Sunday, March 1, 2020Re-Ride program entering a new, more expansive phase. And the founders couldn’t be prouderBY RICHARD JOHNSON

The Godfather of the Cheyenne Re-Ride program was a guy named Harry. 
He told me of a program where the police in another municipality would donate the unclaimed bikes to the school district for kids assigned court-ordered community service, They would learn to repair the bikes and put them at local trailheads for bike paths.
I loved this idea. One day I met with Downtown Development Authority director Amy Surdam and told her I was going to start a bike share. She said that a bike share was on the DDA strategic plan and they wanted in. 
I had spoken to George Anadiotis from Rock on Wheels, but the cost for a complete rack set up was out of his budget range. Still, he thought this idea had merit.
In January of 2016, Amy and I told the DDA board at its meeting we had come up with a plan to develop a bike share. I remember their faces when we pitched it. Not much enthusiasm, but they approved for the idea to progress.
Amy, George, the DDA’s Desiree Brothe and I met at Rock on Wheels one morning for a brainstorming session. My assignment was to get bicycles and work with the Police Department and city leaders. Amy was to work on DDA budget issues and with the board on progress. George would outfit the donated bikes and racks.
I put out the notice that I was collecting bikes for Cheyenne's first bike share and asked for donations. Over 200 bikes were donated. 
We worked on the “All parts of the buffalo to be used theory" and stripped all usable parts for our fleet. I thought we were just going to decal them in case of theft. George had other ideas and powder-coated them and made them look amazing. I went to the shop to see the first one and told George, “Man, it’s going to suck when these get stolen." 
Amy asked our small group if it could be called Re-Ride. She liked that these repurposed bikes would now be given a rebirth, revitalized and re-rode. I remember George and I saying we didn’t care what it was called; we just wanted a successful program.
At the February DDA meeting, George rode the first Re-Ride pilot bike around the Asher Ballroom and parked it in front of the board. We told them that George had five bikes complete with another 15 in process. 
The DDA president at the time said, “You guys did this in one month!”  
They has thought our April 1, 2016 kickoff date was farfetched the month before, but now they were all on board.
The program is now in its fourth year. I was worried with the mayor’s budget cut to DDA funding that the Re-Ride program would be cut as low-hanging fruit. I was in for a real surprise.
The DDA had worked on a partnership with Visit Cheyenne to expand the program. To enhance a tourism experience, they wanted to improve on the existing program. 
We had the data to show an increase in ridership over the lifespan of the program. Rock on Wheels was getting so many phone calls for passcodes, it was detracting from their commercial workload. A good double-edge sword. How awesome to know a program you started was blowing up, but bad to have an employee on the phone all the time!
With the new DDA-Visit Cheyenne partnership comes amazing opportunities. They are building off our platform and doing what we were hoping for in 2016.
New bicycles are going to be ordered to create uniformity. This cuts down on repair costs since all bikes would be outfitted with the same thing.New locks are being experimented with that come with an app, so you have 24-hour accessible bikes, not just Rock on Wheels’ business hours.
Expansion into new parts of Cheyenne. With the Visit Cheyenne partnership, new bike centers can be placed at hotels and other tourist-heavy sites as a mobile transportation network. 
More ride-ability on Cheyenne's Greenway, and to other parts of Cheyenne. This is what all of us had envisioned in 2016.
I know some of you might feel this is branching away from the original grassroots effort and will be sad to see the yellow bikes go away. But I’ve talked to George and Amy, and we are all excited about the future. Because we have skin in the game, we still will watch our baby as she grows, and I guarantee I’ll be very vocal if she is abused, or people try to use our vision for their own greed, ambition and ego.
I am very proud of my associates who helped make this happen and look forward to the progression of the vision. Thank you all, once again, who donated, supported and mostly rode Cheyenne's first bike share program

Richard Johnson is a former City Council member from Cheyenne’s east side.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (Wyoming News Now)- The Array School of Technology looks to change their tuition costs by paying students to join their apprenticeship program. They partnered with the Department of Labor to jump start their apprenticeship program. Nine apprenticeships are expected to open at Array.
“Now it doesn’t matter whether you have one dollar in your bank account or a hundred thousand dollars,” CEO of Array, Eric “ET” Trowbridge said.
“If you have a passion for technology, you want to learn and you want to get your hands dirty, there now is a school in Wyoming that we will pay you to come and learn this stuff.”
Array has been around for almost four years. Their five goals include:
1. Breakdown barriers of entry
2. Build diversity
3. Create more jobs and opportunities
4. Keep learning & work on cool projects
5. Grow partnerships, community & state.
Array partnered with the department of labor to begin their apprenticeship program. The school has potentially three project partners which are Flowstate, Salotto, and Visit Cheyenne. ET mentioned this process has been going on for roughly a year.
“Technology in rural America is incredibly and vastly different than technology in these big urbanized cities,” ET said. “I think we need to start thinking back how we could be vastly different to make it work here.”
Nine positions will open, with the starting wage of $15/hour. The shifts will be Monday-Friday from 9am-5pm. Applications from the program will open in approximately a month. Array’s website is currently going through re-modeling and is expected to be up and running soon.

For many people throughout Wyoming, a visit to the doctor’s office may involve an extensive expedition. Patients sometimes need to travel long distances, on highways that can be nearly impassable, if not closed, during winter.
Confronted with these and other limitations, people living in rural and underserved communities seeking medical care sometimes forego seeking care altogether.
The owners of Stitches Acute Care Center, Amy and Dr. Dan Surdam, have partnered with the University of Wyoming School of Pharmacy to address the challenges facing not only patients, but also health care providers in remote, underserved locations around Wyoming.
Amy, a graduate of the UW Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing, earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1996 and a Master of Science in Nursing in 2004, and is a family nurse practitioner. Dan is an emergency room board-certified physician.
“Telemedicine (connecting a health care provider with a patient using audio/visual technology), as a way to reach people in remote and underserved areas, has been in existence for decades,” Amy says. “However, utilization remains low. Even with the advancement of technology, patients in rural areas tend to either look to traditional brick-and-mortar clinics to receive care, even if it means driving for hours or foregoing care altogether.”
Complicating the availability and use of telemedicine in rural areas is the extreme provider shortage, coupled with an aging population, making it challenging for already overburdened providers in rural or near rural areas to offer telemedicine as an additional service.
With grant funding provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Surdams undertook creating InstaClinics. An InstaClinic provides a telemedicine portal as a means to interact with a physician, nurse practitioner or a physician assistant from within an environment such as a local pharmacy. Stitches was awarded $62,557 to help establish 20 additional InstaClinics in rural areas throughout Wyoming.
Adding to a provider shortage, Wyoming has some of the highest cost of health insurance in the nation, with some of the poorest outcomes. In 2017, 11.5 percent of Wyoming’s citizens did not have health insurance. Compared to the rest of the nation, Wyoming ranks seventh for those uninsured.
“When one is struggling to have basic needs covered, it is no wonder preventive health care is not a priority. However, in Wyoming, our lack of prevention is unacceptable,” Dr. Surdam says. “Wyoming ranks 50th in the nation for adults without appropriate cancer screening; 50th for young children without recommended vaccinations; and 49th for adults without a routine doctor visit in the prior two years. Our state ranks 47th for adults without a usual source of medical care.”
According to the Wyoming Department of Health, less than 5 percent of Wyoming health care providers offer telemedicine. The technology can be expensive, and there are concerns about patients’ lack of knowledge regarding the use of telemedicine.
For many areas in rural America, people seeking information on health care or treatment for a chronic disease may turn to a local school, their employer or a neighborhood pharmacy. Studies have shown that telemedicine is effective when placed in settings such as pharmacies and that the traditional roles of pharmacists practicing in the United States can be expanded, allowing pharmacies to take a more vested approach to providing health care and education to their patients, resulting in better patient outcomes.
The Surdams acknowledge the challenges that implementing telemedicine via InstaClinic sites around Wyoming presents.
“There are many reasons as to why telemedicine has not resonated with the citizens of Wyoming,” Dr. Surdam says. “The three biggest reasons that seem to surface in our discussions with providers and patients continually are the following: Patients do not understand what telemedicine is or does. Patients do not know how to use it. Patients want more comprehensive evaluations than what they believe a telemedicine visit can provide.”
In addition, many providers throughout Wyoming simply fail to offer the service. Providers often do not educate patients on how and when they could best use a service such as telemedicine.
To address the issues of access to preventive and primary care in rural areas in Wyoming, Stitches Acute Care Clinic has developed the InstaClinic model and deployed it in several Wyoming communities, including Sheridan, Kemmerer and Casper. Communities where the additional InstaClinics will be located have not yet been identified.
“One-on-one teaching of the process at the initial telemedicine visit also will help patients understand the flow and what can be treated,” Dr. Surdam says. “This type of undertaking is impossible to achieve without a valued partner on a similar quest for health care improvement.”
The InstaClinic model is designed to make utilization of telemedicine and access to primary care easier for the patient, provider and partnering organization while providing diagnostic testing and comprehensive exams with computer peripherals -- thus ensuring better health care access for people throughout Wyoming.

Article by UW Staff.

Click here to view the interview of Girls Who Code!

Girls Who Code. I have four sons and I love them all so much. I want them to have every opportunity in this world. And they do. They won the lottery in life. They are white males. At the top of the food chain in our society. 
So yes, I support women and girls because I know that we have to work a little harder, go against the good ole boy club, spend our days and years living #metoo moments, and give birth and feed babies while trying to maintain equality in the workplace and often sacrificing either family or career to succeed at either. We need role models and safe places to grow and achieve things those before us rarely achieved. So yes, Girls Who Code, Girls on the Run, women in the military, and all things girl, you are amazing. I want to help you have every opportunity in this world, too.

Mentoring girls is important to me. Having role models and mentors has helped me succeed and it is exciting to give back in this way. Our Girls Who Code Chapter starte January 2020 at Array! shortgo.co/array-announces-girl-who-code-chapter-in-cheyenne/

So honored and humbled to be included in this!

The first episode in Season 2 of This is Me Podcast, features guest, Amy Surdam.Amy has proudly lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming since age 11. She graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1996 with a BSN, and in 2004 with an MSN. She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Wyoming Army National Guard, Family Nurse Practitioner, co-owner of Stitches Acute Care Center (with her husband) and The Array School of Technology and Design where is the COO. Amy’s talent and passion lies in strategic planning, public relations, public speaking, leadership, connecting people together, and making a difference. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends, running, and creating a better tomorrow. Join us as we hear Amy speak about living a healthy life-style, her near-death experience, her run for mayor and so much more! 

​https://soundcloud.com/thisismepodcast/amy-surdam

This article is very much the truth. As true as it is, and as disappointed as I was...am...that all of this occurred, I do want to say that I am looking forward to the second column by Reed in which he will talk about a new solution for the hole/Hynds. Life is too short to live in the past or to hold on to anger. I'm hopeful for the future and optimistic that one day, there will be an amazing children's museum in Cheyenne and downtown revitalization. 

Friday, June 14, 2019

​Business leaders created "nightmare" at "The Hole"This is the first of two columns on the downtown “hole” and the neighboring Hynds Building.

BY D. REED ECKHARDT
It’s a harsh thing when your words come back to haunt you.
            Consider this from an editorial in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle:
            “Our ‘nightmare’ scenario for downtown Cheyenne is that plans to renovate the Hynds Building will fall apart, and the ‘hole’ next door on West Lincolnway will remain unfilled.”
            These words were printed on Aug. 7, 2016. That’s when the 

Thanks to the city's business leaders, "The Hole" remains empty.
newspaper joined linked arms with the business community insiders at Cheyenne LEADS and the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce as well as with then-mayoral candidate Marian Orr and other naysayers. Their mission: to bully the proposed Children’s Museum of Cheyenne out of “The Hole” downtown. 
All of them had imbibed the snake oil peddled by developer David Hatch. They were drunken with the idea that the Hynds Building could be turned into a palace for lawyers with “The Hole” as their private parking pen. 
These community “leaders” applied their considerable influence to shame and embarrass museum creator and also then-mayoral candidate Amy Surdam into submission. 
After all, Surdam was not one of “theirs.” She and the Downtown Development Association that she headed wanted the museum in “The Hole,” and they refused to be pushed around by the Chamber and LEADS. The insiders didn’t like this uppity woman, and she was standing in the way of their buddy’s big plans. She had to go.
Never mind that the Children’s Museum was a perfect fit for “The Hole.” Its potential as an engine to drive a downtown renaissance was immense. But no, the big timers were willing to drive a stake through its heart to promote the scheme of a man with major dreams and minor means.
The WTE willingly joined in, arguing the Children’s Museum was an extravagant boondoggle. A once-proud newspaper, which for more than 15 years had supported public efforts to create a thriving downtown, flew into the arms of the city’s business leaders. It has been there ever since.
And the visionless Orr was more than willing to pile on. She played to the naysayers, speaking against the museum and the proposed tax to fund it. Then she came up with a surprise move: She offered free land elsewhere for the museum. She pretended this was a grand gesture, but it was just another way to get the museum out of “The Hole” for her establishment buddies and to take down Surdam at the same time.  
That Hatch never was going to be able to cobble the money together to develop the Hynds was obvious. He never would put enough of his own skin in the game, but he was very willing to suckle at the government’s teat. Uh, no. No agency was drinking that snake oil. Finally, in the fall of 2017, he threw in the towel.
And so, if you walk downtown now, you can see the WTE’s “nightmare” -- an empty hole and a vacant Hynds. The irony is, the newspaper played a major role in its creation.
As you stand in front of Ernie November’s downtown and look across the street at the still-empty “hole,” you have to wonder: What if the Chamber, and LEADS, and the WTE, and Mayor Orr, and the other naysayers had stood tall for the museum? Perhaps the tax would have failed, but the museum still might be in place, fighting for funding and trying to move ahead. And perhaps a thriving museum might have pumped fresh life into the Hynds.
The silence from all those who perpetuated this farce is deafening. Hatch is gone and LEADS, and the Chamber and Orr have done nothing except put up a pretty fence to hide the ugliness they helped to maintain.
Five years ago, these same people were saying that without something in “The Hole,” downtown never would prosper. Now it is not even as issue for them? 
But perhaps their silence is driven by embarrassment. Embarrassed that they got taken by Hatch. Embarrassed that they bullied a project out of “The Hole” that might have saved downtown. Embarrassed that they browbeat someone who really cared about downtown, Surdam, to the sidelines. 
As well they should be.
§   
So what’s next for “The Hole” and the Hynds? 
There is one idea that makes a lot of sense. Come back next time to find out what it is.
            
D. Reed Eckhardt is the former executive editor of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

As Wyoming begins preparations to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Louisa Swain casting a ballot in Laramie, I’ve been thinking ab- out the many women in Wyoming who impacted the trajectory of our state’s future by becoming the first to achieve a responsibility traditionally reserved for men.
​First woman to serve on a jury. First woman to serve as a bailiff. First woman to serve as a justice of the peace. First to become a statewide-elected official.
Look them up – their images portray them as grim-faced, stern women, separated from us by both years and photographic style. But don’t let this obscure the fact that these women were not two-dimensional characters. They cared deeply about improving their communities. The reasons why they were willing to break glass and pursue change led them to be passionate about imagining how a problem could be solved.
Maybe it isn’t just grim-faced sternness we see in those old photographs. Maybe it’s also unyielding grit.
One of the things I love about Wyoming – that sets it apart from many places I’ve lived – is how accessible change-making really is here. You don’t have to wait around for change to happen by accident. Belonging to an elite club of do-ers is unnecessary.
See a problem? You can literally decide to do something about it and then do that thing. It isn’t always easy or immediate, but a healthy dose of unyielding grit, handed down through generations, makes it possible.
I know because there is proof – from the earliest days of Wyoming’s existence to the present day, where Wyoming women are quietly (and sometimes not quietly at all) imagining ways to improve their communities.
The fourth annual Connect2Women conference was held last week in Cheyenne, and I was amazed, delighted and inspired by the many local women who shared their stories of a quest for change.
Heather Fleming and Kari Roden of the nonprofit WY Lit are accidental activists who came together to change how literacy skills are taught in Wyoming schools; while their work is just beginning, they’ve already proven themselves fierce advocates of a better way of doing business. Their advocacy brought the successful passage of Wyoming House Bill 297, requiring school districts to assess the specific skills predictive of third-grade reading proficiency. The ripple effects of improved literacy skills through evidence-based research and instruction will be staggering.
Valerie Colgate and Karen Fettig are ardent advocates for bringing awareness – and an end – to the devastating issue of human exploitation and sex-trafficking, which is an all-too-real problem in Wyoming and internationally. A global health professional, Valerie serves as a medical liaison for Destiny Rescue, regularly traveling from Wyoming to Cambodia to combat the effects of exploitation on girls, women and their communities. Karen Fettig works tirelessly within the state to bring awareness to this issue, partnering with law enforcement to hold workshops about identifying the warning signs of trafficking, exploitation and trauma.
Neither of these women set out to do this work originally, but the problem was simply too big to ignore. So, they didn’t.
Stacy Strasser founded the Unaccompanied Students Initiative because she couldn’t live with the status quo of homelessness in Wyoming. Her efforts to provide actual homes for adolescents without guardians so they can graduate from high school in a safe, consistent environment has led to a near-impossible level of community collaboration and generosity that is already making a difference for every single student served by the program. Stacy did not allow initial failure to deter her laser-focused vision of a better Wyoming.
Amy Surdam and her husband are reimagining how health care is provided in Wyoming through their acute care center, Stitches, a challenge so great that it seems insurmountable – until it isn’t. Their approach is both inventive and innovative, and has created statewide partnerships to provide telemedicine to previously underserved rural areas. Additionally, their partnership with LIV Health and Wyoming Breast Cancer Initiative will provide access to counseling for patients diagnosed with breast cancer (and their families) without the added stressor of hundreds of travel miles.
In our kitchen hangs a treasured piece of artwork made for my family by artist Amos Kennedy. On the backdrop of a Wyoming road map, he handset the words of Sojourner Truth and printed with a vintage letterpress: “If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.”
Something about this sentiment pierces my heart. Just like Sojourner Truth knew in the 1800s, Wyoming women know today that change comes not from talking, but from doing.
No one must settle for the status quo here, and that is a treasured right we should never take for granted.
Elizabeth Dillow is a writer, photographer and graphic designer in Cheyenne who can be reduced to tears by stories of women changing the world. She can be reached at [email protected].