June is Bike to Work Month and we kick it off with Bike to Work Day. That’s Monday, May 28th. See here.
Tracy kicked if off early and blogged about it last week. She’s back in the saddle again!
I’ve signed up for the Guelph Bike to Work Monday and hope to win some prizes and meet some fellow cyclists.
Some of us at Fit is a Feminist Issue are celebrating Bike to Work Day on the blog by sharing photos of ourselves and our commuter bikes on the blog on Monday. (And we’re also biking to work of course!)
Want in? Send me a photo of you and your commuter bike. Include your name, kind of bike, where you live, how far you ride and one other fun fact about you and biking to work.
Email Sam at samanthajbrennan@gmail.com
Looking forward to seeing your bikes.
And you too, of course!
Tracy
Type of bike: Specialized Globe San Francisco
Lives and works in London, Ontario
Bike to work is about 9K round trip
Fun fact: Door to door it is faster for me to bike to work than drive, park, and walk to my office. And I love the bike path that I get to take beside the river almost all the way.
Sam
My commuter bike is a Giant AnyRoad. It’s not a cyclocross bike and it’s not a road bike. It’s a style called Adventure Road bike. See here for a description of why you might want to commute on this style of bike. It’s good on pavement, grass, and gravel. I’ve got it loaded down with German panniers. Usually they contain a change of clothes, a bike lock, lunch, my laptop, books…
Cate
I’m traveling in Bhutan right now and have been riding a huge mountain bike in the actual mountains. But normally in Toronto I ride a sleek hybrid Opus to all of my work gigs. The distance varies from about 5 km to many of my client site to about 9 uphill if I go to Sunnybrook hospital. I have to psych myself up for that one. I also have to be thoughtful about what I’m wearing, since I don’t have an office and can’t usually change. There are a lot of shorts under dresses. It’s the best way to navigate Toronto traffic and actually know what time I’ll arrive — ttc is way less reliable. I do have a doubleb lock since my 7 year old mec bike was stolen while I was at a meeting a couple of years ago.
Jennifer
Jennifer Burns is a reader of the blog and the Executive Director of the Canadian Philosophical Association. I’m the President and we were meeting Friday to chat about our annual congress. She showed up at the coffee shop we like to work in on this gorgeous bike. It’s an Achielle, a classic Belgian bike that cost her a medium sized fortune but since she doesn’t have a car she decided it was okay to spend a lot of money on a bike.
Christine
I have discovered that the ride to my Mom’s house is far easier than the path to return to my own place. But, the path to Mom’s is downhill so, maybe that’s a whole different metaphor?
I work from home so when I ‘bike to work’, it’s actually me leaving my house, going for a ride and then returning to my house. But that’s good for creating a separation between home time and work time.
I didn’t have any specific criteria for choosing a helmet, so I picked one with similar swirls as the ones on my bike. I thought the connection between the helmet and the bike would help me move smoothly – like a kind of magic, you know?
Bettina
Bettina’s bike is an 8-gear Diamant 247. Diamant is a traditional German bike manufacturer from the East of the country and one of the few success stories of companies that thrived after the demise of communism, although it is now a subsidiary of Trek. Bettina bought her bike six years ago for bike commuting purposes in Hamburg, Germany, which is a very flat city. She now lives in hilly Heidelberg, where she works at the top of a particularly steep hill and no longer bike commutes to work (8 gears just won’t cut it), but she cycles pretty much everywhere else in the city.
