Cindy Torres bikes to work every day.
Every day means every day in her case.
“I live in Mapleton Mobile Home Park. I don’t travel far, 1.8 miles each way,” said Torres, who works as a custodian at the University of Colorado. “I go to work at 4 o’clock in the morning, every single day – rain, snow, shine, food.”
Torres is among the 4 percent of Boulder County residents who commute to work by bicycle, often for environmental reasons combined with enjoying the ride. It’s probably safe to say, though, that many bike commuters might take the occasional snow day off.
It’s different for those who work during off hours.
“For folks who don’t have a car or have the money for a parking pass, for those folks who work nontraditional hours when the bus doesn’t run, when we got to go to work, we got to go on a bicycle.” Torres said.
“These aren’t fancy bikes,” she added. “I want Boulder to recognize how many people riding to work who aren’t … professional people riding for fitness.”
When it snows, the streets aren’t usually plowed yet when Torres leaves for work.
“If I can get my bike out, I end up dragging it,” she says. “I’ve run a marathon. There are times when I dragged my bike to work that it seemed more physically demanding than that.”
Still, sometimes there are compensations.
“Sometimes during work, I’ll wear ear plugs when the vacuum is loud. When I do that I can hear myself breathing, hear internal stuff, my heart beating. It’s kind of like that,” she says, of riding before dawn. “You can almost hear the snow falling on the leaves, the snow falling on the ground, the creek running. It’s beautiful.”
