Snow, rain and sleet can’t keep Rob Gusky and his bicycle off the roads of Wisconsin.
Most days, he makes the 17-mile round trip to his office in Neenah, about 100 miles from Milwaukee. When winter makes commuting treacherous, Gusky, 48, trades in his Trek for a Schwinn with studded tires.
Gusky has plenty of company these days. He is one of about 765,000 Americans who regularly bike to work, according to 2009 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. That is up 22 percent since 2006. Those numbers likely will grow as companies step up their efforts to get employees to leave their cars at home, said Andy Clarke, who runs the League of American Bicyclists, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.
“Every company is on the lookout for something that gets more people physically active,” he said.
About three-quarters of all Americans still prefer to drive to work. Not Gusky, who remains committed even after breaking a bike frame mid-commute, a mishap that required his wife to rescue him.
“I keep all my receipts and a note of the amount of money I’m saving on gas, insurance and expenses to show my wife we’re in the black,” Gusky said. “We’re saving money.”
