Transcript exported from the video version of this episode - Note that it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:18:00
Travis Norvell
My daughter, she spent January. She's a senior at St Paul's College. She spent January in Italy and France. She went by herself for a couple of weeks and her only response was, Hey, Dad, do you know how easy it was to get around? I knew exactly how to get around on trains. I knew how to get around the busses.

00:00:18:09 - 00:00:24:29
Travis Norvell
I knew how to get the bike, shares it was it was it was just like all of this stuff that, you know, you've been working with me. And it just came so natural.

00:00:25:06 - 00:00:29:15
John Simmerman
I'm sure, for you and your wife. That was like a proud parenting moment.

00:00:29:15 - 00:00:34:29
Travis Norvell
Oh, I wanted to take that and put it on the refrigerator. And, you know, that can take all the other places where it said, Dad, you're right.

00:00:35:12 - 00:00:59:25
John Simmerman
Everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman. And that is Travis Norvell. Many of you know as the @peddlingpastor out on Twitter, we're going to be talking about his book, The Church on the Move and some other good things, including parking reform and churches and getting around by walking, biking in transit. It's a good one. So I'm going to get right to it with Travis.

00:00:59:28 - 00:01:02:07
John Simmerman
Enjoy.

00:01:05:20 - 00:01:09:05
John Simmerman
Travis, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns Podcast. Welcome.

00:01:10:05 - 00:01:12:17
Travis Norvell
Thank you, John. Great to be here. Yeah, great to be here. So.

00:01:12:25 - 00:01:17:15
John Simmerman
Travis, I'd love to have folks just kind of share a little bit about themselves. So who is Travis?

00:01:18:13 - 00:01:40:16
Travis Norvell
Yeah, Travis. I'm an American Baptist pastor in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I call myself the peddling pastor. And about ten years ago, I gave up my car for my job as a pastor and started walking, biking and taking public transit. And that's kind of how I made my well, I guess to how you know me, something like that.

00:01:40:16 - 00:01:48:09
John Simmerman
That's I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, it's it has to be Twitter. It has to be Twitter.

00:01:48:09 - 00:01:50:04
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:50:04 - 00:01:57:20
John Simmerman
So you are the pedaling pastor out on on Twitter and what do you do and hanging out on Twitter like this.

00:01:58:24 - 00:02:08:24
Travis Norvell
Yeah. Well, you know it really wasn't like planned to that way you know I, it's been kind of a fun thing so, you know, as long as we have Twitter, right? Yeah, as.

00:02:08:24 - 00:02:11:10
John Simmerman
Long as is around, you know, might as well use it.

00:02:12:02 - 00:02:26:02
Travis Norvell
It's been a great way to meet other people. And, you know, the mobility and transit and biking walking circles. I don't think I would've been exposed to probably two thirds of the people that I follow unless it had been for Twitter. So for me, it's been a great resource and a way to connect with people. Yeah.

00:02:26:14 - 00:02:52:23
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's been you know, I've had this conversation a couple of times in the last few months because we just don't know. We don't know what the livelihood of that platform is going to be, but it's been pretty special in terms of the things that we have been able to. I don't want to say the things that we've been able to accomplish, but I mean, the connections that that have been made out on Twitter, hashtag, you know, by Twitter, you know, the and the urbanism.

00:02:52:29 - 00:03:19:11
John Simmerman
And it's not just bikes. I mean, it literally is not just bikes. It it it is about about livable places and urbanism and livable communities and and bikes are just cool and functional and practical and pragmatic and, you know, and all those good things. But once you share a little bit about your story as to how you came to being the pedaling pastor and your your love of bikes.

00:03:20:25 - 00:03:44:07
Travis Norvell
Yeah. So I take the story all the way back to childhood. I grew up in a country in West Virginia, which is on a dirt road. And, you know, I love going to town. Even it was a town of like 10,000 small town. I love going down and watching the bus. One of my neighbors would take the bus to work every day and I would have to pass him as I was going to grade school and I would watch him.

00:03:44:08 - 00:04:07:29
Travis Norvell
I thought whenever he agreed to take the bus, I loved to walk home from school, had a two mile walk, and I loved just walking home from school. And I love riding the bike and I love just being able to get down to town and ride around. I think for me, the really big opening part was when I was in sixth grade, we had a crossing guards patrols in the sixth grade trip, and if you were a good enough patrol for the whole year, you got to go to Washington, DC.

00:04:08:12 - 00:04:31:01
Travis Norvell
And I went to Washington, D.C. with sixth grade. And I remember we're coming into town, coming into DC proper and I look out this the window of the Greyhound bus and there was a separated bike lane, and I had never seen anything like that in my life. And I thought, This is the coolest thing ever. And so I came home and my parents are like, you know, tell us about the memorial.

00:04:31:01 - 00:04:53:15
Travis Norvell
Tell us about going to the capital. L I wanted to talk about was this bike lane that they had in. There were people riding bikes around town. It just looked like an amazing thing and they just kind of rolled their eyes at that. And, you know, fast forward over the years, you know, in seminary, I, I didn't have a car for a while, and so I was riding a bike to school, you know, And I don't know, I just wanted to try that as an ideal.

00:04:53:15 - 00:05:09:11
Travis Norvell
And every time I tried it with as a pastor working, it just didn't work out. You know, the first time I tried it, I walked to somebodys house for a visit and the guy looked at me and said, Preacher only pay you enough to buy a you know, to drive a car. And I thought to myself, actually, you don't.

00:05:09:11 - 00:05:12:23
John Simmerman
But as a matter of fact.

00:05:12:28 - 00:05:33:18
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah, I didn't want to go there and I tried to ride my bike and somebody threw up. It was a college town and the college students threw beer bottles at me as I was riding my bike. So wouldn't have all a pleasant experience. I tried it again in Rhode Island when I was working, and it was just a really, you know, the new narrow New England roads that didn't have bike infrastructure.

00:05:33:18 - 00:05:51:27
Travis Norvell
It was really difficult. But that's where I heard my first story of somebody is the first funeral I did there. They talked about this guy who was a professor at Risley, and he rode his bike year round and everyone kind of rolled their eyes and it was kind of a chuckle at his idiosyncrasy. But I was like, Wow, somebody can rather bike year round.

00:05:51:27 - 00:06:15:16
Travis Norvell
I got to try that still didn't work. I tried to in New Orleans. I thought, This is the perfect city, right? It's compact, it's flat. I didn't take into account how much, how hot it was, and I didn't take into account that every day at 4 p.m., three or 4:00, you know, it rained. So I would always show up at people's house or at the hospital or wherever, you know, just drenched either in sweat or with rain.

00:06:15:16 - 00:06:33:09
Travis Norvell
And people would say, you know, can I get you a shirt? Or here, sit by the fan. It just created a weird boundary issue that I wasn't really comfortable with. And then finally, so we moved to Minneapolis and had this car. And I love the car. It was a Volkswagen. I loved the way, the sound, the door closed.

00:06:33:09 - 00:06:54:24
Travis Norvell
I learned all the engineering parts of the heated seats, everything, but it just was costing me an arm and a leg to maintain. And so finally the heater went out and I just looked in to my wife and said, I can't do it anymore. And she said, okay. And then that that was like on a Saturday. On Sunday I preached a sermon, which I thought was just your basic kind of Christian socialism sermon.

00:06:55:04 - 00:07:09:18
Travis Norvell
And I asked a question, you know, what are you willing to give up so that others may experience joy? And my daughter, who was 11 at the time, you know, I went to tell her goodnight and she said, Hey, dad, what are you willing to do? So others may experience joy? And when she said that, I just felt like a complete phony.

00:07:09:18 - 00:07:24:14
Travis Norvell
I don't know why. I just felt my mouth went ash. And I said, I don't know, but I have an answer for you in the morning. And so that night I turned a dining room table into a makeshift midlife crisis center, had all these notebooks and my laptop, and I figured it out. I was like, okay. So the next morning I said, I've got two cars.

00:07:24:25 - 00:07:36:29
Travis Norvell
I'm going to we're going to sell the car, I'm going to bike and walk and take public transit from my job. And their reaction was just abject horror that he's.

00:07:37:01 - 00:07:38:28
John Simmerman
Lost his mind.

00:07:39:06 - 00:07:52:06
Travis Norvell
Yes, exactly. I mean, it was January. It was during a polar vortex here in Minneapolis. And I said, look, this is my thing, not yours. And so they breathed a sigh of relief. And then that's the start of the journey. That's how I just became who I am now.

00:07:52:27 - 00:07:57:28
John Simmerman
Well, in there and there's a long history, of course. I mean, if we go back to the beginning of time, I mean.

00:07:58:00 - 00:08:20:05
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, some say that this is the, the, you know, the idea of a of a bicycle, you know, from the wheels of in the book of Ezekiel, this image that the prophet has and then here's a in St Giles this image of it in the in the stained glass. But I mean obviously this is not the forerunner of a bicycle, but it really makes me think that it is.

00:08:20:05 - 00:08:26:27
Travis Norvell
And Carlton Reid would soon as I put that on Twitter, Carleton emailed me, That's not a bicycle. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:27:27 - 00:08:48:18
John Simmerman
That's true. Carlton And Carlton is one of, you know, the wonderful authors and writers that is out there. He's both an author of books as well as a journalist, and he produces some wonderful stuff. But yeah, I mean, there's there's a history of, you know, people in the clergy riding bikes.

00:08:49:06 - 00:09:07:25
Travis Norvell
Yeah. And here's, you know, a clergyman that was in Edgefield, England. And after he died, the congregation honored him with this stained glass window with him on a bike just because of all the peddling that he did. And I just find these people to be, you know, great role models. And yeah, we should be doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:09:08:08 - 00:09:45:04
John Simmerman
Now and what's what's kind of interesting too, about your journey and by the way, you do a beautiful job talking about your journey and, and, and really explaining it in a very approachable way in your book. So why don't you share just briefly about why you felt motivated to, to, to write the book? Because I think that that's that's a big part of of this overall journey for you because it wasn't just about, okay, you know, I don't want to I can't afford or I don't want to afford to fix this car.

00:09:45:16 - 00:09:54:14
John Simmerman
You want to do this because it profoundly changed your life, become, you know, really leaning into active mobility. Talk a little bit more about that.

00:09:55:06 - 00:10:16:24
Travis Norvell
Yeah, I mean, that was never the that was never the goal where it began as a personal journey. And then the more that I started riding my bike and walking and taking the bus, I became exposed to all kinds of of people and communities that I had no idea about. I went to a what we call like a social gospel, you know, a liberal Protestant divinity school.

00:10:17:05 - 00:10:36:15
Travis Norvell
And we talked a lot about social justice, economic justice, you know, being with the poor. But if I did a audit of my life, I realized I was hardly spending any time, you know, sharing space with the poor or talking about some of the issues that I really cared about or I was just talking about. And I didn't have like stories about it or, you know, direct experiences.

00:10:36:27 - 00:10:58:08
Travis Norvell
And the more I started riding my bike and taking the bus and being with people, and that just opened the floodgates really for to realize about the economics of mobility and transit, to think about the way that our towns and cities are segregated purposely through design and through, you know, housing contracts and codes and all this kind of stuff.

00:10:58:08 - 00:11:23:02
Travis Norvell
And it just made me realize that. How come some parts of the city have really nice sidewalks, other parts have really bad sidewalks? How is it in some ways that these interstate systems have not only segregated but divided us as communities that that was a lot of that stuff started coming in. And then the more of it I started thinking of walking, biking and taking public transit is really as metaphors for ways for people to get into the community.

00:11:23:12 - 00:11:42:11
Travis Norvell
And, you know, a lot of times churches are either these wonderful old buildings, a lot of them are modeled after English castles. And I had a friend say, you know, if the French decide to invade, you know, we're ready for them. I don't think that's really the fortress mentality that we want to have. We want to be in the community and around people.

00:11:42:22 - 00:11:58:10
Travis Norvell
And I think that the best way for churches to do that is to get out in your community by walking, riding your bike and taking public transit. You're going to get to know people. You get to know your community better, and people are going to get to know you and you're going to actually know what you should be talking about.

00:11:58:23 - 00:12:03:29
Travis Norvell
From the stories that you hear and the people that you engage with. So that's where the book kind of came from. It's a recipe book.

00:12:04:14 - 00:12:29:20
John Simmerman
And what's what's interesting, though, too, is you touch upon many different themes in this book that are that are themes that I keep bringing up and my guests keep bringing up here in the Active Towns podcast time and time again. And you just mentioned it there briefly in terms of like one of them was just like the sociability, the social cohesiveness and connectedness.

00:12:30:04 - 00:12:42:22
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit more about that and how, you know, making that shift to active mobility has really sort of opened your eyes to the potential of of that for from your perspective.

00:12:43:26 - 00:13:05:18
Travis Norvell
Yeah, I think about just somewhat sometimes having the bus rides that I take where when I'm on the bus I view busses, bus rides as I don't know, between a 15 and a 30 minute community that's voluntarily gathered together. You know, they're just different people that you meet on the bus that you can't meet in your car, a car that we still don't have.

00:13:05:18 - 00:13:24:24
Travis Norvell
And I'm not anti-caa even though I have a war on cars mug, usually around me, you know. But but a car in some ways traps you. It's an exoskeleton that prevents you from engaging with the other person. And when you're on a bus or walking or even on a bike, you have to engage with the other people, even if it's just an eye contact.

00:13:25:03 - 00:13:53:02
Travis Norvell
Or maybe for some people it's just a smell or just an engagement acknowledgment of their humanity. You have to have that little engagement, and I think it really creates some of the most beautiful stories of human transformation. There's been times when, you know, you've watched people as you've watched people whose anger escalates on the bus. And all it really takes is for one other person to maybe put their hand on the shoulder or maybe just say, hey, you know, share my cup of coffee.

00:13:53:02 - 00:14:08:14
Travis Norvell
I mean, I saw somebody once. I have a loaf of banana bread. They pulled out of their backpack and said, hey, are you hungry? I mean, those things can't happen in a car. And I think they really kind of transform us when we're participating in active mobility in that regard. Yeah.

00:14:09:14 - 00:14:18:24
John Simmerman
It's funny that you mention, you know, a war on cars because, you know, sometimes I think the the cars are having a war on, on the churches. Yeah.

00:14:19:07 - 00:14:37:20
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, this is the Link Avenue Memorial Baptist Church in Rochester, New York. It's where I was ordained. And a couple of weeks ago I get this text from the pastor and saying that, you know, the church was hit by a car. And I was like, wow, what kind of I mean, I know it's not I don't think that, you know, the Divine works in that way.

00:14:37:20 - 00:14:55:08
Travis Norvell
But I did think, wow, how crazy is that? The church that, you know, that was ordained, that was hit by a car. And it's and it's not in an area that it's kind of in like a V-shape section of town with. It's got plenty of trees and grass between. I mean, the car really had to go out of its way to run into that side of the church.

00:14:55:08 - 00:14:57:25
Travis Norvell
So, yeah, it does feel like the Yeah, yeah.

00:14:57:28 - 00:15:00:09
John Simmerman
And where there's a will, there's a way.

00:15:00:15 - 00:15:03:20
Travis Norvell
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yes, yes.

00:15:03:20 - 00:15:06:15
John Simmerman
Yeah. I'm not saying they're evil.

00:15:06:15 - 00:15:14:20
Travis Norvell
Yeah. Yeah. But how many times have we seen like, you know, on the separated bike lane, you know, on a bridge or something where like here's a car right in the middle. Like, what do you think?

00:15:15:04 - 00:15:37:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, So I'm trying to. I'm trying to conjure up this image of you, you know, riding around the community, you know, connected, you know, to the community and waving to people and and greeting folks. And so I'm trying to conjure up the image of what it must be like with you, with your bike out there.

00:15:37:06 - 00:15:42:10
John Simmerman
And of course, the image that kind of pops into my head is, is that it must be something like this, Right?

00:15:42:11 - 00:15:57:08
Travis Norvell
It got yes. Yeah. This is Sydney Chambers. Some of you may know from Grantchester, the PBS mystery. This is what we all think we look like, right? This handsome, beautiful person writing this, you know, great vintage British bike. But that's really not who.

00:15:57:08 - 00:16:02:02
John Simmerman
TAPPER, I tell you. Yes. Oh, yeah. Like this or this you had a dig to do.

00:16:02:05 - 00:16:24:00
Travis Norvell
I mean, he's got a great story about a bike in his childhood that it was a bike that really kind of helped him kind of cross boundaries. And it was given to him by a white minister. And that was the thing that he's always talked about, just how much joy that bike riding and enjoying. I'll say this about your podcast, you know, and especially is that, you know, when you listen to the show, you know how much joy you have for it.

00:16:24:00 - 00:16:30:27
Travis Norvell
I mean, you're smiling a lot in it. You're not sitting there frowning, and you could be. But I think that's kind of the positivity part, that.

00:16:31:04 - 00:16:35:12
John Simmerman
Sometimes I am frowning. So yeah.

00:16:35:12 - 00:16:35:18
Travis Norvell
Like.

00:16:35:23 - 00:17:02:25
John Simmerman
Where does this go? Yeah, well, I got a bone to pick with you because, you know, parking is like a huge, huge thing, you know, in our urban setting and, and the situations that are out there. And and I saw I somebody gave me this, this photo and it's a picture of privilege that happens here. What's going on here?

00:17:02:25 - 00:17:23:10
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one time I went away for summer break, you know, I mean, just for a couple of weeks vacation and the church installed some bike parking and we have, you know, here in Minneapolis, there's a great deal with Dero bike stuff where they will pay for half of this. You know, if you pay for half, they'll pay for the other half with the city.

00:17:23:10 - 00:17:45:17
Travis Norvell
So they did this and then somebody went out and bought like this is for your car. They don't make them small enough for a for a bike, but it takes up a lot of space. But yeah, this is my own private parking spot that the church has. And we have a preschool here and sometimes a preschool kids will park there and I will tell them like, look, you can park their kid, but you know, you got a preacher on Sunday and they usually get this, you know, terrified looking and they quickly move their bike.

00:17:45:22 - 00:17:47:24
Travis Norvell
Yeah.

00:17:47:24 - 00:18:12:28
John Simmerman
Oh, I can't believe that. Yeah. So for the listening audience, what we're looking at here is Travis bike parked at a bike rack with a sign reserved for clergy. Yeah, Yeah, I tell you that, that privilege, I, you know, I guess back to your point, it's not like you're raking in millions of dollars, you know, doing this sort of work, you know, So you might as well have a perk, one or two.

00:18:13:05 - 00:18:19:21
John Simmerman
But but let's get serious. Let's let's talk a little bit about churches and parking. And you wrote an article about it.

00:18:20:29 - 00:18:45:24
Travis Norvell
Yeah. This this was a this is an adaptation of one of the chapters. And this is a thing that I did not expect to get the most of, I don't know, most energy from. So people now refer to me, Hey, you're the church parking lot, dude. And I'm. Yeah, I guess I am now, I'll, I'll take that. But this is a in Christian century and lo and behold, ended up being the fifth most read article of 2022 was on church parking lot.

00:18:45:24 - 00:19:05:17
Travis Norvell
So that just shows me that there are a lot of people thinking about church parking lots other than just the temporary storage of automobiles. Now, I live here, you know, Minneapolis is Luther Land, so there are Lutherans everywhere. You can't do a rocket that hit them and there are giant Lutheran churches. And I like to ride my bike by and just take pictures of their parking lots different times.

00:19:06:00 - 00:19:32:14
Travis Norvell
And what you'll find is even on a Sunday morning or even like the largest funeral they have, the parking ones are only for maybe 5% of the time. And my thought, okay, what if churches started thinking different about their parking lots other than just car storage? And some of the things I ask for people to think about is, you know, put a basketball court on it, put a bike, you know, kind of bike out on it and put some just some put some circles for kids to ride around.

00:19:32:26 - 00:19:55:07
Travis Norvell
They kind of learn about, you can plant food. I mean, you can have these Strobel gardening, which started here in Minnesota as a great way. And in space of two parking spots, you can grow enough food to feed, you know, two families of four. So just think about that. And also, people don't realize at church parking lots throughout America live in this odd zone.

00:19:55:22 - 00:20:11:03
Travis Norvell
And by that I mean both literally and metaphorically. But if the zoning laws that a lot of zoning laws that would apply to the lot directly next to the parking lot do not apply to the church parking lot. And so what you're finding is a lot of churches throughout America, I mean, a lot. Not a lot, not enough.

00:20:11:03 - 00:20:36:02
Travis Norvell
I wish there more are starting to put tiny holes in their church parking lots and you can put two or three tiny homes, take up two or three spaces, use some of the church's community space for, you know, cooking and just gathering for the people in these tiny homes. And you can really revolutionize, I think, a lot of American society by thinking of the church parking lot as more than just a place to store your car while you go to worship.

00:20:36:14 - 00:20:36:22
Travis Norvell
Yeah.

00:20:37:09 - 00:21:12:22
John Simmerman
And for again, the listening audience, the visual that we have up on screen here is, you know, sort of your typical parking lot. It actually does have some green strips in it so that there is actually some water, you know, filtration storm, water filtration that could happen in this area. And I and I do spy at least one tree planted in there, but it does kind of, you know, make the you know, it pops out, you know, for me of saying, oh, wow, you know, you could you could totally change this from what looks like just kind of weeds or wild stuff growing.

00:21:12:22 - 00:21:43:06
John Simmerman
You could probably, you know, actually do a little garden along these these strips quite easily versus the the the Baptist Church two blocks away from me here in Austin, Texas. This is an overhead. You were looking, you know, from the satellite view down. And we can see they have not one but two parking lots, a small one where this is the street view of of the small one here at this Baptist, you know, parking lot or or Baptist church.

00:21:43:20 - 00:22:23:21
John Simmerman
And and then we kind of scroll over to the large one here. Come on, come back here. There we go. That's what I wanted. And we can kind of, you know, get the visual there. And we see that to your point. Yeah, it's a tremendous amount of wasted space. And one of the things that you pointed out in the book, too, was that there's this pressure, you know, for especially small churches in urban areas, churches that may have been actually established like many other, you know, social institutions.

00:22:23:21 - 00:23:10:26
John Simmerman
I mean, we happened to be talking about churches, but we could be talking about other other groups and gathering places, whether they be, you know, fraternal organizations or whatever part of that, you know, that the third place or whatever it's like in places that's not work and not home, it's something else. It's community and those institutions. But there's like this pressure to try to accommodate the automobile and try to accommodate potential patrons and guests and people arriving to that establishment, whether it's a business or a church or organization by car, so much so that they may even like tear down housing next to them to create a parking lot.

00:23:10:26 - 00:23:15:17
John Simmerman
And then you just mentioned trying to think of ways of how do we turn that back into housing.

00:23:16:02 - 00:23:38:02
Travis Norvell
Yeah, Yeah. My thought is that if a church this is something I've been seeing kind of since the book you were talking earlier of churches. Churches primarily. Yeah. It could be a school, It could be a library. We go down the line of, of social institutions. If you're going to tear down a house to put parking on it, then you have to do, I think, everything possible to redeem that act.

00:23:38:02 - 00:23:43:15
Travis Norvell
You know that this place better be life producing, not just, you know, sucking the life out of the community.

00:23:44:00 - 00:24:12:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's extraordinary. The other thing and you do referenced, by the way, Don Soup's a wonderful book, The High Cost of Free parking in here. And so you clearly were drinking from the firehose of urbanism. You I think you referenced Chuck Morone in there with strong towns. You've been on his podcast in the past. And so clearly you were boning up on a lot of these, you know, urbanism topics.

00:24:12:22 - 00:24:22:28
John Simmerman
You know, what was that like? Kind of like getting inundated with, you know, a whole new world of thought just because you decided to not fix that car?

00:24:24:01 - 00:24:47:25
Travis Norvell
Yeah, it's been very surprising that sometimes I feel like I should have got an extra degree. You know that just from the reading that I've done, it's been fantastic. You know, here's been the kind of a fun part about the reception of the book. So far. It's been a year March 15. So I have had a lot of interest from kind of urbanism kind of civic planners.

00:24:47:25 - 00:25:07:03
Travis Norvell
Those people have been very interested in the book. I think they have more faith in kind of faith communities and faith communities have in themselves. I haven't got as much interest from church communities that's starting to pick up, but been very slow. But it has been great to kind of read these things and find new ideas and I didn't expect to go down this road.

00:25:07:15 - 00:25:26:25
Travis Norvell
It just kind of happened once you start. Yeah, once that fire hose gets turned on, it's hard to say no. You just start seeing things in different ways. And I started realizing how social policy you can be really, it was influencing these communities. It was beyond our control. You know, we think about those churches that want to have a parking lot.

00:25:27:12 - 00:25:58:24
Travis Norvell
You know, they were right in the middle of what you can say are 15 minute neighborhoods. You know, they were all 15 minute neighborhood churches. And then, you know, we have the highway bill and we have a new kind of GI bill for homes. And, you know, things just things drastically changed. And all of a sudden, if a church that was surrounded by its neighborhood and was really a neighbor to its to its community, all of a sudden became neighbor less because all the members moved, you know, 20 minutes by car rather than 15 minutes by a walk.

00:25:59:06 - 00:26:17:23
Travis Norvell
And it just drastically changed who we were. And you saw this great rise. It worked for a little bit. I mean, the 1950s were great for faith communities in America. And now we're all we're all kind of barely hanging on, it feels like. And I think a lot of that has to do with being neighbor less or a neighboring churches.

00:26:18:13 - 00:26:19:08
Travis Norvell
Yeah. Yeah.

00:26:19:24 - 00:26:43:18
John Simmerman
And you mentioned, you know, policy there. I mean, you know, head over to this image here. This is probably not an image you recognize. This is from up in Ontario, Canada. And it's a typical scene of where the policy, the public policy that is is currently in place in front of this church is such that they can actually park in that is actually a bike lane.

00:26:43:19 - 00:27:12:05
John Simmerman
That's a marked bike bike lane. And as you can see, there's cars lined up parked in the bike lane and in basically there's a provision that allows church parking to park in the bike lane in this community. You'll see to the right of this image they have a parking lot. Yeah, around the corner. Around the corner there is a municipal parking lot.

00:27:12:24 - 00:27:37:22
John Simmerman
So there's even off street parking around the corner. And yet there was this need, you know, pressure from the church to the city to preserve, you know, on street parking. And thus, you know, my friend who who, you know, snapped this shot and his daughter, you know, they have to when they're riding their bike, they have to merge over and control the lane.

00:27:38:06 - 00:28:15:00
John Simmerman
And you can see a very large truck, you know, coming towards us on screen here. And so and trucks are getting larger, SUVs are larger in this society. It's a scary thing. I mean, this is really, really interesting, you know, how pervasive, you know, kind of this this orientation car brain is. And it starts bleeding into public policy, starts bleeding into, you know, churches trying to survive, because I guarantee you that, you know, their communication is like, look, you know, our parishioners are getting older.

00:28:15:00 - 00:28:21:14
John Simmerman
We you know, they can't walk as far. I mean, there's some legitimate concerns here. How do we balance this out from your perspective?

00:28:22:27 - 00:28:41:10
Travis Norvell
Yeah, I mean, I think about this a lot and I get you know, I get question on this. A lot of people snap pictures of those churches, you know, throughout the nation say, hey, what do you think about this? You know, I think there's two things. One is that, yeah, I mean, there are some legitimate concerns of people that are, you know, elderly, not as mobile as I'd like to be.

00:28:41:27 - 00:29:01:27
Travis Norvell
Yeah. We've got to preserve spaces for those. And generally in most public institutions, there are spaces that we can accommodate for those. But it's people that maybe that should. I mean, they could walk or they could take the bus or carpool with someone else or ride your bike. I mean, there's other ways around it for that. And sometimes I challenge people.

00:29:01:27 - 00:29:13:01
Travis Norvell
This was like when you went to the airport, how far did you walk from your car to the front gate or how many have you been to on vacation to Mackinaw Island or Miami or.

00:29:13:12 - 00:29:18:07
John Simmerman
Well, you just you just can't, you know, just drop that in there without explaining it.

00:29:18:15 - 00:29:31:16
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Mackinaw Island is a beautiful place in Lake Michigan that doesn't allow cars. You know, the only vehicles, I guess what? Mike Pence, they get a car when he went there a couple of years ago, but everybody else.

00:29:31:25 - 00:29:36:18
John Simmerman
So, yes, the story is and I don't think it's Lake Michigan. I think it's on here on.

00:29:37:00 - 00:29:37:06
Travis Norvell
It's.

00:29:37:06 - 00:30:04:12
John Simmerman
In Michigan, up towards the the upper Peninsula there. And yes, since the 1800s, it has been a motor vehicle free zone. There's I think two or three, technically two or three motor vehicles that are on in place there. And they're all emergency services vehicles or the coroner has a vehicle. But other than that, it's people power or horsepower.

00:30:05:15 - 00:30:28:15
Travis Norvell
And people love it. People spend every priced what a hotel room there cost. I mean, people pay exorbitant amount of money to go there and not drive their car. So if we can do it, just try to do it. And this is why I'm so big on why I wrote the book for that. If faith communities can get involved in this work, we've got a huge amount of leverage that we can apply to social policy.

00:30:28:24 - 00:30:41:22
Travis Norvell
And, you know, people just assume that churches don't want to be involved in this. But, you know, I'm fine in a church, still want to be involved in this. They do want to be involved in, you know, how their city looks and runs and the health of people. And, you know, I find it again, this is the idea.

00:30:41:22 - 00:31:06:02
Travis Norvell
If I can get people out of their church buildings in their faith communities, you know, when you when you fear that you're about that life is just, you know, you're gripping by, you know, finger your fingertips. You know, you think that you have to kind of close your mind and have everything kind of inward focus. But really, you know, that the idea is really if you turn outward and become part of the community, you're going to have a much better chance at making it.

00:31:06:16 - 00:31:10:01
Travis Norvell
And so that's why that part of the reason I'm trying to write the book, I wrote the book.

00:31:11:02 - 00:31:21:07
John Simmerman
So the book title is A Church on the Move, A practical guide for Ministry in the Community. Is is this your your future church right here?

00:31:21:07 - 00:31:42:27
Travis Norvell
Yeah, this would be really fun. This is this is a restored chapel car. So there was a time when we're thinking about going to America, moving westward, that churches had one car, a train car that they made into these chapels, and they would just go around to around the west, in the Midwest. And I think it's a great idea.

00:31:43:07 - 00:32:03:00
Travis Norvell
I think it's is again, it's part of this this is part of our DNA system, is that we were trying to do these kind of things all along without cars. And I tell people were for 1900 years, you know, the church survived without a car and for 1900 years it survived without a parking lot. You know, we've got great history.

00:32:03:10 - 00:32:04:15
Travis Norvell
We can do this. Yeah.

00:32:04:28 - 00:32:16:11
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I can totally see you. You know, like, you know, figure out a way to to work with the city and get a, you know, street streetcar line. And you've got your movable church right there.

00:32:16:11 - 00:32:33:26
Travis Norvell
BO Yeah. You know, when I lived in New Orleans, there was an old tradition that priests and nuns did not have to pay to ride the streetcar. And there was still enough kind of old streetcar drivers that on Sunday mornings they would never they wouldn't let me paint. They would just say, come on, you know, have fun. So, yeah.

00:32:34:25 - 00:33:04:06
John Simmerman
Oh, man, that's that's interesting. So. So talk a little bit more about how churches and when I say churches folks, I don't literally mean churches, but I mean other institutions similar to two churches that we can think of in our communities and societies. Can me be more welcoming to, to, to people arriving on bikes and getting people to to use bikes more frequently.

00:33:04:10 - 00:33:19:23
John Simmerman
And I'll pull up Dave Walker's illustration here, which which helps to to sort of illustrate what we're talking about in terms of ways that your church or insert institution can welcome people who cycle.

00:33:20:22 - 00:33:51:20
Travis Norvell
Yeah, this is a scheme. I love that. I love the British way of thinking of an idea as a scheme, but this is a scheme that the diocese of Manchester came up with on trying to incorporate more bicycling into their city. And so here we just have these ways, right? Bike racks, just putting bike racks out is a great way to communicate or the fix at stations to have those available for for people or you know, I really like to think of the parking lot again, having some spaces on, you know, just a track so kids can learn how to bike.

00:33:51:28 - 00:34:08:03
Travis Norvell
You know, there's a lot of places in urban areas where they're in safe places to learn how to ride. So there's a place and if you read about the early history of bikes in Amsterdam, a lot of church basements where bike schools, where where people learn how to ride bikes. I think we've got to a part there to do that.

00:34:08:27 - 00:34:33:26
Travis Norvell
I think it's also kind of a mind shift on what we wear. So it's okay to arrive someplace, maybe a little out of breath and maybe a little sweaty. And it's okay if you have if you're more leaning towards athleisure than towards, you know, business suits being people welcome them to that. I think there's just a lot of things that we can do to make biking more accessible and also welcoming of water.

00:34:34:00 - 00:34:47:29
Travis Norvell
Just having a water bottle, I mean, not water bottles, but, you know, having the kind of water fountains where you can fill a water bottle up or I like. The two biggest part I do is just try to tell stories. Hey, this is who I met on a bike this week this is who I met on the sidewalk.

00:34:47:29 - 00:35:06:00
Travis Norvell
This. So I get on the bus just ways that if you just tell those stories, I think you have a better shot at incorporating all this. You know, there was a last year there was a League of American Cyclists had their annual meeting, and I was on a panel with a gentleman from North Carolina who talked about libraries and bicycles.

00:35:06:00 - 00:35:31:03
Travis Norvell
And this big spot was, if you can start a bike ride at a library as opposed to a bike shop, you're going to have a more diverse and more inclusive community. So I think, you know, faith communities, all these social institutions as being places that can just start. That's where you start the bike ride. I think it just just the way that people are thinking about who may be there and who may be participating in the ride.

00:35:31:29 - 00:35:57:18
John Simmerman
Also sort of, you know, reminds me, too, of, you know, every year we have our National Bike to work day or by bike to school day. And and I think that's important to remember, too, that we have to support others in being able to accomplish something because it's so ingrained in us that we get in a car to make that trip.

00:35:58:01 - 00:36:16:22
John Simmerman
And so it may not be there's a little bit of a learning curve to understanding that, Oh, by the way, if we're going to the grocery store, we can actually make that trip by bike. But I'm not sure how do I do that. And so the how to is is a very, very important thing to is, yes, we need the modeling.

00:36:17:19 - 00:36:50:14
John Simmerman
You know, in this illustration there's a section there or a illustration there that says, you know, cycling to the church and an arrow pointing to the clergyman, you know, giving the sermon. It's like, yeah, you're modeling that behavior, you're showing leadership by doing this. But then that next step is also how do you help provide support and scaffolding, as is my friend Sam Balto with the bike Bus talks about to to help people say, oh, and by the way, we're going to help you with this.

00:36:50:14 - 00:37:10:29
John Simmerman
We're going to show you how to do this, you know, all the way down to, yeah, you don't have to wear fancy clothes, you know, for doing this. You know, you can wear your normal clothes and we're not going to be moving fast, so we're not going to be getting sweaty and all of these different things as as well as just to the point of, you know, maybe the bike isn't even in in good repair.

00:37:10:29 - 00:37:36:04
John Simmerman
And so making sure that the equipment is safe. So there's a lot of I don't want to call it hand-holding, but you know what I mean? It's there's a lot of support that may need to be provided to be able to get the momentum of habit formation going. Because I'm sure even for you, when you made that move, there was a lot of learning that was going on in terms of suddenly, yeah, I'm I'm riding my bike.

00:37:36:06 - 00:37:43:06
John Simmerman
I don't have that car anymore to fall back on. I'm walking, I'm riding my bike, I'm taking transit. There's a learning curve there.

00:37:44:16 - 00:38:02:18
Travis Norvell
There's a huge learning curve. And I think that these kind of social institutions are the prime places in our society to help people and teach them how to do this. You know, one of the things we do here is just we're going to take the bus downtown to a Twins game just to teach people how you get on the bus and how it works.

00:38:02:18 - 00:38:04:06
Travis Norvell
Yeah. Yeah. It can be.

00:38:04:06 - 00:38:20:08
John Simmerman
Scary to people who haven't done it. Maybe they they've only heard of other people having negative experiences with it, or maybe they've attempted it and they're like, I can't make heads or tails of this map in route. So yeah, it's a good that's a good point.

00:38:20:28 - 00:38:38:03
Travis Norvell
Yeah, I mean, I think about yeah, I mean, when I first learned all that know I couldn't figure out the numbering system for busses, you know, in between the number four and then number five is the number eight line and they're all running north south and I couldn't figure that out and I still can't figure it out. But those kind of things.

00:38:38:03 - 00:38:43:00
John Simmerman
And I think some of the evil genius is back there just laughing at Clive and a mess with his.

00:38:43:14 - 00:39:02:04
Travis Norvell
It's I'm sure they're historic reason, you know. Yeah. But you know like so this is kind of its interesting point though and so I'm working on the next book and I realized that after a year of kind of talking with people, I really need to write a prequel to this book, kind of getting people because they're all the questions I got from churches were really basic ideas.

00:39:02:04 - 00:39:17:27
Travis Norvell
Like there was one organization of a group of pastors in New Jersey, and they wanted to know how the how to join a group bike ride. And I'm like, you know, I'm in Minnesota, you're in New Jersey. Like, I don't know where the group bike rides are, but just but maybe one way would be just just to go sit at a coffee shop.

00:39:18:05 - 00:39:37:20
Travis Norvell
When you see the bike ride group go by trying to flag somebody down. But I realize there's a lot of those basic things. How do you how do you ride? What is the route life was? What conditions my biking and all this kind of thing should be. Those kind of foundational things are really the kind of bread and butter that I think like faith communities could could really be of service.

00:39:38:08 - 00:39:38:17
Travis Norvell
Yeah.

00:39:39:06 - 00:40:01:08
John Simmerman
Now I always get the question, you know, from individuals who are watching the videos on the Active Towns channel or listening to the podcast, they say, Well, I've been I'm inspired by the conversations you all are having. What can I do as an individual in my community to to head in a more positive direction when it comes to this, this sort of stuff of active mobility?

00:40:02:03 - 00:40:22:17
Travis Norvell
Yeah. When when people ask me that, you know, I say, can you lean in with curiosity? You know, can you just ask ask your community, hey, I want to do this, Can anybody help me? And you'd be surprised at how many people there maybe that also are in the same boat as you. And you'll be surprised that there's probably somebody in the community that also would want to help you, to help you get through that part.

00:40:22:17 - 00:40:36:10
Travis Norvell
You know, when I first started. Yeah, I was amazed at the number of people that came up and said, Hey, I used to ride my bike in the winter when I was working. Here's what I did. Or people would say they would come and, you know, give me an old pair of gloves that they were they were worn out.

00:40:36:10 - 00:40:53:05
Travis Norvell
I appreciate the gesture, but it would at least give you a little bit that you start out with curiosity. And then I go back to realize you're going to make a ton of mistakes and just have just lean into the mistakes. It's going to happen. It's going to be okay, and you'll learn a lot of a lot from them.

00:40:53:05 - 00:41:01:26
Travis Norvell
But yeah, I guess for me it's just a leaning with curiosity. I think it's the best way you can do it and you're going to probably be a better chance at success that way.

00:41:02:15 - 00:41:25:06
John Simmerman
I'd like to do, you know, leaning in with curiosity and you talk about this in the book is like you when you slow down, take the time to, you know, walk, you know, take the time to get on a bike. You're not you're not concerned with getting there fast. It's not the fastest way. You're choosing intentionally the slower way.

00:41:25:10 - 00:41:48:06
John Simmerman
And so when you walk out into your neighborhood and you are suddenly able to really embrace that curiosity and embrace the connectedness that you can have with others in your community that you come in contact with. So I think that's a beautiful of you know, it also helps you get to know who your neighbors are and who your community is.

00:41:49:10 - 00:42:11:13
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah, I think it's slower, but it's faster, you know, in a paradoxical way, because you I mean, there's a house that I walk by that I know every Tuesday they're cooking the Italian food and I just want to walk right by and I want to knock on the door and find out about them. It's slower, but also just an intentional part of the you're I think you're healthier, maybe not necessarily physically.

00:42:11:13 - 00:42:29:07
Travis Norvell
I mean, you are a little bit, but just mentally healthier. You know, the benefits of walking, being fresh air, taking a bike. Yeah, and slower. But the added benefit that you have, the clarity that you have about life, I can't tell you how many times I've had a terrible time, had had a bad meeting or an argument with somebody.

00:42:29:19 - 00:42:46:18
Travis Norvell
And I get on a bike or I walk and by the time I get home, you know, I'm calmer, I feel better, and I'm probably in a better place to call the person up and say, you know, I'm sorry, I was I was a jerk back there or we really kind of saw this in the wrong place. It's just a lot slower but faster.

00:42:47:04 - 00:43:22:00
John Simmerman
I love that, too. And that's great. And it reminds me of the speed of trust because you can only go as fast. You can only move as quickly, you know, in any of these difficult transfer and transformative things that we're trying to do within our communities, You can only go as fast as there's trust in the community. And so the speed of trust is is such that, yeah, until we really know each other and can trust each other, you can't really move forward with a lot of these ideas and changes like limiting the amount of parking at the church.

00:43:22:00 - 00:43:25:01
Travis Norvell
Yeah. I mean the speed, the trust. I love that place now.

00:43:25:01 - 00:43:52:20
John Simmerman
It's actually the two book title of, of a book in my library and I honestly, I can't remember now how much of it is about this, but I'm pretty darn sure it's all about slowing down to make sure you have that connectedness and really know your audience. SO a photo that you sent along, which I want to pull up here is is also about the the power of physical activity throughout our our our generations.

00:43:52:20 - 00:43:55:10
John Simmerman
And as we get older. Talk a little bit about this.

00:43:56:09 - 00:44:14:04
Travis Norvell
You know, some of it is so much of my time is spent in nursing homes, you know, in the life care. And when I talk with people what I love to ask people in their nineties, I will ask them a question. Can you remember the first time you rode a bike and just to watch them close their eyes and get this giant smile on their face?

00:44:14:19 - 00:44:37:03
Travis Norvell
And I'm like, Would you like to ride a bike right now? And all I hear is I would give anything to ride a bike right now. And there are a lot of boomers and there are a lot of, you know, senior citizens right now that I think that the trike is maybe an untapped resource for communities and for for people with mobility issues just because you get the stability for it.

00:44:37:03 - 00:44:54:22
Travis Norvell
But I just keep asking every time I go to a nursing home like, hey, I show this picture like, Hey, what do you think about buying a couple of these and just trying them out? You know, just, just let me walk with people, you know, on to get them on one of these and just ride around in the in the hallways.

00:44:55:03 - 00:44:59:25
John Simmerman
Yeah. Let I'll let you I'll let you describe for the listeners what is in this image here.

00:45:00:06 - 00:45:17:07
Travis Norvell
Yeah. This is just an image of a probably a nursing home or rehab facility. There's an elderly, elderly gentleman on a on a trike. And, you know, if you zoom in, it's still really hard but just has a great face, you know, just really enjoying it. And then there is the nurse beside beside them.

00:45:18:12 - 00:45:22:21
John Simmerman
The nurse is kind of going, Oh, I don't know about this. A bike in the hallways here.

00:45:23:18 - 00:45:44:27
Travis Norvell
Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you, my wife, and now we have a contest and we've had it now for ten years. I guess we try to find someone who's riding a bike on, you know, in on the parkway with a frown on their face. And we've only had one time. One time out of ten years we saw someone and we're pretty sure that they just had to go to the bathroom.

00:45:45:12 - 00:45:48:12
Travis Norvell
That was their reason. But so there is something about that.

00:45:48:12 - 00:46:08:28
John Simmerman
Joy, I'm glad you brought up the family again because you mentioned I mean, you channeled them earlier and you talked a little bit about assuring them that, no, no, no, this is this is my thing. You know, you guys are safe. I'm not going to coerce you or force you into anything here. But as you mentioned in the book, you know, there was a little bit of a transformation.

00:46:08:28 - 00:46:19:14
John Simmerman
You were sort of a leader within your own home. And now the family seems to be embracing active mobility a little bit more talked a little bit about that transformation that took place within your own household.

00:46:20:20 - 00:46:49:12
Travis Norvell
Yeah, well, there's two things that happened. One was just a normal model of anytime I went somewhere, my thought was, Hey, let's ride our bikes or Hey, let's walk, let's, let's, let's take the bus. And you've got a lot of heroes. These are teenagers we're talking about. And I just figured out I had to figure out that that little pattern of life, you know, from about 15 to 17, if I could somehow adjust their thinking, I didn't experiment on my kids, I guess I should I should be fully transparent about this.

00:46:50:00 - 00:47:05:13
Travis Norvell
So when the kids turned 16, I gave them this option. I said, look, you can get your license, that's fine. And we can put you on our insurance. But realize we have one car and you know you're going to have to help pay for the insurance to make it work. And you're probably hardly ever going to get to drive it.

00:47:05:13 - 00:47:28:13
Travis Norvell
That's one option You can be postpone getting your license. We will buy you a new bike, will fully sign your bus card and whatever in your allowance will be what it was going to cost us to put you on our insurance. Now, all three kids took the deal, so all three are still active in this way. And here's the payoff.

00:47:28:24 - 00:47:46:24
Travis Norvell
My daughter, she spent January. She's a senior at Zeno College. She spent January in Italy and France. She went by herself for a couple of weeks and her only response was, Hey, dad, do you know how easy it was to get around? I knew exactly how to get around on trains. I knew how to get around the busses.

00:47:47:04 - 00:47:53:24
Travis Norvell
I knew how to get the bike shares. It was it was it was just like all of this stuff that, you know, you've been working with me. And it just came so natural.

00:47:54:01 - 00:47:57:19
John Simmerman
I'm sure, for you and your wife. That was like a proud parenting moment.

00:47:58:10 - 00:48:07:05
Travis Norvell
Oh, I wanted to take that and put it on the refrigerator. And, you know, that could take all the other places where it said, Dad, you're right. That's all I wanted was right there.

00:48:07:05 - 00:48:39:22
John Simmerman
I love that you have that impact there in your in your own home. It's well, what is has been referred to up in Winnipeg is like a cultural bomb of bringing, you know, bikes in And you channel that story in your in your book and I've profiled the activities of the Plain Bright program a couple of times. This is the landing page to my second interview with Aaron Roediger, who's an architect up there in Winnipeg, and she has the Plane Bicycle podcast.

00:48:40:26 - 00:49:27:27
John Simmerman
But we were able to to profile sort of that program that existed. You you highlighted it in the book, and it's basically this program where they are taking old abandoned Dutch bikes, piling them into a container and getting them up into Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. And so they call it like this, this, you know, cultural bomb, a bicycle bomb, you know, of of all of a sudden you have all these easy to ride, step through frame upright Dutch bikes and you just watch sort of that cultural transformation and sort of the light bulb moments of people understanding that, Oh, you mean riding a bike can be easy and fun and we can get around?

00:49:28:23 - 00:49:37:12
John Simmerman
So I just had to share that. I was delighted and tickled to see that you also channeled the plane bicycle program in your book.

00:49:38:17 - 00:49:56:29
Travis Norvell
Yeah, and I'll just say back to like the person you said, you know, how can I make change the like, this is my Christmas Eve sermon from a couple of years ago was the plane bicycle project was you look at that percentage. I mean, one, I think it's less than half of the percent of people in Winnipeg are riding these bikes.

00:49:56:29 - 00:50:11:29
Travis Norvell
But the change the amount of change that they're bringing, it doesn't take a huge amount of people to kind of change society and change culture. It only takes a few to start doing this and you can really build off of that. So I love that podcast, I love that story. I think what they're doing in Winnipeg is amazing.

00:50:12:13 - 00:50:22:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. Travis As we bring this to a close, is there anything that we haven't covered that you want to make sure that we leave the audience with maybe, maybe even some sage advice?

00:50:23:04 - 00:50:39:20
Travis Norvell
Oh, well, you I think there's one thing I do want to point out. My patron saint. You know, Mr. Rogers, you see a picture of him behind me. You know, I would really ask people just to think about Mr. Rogers. When you're thinking about public transit and how you can make a difference. I mean, he leans he leans in with curiosity.

00:50:40:02 - 00:51:00:21
Travis Norvell
He has this compassion, he has this joy of life, this is a picture right now of a stole that he wore when he would preach. You know, he was an ordained Presbyterian minister and the only stole or his, you know, walking shoes, picture of the trolley car, the people from the land and make believe. I mean, just a wonderful kind of image to have.

00:51:00:21 - 00:51:15:05
Travis Norvell
And I would just ask people to take his example and really have it be a working example for themselves. You can bring change and you can do it with joy and you can do it with compassion and you can really you can really change somebody's heart with that motto.

00:51:15:28 - 00:51:21:13
John Simmerman
I love it. I love it. Yeah. Travis, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. This has been an absolute joy.

00:51:22:01 - 00:51:25:24
Travis Norvell
Oh, Jim, this is fantastic Rick. I can't tell you how thankful And thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

00:51:26:09 - 00:51:43:20
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much for tuning in. And I hope you enjoyed this episode with the Petaling pastor. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell.

00:51:43:20 - 00:52:02:12
John Simmerman
And if you are enjoying this content, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Buy me a coffee or a button. Some fun items from the active town store. The link is down below in the video description and in the show notes, and any support you're able to provide is a huge help and much appreciated. Thank you all so much.

00:52:02:12 - 00:52:26:27
John Simmerman
Once again. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active town's ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super. Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

00:52:27:08 - 00:52:36:13
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.