Ah, May. It’s just around the corner, and that means one thing here at the Cascade office: the start of Bike Month and the Group Health Commute Challenge. We loooove the Commute Challenge at our office. Not just because it’s our own event, but also because it stokes the embers of competition, which burn hot beneath the surface of many of my colleagues, myself included.

We’ve had some fun over the years. There was the men vs. the women year. There was the Secret Match-Up year. There was the “draft a volunteer in the middle of the night to ride for my team because we’re losing” year. There was the “OK, you can run to work, but you only get half the credit” year. And there was the “Read the fine print, lazy man, you have to commute five round-trips, so no, your miles don’t count” year.

Good times!

Being a team captain is super fun, especially in a workplace that embraces the contest. If you’re toying with the idea of captaining a team, I say “Go for it!” You’ll be pleasantly amazed by how much people will rally and ride for bagels, brownies, team shirts and accolades at team meetings. And taunts. Taunts work, too. (Note: if you taunt the other team too aggressively, it will backfire and you will lose.)

This year, Teagan, Tessa and Sander are taking the helm of the three Cascade teams, and they’re off to a roaring start. They’ve concluded the closed-door draft session, announced teams, and laid down a few rules:

It’s been brought to our attention that we should cover a few ground rules before sending the teams off and biking.  Please read closely.

1. Despite popular belief, dogs are actually not people and unfortunately not Cascade staff — bringing a dog in your bike basket, although amusing, will not count for double miles.  Same goes for cats, stuffed animals etc.
2. Mileage can only be received when you are actually riding the bike. Trips around Lake Washington with your bike latched to your car, unfortunately, will not count.
3. Although we welcome multiple personalities in most situations, please choose your dominant personality to report miles for.  For example, if one day Tessa is from Greenwood and the next she claims she’s from Snoqualmie, she’ll have to settle on her Greenwood commute for inputting miles.
4. Sabotage is actually not okay.  For example, Sander cannot slash Tessa’s tires before she jumps, eagerly, on her bike to head home for the day.  Sander, among other things, would be disqualified, and might lose a friend in the process.

I have a feeling May 2011 is going to be one for the record books.

Becky Roberts, Michael Henderson and Alan Dodson of Miller Hull rode to the Club office to present a donation check to Cascade’s Kathy McCabe.

Back in September, Cascade Bicycle Club got a visit from Alan Dodson, Michael Henderson and Becky Roberts of the Seattle architecture firm Miller Hull. The threesome had biked from Miller Hull’s downtown office to deliver a $1,500 check, the end result of the firm’s effort to boost employee participation in Cascade’s Group Health Commute Challenge last May.

Miller Hull—which has entered teams in the Commute Challenge for five years—pledged in 2010 to donate one dollar for every mile logged by employees during Bike Month. They split the contribution between Cascade and Bike Works, a nonprofit that builds sustainable communities by educating youth and promoting bicycling.

The incentive served not only to encourage bicycle commuting at Miller Hull, but also to reflect the firm’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It was wildly successful. Participation in the Commute Challenge doubled at the office compared with any other year, for a total of 3,000 cycling miles logged by 24 employees, or an average of 125 miles per rider.

“When the partners at Miller Hull challenged our office to ride by donating one dollar per mile to bike friendly organizations, it was a game changer,” said Alan Dodson, who organized the Commute Challenge effort at the office. “As the mileage began to build…1000, 2000…our riders’ excitement snowballed as we realized that our efforts were going to lead to a significant donation.”

Michael, who started bike commuting as a result of the Challenge, said, “It was a great opportunity to get in shape. I’d try to get to work faster every day.” He added that the competition helped make biking normal and easy for him. He and other participating employees still commute regularly by bike, and Miller Hull continues to support them. The firm purchased an office bicycle that staff can use for errands during the day, and the building where they work added 15 to 20 bike parking spots in the garage.

Miller Hull’s Commute Challenge teams are now ramping up for another great year, in which they’ll defend their first place trophy in the highly competitive architecture and engineering sector.

Cascade thanks the whole bicycling crew at Miller Hull for their generous donation and leadership in promoting bike commuting. We cheer them on as they pedal forward, just as we put their contribution to work helping other individuals and businesses bring out their bikes and ride.

If you are an employer or work for one that would like to increase bicycle commuting, we can help. Visit www.cbcef.org/bike-commuting-employers.html or contact us at commute@cascadebicycleclub.org to learn about the types of services that Cascade offers, such as workplace bike-ability assessments, bicycle infrastructure planning and customized classes. Of course, you can also offer your employees an enticing incentive like Miller Hull did.

From "Gearheads & a Redhead" and "2-122 Green Team" teams, courtesy of Lisa Adair

Hello, team captains! Thank you for accepting this leading role in the Group Health Commute Challenge [cue spotlight, pan to you and your team]. As team captains, you are the engine behind the Challenge. But are you lying awake at night wondering how you’re going to fill your team? “I’m the only one who rides to work,” you might be fretting.  But fear not: anyone can participate in the Commute Challenge, and potential teammates abound behind every cubicle.

Here are four tips to incent, inspire or coerce your way to a brilliant team:

1. Use a Commute Challenge sticky note. We made them just for you (see your captain’s packet). Stick the notes on potential teammates’ desks– or windshields!
2. Use a bribe. When in doubt, go for donuts or sweets. Tell your coworkers that, of course, you’ll regularly bring in treats– but only for your teammates.
3. Be helpful. New riders might be intimidated by all that lycra, long commute distances or routes. Offer to plan a route with potential teammates or show them how to load their bike on the bus so they can split their commute. A little encouragement and help will go a long way.
4. Have fun and be inclusive. When thinking of potential teammates, go for new riders and people with short commutes. We’re rewarding more than just miles! Tell your potential teammates that there will be some informal office celebration each week.
5. With a little creativity and some TLC, your team will be full—and you might be on your way to winning Captain of the Year! (More about Captain of the Year next week….)

Registration hasn’t been open long, but already thousands of cyclists and hundreds of teams have signed up to participate in the Group Health Commute Challenge in May. We’re more than a fifth of the way to our goal of 12,500 riders.

If you’re not yet registered, sign up is easy. The first step is to designate a captain to sign your team. When Captains register a team, automatic email invitations are sent to team members, asking them to join.  That’s it.

If you already signed up, don’t rest on your laurels, there’s still more to do. Spread the word:

1. Invite other cyclists to participate. If they’re riding already, there’s no reason not to log miles and be eligible to win prizes.
2. Help a new rider get started. Recruit new riders to your team and coach them through their first few commutes. Map out a route. Look of their bikes. If you can, ride into work with a new rider to model behavior and show them how easy cycling is.
3. Join the event on Facebook , and while you’re at it, post your ride so your friends know you’re biking.
4. Follow us on Twitter and tweet some news. We’re using #GHCC for posts related to the contest.
5. Decorate your cubicle and put up posters at your workplace or around your community. Print out posters at our promotional materials page.
6. Volunteer! Have a good time, meet other cyclists and help make Bike Month happen.

Not long ago, in the Land of the Bike, there was a woman who for many months had not ridden. She had stopped riding in autumn, which came with extra road debris and two flat tires, in one day! All through the sleepy months of winter, the woman’s tire lay with its wilted tube like the sad and colorless remains of summer bloom. Rain fell, even snow. Winds blew. Gray overtook the Land of the Bike, and the woman did not ride. Long bus commutes and other travel ate at the woman’s time. She did not buy the new puncture-resistant tires she needed. She did not repair her flat. She did not invest in fenders. Her complexion faded.

But when she sensed the stirring of spring over the Handlebar Hills, the woman bought tires and fenders. By herself, she fixed the flat. And then the woman brought her bicycle outside. She put foot on pedal. Once again, she began to ride.

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That woman was me: the Cascade Bicycle Club employee who didn’t bike between November and the end of March. When I started up again the other week, I was welcomed back to the Land of the Bike with a sort of fanfare and excitement, with challenge and a whirr of freedom that has me spinning like a wheel.

I offer my story as encouragement for all of the enthusiastic souls gearing up for the springtime celebration of bicycle commuting that we call Bike Month. Biking to work isn’t always easy, as my story will demonstrate, but it brings with it many, many rewards. Give it a go! Get a team going for the Group Health Commute Challenge. In time, you’ll have your own story to tell. Maybe you’ll share it with us.

For me, it started this way, with a stint as…

The Bicycle Sherpa of Tropical Fruit

The day I had chosen to start biking again, Wednesday, was also the day on which a friend’s birthday dinner had been rescheduled. It was a potluck. I had purchased tropical fruit to commemorate a recent trip to Kauai: one mango, one pineapple and a papaya. An almost-five-pound papaya.

Note to self: Until you get a rack and panniers, leave the five-pound papayas at home.

Or maybe the pineapple, which didn’t fit into my backpack and which I tossed in a shoulder bag that persisted during the ride in slipping forward in direct range of my pedaling knee, such that I had to continually readjust my load toward the posterior.

Thankfully it didn’t rain. Thankfully I didn’t get run over when I stalled under my load, crossing an intersection from a full stop on a slight incline. It meant that I’d have a chance to continue my adventures the next day, and…

Bike with the Mayor!

Mike McGinn, Mayor of Seattle, had agreed to let me interview him for the Cyclist of the Month column that appears each month in the Cascade Courier. His assistant had arranged for this interview to take place during the Mayor’s regular morning bicycle commute. This would be a first for me—conducting an interview on two wheels. I’d have to pay attention to traffic, listen carefully and do my best to remember what I heard. I’ll let you read all about it in the Courier (the Courier goes to Cascade members, btw; join here). Let me just say this: The Mayor—who claimed in the interview to getting passed routinely by other cyclists on Dexter Ave—kicked my butt! On the finishing stretch to City Hall, I struggled to keep apace, wishing we could stop for just one moment and breathe.

I need to get back into biking shape. Because you never know when you may unexpectedly need to…

Ride furiously to the train station in the cold and the wind and rain

The plan for day three of cycling was lovely. Leisurely bike ride to work, then load the bike onto the #75 and #522 buses to get downtown and catch the train to Portland. It would be my bike’s first time on the train. I was excited.

Mad, cycling hamster

Shortly before the #75 was to have arrived, I checked the bus tracker. The bus was 12 minutes late. Then 13. I had a 10 minute window between buses. My plan was failing. I exploded into a frenzy of preparation—tearing open my tightly packed bag (which I am happy to say did not include a five-pound papaya) and excavating to the bottom for my bike shoes, then clumsily lacing them while coworker Erica re-stuffed the bag and endured my constant stream of nervous commentary and cursing. I stumbled out the door, hopped on my bike and pedaled into a curtain of rain and hearty bursts of wind. I pedaled and pedaled and pedaled like a mad and wet little hamster (on a bike?) until I got to the U-District, at which point my ice-cold hands, racing heart and scattered thoughts told me it would be prudent to STOP and catch the bus downtown. So I did. And though the bus was late and packed with passengers and slow, I made it to the train station and successfully loaded my bike. The bike and I rested in Hood River for the weekend so that we could be ready the next week to…

Tour Portland’s awesome bicycle infrastructure

Neighborhood Greenway in Portland

Cascade staff had the opportunity recently to travel to Portland, meet with our good colleagues at the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and take a 24-mile bicycle tour of Portland’s bike lanes, cycle tracks, bridges, neighborhood greenways and other convenient and delightful bicycle facilities. Some salient points regarding my happiness on this tour:

• It didn’t rain. Well, maybe for five minutes in the afternoon, but really, no. No rain.
• Portland is flat(ter).
• There are fewer cars—even parked cars—in the places we visited.
• We rode on neighborhood greenways, often called bicycle boulevards. Neighborhood greenways are residential streets lying parallel to arterials and set up to be safe for cyclists, pedestrians, kids and other people not powering some sort of combustion engine. They have speed bumps to slow motorized traffic. Stop signs halt cars on most intersecting streets. A cyclist may glide along these greenways, relaxed and confident and happy, unlike when she returns home to Seattle and…

Rides Fourth Avenue downtown from the train station

I want to be a buff and burly cyclist, willing to tackle most traffic scenarios. But often I am sensitive and fearful, and though I may be willing, I am far from comfortable. That’s how I was on Fourth Avenue in downtown in Seattle. It was downright unpleasant biking on that thoroughfare, even in the bike lane. Mostly it was from the speed of passing cars. I kept muttering under my breath: “I don’t like this.” I mourned the bygone day of the Portland neighborhood greenways. Don’t get me wrong—it’s awesome that Seattle has bike lanes on Fourth Avenue. But it strikes me that we still have challenges if we’re going to get folks—I was thinking of women in particular, but really, anyone—to commute downtown under those conditions. The trip to Portland showed me that advances are possible. And I work with an energetic group of people here at Cascade who are doing their darnedest to make those advances a reality. There is hope.

And there’s this: the more people who choose bicycling, the safer the roads get for ALL cyclists. So, how about it? Anyone want to join me and thousands of other new and returning and regular cyclists this Bike Month in an embrace of bike commuting?

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Thus concludes the Tale of the Prodigal Cyclist. In recounting her tale of return and redemption, the Prodigal Cyclist has perhaps been remiss in not describing the joy and freedom she felt amongst the challenges. In those first tender days back upon the bike, there were cherry blossoms at which to marvel. There was the smell of green things pushing their way through soil into springtime. There was the strong way the woman’s legs felt the third morning; the energy she brought to work after a bicycle commute. Let’s not forget the $2.50 saved, each commute leg, in bus fare. So while there are sometimes rain and rush in cycling, there are also sun and leisure. While there are loads to carry, there are burdens to shrug off. There are busy downtown streets and idyllic neighborhood greenways. And there will be more neighborhood greenways, here and there, by and by. And the prodigal cyclist will return to them.