Coach Tom (00:00.898)
Hey Kenny, how are you?

Kenny Bailey (00:02.124)
I am Fantastic Tom Harry You.

Coach Tom (00:04.328)
I'm fantastic as well. We have a wonderful guest as all our guests are wonderful, which is kind of nice. We have Jenny Veal joining us today. She is the assistant director in the Tennessee Office of Outdoor Recreation. We got to meet. I got to meet Jenny at the Gravel Revival and I met her through Shannon Burke, who does the Tennessee Gravel. And Jenny's going to tell us about how they've worked together. the the.

Jenni Veal (00:26.041)
Bro.

Coach Tom (00:31.534)
Outdoor Tourism in Tennessee has this fantastic program called Bike Tennessee. And it's great. It's got a whole bunch of about 50 different routes. I think we've talked about it on a couple shows now. We've had Shannon on. And it's fabulous. It's fantastic. So we're going to get into that in a second. But first, want to thank everybody for listening and watching if you're watching our YouTube channel. Please subscribe. Hit the little subscribe button that's there. That helps the algorithm get out to everybody.

Jenni Veal (00:34.646)
That's where I'm from.

Coach Tom (00:58.87)
It rises up. We've gotten some really good downloads lately, which is nice. Keeping the program up and keep your comments coming. I get calls every so often from people that have listened to the podcast and you know, we're appreciative of everything, even if it is, you know, can critique us a little bit and tell us what we can do better or give us suggestions. We're always open to suggestions for people to talk to, topics to cover. It's kind of a wide ranging thing for us to do. So great. Thank you for everybody.

Jenny, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jenni Veal (01:32.265)
Well, thanks for having me.

So I live in Sequatchee County outside of Chattanooga in Southeast Tennessee and have been riding bikes more seriously than ever in my adult life for the last about seven years, thanks to Shannon Burke and Jim Johnson, who is the former owner of bike tours.com here in Chattanooga. I've been working with the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development for about four years.

And that is where we developed the Bike Tennessee initiative. And then just two weeks ago at this point, switched over to the new Tennessee Office of Outdoor Recreation. So I feel really blessed to be able to kind of launch from an outdoor role in tourism to our new Office of Outdoor Recreation. So I'm still supporting Bike Tennessee and helping with transition, but then also our Department of Outdoor Recreation is very focused on collaboration.

with other state agencies. So we'll continue to be very supportive and involved in cycling initiatives and development across the state. So yeah, my husband and I live on Wilden's Ridge in Sequatchia County and have two grown daughters and a dog that hangs out with us now. So yeah, happy to be here.

Coach Tom (02:42.702)
That's,

Coach Tom (02:52.59)
And there's some great cycling down there as we're learning. How does a program like this get started? Now this is a government thing, so I can imagine that there's a little bit of red tape, there's a little bit of process that needs to go on for that. How long did this initiative take to get started? Who started it? Whose idea was it? Because it's a great idea.

Jenni Veal (02:56.524)
There is.

Jenni Veal (03:15.372)
Yeah, so it really... Well, thanks. Yeah, we think so too. And it's a lot of people that kind of helped bring it to where it is today. But I really, it really started about, gosh, eight years ago. I had been working at the Southeast Tennessee Tourism...

Association, which is through the development district in Chattanooga, doing tourism development and marketing through the development district with the 10 counties in Southeast Tennessee. And one day, Shannon Burke and Jim Johnson walked into my office and said, we need to promote cycling in this area. And I would ride bikes at the time at the beach with my young daughters at the time and loved riding bikes, but didn't really understand the opportunity that we had to really promote it.

Kenny Bailey (03:55.737)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Veal (04:04.272)
and all the different kinds of cycling that is out there and available to cyclists. So they were really smart and they said, come on, let's go ride. And they got me riding with them and with groups. And so eventually I just fell in love with road cycling and green, you know, riding on the river walk and Chattanooga and just got more and more serious about it. And I bought my first real bike, which is a salsa journeyman.

Kenny Bailey (04:33.146)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Veal (04:34.192)
still the bike I have today. Although I did add a mountain bike recently. But they were just really smart and just engaging me and saying, come on, let's go do this. You need to see how wonderful this is so that you'll, you know, you can be a part of this and help promote it. So initially we did a regional program called Bikeways of the Scenic South. And it's something that I really want to give credit to Jim Johnson, who had formerly run bike tours.com, which was a,

Coach Tom (04:35.854)
Nice. Nice.

Jenni Veal (05:04.358)
global bike tour company and he's based out of Chattanooga. He really kind of helped us dream big about what we could do with cycling because he saw it happening across the world. He saw how cycling could transform communities and especially economically distressed communities and bring people in to beautiful areas that needed visitors to be spending their money. So we just we developed this Bikeways of the Scenics South program in southeast Tennessee

see it included parts of Alabama and Georgia and just kind of did it on a shoestring budget. So we would, I would talk to our counties cause I was working with our county tourism partners and mayor city mayors and county mayors and say, Hey, if you want some cycling routes, I can get you connected with people that know how to develop these routes and then we'll help promote them. So we did that throughout the region and it was really growing. And then I

Kenny Bailey (05:43.674)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Veal (06:03.98)
Well, COVID hit and it was probably a good time that we had bikeways of the scenic south up and running. So there were cycling routes in the southeast that people could ride. But after that whole time period of COVID and the world shutting down, I ended up transitioning to take a job with the state. So I went to the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development to do rural tourism development, which was working in our economically at-risk and distressed counties.

to help them develop easy ways, like low-hanging fruit ways, to grow their tourism economies. And so, Shadon and I were talking early on when I joined the state and we're like, you know, what if we could do what we just did regionally at a statewide level? And so we met with our tourism commissioner, Mark Azell, and the assistant commissioner, Melanie Beauchamp, and just brought the idea to them and said, you know, we don't

We don't have to build anything. don't have to, like, roads exist. Trails exist. We don't have to build this. So it's not, you know, a super expensive...

Coach Tom (07:06.743)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (07:07.034)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (07:13.444)
project and idea for these rural communities. We don't even have to put up signs. We can do it all in Ride with GPS. Like we can map these routes in Ride with GPS. We just need to promote it. And they immediately saw the benefit of this and just were on board from the beginning, which was amazing. And so that's kind of how the origin story of how it got to this state. And we hired Shannon, we contracted with Shannon for two years.

years to help develop road cycling routes to begin with and ended up with about 52 road cycling routes across the state and mostly in our rural areas. So at risk and distressed counties. And then as, as he was mapping that and we were talking about and developing the program and the website, we thought, gosh, we could do this with gravel, which is, you know, another huge segment of cycling that's growing and so popular. And then

What if we did it with included mountain biking as well? So it's really just grown to become this amazing thing. We are launching gravel routes in early April. So this next month we'll have about 36 gravel routes across the state that Shannon also was contracted to help develop. And then we're working with Sorba. So the Southeast Off-Road Bicycle Association always say they're, everybody knows Sorba.

Coach Tom (08:25.566)
Awesome. Okay.

Kenny Bailey (08:26.084)
Nice.

Coach Tom (08:40.088)
Yeah, it's Sarva. That's all. Yeah.

Jenni Veal (08:41.988)
We got, yeah, sorry, but it's just the easiest way to say it. We contracted with them and what a great organization. The directors that we have across the state of Tennessee are amazing. And then the state director, Philip Darden. So they're helping us to add mountain biking across the state and that will launch in the fall. So that's kind of how it all came about.

Kenny Bailey (09:02.202)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (09:03.907)
Okay.

That's amazing because it's like, as you describe it, it is low hanging fruit. It's just taking a little bit of knowledge and Shannon has that knowledge. mean, we were talking before we hit record that was, I'm saying that Shannon has the best job is like, I have to go ride my bike. I'll be back in a little bit and map it out, take some notes, edit everything in. was just like, it's a dream gig for a cyclist, you know? And I think

Jenni Veal (09:24.642)
Right.

Jenni Veal (09:34.264)
Well, and Shannon's so great. He takes it so seriously and he also has a background in community planning and regional planning. And so he like he sees the benefit of it. In addition to just being a cyclist, he understands like that when we were developing these routes, we wanted them in our rural areas and we wanted to make sure that we were connecting people to communities in those areas so that they knew like where to go park, where they could go eat afterwards. Or if there

Coach Tom (09:38.898)
yeah.

Coach Tom (09:43.32)
That's right.

Kenny Bailey (09:44.186)
Perfect.

Kenny Bailey (10:02.87)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Veal (10:04.208)
at a state park, included, there's 14 Tennessee state parks that are included in our road cycling routes in some way. You know, it might not be exclusively in that state park, but you might go through it or you might park or end in that spot. So he just really was the perfect person. And he's also so conscientious of safety and like being on low traffic roads and not being on state highways as much as possible. And so he was a great partner.

in this effort.

Coach Tom (10:36.632)
Yeah, it's.

Kenny Bailey (10:36.834)
Yeah, it's, it sounds like he, mean, it's funny cause I was going to ask questions and you're answering all of them, which is like, Hey, from a, you know, like what kind of routes, like when you do a road route, right? There could be some sketchy roads and some not so sketchy roads, but also the, I love the fact that he thought about like, Hey, where do I park? What do I want to eat afterwards? Those kinds of things. So, the fact he has a planning background and makes it huge. Right. So you get those two big brains together between, you know, a cycling background and a planning background. How is the, how is the, what was the initial feedback from?

Jenni Veal (10:42.956)
Yeah

Jenni Veal (10:55.577)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (11:06.49)
Cyclists, what was the initial feedback from the cities? you, I mean, I'm assuming it was positive and do you have people like send you now like routes that may be really cool or how has the feedback been?

Jenni Veal (11:20.654)
Yeah, so when we first were launching or developing the program, we had feedback from our division managers within the tourism department. have three division managers that are kind of our.

connectors to our communities in West, Middle and East Tennessee. And at their suggestion, they said, you know, before we launch this, it'd be really great if you could go out into the communities and talk to them about what this is. So we are rural program managers is Silas Stoddart and he had joined kind of at the beginning of Bike Tennessee being developed. So he became my partner in crime from the state, you know, state employee level in working on Bike Tennessee. So he really helped

Kenny Bailey (11:50.274)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (12:06.79)
develop this as much as anybody. So we had kind of a little road show we did across the state where we were go to communities that we knew were going to be near routes and talk to them about what Bike Tennessee was and the economic impacts of outdoor recreation in general and cycling. And then we also hosted partner pedal events. And we were working with Sunshine Loveless based out of Chattanooga with Outshine Adventures to help bring bikes so that we could

get like mayors and tourism directors and all the people that we wanted to kind of have buy-in to the program that we would offer them an opportunity to do a short ride. And so we did, gosh, we did a lot of those. I want to say maybe 15 across the state to just really connect with the communities. you know, cycling was new to a lot of people. Like this is a new thing for Tennessee to think of ourselves as a statewide, you know, cycling draw.

Kenny Bailey (12:40.836)
Smart move. Yeah.

Jenni Veal (13:06.63)
It was very rewarding to get people on bikes. I felt like that was one of my favorite things as a part of the community development process was saying, let's go ride a bike. And so many of our partners and mayors and Main Street directors had not been on a bike in a long time. And so being able to have the bikes available to say, we'll bring the bikes, we'll guide the ride, just come join us. And we taught a couple people how to ride bikes again.

Kenny Bailey (13:06.862)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Coach Tom (13:26.19)
you

Jenni Veal (13:36.522)
I mean, people in their 20s and 30s and we had people that hadn't been on a bike in.

Kenny Bailey (13:37.102)
Yeah

Coach Tom (13:37.719)
Nice.

Jenni Veal (13:43.542)
years I think of Tom Orr who is the Main Street Director in Brownsville, Tennessee in West Tennessee and I was riding next to him and he was beaming. He was so happy and I think he was on an e-bike. We had partnered with Pedego Germantown on that trip and it had some e-bikes and he was so happy and I was like Tom look at you you're just beaming and he's like I just I'm so happy this was this is just the greatest day and so he actually started a bike

Kenny Bailey (13:58.715)
There you go.

Coach Tom (13:59.064)
Nice.

Jenni Veal (14:13.446)
event in Brownsville just based on riding a bike and kind of really getting excited about the program. He started a cycling event in Brownsville. So there were lots of stories about people that would go buy bikes after they did these rides. So I really think there's power in outdoor recreation in general. When you're doing outdoor recreation development and talking about trails and bikes and paddling, that getting people out and

Coach Tom (14:27.95)
That's fantastic.

Jenni Veal (14:43.366)
from their communities to understand the value of that and the joy of it and why a visitor would like to do these things is really an important part of the process. So yeah, so really great feedback and then we also get feedback through Ride with GPS. All of our road routes and our gravel routes are mapped in Ride with GPS and that's a great way to get some comments from riders who are like, oh wow, this is great and we hear

like people loving that they can get off the beaten path and you know get away from kind of the traditional places that people might know of where there might be a lot more cyclists but still experience the same beauty of Tennessee and authenticity so that's been fun to read those comments.

Kenny Bailey (15:32.367)
Yeah, I bet it would be. I mean, what's really interesting too is I don't think, you know, the fact that you started in Chattanooga, which is already a pretty robust outdoor community to begin with, right? I don't think you could have launched this in Murfreesboro. Maybe you could have, but I think that just fortuitous or luck or strategy, or you were at the right place at the right time. But the idea that Chattanooga is, you know, is kind of the birthplace of it. And then it expanded from there. I don't know if that could have happened on any other part.

Coach Tom (15:32.588)
Yeah, I think.

Jenni Veal (15:42.424)
Yes.

Kenny Bailey (16:01.976)
Maybe Knoxville? I don't know. But Chattanooga is sort of the place, right? So.

Jenni Veal (16:05.526)
Yeah, Knoxville has an amazing cycling community. mean, that's part of the fun of this. And, you know, we're still in the development phases. We we launched Bike Tennessee in May of twenty twenty four and with the road cycling, the 52 road cycling routes. And then again, we're launching gravel next month. But it's it still feels like we're very much in the infancy infancy of it. Part of like in another exciting development is just last month we were able to launch

our social media platforms for Bike Tennessee. So we have a Facebook page and Instagram page and that's really exciting because that's where we can really tell the stories of the rides and hone in more on what you might experience on the rides and do collaborative posts and really connect with the cycling community. that's been exciting but we're still learning and growing and just getting a lot of great feedback though from cyclists and communities.

communities.

Coach Tom (17:07.616)
And it seems like you're growing at just the right pace. It's not over crazy like it's just exploding so fast. It's going at just the right pace that it's organic enough that it can grow and sustain itself. think I think involving the communities and getting them on bikes to experience it is fantastic instead of just a bunch of Lycra Lycra clad, you know, middle aged folks showing up.

like riding bikes in their neighborhood type of thing. It's like, that can be a little daunting sometimes. So the fact that you get them excited about it, create their own events, and then draw some people in to spend some money and spend some time there and see the beauty of their community, I think is fantastic. I think it's the best way to do it because now, now they're joining in with the process, right? Not just watching visitors show up and, come through the town. I think that's great. And the reach through, through ride with GPS is great.

Jenni Veal (17:33.388)
Right.

Kenny Bailey (17:36.13)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (17:58.468)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (18:00.692)
and the social media is gonna get more people to see from the neighboring states and who knows around the world that won't want to come because it's really beautiful. We have so much amazing cycling air. So.

Jenni Veal (18:11.478)
It is. And I think Kenny to your point about like other places and it's starting in Chattanooga.

You know, what we've learned is there's so many wonderful places to ride and then really connecting with the cycling communities across the state. Knoxville has the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club, Sorba Chapter that Matthew Kellogg leads that is unbelievable. They have Baker Creek Preserve and so many trails and that has added so much to Knoxville's cycling scene. So it's a huge cycling community in Knoxville, Northeast Tennessee.

Kenny Bailey (18:37.604)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Veal (18:48.714)
has a ton going on and you know mountain biking parks. I Johnson City has Tannery Knob and has an amazing pump track there and really you know we have we just have a lot of

people in Tennessee who are celebrating and growing cycling and trails. And especially when you start talking about like mountain biking and gravel as well, there's just a lot of great work being done. So I think the other element of Bike Tennessee that's been really exciting is we started creating a Bike Tennessee collaborative and hosting meetings. Last year we did two meetings and it's something that crosses the agencies.

Kenny Bailey (19:11.514)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Veal (19:31.934)
something that you know I'll still be involved with with the office about direct and we have Department of Health involved and economic and community development in addition to tourism but just bringing people from across the state who are working in different parts of the state on cycling and it is amazing how many people there are and all the great work that they're doing and so it's fun to put them all in a room together though so they can all meet each other and just really grow that enthusiasm so yeah it's it's been really a fun

process and you know there's just been so many people that have been important to where we are today with Bike Tennessee and it's again you know cross agency supported.

Kenny Bailey (20:15.258)
So an interesting challenge you have, because you were mentioning that what's fun is like you get somebody on a bike and suddenly you're 12 years old and you have that freedom that you have, right? And I remember when I was a kid, I got my first BMX bike and that was it, right? I was never home, right? Talk a little bit about the kind of like when you start putting these routes together, like you have to Tom's point, you have a bunch of like dudes that want 60 mile routes, you have people that are looking for safer, shorter routes.

Jenni Veal (20:30.552)
Right.

Kenny Bailey (20:43.67)
that, you know, an hour or so and I'm highly interested in the gravel. So I'm, I'm giddy. I, know, I cause I've been trying to find, I'm in Williamson County and gravel is darn near scarce in Williamson County. have to go a couple counties over. So I'm really curious to see what's going on, but tell us how you sort of build the, you know, those routes. you, do you try to have a nice mix of kind of difficult stuff for the people, a little bit more experience or when you go to sort of plan these things, what's your kind of personas or the people you have in mind when you, when you try to do this?

Jenni Veal (21:14.34)
Right, well so with the road cycling, what Shannon helped us really decide to do, because again, he was the one traveling the state and mapping the routes, was doing kind of moderate rides so that people could ride, you know.

20 to 50 miles were kind of the average of rides that we have so that they also had time to go eat and do other things. So we wanted it to be, you know, an experience of not just riding in the days over. Like you go to this place, ride, but

Kenny Bailey (21:48.932)
Great idea. Yeah.

Coach Tom (21:49.399)
Hmm.

Jenni Veal (21:51.96)
Within Ride with GPS, he offers ways for you to either decrease the length of the ride or increase the length of the ride. So most of the rides for road and gravel have those options within them. But.

Ultimately the goal because it is a tourism initiative is to bring people to Tennessee and we want them to ride their bike but we also want them to stop and spend some money and you know see these communities and Learn about the history and eat and stay overnight and all of those things So but with the road cycling we also you know, we're not marketing the road cycling to families So this is for people that are comfortable riding on roads And so we've been really clear with our communities about that like if you have a family come in to a visitor center and say

Kenny Bailey (22:16.981)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (22:17.646)
Yeah

Jenni Veal (22:37.072)
we want to go ride bikes, the Bike Tennessee road cycling routes are not for those people. Like these are for people that are comfortable on roads, but we're also creating curated routes for them that with as much as you can.

you know, guarantee safety on a road, but that we've taken all those things into consideration for the routes that we're promoting. The gravel meets the other market of folks that are really interested in maybe not being on the roads and being more off in the woods, but still being not being on a mountain bike. And, you know, and there's tons of gravel across Tennessee. Like that's been really exciting to see what Shannon's come up with because we kind of knew

Coach Tom (23:15.342)
You

Jenni Veal (23:19.468)
with road cycling, yeah you can probably find that pretty much anywhere, but with gravel it's been fun to to see that develop.

Kenny Bailey (23:30.126)
Yeah, but I think it's really important that you made a conscious decision to say, look, this isn't for families. Because you can think of like, wow, do we start leaning into tourists? Do we start looking at urban development and say, hey, how do I get more bike-friendly cities so that if I do travel to places that I can still take my family and ride to different areas and see different things? But it sounds like you were really conscious about making sure you satisfy a group.

Jenni Veal (23:58.894)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (23:59.239)
make sure that that's popular, right? And then you can look at other things because from a scope perspective, this thing can get big and hairy quick. But I like the fact that you said, look, this is our boundary. We're not going to try to solve the family thing right now. What we're going to do is put routes together to get people to come here, do those 20 miles, be able to stop, have food, visit, shop, want to stay overnight, those kind of things. That was the boundary condition that you put. And I think that was a fantastic idea because

Jenni Veal (24:05.689)
Right.

Kenny Bailey (24:26.442)
you try to solve everything all at once, suddenly you become mediocre at everything, right? So I think that's brilliant.

Jenni Veal (24:27.038)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah, it's, and there's so much more.

Coach Tom (24:32.258)
Yeah, you're getting people on bikes that are brand new, right? So you need rider education and safety and you've got to worry about little things like that. So we don't want to put them in over their heads for sure. So that's.

Kenny Bailey (24:35.354)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jenni Veal (24:37.731)
Yeah.

Yes.

Jenni Veal (24:44.982)
Right. And I think that we will eventually add, like we've talked about adding rail trails and greenways that would be much more family oriented. So I think there's a lot of ways that this program can grow. And it's just, like you said, not going to happen overnight. But what's exciting

Kenny Bailey (24:53.946)
Perfect.

Jenni Veal (25:05.803)
beyond just even Bike Tennessee is that the way that now multiple agencies are thinking about cycling because we've got this statewide cycling initiative, we are...

wanting to talk to, you know, work with communities who want to build out more cycling infrastructure, maybe for families, and which is a role that, you know, the Office of Outdoor Recreation can kind of help fill. We have grants through our department and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and through the Department of Health that we can help our communities build more trails and also build out connectivity within their communities. So if you have a, downtown, can you connect your downtown

safely so someone could ride to a nearby state park or to a park. So I think it's building out beyond or helping our communities to build out and think bigger about what they can be and then that's bringing in other agencies to help them do that. So like the Department of Health, of the things that tourism did this last year and that Office of Outdoor Rec will continue to work with as well is the Department of Health will help

communities do walk audits where they'll look at their downtowns and look at how safe is it here for to walk and we said well what if we added a bike come right right like do you have

Kenny Bailey (26:26.298)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (26:29.956)
Yeah, is it a walk? It's like a Blue Zones kind of stuff. Yeah.

Jenni Veal (26:35.53)
sidewalks, you have crosswalks, you know, what does this feel like? And they take people out into their community to do like a physical survey of the community to really feel that and then do a report back to them on the things that they all learn together that need to be improved. So we said, well, what if we added a bike element to that and looked at biking and walking? So that was kind of an interesting way that like here's this bike to the sea

tourism focused program, but then it got communities thinking and other agencies thinking about, you know, how do we think bigger about this and really make Tennessee a cycling destination? So our first bike and walk on it was in Irwin, Tennessee, in Unicoi County, and we had like 25 people and we were riding in like big golf carts just to get everybody around town, but it was amazing. So.

Kenny Bailey (27:27.074)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (27:33.38)
It's been fun to see all the agencies start to get on board with cycling.

Kenny Bailey (27:39.855)
Well, and it's exciting too, because I know we, know, Tom and I are both in Williamson County. I, you know, I came out of Northern California, he came out of Southern California and in Northern Cal, there were bike lanes all over the place. And, you know, my first day, you know, I was going to, I'm 10 miles away from my, my, my business and I was like, of course I was going to bike to work, right? And almost died. And, know, big wide lane roads, you know, four lane road and no bike lane. And it's like, this is insane.

Jenni Veal (27:58.954)
Right.

Kenny Bailey (28:06.066)
And so the fact that you also have inter-agencies that are seeing your success and doing that. How do you... So with anything with the state, it's always a budget issue, right? And so I'm assuming you have to measure success in order to continue to get funded, especially in this economy, right? How do you tackle that? How do you go about making sure? And what can our viewers help with so we can say, yes, please do more of this? What would be your recommendation on this?

Jenni Veal (28:36.836)
Well, I think for our department and I think across the state, what we're recognizing is that outdoor recreation in general is kind of an entire industry that is part of Tennessee's economy. And we're really learning like the...

the economic impact like the 2024 numbers were released recently of like $15.6 billion in economic impact for outdoor recreation in Tennessee. Yeah. And that Tennessee was like, yes, yes. So and that's a

Kenny Bailey (29:08.612)
That'll get somebody's attention.

Coach Tom (29:10.19)
Just in Tennessee.

Kenny Bailey (29:13.272)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (29:14.712)
Wow, wow.

Jenni Veal (29:15.85)
a big bucket of a lot of things. So that's not just tourism, like that's retail. And there's a lot in that number that a lot of our agencies want to start really diving down and figuring out what does that mean to economic development and workforce? What does that mean to tourism? So there's still work to do, but it gives us a baseline to know that outdoor recreation is important in Tennessee and that people who live here want to be outside and play outside and the people who come to visit.

Coach Tom (29:18.828)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (29:22.038)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jenni Veal (29:45.846)
Want to come and play outside and you know, honestly people come visit and love it so much because it's so beautiful that they move here so We as you know if you all are both moved here as well So, so I think that it's and you know, like we just the the

Kenny Bailey (29:55.214)
Darn Californians.

Coach Tom (29:56.929)
Mmm.

fell in love with it.

Jenni Veal (30:05.704)
Office About De-Recreation and then the Tennessee Outdoor Partnership, which is kind of the high level organization of commissioners and agencies that really helped spur the movement of the growth about de-recreation in the state several years back that ultimately

resulted in the development of the Office of Outdoor Recreation. They had just finished their second year of Outdoors Day on the Hill up at the Capitol. So that was just last week.

was our second year of doing that. And we doubled the number of people who were involved in outdoor recreation, whether it's their business or a nonprofit or the Nature Conservancy of Tennessee and the Trust for Public Land. So we had all kinds of people come to the Capitol this year to talk about outdoor recreation and show legislators what they do. So it's just a huge engrossment.

movement that I think the agencies are seeing, that legislators are seeing, that communities are seeing. So there's a lot of support and buy-in and honestly Governor Bill Lee has done, you know, has been such a supporter of outdoor recreation. He really has left an incredible conservation legacy for this state and has helped, you know, drive that interest and the support about the recreation initiatives as well.

Kenny Bailey (31:11.332)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (31:35.424)
I've been totally impressed with the state park system here since we've gotten here and the fact that it's free to everybody. You just just roll on in and enjoy it. mean, I was blown away by the the the number of state parks, how well they're run, all of that's been been fantastic. And we've even seen Governor Lee down at he did the Chattanooga Waterfront Triathlon, I think last year, the year before. So he was he was down there racing, racing triathlon.

Kenny Bailey (31:39.438)
Yeah, very good.

Kenny Bailey (32:03.898)
There you go. Well, and how fun is your, I mean, your department is like, I mean, how fun is that, right? It's outdoor recreation. It's not like you're like, hey, we got to show up to the power grid meeting. Like, it's like, yawn, right? I mean, you're to talk about, you know, rafting and hiking. I know they're absolutely important, right? Yes, we need our power grid to work, but, but, you know, kind of important. But I mean, the idea that, you know, like, hey, we get to talk about, you know, rivers and, you know, rafting tours and hiking tours and, and cycling and the whole nine, right? And you're just like.

Jenni Veal (32:05.217)
Yes.

Coach Tom (32:05.257)
as it goes anyway, so.

Jenni Veal (32:13.956)
No, but those are important too!

Coach Tom (32:19.566)
Those very important.

Jenni Veal (32:29.825)
It is.

Kenny Bailey (32:32.622)
I get to do this versus how are we going to figure out how to get voltage over here? That's no fun. Or statewide, and again, Wi-Fi access, internet access to the state and rural counties, incredibly important stuff. but eight people show up to that meeting. That's not a fun meeting. So it's like, hey, who wants to go for a bike ride? just I think that's just the crux of what you said is exactly what happened. You gave a person that hasn't ridden since ever and the smile on their face.

Jenni Veal (32:37.142)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's an exciting time.

Jenni Veal (32:45.229)
Yes.

Alright.

Kenny Bailey (32:59.716)
when they get on a bike is just incredible, right? And that is a hard, you know, that's not a hard sell, right? It's like, this is what you're getting. This, because you know, you think about it like, bike routes, that's fun. But it's like, no, no, get on a bike and just remember what it's like to have that, you know, yeah, it's just like, you're bringing up that childhood snipe. So that's fantastic.

Coach Tom (33:13.71)
It's like being a kid. That's that freedom.

Jenni Veal (33:16.118)
It is. It is. Yeah.

Coach Tom (33:19.606)
And you've experienced it as well, right? Now that you're riding more and getting out, what fun rides do you have planned coming up this spring?

Jenni Veal (33:24.408)
Yep.

Jenni Veal (33:28.462)
Well, you know, we hosted 28 people to go to Bentonville in the beginning of December. So this is another fun part of the story. Multiple agencies kind of led through tourism and Bike Tennessee. We said, we need to go to Bentonville, Arkansas and see what they're doing because the more we've been talking about cycling, the more we hear about Bentonville all the time. And so many of us had not been there. We're like, we gotta go check this out.

Kenny Bailey (33:54.935)
Interesting.

Jenni Veal (33:56.428)
So we were really excited to be able to bring 28 people and that was multiple state agency folks that came with us. had a county mayor, the Claiborne County mayor. had Parks and Rec folks. We had Sorba partners, just a great group that went to Bentonville for two days of learning. And Visit Bentonville is their tourism DMO is unbelievable because they organized the trip for us and lined up like we talked

with Aaron rushing, who has designed all the trails from the beginning or most of the trails in Bentonville. We talked with people for bikes. We talked. heard from the state tourism person director for Arkansas. So we had two days of learning and also riding our bikes in Bentonville to just get excited and see the potential. And so when we left there, everybody was really invigorated, but also we all want to go back.

So I can't wait to go back as a tourist as well. But it was so fun. It really did... Well...

Kenny Bailey (34:57.274)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (35:01.882)
Yeah, I'm just wondering how Bentonville became the thing. Like that's an interesting... Is it just Walmart? it's... Yeah, that's what I figured. Yeah.

Jenni Veal (35:06.754)
You know, everybody said, because the Walton Foundation, the Walton Foundation has, I think it was some grandson, grandson or two of the Walton's who was really into mountain biking and they were trying to figure out how to reinvigorate that area of Northwest Arkansas. And they made these huge investments. And sometimes people will think, well, we can't do that because we don't have the Walmart Foundation, you know, the Walton's to invest that money.

Coach Tom (35:11.726)
For Walton family, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (35:17.679)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (35:35.598)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (35:36.65)
But I think what we realized is that what that foundation allowed Bentonville to do was to do it fast. Like they had the money, they could do it fast. And the folks in Bentonville will tell you like it was almost too fast. Like they wish they could go back and change a few things that they did, but.

But what we tell our communities is like, can all still, we don't have to all be Bentonville, but you can still create a great outdoor system, whether that's hiking trails or cycling trails, whatever it might be, but.

connecting to your downtown if you plan it. fortunately there's a ton of planning grants available through TDEC and Department of Health and even tourism and ECD to help communities plan and build it out over time.

but they did a spectacular job. mean, it's definitely, it's the Disney world of mountain biking, but it's not just mountain biking though. Like what's fun is we had a really diverse group of people who were with us on our trip, some of whom are not mountain bikers or, and you take me, I love mountain biking, but I'm very much, I'm a beginner plus according to Sunshine Loveless. I know my category, beginner plus. Beginner plus.

Coach Tom (36:51.246)
Beginner plus. Excellent. Always good to know.

Kenny Bailey (36:51.8)
Hahaha

Jenni Veal (36:55.126)
Yes, but

we could ride together because Bentonville created trails where you have, you know, someone could be walking with a stroller while their, you know, wife and kids are riding some mountain bike trails right next to them. And so you're heading in the same direction and you're together, but you're on different levels and kinds of trails. And that's the one of the beauties of Bentonville. And I think one of the big takeaways for us was when you're building trails in your community, don't just build the super

intense black mountain bike trails. You need to think about the beginners because we want to get more people riding and if you want more people to ride you need to have those beginner level trails and kind of scale them up so that people can learn and be comfortable. So anyways long answer.

Kenny Bailey (37:44.997)
Yeah, see, I think I'm an expert mountain biker. See, I think I'm an expert mountain biker and then I ride like a, you know, I try to ride like an expert but then I find out I am a beginner plus myself. So I'm a really good crasher. So I do really good at crashing.

Coach Tom (37:45.048)
Yeah, to get them in and... No.

Jenni Veal (37:58.442)
Yeah, there's a lot of categories. It's good to know what your category is. And so... Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (38:05.25)
Yeah, don't follow Tom. That's my category.

Coach Tom (38:06.126)
For sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the one of my big pet, no, not pet projects kind of things is that it's one thing to get people on the bike again, but now how do we keep them? How do we keep them in the sport forever, right? Keep them going through and it's having multi-use trails that are challenging enough for you as a beginner and then still challenging enough for someone that's an expert that wants to come in at that.

Jenni Veal (38:24.024)
Yes.

Coach Tom (38:35.348)
has the riding skills that you know for years and years so finding that balance in there or being able to you know take care of a wider group of people will keep more people riding well actually you know if they want to keep improving themselves they can improve because there's a trail that will challenge them and move up the next level so

Jenni Veal (38:45.336)
Yes.

Jenni Veal (38:51.288)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (38:52.698)
Okay, well Jenny, I gotta ask the tough questions, so this is the 60 minute portion of it. So.

Jenni Veal (38:57.215)
I'm scared.

Kenny Bailey (39:01.156)
Bathrooms. Do we have to design trails or roads where there's easily accessible to bathrooms? I'm just asking. As a cyclist, that's a very important thing. The hard-hitting question.

Jenni Veal (39:03.032)
bathrooms.

Coach Tom (39:03.211)
Ahem.

Jenni Veal (39:11.384)
Are you, it is, yes. It is, yes. So we definitely.

Coach Tom (39:14.08)
I started in questions rest stops.

Kenny Bailey (39:15.244)
I didn't want to ask it. Rest stops.

Jenni Veal (39:17.526)
No, it is very important. You're right. And that was part of what we did in Bike Tennessee. So you will be very pleased if you ride the routes, download the routes and ride with GPS. think probably every route will list where to park and whether there is a restroom facility or whether you need to make sure you take care of that on your way before you park. Yeah. Yes, yes. All the things that you would want to know, we try to answer.

Kenny Bailey (39:22.203)
Yay!

Kenny Bailey (39:39.716)
Perfect, okay, so see the hard-hitting questions are being asked right now.

Kenny Bailey (39:47.801)
Hehehehe

Coach Tom (39:48.142)
Shannon as the city planner. I can just see him making note of all of those. He's very detailed. He's very detailed. I love chatting with Shannon.

Kenny Bailey (39:51.054)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (39:51.147)
Yes.

Kenny Bailey (39:54.605)
the bathroom, so. Well, to be half serious too, you know, as a, as a small community, what you don't want to see is a bunch of road bikes on the side of the road and people, know, you know, it's like, Hey, you know, guys, you know, we, want to be able to, enjoy our, our view vistas and, know, so that's kind of funny, but no, I had to ask the question because that's on everybody's mind. That was, that was the question on everybody's mind. You know, how do I get food and how can I go potty? And that's it. So then everything else is kind of fun in between. So.

Jenni Veal (39:56.522)
He is very detailed.

Coach Tom (40:04.428)
Yeah, yeah, that's not appropriate.

Jenni Veal (40:04.512)
Yes.

Jenni Veal (40:08.707)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (40:11.397)
Yeah

Jenni Veal (40:12.129)
Definitely.

Jenni Veal (40:16.079)
definitely. Yeah.

Yup, yup, yup.

Coach Tom (40:23.32)
I like finding a little local shops for food, know, finding a little sandwich shops, there's a little local restaurants that you can kind of roll into and eat something and then roll on out again. So that's always.

Kenny Bailey (40:36.516)
Yeah, yeah.

Jenni Veal (40:36.972)
Yeah, it's I think the food part is a consistent interest of cyclists. In fact, Shannon, you know, he runs his gravel event, the Reliance Gravel Event, and I was with him at a booth that the Chattanooga Outdoor Festival, which is a fabulous event.

Coach Tom (40:44.695)
and coffee.

Kenny Bailey (40:45.86)
Coffee.

Jenni Veal (40:54.914)
We were at a booth together last year and we had participants of his gravel ride and reliance were coming up and they were not talking about the bike ride, they were talking about the food. And at the end of the day I was like, Shannon, you're not doing a.

Kenny Bailey (41:07.62)
Absolutely.

Jenni Veal (41:10.626)
gravel ride, like you're doing a culinary experience. Like, I don't know where the bike part plays in. No one talked about that. They were talking about cooking pizzas in the woods and, but food is consistently of interest. y'all know Dawson Wheeler in Chattanooga? Dawson is the former owner of Rock Creek Outfitters. So one of the major outfitters that started in Chattanooga.

Kenny Bailey (41:14.522)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (41:14.552)
Yeah.

We just ride bikes.

Kenny Bailey (41:18.842)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (41:29.538)
No. No.

Kenny Bailey (41:35.61)
Yeah

Coach Tom (41:35.648)
Okay.

Jenni Veal (41:38.724)
And so he's just a wonderful advocate of cycling and outdoor recreation and has been an advisor to us through for Bike Tennessee. And he's very keyed into the food as well. And so he talks about wanting to ride like the Bell Buckle ride. We have a route that goes near Bell Buckle, Tennessee, which is in Middle Tennessee. And there is little shops there where you can stop. And one of the shops you can stop and there's an elderly woman who makes homemade pop tarts.

Kenny Bailey (41:52.259)
Absolutely.

Coach Tom (41:52.578)
haha

Kenny Bailey (41:58.426)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Veal (42:08.538)
there. It's pot tarts or cinnamon rolls. It's something that she makes and every day there's a limited amount.

Kenny Bailey (42:09.786)
yeah, that's it. That works, perfect.

Coach Tom (42:11.367)
I... Either or, I'm good.

Jenni Veal (42:17.94)
And so you want to get there and get this bakery item that she makes. And then he's got a similar, I think Reliance Fishing in the Hiawassee area. They also have a woman who makes these amazing little bakery items. And so he likes to go ride out there so he can get those. So food is consistently comes up in talking about bike riding. And luckily we have so much of that.

Coach Tom (42:18.136)
Goin'.

Kenny Bailey (42:20.387)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (42:24.358)
my God.

Kenny Bailey (42:42.39)
It's the thing that, yeah, it's the thing that drives you. I mean, I was doing a century in Northern California and all I thought about is at the end of this, I can get food. it was all, you know, volunteers that would like racks of chicken and homemade pastries. And like, that's the only thing, like the last 20 miles of that ride was like, all I'm thinking about is, hey, at the end of this, we get food. And it's just, it's just, is that, yeah.

Jenni Veal (42:52.226)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (43:04.526)
my favorite of the cafe rides, what I call cafe rides, where you're just gonna ride about 15 miles or so to a shop, get coffee and a pastry. And then you're gonna ride another 10 or 15 miles to the next one and do the same thing. And you just do that all day long. I mean, that's fantastic to me. You're fueling yourself, you're having a little coffee, you're just chit chatting. It's all social and then you can ride a little bit and that brings it all together for me. So that's my favorite part of it.

Jenni Veal (43:04.547)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (43:18.432)
Yes, yes, exactly, it is.

Kenny Bailey (43:19.268)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenni Veal (43:28.131)
Yeah!

Kenny Bailey (43:30.436)
There you go.

Jenni Veal (43:30.924)
Yep, that's one of my favorite things too.

Coach Tom (43:34.222)
That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So you're to do the Sequatchie 24 that Shannon's got coming up in June. I think it's June, right? No, he's got the 150 and the 150 and the 75 mile. I think that's the two, the three route, the 24 hour 150 and the 75 route in the Sequatchie Valley there. So yeah.

Jenni Veal (43:42.077)
No. Yes, he has it.

Jenni Veal (43:49.258)
Yes.

Yes, yeah. Brand new ride for the Sequatchie Valley and I am not riding that one. I've got another obligation that day, sadly, but it's probably, darn, it's probably a little...

Kenny Bailey (44:05.418)
darn. I got a thing with a thing.

Jenni Veal (44:09.512)
Little more distance than I probably would do but no I'm super excited about that event I mean anytime you know events are just drivers for our communities and so I mean Shannon runs another event in Dunlap That he does every October the first weekend on October And it is brings people from I think he said 50 different states came to that event in Dunlap And you know Dunlap is in the Sequatchie County, which is an at-risk County, you know very rural

Coach Tom (44:12.782)
Ha

Coach Tom (44:33.07)
Hmm.

Jenni Veal (44:39.366)
I live in Sequatchia County, right on the edge of Hamilton and Sequatchia County, and I love this county dearly. And it's a great economic driver for Sequatchia. So events are important and it's always fun when people decide to invest their time and energy in creating something fun and a reason for people to travel to come to their community.

Coach Tom (44:50.904)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (45:01.304)
Yeah.

I've got that on my calendar and I'm getting a couple of my athletes, I'm putting it on their training calendar. So there might be a few of us coming down to do the 150 mile route on that one. do the, I think he has the the draft legal and the non-drafting version. We're gonna do the drafting version.

Jenni Veal (45:12.063)
good!

Jenni Veal (45:18.571)
great.

Kenny Bailey (45:27.354)
The non-drafting version? Seriously? okay, yeah.

Jenni Veal (45:27.37)
Okay.

Coach Tom (45:28.906)
Non-draft, it's a race. It's an actual race. So like they're gonna have a version that you're not drafting that you have to actually do everything on all of them. So we're go as a group. Make it a little more, yeah, I know. Make it a little bit more social and sun on that. So awesome. So what else, Jenny? What else is coming up? What else do we need to know about? How do we?

Kenny Bailey (45:41.078)
That's good to say, part of the fun is drafting. Let them do the work and then I'll soft pedal in the back and wait for it. There you go.

Jenni Veal (45:42.2)
Have fun.

Jenni Veal (45:48.807)
Hahaha

Coach Tom (45:55.406)
We'll put in the show notes all of the social media. You'll have to send me that so I get all the social media links for Bike Tennessee

Jenni Veal (46:01.624)
I will, yes. So we would love for your listeners to follow us on social media. Like I said, we just launched it in the last couple weeks. So it's growing and we'd love to have some followers. We're gonna be supporting Bike Camp coming up in Chattanooga in April. So we're excited and helping to promote Bike Camp.

And just we're trying to engage in events across the state and just have a presence with Bike Tennessee across the state as all these fun events take place. Like Tom, we met at Gravel Revival in Hickman County. So there's so many fun events. so we'll if you're at one of those events, you'll probably see us there. We're trying to have a booth as many as we can. We are going to the Sea Otter Classic in a couple of weeks, which is in Monterey.

Coach Tom (46:56.335)
wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (46:56.355)
Wow.

Jenni Veal (46:57.094)
Yeah, super excited about that. We went last year, yep, lifetime event and we had our booth there last year. Did not...

Kenny Bailey (47:00.986)
you my lifetime.

Coach Tom (47:02.338)
Hehehe

my lifetime.

Jenni Veal (47:11.168)
have any sense of what that might be, but then, you know, fully experienced that it is what North America's largest cycling event. So we're going back this year, we're going to have a bigger booth and we're launching, we'll have gravel launched when we're there. We've got the city of Chattanooga, Andrew Hudson is coming with us. He works in economic and community development for the city of Chattanooga. So we're bringing him with us. And then American Bicycle Group, which makes light speed bikes and Obed gravel bikes and Quintana Roo bikes.

Coach Tom (47:19.404)
Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

Kenny Bailey (47:19.427)
It's here.

Kenny Bailey (47:34.618)
Smart.

Jenni Veal (47:41.102)
they're going to be there and we're doing a media event on an industry morning to kind of just introduce the media to all the things happening in Tennessee that are cycling related. So we're excited about being there as well.

Coach Tom (47:52.814)
Nice. Good.

could. So what's the what's the Instagram like Tennessee? What's the do you know the

Kenny Bailey (47:57.306)
to be a fun event.

Jenni Veal (48:01.272)
Bike Tennessee, yeah, bike.tennessee on Instagram and on Facebook, just Bike Tennessee.

Coach Tom (48:05.294)
Bike.Tennessee, okay. Bike Tennessee, okay. I wanna make sure we get those out there, so everyone should follow along. We want all of our, we have a nice group of listeners in Germany. We want them to come visit and come ride and ride. And our friends in Portugal should come as well. I think Corelle's gonna be here next week. So we're gonna take her on a route. So have fun with that. So that's fantastic.

Jenni Veal (48:10.009)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (48:15.95)
Yeah, we the Germans to come in. So all you listeners in Germany.

Jenni Veal (48:17.489)
please come visit, yes?

Kenny Bailey (48:21.754)
There you go. There you go.

Jenni Veal (48:27.896)
Great. And our website is very user friendly. So, bikeTN.com is the website and you can see on a map all the routes, the gravel and road cycling routes and you can click on them depending on what part of the state you're gonna be in or you can search by name. So, there's lots of different ways. You can search by road cycling or gravel cycling route.

Coach Tom (48:39.597)
Yeah.

Jenni Veal (48:52.652)
So it's very user friendly and then all of those routes download into RideWid GPS. So it's super easy to use and gives you all the information that you want to know. And we've been super excited about partnering with RideWid GPS. They are a great partner. We have an ambassador account with them. So it's really an expanded version of RideWid GPS that has photos and allows us to have a lot more information than you would on just a traditional RideWid GPS.

Coach Tom (48:58.445)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (49:08.378)
Brilliant.

Coach Tom (49:08.492)
yeah, that's...

Jenni Veal (49:22.566)
So that's where a lot of the details about things like bathrooms ends up. And parking and restaurants.

Coach Tom (49:24.846)
Okay. Yeah. I've seen that. Yeah. It's so well done. It's so well done. I could just go on the map and I love maps. So I'm looking at different spots at how far out it is and then go, I know that area, zooming in to see where it is, checking the thing. It's so well laid out. It's, yeah, beautiful, wonderful job. Wonderful job on that. So we got everybody to come here and let's ride bikes in Tennessee.

Kenny Bailey (49:27.322)
There you go, I'm telling you, always comes back to the bathroom.

Jenni Veal (49:38.613)
Yes.

Jenni Veal (49:43.512)
Well, thank you.

Jenni Veal (49:48.184)
Thank you. Thank you.

Coach Tom (49:53.446)
let's make this the new Bentonville. We'll make the whole state. The whole state. Yes, yes for sure. Well Colt, Jenny, thank you so much for joining us and telling us more about this. This is, we're super excited about it. We're so glad that we were able to connect and get you on here. I know how busy you are. I just missed you at the State Capitol. I wasn't able to get up there. Maybe next year. I'll keep my eyes out for that for sure. Thank you everyone for

Jenni Veal (49:53.708)
Yes, please come ride. Yeah, come experience the state on two wheels.

Jenni Veal (50:11.01)
Yeah. Well, thank you so much.

Jenni Veal (50:19.682)
Yes, please do.

Coach Tom (50:22.616)
for listening, keep up the five stars, thumbs up, all of that great stuff for the keeps the algorithm going and your comments. We always love all of that stuff and come ride bikes here in Tennessee. We're available all the time. Kenny loves to get out of work to ride bikes. when he's not driving in his convertible, have all of that. So thank you all and Kenny again, always good. And for everyone, we'll catch you on the next one.

Kenny Bailey (50:38.202)
Yeah, 100%.

Jenni Veal (50:40.529)
Hahaha

Kenny Bailey (50:42.029)
Yeah