printable versionDuring Bike Month, they pedal for glory
Competition fuels friendly interoffice rivalries on campus
BY MICHAEL PEÑA
From left, Andrew Harker, Mike Ling, Creed Raftery, Paul Goldstein and Dena Mossar make up the team Budget Cycles, which is competing in a Bay Area-wide contest this month to promote bicycle commuting.
For many alternative commuters at Stanford, National Bike Month is no different from any other month. So it should be no surprise that a Bay Area bicycling competition this month is riddled with teams that include staff from all over campus. But biking isn't necessarily a breeze for all of them.
Mike Ling, computer information systems analyst in the University Budget Office, lives in east San Jose and takes his bike and a VTA express bus to campus most mornings. But with daylight savings now in his favor, Ling said he increasingly bikes the approximately 20 miles back home at the end of the day.
Another contestant on staff, Maria Cacho, practically had to overcome a phobia of bicycling. Several years ago, a child of one of her closest friends died after a car hit her as she biked to school in the morning. But after years of pleas by her own daughter, and more recent prodding by co-workers, Cacho has taken her new hybrid bike by the handlebars.
One of Cacho's teammates is Provost John Etchemendy. As the team's Big Wheel—an anchor position that must be filled by an elected official, manager or executive—Etchemendy earns three times as many points as other team members. But more than his hectic schedule, the biggest burden for him has been more tangible, weighty issues.
"My main challenge has been carrying work home and back again," Etchemendy said. "I've got a wonderful sidesaddle, but sometimes it gets so full I can hardly stay upright!"
Coordinated by the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition, the Team Bike Challenge includes more than 100 teams throughout the nine counties in the region, with participants carrying the banners of municipal public works departments, young feminist groups, high-tech companies and major research institutions such as NASA Ames and Stanford. Each team has five members, and they earn points—which they track themselves—for every day they bike instead of drive. The team with the highest total at the end of May wins designer bike bags and goodies for each member, and together, they get to pick a public space in their county for a new bike rack.
The entire list of contestants on the bike coalition's website, http://www.bayareabikes.org/btwd/, shows no fewer than seven teams claiming affiliation to Stanford. Cacho and Etchemendy ride for Stanford L & B (Land & Buildings). But there also are teams with staff from the Office of Sponsored Research, the Alumni Association, Facilities Operations and the Department of Project Management, Cost and Management Analysis, and other administrative offices.
On May 18, which was Bike to Work Day, the coalition estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 Bay Area residents participated.
Cycling is no stretch for Paul Goldstein, Ling's teammate and director of financial and strategic studies in the University Budget Office. Goldstein said bicycling is his main mode of commuting and that he has not purchased a parking sticker since the late nineties. Although he lives less than 2 miles off campus, he said short car trips are especially harmful to air quality because of inefficient fuel burning and increased emissions associated with engines started cold. "It's really a challenge designed to get people who don't usually ride to ride, even short trips," he said. "That has a measurable impact on air quality and congestion."
Goldstein's team, Budget Cycles, had a slight lead on the other teams as of press time, with a score of 117. But inching closer were Stanford L & B, with 107 points, and the Saddle Sores, which includes staff from Project Management and the University Architect/Planning Office, with 102 points.
"It's really sort of exciting to be competing against the provost," said Goldstein, whose wife, Palo Alto City Councilwoman Dena Mossar, is the Big Wheel for Budget Cycles. "Stanford has done a great job promoting alternative modes of transportation."
For Cacho, the act of bicycling has been a challenge all its own. Until a few weeks ago, she had driven to work regularly since starting at Stanford about seven years ago. The death of her friend's 6-year-old daughter a few years back made her even more reluctant to ride. But over the last year, her daughter urged her to give biking another shot, and when co-workers at Stanford began to second that, Cacho decided it was time.
Cacho admits that she still feels uneasy at times about biking, especially when cars zoom by as she bikes with her daughter to school and then continues onto campus. In fact, when she first joined the team, she rode her daughter's bike to Stanford. But she bought her own two weekends ago, and now she plans to sit in the saddle over the long haul.
"It's super easy," said Cacho, an environmental planner and spatial analyst in the university architect's office. "I'm planning on biking all summer."