Home > Fit City > Archives > 2010 > May > 04 > Entry
Commuting to the mailbox
Clearly I need to develop a coffee habit. Or move my mailbox farther away from the front door.
The Austin Commuter Challenge has begun, and so far the Circle C Ranch Cycling Club is dominating.
The challenge is scored by the number of trips taken by bike. Distance doesn’t matter. Each trip, whether it’s 1 mile or 30, earns a single point.
I thought I was doing well over the weekend, logging trips by bike to my Dad’s house (4 miles each way) and to a friend’s Kentucky Derby party (2 miles away). And this morning, I pedaled 8 miles to work. (And met a blog reader, Carry, who also was biking to work!)
But the Circle C Ranch team cleaned up.
Jealous, I peeked at Team Captain Wes Robinson’s stats.
In the first two days of the challenge, he logged a whopping nine trips by bike.
But how?!
As it turns out, the boy is making a lot of trips to Starbucks. And the mailbox.
Yep. He lives in a neighborhood with one of those community mailboxes. And it’s half a mile from his house, so he racks up 2 points each time he checks his mail. Starbuck’s is a mile from his home. So he gets points for satisfying his caffeine fix, too.
Apparently he used to make those trips by car!
Robinson’s team, you may not be surprised to hear, won last year’s team commuter challenge. They replaced 972 car trips with bike trips and logged 2,873 miles.
“I think that’s point of competition, to get folks who don’t ride 500 miles a month to log a bunch of short trips,” Robinson says.
In all, more than 300 people participated in the challenge last year, logging more than 8,400 trips.
I’m thinking of getting my mail delivered to a friend’s house, just so I have a reason to ride down the street.
The photo above shows last year’s winning Circle C Team.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: cycling
Comments
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By Carri
May 4, 2010 11:41 AM | Link to this
Hi Pam! Was great seeing you biking to work on this oh-so-beautiful morning. Can’t wait for the ride home!! :-)
By Just Some dude
May 4, 2010 11:58 AM | Link to this
Someone call the wah-mbulance for poor Pam!
By Angela Bell
May 4, 2010 12:48 PM | Link to this
I will gladly ask Darrell, the Marilyn postman, to drop your mail off at our house! Then we will have any excuse to see you each afternoon:) AJ and Wrigley would love it too and it would help your cause!
By Andy Smith
May 4, 2010 1:16 PM | Link to this
Someone call the Wah-mbulance! Poor Pam!
By Pam LeBlanc
May 4, 2010 1:23 PM | Link to this
Carri — How cool that we met on our bike commute! It IS a perfect day to pedal to work. I’ll look for you this afternoon. Enjoy the ride home!
By Wes
May 4, 2010 3:22 PM | Link to this
Catch us if you can!
By Wes
May 4, 2010 3:24 PM | Link to this
Oh, and we’ll arrange to have to have a team member deliver coffee to your office, by bike of course!