Event encourages bike riding to work in Warren
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Rosemary Campany doesn’t work anymore, but when she did, she rode a bicycle to work all the time.
She’d drive from her home in Warren to a location in Southington, where she would leave her car and ride back to Warren to Delphi Packard Electric on Dana Street.
At the end of a day of loading, unloading and driving a truck, she’d ride her bike 10 miles back to Southington.
“Then, if I didn’t have to mow grass or something, I’d take a bike ride,” she said with a smile and a laugh.
Campany talked about her love of bike riding and other outdoor activities Friday morning at the Log Cabin on Courthouse Square, where about 40 participants stopped for a free breakfast and a T-shirt during the third annual Bike To Work Warren Day.
Campany said she used to ride her bike to work “most of all just for fun,” but she also rode a bicycle across the United States three times. She covers an average of 8,000 miles on her bike in an average year, she said, adding, “It used to be more.”
Also at the Log Cabin was Jim Taylor of Lordstown, who has to be the most devoted work-related bike rider in the area, and he keeps detailed records to prove it.
Taylor, who works at GM Lordstown, rode a bicycle to work 256 times in 2013 and drove only 18 times. His total mileage for 2013 was 4,321.8 miles, he said.
It helps to have knobby mountain bike tires on the bike, he said, for days when there is ice and snow on the road.
He said the weather this winter made it very difficult, however. He’s had to take the car 24 times already this year because of the brutally cold weather and the large amounts of snowfall in Trumbull County during the winter months.
He has ridden the bicycle 83 times to work since Jan. 1.
On days when Taylor is off from work, he likes to take a “century” or “double century” ride — either 100 or 200 miles in one day.
In July, he rode 217.2 miles on a 24-hour ride that began at midnight and ended at midnight the next day, he said.
Mel Milliron, educator for the Trumbull County Board of Health and one of the Bike To Work Day organizers, said the goal of the event is to encourage people to be more physically active by bicycling to work.
Many of those who participated traveled only a few miles to their jobs at various offices in the city. One woman and her husband, however, rode 8.9 miles from their home in Mecca Township.
The number who participated this year was down from last year because the temperature was lower than normal and possibly because of the amount of rain all week, Milliron said. There were about 40 on Friday, compared with more than 60 last year.
Among the most-important messages Milliron stresses for people riding on the streets to work is to wear a helmet, stay on the right side of the road, and obey all traffic laws, including use of turn signals and stopping for stop signs and traffic signals.