Michele Baumer
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Michele Baumer, a Resource Science Assistant for the Missouri Department of Conservation and mother of two school age sons, knew commuting to work was good for her health and for the environment, but she struggled with how to make it work. Baumer lives in southwest Columbia and, at the time, her sons both went to Christian Chapel Academy. How could she get them to school and herself to work at a reasonable time everyday?
The solution for Baumer was a partial commute. “What I do is haul my bike on my car, drop off Joshua at Gentry, drive to Christian Chapel Academy, drop Samuel off, pull my bike off my car and off I go to work,” she explained. “ At the end of the day I ride back to Christian Chapel, pick up a child, and haul the bike home.”
After having three heart attacks at the age of 14, Baumer has always been aware that she needed to take care of her health, but it was the 30 pound weight gain she experienced in graduate school last year that pushed her into taking better care of herself. “During Bike Walk and Wheel Week 2008 my sons and I decided that we would try bike commuting. The experience was a positive one and from that week on, I was hooked.” Last summer Baumer took Confident City Cycling has been commuting regularly since then. “That class gave me the skills I needed to be able to confidently commute to work on a daily basis,” she said. “I highly recommend the class!”
Weather has not been a deterrent for Baumer. At first she was not sure how much she would ride when the weather got cold, but has found that she can always put more clothes on and vows to ride even if it is 0 degrees outside. “I am only not riding if it is raining hard or snowing, so I am not as good as the mailman,” she joked.
Baumer’s positive commuting experiences have attracted the interest of others. “Everywhere I go people want to talk to me about it, especially since it has gotten colder. As an older mom of two kids, lots of parents are talking to me about how they can commute.” Baumer loves talking to Moms like herself who have to work around getting the kids to school. “Moms are a very creative group of people, and I am more than happy to help them to come up with creative ways to commute. It does not need to be a whole commute, even a partial commute helps you to feel good, save wear and tear on the vehicle, save gas money and become more environmentally friendly.”
Baumer’s advice to other potential commuters is to just get out there and do it with the bike you have right now. “When I first started commuting I felt that I needed to get a new bike with all the fancy commuting stuff on it,” she said. She found, however that just using her twenty year old mountain bike has served her quite well. “In the future it would be nice to get a lighter bike, but for now when I am climbing up Rock Quarry hill, the hill by the Mizzou Arena or Chapel Hill I am thankful for the wonderful workout I get because of that heavy, old bike.”
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