2012 BCC Rider Profile # 4: Sara Eve

• What is your age, roughly speaking? I’m in my mid-40s.


• What is your occupation or area of study? I work for the Washington State Department of Health. I have my Master’s Degree in Public Health, Community Health Education.

• What is your most frequent destination on your bike? Last summer was the first time I had a bike in more than 20 years, and I rode to my office in Lacey from my home on the upper Eastside. I changed jobs to work at the Department of Health in Tumwater, so it’s a longer ride now.

• How did you hear about the BCC? I saw flyers about it for years and longingly wanted to participate, but this is the first year I’ve had a bike!

• How many times have you participated in the Bicycle Commuter Contest? This is my first year.


• What got you started riding your bike to get around (practical cycling)? I wanted to feel like a “true Olympian,” I wanted to get more exercise, and I find that I do best with regular exercise if it is “practical.” I also had an injury about a year ago that made it hard to do what I usually did for exercise – dancing and walking – and needed to find another way to be active, so now it’s biking and swimming.

• How many years have you been getting around by bike?

• Describe your current average or usual trip (distance, terrain, urban/rural, etc.): To get to work, I ride from my house near Bethel and 26th through neighborhoods to Boulevard for about a half mile, through neighborhoods again until I connect to Henderson, and then Henderson to Tumwater Blvd. A mix of neighborhoods and rural, about 8 miles.

• How have you adapted your habits to make practical cycling work for you? When I bought a bike last year, we went from being a two-car family to a one-car family, and that has been a little hard, but it also makes me more likely to ride the bike. The car we bought was big, but burns a lot of gas, so not consuming gas is a big motivator.

• What are some of the benefits you have experienced from commuting by bike? I really feel proud of myself when I do it. I also like how I’m not your “average” rider in terms of how I look, if there is such a thing – I hope it challenges people’s stereotypes of what a bike rider looks like. And, I like being able to hear sounds like birds chirping, and notice things I wouldn’t notice if I were driving or on the bus.

• What are some of the challenges you have experienced, and how have you overcome them? The biggest challenge for me is big hills! So I have planned a route that minimizes big hills, and when I have to, I swallow my pride and walk my bike until I can ride again. I’m sure that the more I ride, there will come a time when I can handle those hills with ease (or at least won’t have to walk up them.) I was also worried about how to manage changes of clothes, showering, etc. but I’ve figured those out, too, thanks to the facilities at my workplace. But when I had a shorter ride, I figured out how to make it work with a change of clothes but not always a shower, and no one ever told me I didn’t smell nice.

• How do you choose your route (most direct, least traffic, most scenic, etc)? I prefer a route that has the least traffic, the fewest hills, has a dedicated bike lane on busy streets, and where people won’t mind how slow I am.

• What style of bike do you ride to commute? I ride a commuter bike, a Breezer Uptown EX S/17, in dusty metallic pink. My helmet, Nutcase brand, is black with pink and white flowers.


• Any words of wisdom for the beginning practical cyclist? Talk about wanting to do it with people who already do it! They will be a great source of information. Someone who I didn’t know yet at work drew me a lovely map so I would be able to find the foot/bike trails. Also, I did a test ride on a Saturday so I could see how much time it would take and what the route would be like (and then took a nice long nap). And, when I was first starting out, I got advice from an expert who taught me now to use the online Thurston County Bike Map, and learned which routes had the least traffic that way.






Less than 1 year.