We are excited to announce the San Mateo and Santa Clara County Team and Company Bike Challenge winners from May's Bike to Work Month competition.

I got an email three weeks ago from my Director of Engineering, Aaron Francis, about Bike to Work Day. I expressed my interest in doing it but I was skeptical to do the 18.5 mile ride from my house to work on my single speed.

This update on SVBC's role in Bike Month was authored by our executive director Shiloh Ballard.

Having come from the world of policy advocacy, many of my friends ask how the new job is going and whether I miss advocacy. Yes and no. It’s easy for me to gravitate towards the work of our policy team – working with Caltrain to increase bike capacity, figuring out the next phase of bike share on the Peninsula, or coordinating with Santa Clara County leaders on a potential new transportation sales tax. But instead I’m focused on what many might characterize as the more mundane but necessarily elements of the Bike Coalition: reviewing contracts, raising money, and playing a support role to a great team.

One project that is on my plate is something that you don’t often hear of in the nonprofit world but is rampant in the for-profit sector – a merger and acquisition. In this case, the intent isn’t to gobble up competition, but rather to leverage SVBC’s strengths to improve how a regional program is run.

The first day going to work, yeesh was it both terrifying and thrilling! Riding along a buffered bike lane along Monterey Road in San Jose, I still felt like I’d get clipped from a car’s side window, but with every quarter-mile I rode the less I worried about it. Riding along Third Street, a street that is without a bike lane for what seemed like miles, was tough the first day, and still is.