Bike to Work and School Day encourages people to leave their cars at home on May 16. Two Bellingham women don’t need extra encouragement. Here are their stories.

MAGGIE MACKENZIE

Forty pounds and several clothing sizes later, Maggie MacKenzie blames her Saturn.

“It all started with my little car because it started deciding when I got the privilege of driving. Sometimes it would start and sometimes it wouldn’t,” the 46-yearold Bellingham resident says.

So she hopped on her bike. That was in April — more than a year ago. The weight went with each ride, from her home in the Columbia neighborhood to her jobs at T-Mobile and Slo Pitch Pub & Casino to the outings last summer to lessen her boredom.

Anywhere she needed to go in town, she went by bike. That included nights out for dinner and to listen to music. When the weather turned icy and nasty, MacKenzie took the bus.

“I’m in the best shape of my life. The one thing that I regret is not figuring it out sooner, how easy it is to get around Bellingham on your bike,” says MacKenzie, who drove her car for the first time in over a year on Monday to get it from a mechanic’s shop to her house. In addition to better health for herself, she rode to lessen her carbon footprint.

It’s no small thing that MacKenzie has stuck to her resolve. She works 60 to 75 hours per week. And she hates hills. “I’m a big hill wuss. I don’t like the big hills. I don’t like the little hills.”

And she had been struggling with health-related issues. One year before she started riding, MacKenzie underwent gastric-bypass surgery. She weighed more than 330 pounds then. She wore a size 26. Post-surgery complications sidelined her, for awhile. Still, MacKenzie decided to start riding as her weight loss began to level off.

“The bike riding has made such a difference for me and how my body has shaped up,” says MacKenzie, who now weighs 155 pounds with the additional help of exercise and eating right.

Now, she hopes to encourage others to ride — safely.

That can be accomplished when bicyclists and motorists see a bike as another vehicle and both follow the rules of the road accordingly, she says.

JULIE SAMMS

Bellingham residents Julie and Caleb Samms talked long and hard recently about whether to add to their growing family. After all, they already had two boys, one girl — and one Honda Civic.

In the end they decided to stay a one-car family for the time being, says Julie Samms, who has logged 700 miles commuting on her bike since last summer.

“It’s so hard to make that choice to bring another car into the family, just the environmental impact of it,” she says.

Samms, who sees a connection between over-dependence on gasoline and detrimental impacts on the environment, worries about the legacy they will leave their children.

“What are we leaving for them? What are they going to have to deal with when they’re my age?” she says.

So Samms rides her bike year-round to her job at St. Joseph Hospital, to school at Bellingham Technical College and for most trips. The family has one bike trailer that can carry two of the children and haul other goods. A second bike trailer can carry up to 100 pounds.

Two of her older children can ride their bikes by themselves. Her youngest has a tag-along, which attaches to her bicycle to turn it into a tandem.

“We make a big train when we’re all riding,” Samms says. “There are lots of options for riding with your kids.”

Samms started bike commuting four or five years ago, partly because she wanted to be active and be in the outdoors.

And she knows it’s easier for her to ride because she lives in the York neighborhood in Bellingham.

“The city of Bellingham has made a lot of improvements to help bikers, putting in bike lanes and revamping streets,” Samms says. “I think that’s great.”

And Bellingham is still small enough to make getting around by bike easy.

“Everything’s so close when you’re living in town that it’s almost a shame to drive,” she says.