Under beautiful clear skies and cool morning temperatures, thousands of Denver area residents biked to work this morning.
Eric Bard, a 53-year-old geophysicist, smiled from ear to ear at a breakfast station at Civic Center between Denver’s City and County Building and the Colorado Capitol.
As a boy, Bard lived at the top of a hill in Oneonta, N.Y., and loved zooming down the hill on his bike.
He has never given up bicycling.
“I love the extreme mobility of being on a bike. Riding a bike in downtown Denver is like having wings,” said Bard.
“I bike every day. The sunlight helps with my mood and Vitamin D,” added Bard.
Nearby, some of Scout Troop 324 of Westminster had just completed a portion of their 27-mile jaunt into Denver.
Chuck Sherman’s family has been a part of the troop for years. Sherman, a retired mechanical engineer, convinced troop master Brian “Bear” Beyer, to let the troop bike into Denver.
“We can do 150 miles on Denver bike trails and hardly ever see a car,” said Sherman. “I love the Denver trails.”
Some of the kids in the troop are working toward their biking merit badges. They are required to do two 10-mile trips, two 25-mile trips and one 50-mile trip on bikes to get the merit badge.
Wednesday was the perfect day for it.
Steven Beyer, 18, the son of troop master Brian Beyer, was soaked in sweat from riding in from the suburbs. He had fun, even though he doesn’t bicycle much.
“Yeah, it was a good work out,” said the younger Beyer. “We took the bike trails in.”
The annual event drew about 35,000 riders last year, with scores dropping by more than 100 breakfast stations.
The most popular are at Denver’s Civic Center and at RTD’s Market Street Station.
Wendy Wiedenbeck, a community relations specialist at EnCana oil and gas, is a Highlands Ranch resident. She drove to the Denver Tech Center and then biked 14 miles into downtown.
Her husband gave her the “commuter” bike. On her upper arm she wears a “Bodybugg” which measures the number of calories she burns.
“I love Denver. I stay on the bike paths. We have so many great bike paths,” said Wiedenbeck.
Brian Cradick, a database analyst in the academic technology department at the University of Colorado Denver, is a hardcore bicycling enthusiast.
He has four bikes.
Cradick said that he finds motorists in Denver “are nice and courteous.”
He lives three miles from work. As the weather has warmed up, he is bicycling to work twice a week.
The League of American Bicyclists has been sponsoring National Bike Month and Bike to Work Day since 1956. Colorado’s Bike to Work Day is always held on the fourth Wednesday of June.
James Tyson, who calls himself a “novice”, bicycled in to work today, despite the fact that he had done it only once before – three years ago.
“I think it is a terrific idea,” said Tyson.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
