I love bike to work day.  I realize how ironic that is given the fact that I work from home, but this day makes me wish I didn’t (just this day).  It’s like a carnival out there, and it starts as soon as you begin setting up your canopy pre-6:00 am (or attempting to set up the canopy, as was the case for Jill and I!).  Our location for the past three years has been just north of La Costa Avenue on the west side of the 101.

 With just a small request for volunteers a few weeks back, I was flooded with offers to pitch in.  Volunteering is what is truly special about our club – each and everyone of us has the opportunity to put ourselves out there and give something back to the cycling community.  The entire club leadership is made up of volunteers, with all of us having full time employment elsewhere – we are software engineers, CPAs, doctors, occupational therapists.  I was specifically excited about the group of volunteers that showed up for Bike2Work Day as we spanned the range of new members to long-time members; men and women; A group to E group.  It was an incredible opportunity to spread the word about how our club has grown and changed over the years, while staying true to our commitment to excellence in cycling.

And we handed out socks!  Which was far and away our most popular offering.

A huge thanks goes out to our 2018 Bike2Work volunteers:

• Jill Theodossi
• Carmen Mitchell Suchy
• Dan Suchy
• Tim Wilson
• David Crabb
• Eric Grade
• Rob Klingensmith
• Manya Hult
• Sumi Gross
• And last but certainly not least, Kevin Greer for creating and submitting the Bike2Work application to SANDAG, picking up the supplies, and staging everything at his house.

We had a total of 137 visitors that morning.  We offered water, Rx bars, muffins, hot coffee, Swami’s socks, Discounts on Swami’s memberships, and the attractive Bike2Work t-shirts (kudos to SANDAG for improving the design).  Our canopy was decorated with a collection of historical Swami’s jerseys, which generated a surprising amount of interest and discussion.

We also had Velofix on hand for any bike repair needs.  Oddly enough, a cyclist’s chain broke right at our rest stop. We were grateful to Velofix for coming out and supporting our efforts!

If you’d love to get more involved in Swami’s community outreach, we would love to have you.  Use the swamis.org Contact Us form to get more information.