Last week DMC joined close to a thousand other Chicagoland companies and organizations to participate in the Bike Commuter Challenge. This is my sixth year participating in Bike to Work Week in Chicago, but my first at DMC.
I was excited to share my lively enthusiasm for bike commuting with my coworkers. We normally have a handful of devoted bikers commuting to work, so this was a great opportunity to encourage new riders to get out on the road.
Sure, there are risks to bicycling, but there are also the tremendous benefits to the mind, body, soul, budget, and environment. By the end of the week we had a 33.3% participation rate and unofficially placed 5th in our category of For-Profit Chicago Businesses With 25-99 Employees. I am proud!
As part of Bike to Work Week, a dozen or so of us joined Active Transportation Alliance at Beer Bistro North for an after work celebration of bikes!
Liz and Ryan, two of our newest Boston employees who are training in Chicago joined us too.
We all had a great time hanging out, selecting from the over 100 brews Beer Bistro serves and jumping straight to the half-baked chocolate chip cookies before eating dinner.
Admittedly, we were celebrating more than just bikes, but the bike challenge was a great motivation for a fun Activity Fund event!
Another notable bonus to Bike to Work week was that we installed an additional vertical bike rack in our building to help accommodate the increasing number of riders in our office, especially during the great weather months in the summer. Hopefully this will encourage the new riders from Bike to Work Week to continue the fun!
Great job and thank you to Jessica, Lyndon, Darren, Courtney, Jeff, Jaclyn, Spencer, Ken, Eric, Jimmy, Jesse, Alex, Ryan, Jordan, Ashley, Pete, Tim, and Simon. Some of our crew even used the bike sharing program Divvy to join the fun, now that DMC subsidizes annual Divvy memberships for all of our employees.
Shout-out to Ken who had the longest commute of us all – 40 miles round trip!
As competitive as we are, DMC plans to continue this tradition in the years to come and eventually win the Bike Commuter Challenge!