Who was the first in your circle to take the plunge and buy a computer? Or a cell phone or an iPod or ; (drumroll) ; who was first to park the car and bicycle to work?
Was it goofy Uncle Jimmy, who used to ramble on about health and flax seed tea? Or was it somebody so solid and down-to-earth you never suspected. Someone like ; (another roll) ; your family doctor?
When Dr. Robert M. Wood appeared in his Santa Maria office in July in a flaming yellow windbreaker and black-and-white police-style helmet, he looked like a walking marquee for Caesar’s Palace. His staff was floored.
“Maybe it didn’t fit with their image of who I was,” Dr. Wood reflected one afternoon in September. “I love humor, but I come across as serious. The yellow jacket stopped them.”
Dr. Wood, graying at 47, normally presents a demeanor so quiet, so deliberate, so cerebral, he seemed an unlikely prospect to take a flyer on a Raleigh 21-speed.
But there he stood in an outfit conspicuous three blocks away. On second thought, it made sense. It was the doctor’s characteristic caution. Drivers can’t miss seeing the neon at Caesar’s.
As in the rest of the nation, Santa Maria-area bicycle traffic spiked this summer, but not always directly because of gasoline prices. Dr. Wood wasn’t motivated by them. Not exactly.
Ninety-five percent of bike shops in the United States gained new customers this year because of those numbers at the pump. A national survey revealed in August that bicycle retailers reported selling more bikes; selling more accessories, like baskets and bells; and that almost all were doing more servicing.
“Our service manager estimates that 70 percent of the repairs we are doing relate to customers getting old bikes in shape,” said a dealer in Austin, Texas.
Same thing here
The story was the same locally. The Sun surveyed bike shops in Santa Maria, Lompoc, and Solvang and found that everybody’s business was up, ranging from modest to gangbusters, depending on location.
In Lompoc, Bikes Unlimited estimated a 10 percent jump, and Bicycle Connection calculated about the same. In Santa Maria, Main Street Cycles and Pedal Power on South Broadway also figured 10 percent, though Pedal Power noted a big 40 percent bump in repairs.
The most striking increases appeared to come in the more upscale neighborhoods.
Central Coast Cyclery at Clark and Bradley reported a 25 percent rise in sales, including two bikes to Dr. Wood. And in service business, they experienced a gold rush.
“Repairs doubled,” estimated Ray Musil, who found himself dusting off 30-year-old bikes hauled out of garages.
The most startling report came from tony Solvang.
Lisa Tonello of Dr. J’s Bicycle Shop reported “more repairs than we could handle. The stuff I have for today I had from yesterday. I’ll be lucky to have them done by Saturday,” she said on a Wednesday.
She calculated repairs up 40 percent, and sales 30 percent.
“I was amazed with the number of women with kids who came in to [use their bikes] to go to the library and to the park.”
Hot ticket accessories are baby seats and baskets, she said.
Solvang has long hosted big-name bike racers like Lance Armstrong, “but to see locals use their bikes was different,” Tonello said. “We have a breaking point. When gas got to $4, that was it.”
Tonello is hard core
Tonello, 52, was a bicyclist when gas was cheap, when biking wasn’t cool. She operated the Bike Barn in Santa Maria before wearying of the small-business grind. Now she works as a mechanic for Dr. J.
She commutes 12 miles from Los Alamos to work. By bicycle.
“It’s awesome coming to work, because it’s all downhill—but not going home after you’ve been on your feet all day,” she said with an ironic grin.
She calculated her time at 45 minutes inbound, but more than an hour going home: “But the stress release is sooooo nice.”
Cycling on the commute raises security concerns, especially for women, she admitted, even though she rides day and night in all weather.
“I’ve never felt scared,” she insisted as she tossed a wrench back on her bench. Biking is manageable, she believes, “if you can get comfortable with how to fix a flat and make simple repairs.”
Safety deterred Dr. Wood
As gas prices rose to $3 in March and $3.20 in April, Dr. Wood and his wife, Linda, who works as his office manager—and who’s as bubbly as the doctor is reserved—began to debate whether to climb onto bikes.
“We were very afraid because of safety,” intoned the doctor in his most soothing bedside manner. He recalled a biking colleague who fell and broke a collarbone. Another regular rider issued a warning, “Everybody who rides gets injured.”
“We talked about it for months,” Linda exclaimed.
While Dr. Wood was intrigued, it was Linda who harbored reservations.
“She really thought this was way off base,” confided her husband. “It wasn’t going to work.”
What an irony that it was Linda who dragged her feet.
Linda’s dad back in Virginia, Bob Bainum, is a bicycle buff, and though he’s now 83, he still rides and sends his daughter newspaper articles about cycling.
He has ridden in Australia and Europe and even three years ago, at the age of 80, learned to drive a semi truck and trailer so he could transport a 48-foot attraction called The Travelling Bicycle Museum, which he founded, to bike events throughout the East.
“Growing up, he would ask me to go on these bike trips on the East Coast or over in France, but nobody would go but my mother,” Linda said, laughing now at opportunities lost.
Bainum returned a phone call from the Sun recently after a 45-minute bike ride: “I encouraged them a couple years ago to buy bicycles. He’s a family physician,” Bainum said of his son-in-law. “I didn’t think he was getting enough exercise.”
On that point, the doctor’s wife did not need convincing.
“My husband needed exercise. He is working 8 in the morning until he gets home at 7:30 on an average night. Average,” she repeated. “We would go to the gym. We went faithfully for six months at 9 at night. We knew we had to exercise, but it was so late at night.”
Over the years, Linda played tennis and soccer. She swam and walked. Her slender frame showed that she valued exercise, but she wasn’t yet convinced of the safety of biking to work.
Shafer gets the order from his doc
Neither was Craig Shafer, 54, until July when he saw his doctor (not Dr. Wood).
Communications director for PCPA at Allan Hancock College (and former Sun arts editor), Shafer learned that his blood pressure was up. He needed exercise.
Shafer’s office is in the Columbia Business Center on Stowell.
“It’s three miles each way. I scoped out some safe routes to take,” he remembered. “For me, Bradley is a straight shot all the way.”
After seven weeks of biking two or three days a week, he’s had no mishaps.
“I hadn’t been on a bike for years,” he said. “Just being out in the open air, you feel connected to your neighbors, them being locked up in a steel-encased motor vehicle.”
And the 20-minute commute is making his clothes fit looser besides: “It’s good for the heart and good for the environment,” he reasoned.
Shafer’s only problem has been the lack of bike rack slots at work.
“Last year, there might have been five bikes on a busy day. Now there’s 20,” he said. “They couldn’t get another bike rack. There’s one on order.”
Also ordered is a cargo rack for his bike.
“Anything associated with bike commuting is back ordered,” Shafer learned.
The Woods inch into action
In May, the Wood family took a deep breath and a small step. They dusted off two old mountain bikes rusting in the garage and began to take short rides on weekends. From College and Santa Maria Way, they rode north on College as far as the soccer field at Rotary Centennial Park, maybe two miles.
“I kept resisting the longer rides,” Linda admitted.
One Sunday in early June, they ventured farther. They continued north on College, through the roundabouts, across busy Betteravia, between the strawberry fields, made a left at the light on Battles and rode past the school, then turned right on Swallow and wove through the residential neighborhood to Barcellus ; all the way to the office at the Marian Plaza Medical Center.
“We can do this,” exclaimed Linda with a triumphant smile of self-discovery. She called her father immediately.
The Woods began to ride to work two or three days a week, plus on Sundays when they go in to do paperwork.
They found their rides delightful.
“There’s that endorphin rush,” analyzed the doctor. “I discovered I had been disconnected from the world around me.”
The aroma of strawberries north of Betteravia became a special treat on every ride: “It smells like toast with strawberry jam,” he said. “You see life a little more by riding on a bicycle. All those years driving, I was missing out on that.”
Linda agreed: “When we’re riding, people are very friendly. We were worried at the roundabouts. They were stopping for us.”
At the office, there’s no need to shower. The Woods don’t work up a sweat. They’re pedaling downhill in cool weather. On the way home, the trip takes 15 minutes longer. At first, Linda needed to dismount and walk her bike up the inclines near home, but not for long.
They bought new bikes. Linda’s is fuschia and candy apple red. Dr. Wood’s is, of course, a more restrained burgundy. Their half-hour morning ride is three times as long as the 10-minute commute by car, but they find that they arrive earlier than before. The bike ride is so much fun that they start sooner in the day.
There is a safety reason, too. The Woods ride between 7 a.m. and 7:30, and they sometimes ride sidewalks instead of bike lanes. They expressly chose the early hour because they wanted to avoid the walkers, they said. Besides those eye-popping jackets and helmets, they bought lights, reflectors, and bells. They always ride together. In 90 days of commuting, they’ve only had to deal with one flat tire and two dogs. They outraced both pooches.
Was it the gas prices?
“It was a convergence of things,” the doctor explained. “It was her dad who was encouraging us. We liked the feeling, and I had read on the Internet about the health benefits.”
Dr. Wood does not make any mention of gas prices. Traveling only four miles to work, he might be saving no more than $6 a week.
Was it coincidence, then, that he happened to choose this year to move to the bike?
“I tell my patients to do more exercise,” he admitted. “We’re having to practice what we preach.”
“It was serendipity to learn about ourselves and our community,” Linda added. “And it was something we could do together.”
But Linda’s dad has been biking for decades, even longer than Dr. Wood has been preaching exercise. The Woods live and work together. Learning is lifelong.
The only difference now seemed to be all those bike sales. Did the promise of more bikes on the street offer a sense of greater security? A barely perceptible smile flashed for an instant across the physician’s face.
“There’s safety in numbers.”
The bribe
There was one more factor: a family challenge.
Bob Bainum made his daughter and her husband a proposition.
“If you ride 100 miles in 45 days, I’ll give you a surprise,” he had said.
“That got them moving,” Bainum noted with a chuckle. “It got them started, and now they like it. I think I bribed them.”
Contact freelancer John McReynolds through the editor at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 16-23, 2008.