Bicyclists & Walkers in the Twin Cities Fuel Up on their Way to Work & School

 

The Green Institute, coordinator of Metro CERTs, and our friends at the Phillips Eco-Enterprise Center hosted our second annual Brake for Breakfast event today for Bike/Walk to Work Week. 273 people ate breakfast (probably more who forgot to sign in), many of them on the windy green roof, from 7-9am today—including Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak!

Last year, over 2,500 people signed up for Bike Walk to Work Day, a celebration of biking and walking to work. The Green Institute had the third largest turnout with their breakfast along the Greenway (learn more). This year, we more than doubled last year’s numbers, as bike commuter rates in the Twin Cities have pushed Minneapolis to the second best in the nation.

Attendence: 273 overall attendees (although we KNOW there were some folks that didn’t sign in!)
  – 249 Bikers (1,782 total miles biked)
  – 9 Walkers (15 total miles walked)
  – 15 Others

Keep reading to get more fun facts about today’s event.

Fun tidbits:
  – 1 unicycle
  – Furthest rider: 50 miles (Burnsville)
  – Served without kitchen—just electric fry pans, crock pots & chafing dishes
  – We tripped the breaker at least twice!

Menu: Pancakes, sausage, breakfast tacos, oatmeal, fruit, vegan caramel rolls, tofu scramble, granola bars, Peace Coffee, orange juice

Food:
  – 20 dozen eggs
  – 400 cups of Peace Coffee served!
  – Served 7.5 pounds of oatmeal
  – Also served 3lbs raisins & 1.75lbs of brown sugar!

Zero Waste Event: 98% of trash diverted!
  – 46.4 pounds of Organics
  – Less than 1 pound of garbage produced! (.05oz per person)

Sponsoring organizations who planned and cooked for the event! Building Tenants: Green Institute, Peace Coffee, Will Steger Foundation, Nonprofits Assistance Fund, Great Plains Institute, Phillips Community Energy Cooperative, The Energy Conservatory, and Headwaters Foundation for Justice. Others who wanted to be part of the fun: Eureka Recycling (made this a zero waste event), The Hub Bicycle Co-op (hosted a free bike check clinic and handed out free patch kits), and The Midtown Greenway Coalition (handed out info and directed folks to us)

Donors of food and other things: SeaSalt Eatery, Seward Coop, Thousand Hills Cattle Company, PastureLand, Organic Valley, General Mills, Dero Bike Rack Company.

Check out the other fantastic events going on this week at www.bikewalkweek.org.

Get MN clean energy news & opportunities

We encourage reuse and republishing of this article. All Clean Energy Resource Teams news posts are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution license, meaning you can share and adapt the work as long as you give us credit. We'd also love it if you link back to the original piece. Have questions or want to chat? Drop us a line.