{"id":114697,"date":"2016-07-20T15:05:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T19:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=114697"},"modified":"2016-07-20T15:05:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T19:05:50","slug":"ride-bike-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/07\/ride-bike-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Ride Your Bike to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Joyce
Joyce Fritz offers breakfast snacks to bike commuters, including homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, homemade granola, homemade banana bread, fresh fruit and drinks. (Photo by Tina Encarnacion)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once a month from May through September, Joyce Fritz puts out a breakfast spread for those who bike to work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a way to combine two of her passions \u2013 baking and biking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved to bike and it\u2019s so wonderful to share this passion with other people,\u201d she says. \u201cPersonally, I bike to work for the exercise and the enjoyment of the sights and sounds I encounter being outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fritz, who works in UConn Health\u2019s Department of Facilities Development and Operations, has been setting up monthly bike-to-work breakfast events on campus for nine years now. It\u2019s a completely self-funded, volunteer effort on her part.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always hoping to motivate faculty, staff and students to bike or walk to work,\u201d says Fritz, who often leaves the car at home in Plainville and pedals the 8 \u00bd miles to work instead. \u201cOnce they give it a try, they will see the benefits and enjoyment that biking or walking offers.\u201d<\/p>\n

UConn Health has a group of regulars who take two wheels \u2013 not motorized \u2013 to work. Dr. Philip P. Smith<\/a>, associate professor of surgery, is one of a hearty few who do it year round.<\/p>\n

\"Josh
Josh Mills, who normally bikes straight to Munson Road from New Hartford daily, takes a detour to the July bike to work breakfast table. (Photo by Tina Encarnacion)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really designed as creatures to be mobile, so we should figure out how to work mobility into our daily lives as part of our health,\u201d says Smith, who lives about 4 miles away in Farmington. \u201cAn awful lot of modern medicine is built on the idea of facilitating maladaptive lifestyles. People sit at home, they ride in their cars to work, they sit at work, they gain weight, their cholesterol goes up, they get high blood pressure, they get diabetes. There\u2019s a consequence to all these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another daily cyclist is Josh Mills, an IT applications developer who bikes about 20 miles each way from New Hartford.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels good to exercise in the morning, it saves on gas, and I really don\u2019t like driving a car. I try to cycle everywhere I can,\u201d says Mills, who jokes that if he wasn\u2019t married he wouldn\u2019t own a car. \u201cSometimes in the morning I get up very early and there\u2019s no traffic on the road when I\u2019m traveling, and it\u2019s very pleasant to be on the road at that time, so sometimes I\u2019ll take a little detour coming in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Locker rooms with showers are available in the main building, on the basement level next to Reprographics, and in the Outpatient Pavilion, on the first floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI challenge all employees and students who live a reasonable distance from here to try leaving their cars at home one day a week and bike or walk to work,\u201d Fritz says. \u201cIt\u2019s great exercise, good for the environment, with no worries about parking. Everything about it is rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with a little planning, those who take her up on that challenge can score some homemade goodies as a reward for their efforts. Fritz will be back with her table outside the public safety entrance to the main building Aug. 19<\/strong> and Sept. 16<\/strong> from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. Rain dates are the Mondays that follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once a month from May through September, Joyce Fritz puts out a breakfast spread for those who bike to work. It\u2019s a way to combine two of her passions \u2013 baking and biking. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved to bike and it\u2019s so wonderful to share this passion with other people,\u201d she says. \u201cPersonally, I bike to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":114701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-114697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 05:26:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114702,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114697\/revisions\/114702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/114701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114697"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=114697"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=114697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}