This week, in honor of Bike to Work Day on May 9, we talked with Todd Paulsen, Executive Assistant in the Senior Vice Chancellor’s office, about how biking enhances his life.
Why Todd Bikes
If you are engaging in small talk with a colleague at UCSF, the chances are good that you'll eventually end up talking about your commute. FAS employees travel from all over the Bay Area and beyond to get to work. For Todd, biking is part of his work commute and his personal life. Todd gives us a little insight into his experience biking to work––rain or shine!––and biking for pleasure.
Why do you bike to work? There are so many benefits: it’s efficient, healthy and cheap; I don't have to pay for parking; and, there are zero emissions. It’s especially nice when there are inexplicable local traffic jams in the afternoon, and I can sail by all the car-share drivers. I feel lucky that I can do it. I don’t have a car, but even if I did, I would still bike if it were raining. Luckily good rain gear helps.
How has biking enhanced your life outside of work?
A few years ago I biked 500 miles from Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks on the Dalton Highway, one of the most isolated roads in the United States. I was hoping to get a bear sighting in; I didn't, but I did see a lot of caribou and a big moose. It was a beautiful, remote piece of the country––very little of it was paved. There was no cell phone service. It wasn’t even on GoogleMaps at the time, but now you can “ride” it online via Google Street View.
If you ride your bike to work and want to stay up-to-date on the latest campus cycling events, you can visit the UCSF Bikes! Calendar and join UCSF Bikes! on Chatter.
About One Good Thing
You like good news, and we want to share more of what’s good in 2019 with our FAS community. One Good Thing is the “cookie jar” of emails: open it up for a quick, sweet break in your week! Every Wednesday, we’ll share One Good Thing happening in FAS.
Check out last week's One Good Thing: FAS in Action and the new One Good Thing web to see all of the stories published during our pilot.
