Southern California is perfect for bicycling. We are gifted with relatively flat terrain, and the weather is practically perfect year-round. In the 365 days since the last Earth Day, there have only been 30 days where it actually rained, and the average mean temperature for the same period was a comfortably brisk 68 degrees (according to Weather Underground).
Our office tries to ride bikes together every day. Often, we ride somewhere to get lunch. Sometimes we go to a park for a picnic. We’ll make multiple stops to satisfy varied tastes. It has taken a few years, but the office has really taken to it. Everyone needs to eat, we all like a little movement to break up the office routine, and no one minds the social interactions.
We started bike to lunch to show that riding short distances around our office was incredibly easy and accessible. We started small – once a week we would take a short ride (~1.5mi or less) to a place that had a variety of food (and beer, if that was your thing.) You didn’t have to own a bike to come along. There were always bikes available to riders that didn’t own bikes or didn’t necessarily want to own bikes. For example, our company owner had a few bikes from his youth that he didn’t ride, and a few of us figured out that we could store one of our bikes at the office for lunch purposes.
Some success: one of our co-workers now rides to work nearly every single day, and has been doing this for the past few years. A few people have purchase bikes that wouldn’t necessarily have done so. We want anyone and everyone to join.
We are constantly trying to encourage our team to take the next step and ride to work.