2009 Bike Commuters of the Year

These Bike Commuters of the Year have been recognized for their dedication to riding their bike for every day transportation.  Their inspiring stories are testaments to the many benefits of bicycle commuting from improving their health to bringing families together.  Remember that you too can reap the rewards of bicycling, even if you ride just a few times a week.  Give it at try.  You'll soon find yourself riding more and more.

Bike Commuters of the Year by County
Alameda County
Contra Costa County
Marin County
Napa County
San Francisco County
San Mateo County
Santa Clara County
Solano County
Sonoma County

Here are the prizes the Bike Commuters of the Year won

Here are the Bike Commuters of the Year for 2008

Alameda County - Laura McCamy
 
Laura McCamy bike commutes from Emeryville to San Francisco using BART’s new eLockers to securely lock her bike at MacArthur BART. She works for the law firm of Severson & Werson, a short walk from Embarcadero BART.
 
“I've known Laura as a neighbor at Emeryville's Doyle Street Cohousing for 5 years and during that time she has been one of my bike Divas and role models as she has no car and does all her errands using a 100+lb capacity bike trailer, including Saturday trips to the farmer’s market,” says Adam Eigner, a neighbor of Laura.
 
Laura recently married April Atencio last October and now organizes regular bike outings for their community with kids and adults, including organizing several teams for the Team Bike Challenge and a kids team called the “awesome otters.” And when Laura and April got married at their home last year, they had a post-nuptial bike parade of guests, wearing their wedding dresses, of course.

Contra Costa County - Jeff Kent

Jeff Kent bike commutes from Lafayette to Pleasanton over 20 miles each way. He often rides an old Japanese made bike, complete with rack, panniers, fenders and generator hubs for biking at night. He rides San Ramon Valley Blvd to the Iron Horse Trail, down into Pleasanton to the Hacienda Business Park.

 “2009 marks my husband’s 30th year of Bicycling to Work. He loves to ride his bike and finds biking to work one of the easiest ways to keep in shape. It allows him to indulge his passion for cycling and save gas and money,” says Jeff’s wife Tanya Ericson. In 2008, Jeff set another personal best of 146 commute days by bike, totaling about 6300 miles. In the spring and summer months, his 42 mile round trip to work is often supplemented with a detour over Mount Diablo. Jeff works is in the IT department of Robert Half International in Pleasanton. RHI encourages its employees to ride to work, providing showers and lockers right on site, and allows employees to bring their bikes into their buildings for safe keeping.
 
In his many years of riding the Iron Horse trail to and from work, he has developed a network of friends in the other bike commuters he routinely sees on the trail. Riding his bike to work is such a regular part of his daily routine, he doesn’t even give it a second thought. When he gets up in the morning and dresses for work, instead of deciding what tie to wear, he has to pick out which jersey to wear from his extensive collection.

Marin County - Clay Kaufmann

Clay Kaufmann, a third grader at Dixie School in Lucas Valley, has been selected as the Marin County Bike Commuter of the Year. Other bike commuters may log more daily miles, but this feisty ten-year-old is gutsy and determined.  Clay and his father Mark are often seen riding their bikes in the neighborhood.  Early in the school year when it became apparent that Clay and Mark had not missed a single day riding the one and a half miles to school, Kel Harris, who spearheads the Safe Routes to School effort in the school district, issued a challenge to Clay: if Clay could ride his bike to school every day through the end of school, Clay would receive a special prize. Clay has met that challenge, through good days and bad, including rain and foul weather. Every day, Clay meets the challenge with a smile on his face, standing for the final sprint along the rolling hills to the school, as though he were on the final stage of the Tour.

Napa County - Justin Medaris

Justin was a cyclist even before he helped found and then teach in the Waldorf charter school in Napa.   Over the last nine years, he has continued to bike to school - even when the school moved to a new location four times farther away. His job requires him to stay with the same class of children from 1st grade through 8th grade. As the curriculum became more complicated, and his hours and materials increased accordingly, an "extra-cycle" appeared on his bike, as a way of transporting all the extra "stuff" he needed to take to school and home. He found that the only thing he couldn't haul on the extra-cycle was a bale of hay, but he did try. Justin is a master teacher and provides a natural and very genuine example of the benefits of cycling. As his students matured, more and more of them copied his example and rode to school. On Bike to Work Day last year, a few of them challenged themselves to ride to school in Napa from Sonoma, where a few of the students lived.  Justin, who has cycled down to teach first grade again, will continue to have a positive effect on his new young charges.

San Francisco County - Shirley Johnson

The 2009 Bike Commuter of the Year for San Francisco County is Dr. Shirley Johnson. Leader and Founder of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Bikes ONboard campaign, Dr. Johnson has successfully led the way to getting more dedicated bike space on Caltrain cars, and thus has encouraged and aided hundreds of bike commuters from three different counties to keep pedaling! Dr. Johnson’s dedication to living by the bike goes beyond commuting, she also runs errands and enjoys vacations by bike. Not even bears in the road can stop her- literally- she rode right past them on a bike tour from Alaska back to the Bay Area! Photo by: Dusty Jensen.

Santa Clara County - Felipe Buitrago

Felipe is fiercely enthusiastic about cycling. Period. Born in Atlanta, growing up in Madrid, Felipe used to sneak out of his house as a kid just to ride his bike.  In attempt to fund an education in photography, Felipe was a bike messenger until he was inured on the job.  A true survivor, Felipe is now a professional photographer for Metro, Silicon Valley’s weekly newspaper. If you’ve ever read the Metro, you’ve certainly seen his photographs. The amazing thing is, Felipe commutes via bicycle.  He's able to take all of Metro’s cover story photos, news article story photos and weekly photos of people out and about town, commuting via bicycle.  Felipe accomplishes all of this while still meeting his deadlines.

San Mateo County - Dennis Chuck

Dennis has been working for the City of South San Francisco for about 20 years, where he is currently a City Engineer.  He pedals his way to work from his home in Foster City at least four to five times a week. He has inspired other co-workers to choose biking to work as an option and is willing to assist them with finding the best bike route or even locating a local bike shop for last minute repairs.  As one colleague puts it, "Dennis is one strong, quiet commuter - dedicated and polite.  He deserves this award for perseverance and fortitude.  Go Dennis!"

Solano County - Craig Snider

Craig Snider works at the US Forest Service on Mare Island, Vallejo. Craig faithfully rides the 20-mile round trip from Benicia to work every day, rain or shine. He began riding to work every day after moving to the area in 2003 and realized that by riding to work, he could skip his former post-work running regimen and save his knees in the process. The US Forest Service supports physical fitness and offers a flexible work schedule, so Craig uses the Doppler radar system on his computer to time his rides to miss heavy cloud-bursts on stormy days and keep on biking. The riding keeps him in shape for forest fires in the summer. He is also active in the Benicia Bicycle Club. Craig has promoted bicycle commuting with his coworkers and helped them with safety issues regarding traffic, bridge crossings, and railroad tracks.
 

Sonoma County - Jeffrey Reeder

For the ten years that he has lived in Sonoma County, Jeffrey has commuted to work every day from his home in Santa Rosa to his job as a Spanish professor and chair of the languages department at Sonoma State University.  Rain, cold, heat, and even hail haven't kept him from the 20-mile round trip. He says that compared to bike commuting in the stifling heat as he did when living in Texas or in the humidity and rain of southern Japan, Sonoma County is an ideal place to ride. Not only is cycling good exercise, good for the environment, and enjoyable, he finds that commuting to work clears his head and gives him the opportunity for some focused thinking. Although he would be honored to be named Bike Commuter of the Year, he would rather see the day when bike commuting were such a common and natural action that an award would seem odd (can you imagine an award for "Car commuter of the year"?). To this end, he encourages and helps his students and colleagues become bike commuters also!

Click here for an interview with Jeffrey.