother went to the same school that he did and his partner so it's a small world. The other thing we had in common: we both have daughters that hate AI so we had a good time discussing that. He had a goal to, in Pierce County, attract over 60 who could and should use possibly cycling as a way to increase and improve their longevity. I never got into the details of what that looked like. Was that a program? Was that state funding? That's for another discussion with him. As always this gave me a new rabbit hole. I was very intrigued and I'll report back to you later. This is Merwin Peters with the Silver Peloton. See ya later!
P.S. Editor, this got me an invite to be on one of his webinars and a willingness to make his content available.
Next steps should be:
- Go look at his plethora of content.
- Get him to narrow down to two or three that are pertinent to his current endeavors.
Many of them that he has are not particularly relevant to this new challenge that he's on so if we can get him as the context for what we're working with, below are some of my ramblings about that.
He went from "I don't want to talk about AI" to being intrigued with PS Editor and wasn't quite sure he wanted at least a monthly blog post from me. He said he likes numbers and data. I would like you to help me create, I guess we call it, a proposal. It would start with the premise of what a program that he's talking about is. How do you measure success? That would start as the basic premise of what would success look like and then we work into the realities of: is it bottom line? There's got to be economics involved, somebody needs to be making money. Business needs, something. If you build bike paths, I think a good issue is how do you optimize existing bike trails rather than how do you build more? I think there's a lot of good ideas that you could have on that and what other cities are doing and the comparative thing. A big piece is also demographics. There simply are no places in Tacoma. It doesn't even ring a bell. Bicycle paths are due to financial reasons, societal reasons, and many other reasons. I'd like to report on what demographic, meaning what geographical area in Pierce County, is conducive to bike paths and merchants and a predicted sales tax, revenue, or some sort of economic data projections. I think this would be very compelling as a starting point for these discussions. I would like to start with the typical state government, county government style proposal writing which leads into PowerPoints for communities. Seeking public assistance not so much in the financing as in an understanding of what this awareness of cycling could bring to a region within Pierce County. There are affluent areas and they could be identified as having cycling capabilities that exist and just need to be expanded on. Focus on what is and how to get more people involved and fundamentally the economics of it. I would like to include the element of it's way more than the heartbeat, how fast you spin, those kinds of fitness measurements. This is more about friendship, collaboration, belonging, being part of your home.
This type of discussion is big for me because, coming from a person that I know, the enjoyment I've got from being physically fit. Now it's about where can I go have coffee with friends and talk about nostalgia, talk about the way it was. Tom was talking about getting associated with assisted living type organizations and that just isn't it. I don't think he's gone and seen one of these places. These are not the places I want to go cycling to. I think the crowd is like me, is once fit, willing to look at slowing the degeneration and describe it more kindly as slowing that process. As opposed to what I think he's proposing, how can it be better? This is a societal thing. The Narrows Bridge is very symbolic, in my mind, of going from the lower-class Tacoma side over to the more affluent side that has open spaces and bike paths, so symbolic. The bridge is big, just like Mount Rainier is. I don't share his belief that rain makes a difference. Let's just be honest: it is a major part of the year, wet here in Pierce County. The over 60 new cyclist is not the person that is taking their child out, teaching them to ride. It's the grandparent having fun with grandchildren and their children around this activity.
The Tacoma Washington Bicycle Club (TWBC) is a community-driven 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to promoting cycling for fun, fitness, and transportation. Our mission is to support safe cycling, advocate for better biking infrastructure, and foster a welcoming cycling community for riders of all skill levels.
Founded in 1974, TWBC has served the South Puget Sound cycling community for over 50 years.
I think this is what they want to build on: this TWBC, which is pretty weak. I think the big thing it has is the ride schedule, which I think is a big step towards us finding areas in Pierce County +++ that could be expanded on with political activism maybe. Upcoming Rides & Events
Stu
amazingleft VM need to update, change add to for thisi got a 2 HUGE ad onscall mestuart206 399 8390
This is going to be a wild ride I sent him amazingleft VMneed to update, change add to for thisi got a 2 HUGE ad onscall mestuart206 399 8390
https://www.thegreyrevolution.com/studio-b/
LinkedBarista - I can get the first few Barista members - it is just the personality - I did a couple of test clips and views were crazy without desc or anything just passed along to friends.
End of Wispr Flow dictation