From left to right: Lowell Fritz, Brian Fadely, Heather Ziel, Janice Waite (team captain), Peter Boveng (100% commute rate), Dave Withrow (rode the most miles: 234 miles), Rod Hobbs, and Bree Witteveen (not shown in photo). Photo by Christy Sims.
May was National Bike to Work Month. In the Seattle area this event was sponsored by the Cascade Bicycle Club to help motivate people to ride their bikes to work. As a part of this effort, the club's Group Health Commute Challenge offered a way for riders to track their commute frequency and mileage, and even challenge other riders and teams to friendly competition to see who can get more people biking to work in May. Eight NOAA Fisheries teams were formed: one from the AFSC and seven (!) from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
The AFSC team consisted of eight riders all from the AFSC's National Marine Mammal Laboratory. Calling themselves the "NMML Non-Essentials", each rider committed to ride at least 4 days during the month of May. As a team, they completed 85 commute trips (individual ranges from 4 to 19), rode 956.2 total miles (from 50 to 234 each), and a team commute rate of 58.0% (18.2 to 100%)!
The riders had a lot of fun and team spirit despite some soggy, cold conditions. They saved 920 lb of carbon dioxide from being added to the atmosphere and worked off 46,268 calories, a benefit to both the environment and their health. We hope to see more teams from AFSC next year!
See the Cascade Bicycle Club website for more information on bicycle commuting; http://www.cascade.org.
