Be the Change!

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If you're like us, you care about our world and the environment.

Founded in April 2009, we're a group of people who commute by bicycle to work. Many of us aren't able to ride every day, and sometimes not even once a week. But on occasion we ride to work. Sometimes we even ride two or more days in a row, and a handful of our members do ride every single day to work on their bicycles!

We cycle to work for many reasons, one of which is because we believe in this wisdom from Gandhi:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

We consider ourselves to be pretty smart. We care about our environment, and we know that our country's love affair with the automobile eventually needs to come to an end.

We know that if even once a week every able-bodied person across America rode his or her bike to work, reliance on oil would tumble along with pollution, traffic congestion, and global warming.

But we do little or nothing to cut back on driving because the urgency isn’t there. We don’t feel any sense of crisis. And worse, we worry that riding a bike will make us look juvenile or radical or offbeat. And we didn’t get our jobs as industry and civic and business leaders by being offbeat.

An yet, we know we need to take action and so our team has decided it's time to stop talking about alternative transportation and make it real, today, now.

So our invitation is for you to join us in riding to work a few days a week—even once a week, or even just a couple times a month, and not during the winter unless you really want to.

Picture the power of us setting an example by riding our bikes to work. Riding with no apology and no embarrassment. Riding because even a single ride makes a difference and means one less trip by car. Riding because it’s healthy, because it’s a nice way to commute, because it inspires others and sets an example. Riding because we want to be the change we want to see in the world.

We hope you'll join us. To do so, read the FAQs below and send an email to Jim Ott at jimott@sbcglobal.net.

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FAQS about joining:


Who is eligible to join?
Anyone who lives or works in the Tri-Valley region of the S.F. East Bay may join. So if you live in Pleasanton, Dublin, Livermore, San Ramon, Danville or Sunol, or you commute into these cities, you can join. If you don't find yourself eligible, we encourage you to steal our idea and start a club in your region!


How do we track miles?
When you first email our club founder, Jim Ott, you'll need to tell him your round trip miles to and from work. So if your commute is 3 miles to work and then 3 miles home, your round trip commute is 6 miles. Jim will record your name and round trip into a spreadsheet. Then, every Friday morning when you arrive at work, email Jim with the number of times you rode to work that week. (Tip: create a recurring task on your online calendar to alert you every Friday morning to email Jim).

When you email, remember that Jim doesn't need to know the miles, because he has those. He just needs the number of times you rode that week.

A typical Friday morning email looks like this:

Rode 3 times this week.

Jim will reply with a thank you! or a word of encouragement, and he'll record your miles, which are added to all the other team member miles. We total miles and trips monthly and keep a running total.

Remember, we're only tracking miles that would have been driven in a car, so exercise miles or longer rides home after work to burn a few extra calories don't count. Sure, they're good for you, but they don't count for our miles because we're only tracking the miles we're NOT commuting by car.

What about side trips or errands in addition to my commute?
Yes, these miles count if you normally would have driven your car. One of our members rides each Friday to a Rotary meeting in addition to his commute, so he includes these added miles and the number of added trips in his emails. Also, if you run an errand on a weekend by bike or after work instead of taking a car, track and report those miles as well. The spreadsheet has a column for extra miles and extra trips.

What if I'm retired but I ride my bike for errands instead of taking a car?
We love people like you and we have several team members who fit into this category. In this case, you will email Jim each Friday with the number of trips you've ridden plus the number of miles. We track total trips and total miles so we can report out to the world how many car trips and car miles we have saved.

Pretty simple, eh? Now email Jim at jimott@sbcglobal.net and start making those bike miles count by being the change today!