Bike-to-Work Day 2019
In the United States, May is National Bike Month, with Bike-to-Work day taking place on the third Friday. This year the national event took place on May 17th, a fine, sunny spring Friday in southern Illinois, and that’s when the AMT crew put on their helmets and biked to work.
Sure, we love trucks and there are more than a few in our parking lot, but we’ve been biking to work one day a year, for quite a while (some of us bike to work more often). According to a few of our original bike-to-workers, the annual AMT Bike-to-Work event is probably in its 13th year. When asked for a definitive date, founder of the event, Rob McClain explained that he’s fathered three children and slept a couple of nights since then. So we’re going with 13.
What exactly is a bike-to-work event? Well, here at AMT, team members meet up in the St. Joe Catholic School parking lot with their bicycles and together ride the approximately 2.5 miles to the AM Transport headquarters. We take this ride in the spring when the weather is nice and the sun is out. We laugh and joke around and sometimes we ride bikes that are either too large or too small for us. It’s always a lot of fun, and most everyone participates.
We take our commitment to our community seriously. That’s why we participate in a wide variety of community events from hosting Give Thanksing and working with the CEO program and kids to our annual clean up around the city pool. But we also take community seriously. The community here in the office where we work and play together. The annual bike ride is one way we are both in the community and creating community with one another.
This year was Dallas Racklin’s first year biking to work and he had a great time commenting that “it really shows we have a group that can have a blast doing anything.”
Jason Doris said that the bike ride is his annual reminder that he needs to exercise more. He added, “It’s a great opportunity for my family to make jokes about how I get my bike out once a year.”
How much fun it is seems to be a theme. Colby Shawver looks forward to the event every year. “Even though we all work together every day in here, the team always has a good time when we are outside of work.”
Each year, we get a new t-shirt to commemorate the event, and they’re always really cool. But the shirts aren’t the only benefit. “I always feel a bit more accomplished when I bike to work rather than drive,” Erik Jensen said.
And Chad echoed that sentiment, “It’s nice to get out of bed early with some exercise.”
No, we’re not giving up our trucks, but biking on a nice spring morning is a fun way to get to work. Especially if you’re Rob McClain who “always wanted to be in a bike gang–but has never had a motorcycle.”