This article first appeared as the Cyclist of the Month column in the June 2012 issue of the Cascade Courier, our membership newsletter.

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Cyclist of the Month: JENNY ANDERSON
Age: 39
Wheels: 20-year-old Bianchi touring bike; Specialized carbon-fiber road bike
Occupation: VP, Instructor at Union Bank

When Jenny Anderson arrived at Log Boom Park in mid-May to lead that morning’s Cascade Daily Ride, one of her regular riders was riding around the parking lot, looking lost. “Oh, Jenny!” he said when he spotted her. “I didn’t recognize you. You’re not wearing your striped socks.”

Jenny laughs, “I didn’t know that was something people recognized me for. I just wear them.”

Jenny sticks out among Cascade’s clan of Ride Leaders in other ways, too. For one thing, she rides an “old dinosaur bike.” A few months back, at the cajoling of fellow Ride Leader Scott Boggs, she invested in a fancy new bike with a carbon-fiber frame.

“He asked, ‘How much does your bike weigh?’ I had no idea,” she says. “I weighed it with all my stuff on it, and it was 43 pounds! That’s ridiculous. His is 17 pounds.”

“I thought the right bike would make me go fast,” she adds. “It doesn’t. I’m still the last person on the hills.”

She says it’s her conditioning, but her overflowing rack trunk probably doesn’t help. “I carry fifty Band-Aids, two pairs of cleat covers, two bike pumps, two multi-tools and one piece of chain, since apparently I might need one if my chain breaks. But I have no idea how to fix that.”

Efficiency isn’t Jenny’s top priority. Instead, she focuses on fun. On her first ride of spring, she had each of the riders sign the waiver in a different “spring color” of ink. On April Fool’s Day, they all signed upside-down. “I never break the rules. I just have fun with them,” she says.

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This article first appeared as the Cyclist of the Month column in the March 2012 issue of the Cascade Courier, our membership newsletter.

Nominate a Cyclist of the Month!

Cyclist of the Month: JOHN WELLER
Age: 65
Wheels: Cannondale Synapse
Occupation: Retired (“Every day is Saturday.”)

John Weller began his bicycling career during the summer of ’97, on three-speed Raleigh from ’73. It was pure happenstance. “The gym was closed for a week,” he said. “I couldn’t run anymore because it hurt. I told my son, ‘Let’s go ride on the Burke.’”

A habit was born. From his start on the Burke-Gilman Trail, he became a regular bike commuter. And instead of parking his bicycle when he arrived at work, he pedaled it on the range roads of his “60,000-acre office.”

John was a range officer for the military, and he bicycled to visit his “customers” – military units training for maneuvers and artillery firing. “There I was, working in an environmentally destructive field, and my carbon footprint was a size 11,” he told me, delivering the joke with such austerity that I didn’t catch on for several seconds.

I wondered whether showing up on a bicycle might undercut his authority among gun-wielding military types. Instead, his bicycle – combined with his quick wit, hardened demeanor and a whole host of ribbons and buttons – had the opposite effect.

“The army is a physical fitness culture,” he told me. “My going to see the officers and sergeants by bike got better reviews than driving.”

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