DreamLarge Hosts Community Bike Ride
Free event is intended to connect Sarasota residents to eco-friendly modes of transportation
When life gives you opportunities to learn, socialize and get in a workout all at once, you grab your helmet.
On Thursday evening, a free community bicycle ride will be held through the Rosemary District and surrounding downtown Sarasota neighborhoods.
The BLVD Bike Ride is the first of many future community events planned by DreamLarge, a benefit corporation that started a decade ago. It spun into its own entity in 2015 with a mission to connect the community and promote positive growth.
To participate in the ride, you can bike down to the DreamLarge Yard at 600 Central Ave. to meet up with the rest of the group. There will be two biking rounds of identical routes. The first round begins at 6:15 p.m., and attendees are advised to arrive around 5:45 p.m. for a bike safety presentation from The Sarasota Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization. The second round begins at 7 p.m. You can register for which round you would like to go on at blvdbikerides.org.
If you don’t have a bike, Endless Summer SRQ and iBike Sarasota are providing them for those who need one for the event. There are still some bikes left, which you can request when you register.
The ride will have guides who will provide a history of the communities.
“This is a way to bring community together and educate them about the place that they live,” said founder Anand Pallegar. “It will be fun, recreational and informative too.”
After the ride, people can keep hanging out with friends, neighbors and fellow cyclists at the DreamLarge Yard. Food and beverages will be provided.
They will also be selling BLVD Bike Ride T-shirts, with proceeds going to buy bikes for those in need over the holidays.
This event will be the first of what the group envisions as a series to activate the community and foster social interaction and environmental consciousness, but DreamLarge has undertaken other projects as well.
Partners for Green Places is another. It aims to inspire organizations and businesses to join and work toward more environmentally conscious practices.
They also have a DreamLarge Weekend for children focused on educating children about challenges in the community, philanthropy and encouraging imaginative solutions. The idea is to inspire children at a young age about the power of giving back.
They host PINC, which stands for People, Ideas, Nature and Creativity, a conference where innovators share their experiences and insight with an audience.
“Wherever we are, whatever we do, we have the opportunity to serve our community,” Pallegar said. “We focus on fostering socially aware, environmentally conscious ventures and ways to connect and inspire the community.”