With the passing of 2008 and the beginning of a new year, it’s time at Dirt Rag to tally up the yearly commuting numbers of the office staff and see who the winner is of our friendly competition. And what does the winner receive? Well nothing more than anyone else that rode a bicycle to work, one dollar per day, and a feeling of pride and accomplishment. Maybe a laugh at the gas man too.

For the 2008 year one person cleaned house and claims the crown for most days and most miles—Eric McKeegan commuted 190 days covering 16 miles round trip for a total of 3040 miles! When asked what he plans to do with his 190 dollars, Eric said: “Probably put it toward purchasing the Steelwool” (the bike he reviewed in issue #138).

Shannon Mominee came in second for most days commuted with 133.5 days, covering 18 miles round trip for a total of 2403 miles.

Karen Brooks rounds out the top three with 118 days commuted, but she actually came in second for most miles. Her ride covers 25 miles round trip for a total of 2950 miles.

Justin Steiner began strong, splitting his commuting time with a motorcycle, then bought his first car in six years. He was also hit from behind by a truck while cycling to Dirt Rag headquarters, and escaped nearly unharmed. Justin decided to spend more days mountain biking instead of commuting, and his numbers are 91 days covering 18 miles for a total of 1638 miles.

The rest of the statistics are as follows:

Andy Bruno commuted 27.5 days, covering 26 miles for a total of 715 miles.
Maurice Tierney commuted 23 days, covering 14 miles for a total of 322 miles.
Amanda Zimmerman commuted 19.5 days, covering 12 miles for a total of 234 miles.

Andrew Crumpler lives the furthest from Dirt Rag with no real bike friendly way to cycle the distance. He covered the 44 mile round trip 4.5 times for a total of 198 miles.

New to the Dirt Rag staff is Matt Kasprzyk. He only got to take part in the cycling challenge for the last few months, but commuted 21 days, covering 18 miles for a total of 378 miles. Not bad at all.

As a whole, Dirt Rag commuted a total of 605 days for a total of 11,878 miles! HooRay for Dirt Rag! There were days when Maurice and Andy both forgot to log their days on our commuting log, so which one of those two actually came in fifth remains undecided. Interestingly though, if we all drove a car that got 16 miles to the gallon, we would have saved 742.3 gallons of gasoline. Thanks Maurice for shelling out 605 bucks as a commuting incentive! Anyone else have a company commute challenge? We’d like to hear about it in the comments field below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Fresh Dirt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.