Talent Maker City hosted 12th annual ride Saturday; event started with just a few friends going around town admiring holiday lights

By Kayla Heffner for Ashland.news

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go and look — especially in Talent last Saturday evening during the 12th annual Lights on Bikes ride.

Talentonians came out in droves Dec. 13 for the lit-up bike ride and costume contest. This year Talent Maker City (TMC) hosted the event headquarters at their creator and makerspace downtown at 109 Talent Ave. 

A bike safety station and decorating area staged behind the TMC building was bustling with kids, families and volunteers helping decorate and inspect bikes before the night ride through Talent at 6 p.m.

“It’s a fun way to get the community together when it’s winter and dark out to get on their bikes and scooters and be together and go celebrate this time of year,” TMC staffer Derek Boland said.

TMC held a free workshop where people could decorate their bikes with lights and get bike safety checks done to make sure everyone was safe during the ride. 

Boland was working on a bike with a bent wheel at the TMC bike station. Boland is the department lead for the mechanics and fiber arts departments and a volunteer coordinator for TMC.

“It’s a fun 1-mile loop through town and the neighborhood participates by being out there with cowbells and cheering and riders go right through the neighborhood and see all the lights with the houses that are decorated,” Boland said. 

There are community bike maintenance classes happening on Fridays at TMC where people can learn how to work on bikes donated to TMC, fix them up and give them out to folks in need. 

“We’re a community makerspace so our workshops are affordable and we are going to be offering more free workshops to provide that community space for everyone,” Boland said.

Another staff volunteer with TMC said 200 people registered for the bike ride — a big turn out, considering how cold it was, but that didn’t dampen the spirits of attendees or attendance. 

Sweet Beet Station in Talent donated hot cocoa, hot cider, and cookies while folks put on the final touches to their costumes or bikes. Other surrounding businesses participated by donating a portion of sales from the evening to TMC.

An older couple dressed as Santa and Mrs. Claus were excited about participating in their first Lights on Bikes event. “We lived in Costa Rica for 11 years so we’re doing everything Christmas we can do,” Kaz Chandler said. 

Chandler said she and her husband used to teach theater and have been visiting the Rogue Valley for the last 25 years, taking students to Oregon Shakespeare Festival  (OSF) plays. The husband and wife moved to Talent nine months ago and already love what the tiny town has to offer. 

“When we were talking about where to move, I said ‘it has to have art, fun people and theater’ — and we picked this. We love Talent and Ashland so much,” Chandler said. 

Chandler spent the day singing Christmas carols at five senior citizen homes while her husband, John “Festive” Haas, helped chop firewood at the Jackson County Fuel Committee (JCFC). The two are active community members, but also enjoy walking together two times a week in town and take yoga at the community center in Talent. Haas said he has even taken a few workshop classes at TMC as well. 

It was also the first Lights on Bikes event for a young couple who brought their 3-year-old son along celebrating his birthday. They were all dressed in different animal onesies: a lizard, an otter, and a cat. One family came decked out in tie-dye unicorn onesies with giant, inflatable unicorns attached to their bikes and won the best dressed family costume award. 

The event itself is the brain child of the executive director at TMC, Ali French. French taught at Talent Middle School for many years. Even then she would ride her bike to school and encourage kids how they can live a healthy lifestyle. 

After retiring from teaching, French set her sights on creating and expanding TMC into what is today. With no pun intended, it seems like a full circle moment for French seeing how everything has culminated into her hosting an event she created at a new makerspace she also helped come to fruition.

Now, going into its 12th year, French remembers how the bike ride came from humble, small beginnings with several friends.

Dressed up as Christmas trees, French and her two friends recounted how the event started. “We are the founders of this ride. Lawson invited us to go for a ride to go look at the lights in town. Then we stopped at houses and thanked them for decorating and would ring their doorbell and thank them for lighting up the town,” French said. 

They didn’t advertise. French, along with her friends, would decorate their bikes and, on a random day in December, would ride around town enjoying all the decorated houses. After the first several years the word started getting out and people in neighboring homes would cheer or yell outside “lights on bikes is here!” That’s when French and her friends knew people looked forward to the event every year, so the group started posting about it on Facebook, transforming the little ride into a city-wide event for all.

A notable year for the bike ride was 2020 the year of the Almeda Fire on Sept. 8. French said it was a sweet, touching moment for the community to show up and support one another. They rode around Talent and asked people to meet them at the roundabout which inspired the more formal bike route for the ride moving forward. 

Since 2020, the annual bike ride spectacle has become a town favorite, bringing in people from surrounding areas as well.

“It started out with four people riding around town and now the community coming together like this is so sweet. This town is pretty special,” French said. 

It’s fair to say the neighbors, kids, families and friendly faces couldn’t agree more. You can see it in the light in their eyes — and the lights on their bikes.

Journalist Kayla Heffner lives in Ashland. Email her at [email protected].