But while he swept, his cell phone rang, waking him from his daydream. On the line was Sarah from Bikes Belong, the bike advocacy organization that we had recently applied to for the position of Events Manager Team. Sarah told Adam that they wanted to fly us out to Boulder, CO to meet with them!
I can only imagine what Adam must have felt while sweeping the floor at his part time job and all of a sudden getting a call from an organization that wanted to actually pay for us to fly out to Boulder, CO of all places! What a high! And within a few days, we were on a plane.
Boulder was a whirlwind, almost literally. The winds were crazy strong and the planes were unpredictable, delaying our flights in and out of Denver. And we thought headwinds only hurt while biking!! But knowing that travel is full of unexpected turns, we made the best of the situation and an unexpected 3 hour layover in Atlanta gave us one last chance to read more about Bikes Belong, their peopleforbikes.org campaign, and many of the other Bikes Belong initiatives. We felt completely prepared for our final interview.
Throughout the day, we met with most of the staff at Bikes Belong including Tim Blumenthal, the president, and Bruno Maier, the VP. They explained a little more about the job, telling us we'd be traveling in a new Jetta TDI to events located in the eastern part of the United States in order to tell as many people as possible about the importance of bikes.
A little about Bikes Belong and their People for Bikes campaign:
The goal of Bikes Belong is simply to get more people on bikes more often.
The goal for the peopleforbikes.org campaign is to unite one million voices in support of bike riding in order to lobby for continued funding for better infrastructure and programs.
Our goal? To get as many people as possible to sign the peoepleforbikes.org pledge, saying they are in support of bike riding (shouldn't be that hard, right? I mean, I know you've just clicked on the link and signed the pledge- that's one more closer to the goal). We signed the pledge over a year ago before the start of our Give a Bike tour and now we'd be traveling the country in search of more people to sign. This was a dream job for us and our smiles just kept getting bigger and bigger throughout the day.
At lunch, we were offered the job.
Funny enough, throughout the meetings with the Bikes Belong staff, what was brought to our attention the most wasn't the different programs they ran and funded (there'd be time enough later for all of that), but the flexibility we'd need while traveling with each other throughout the United States while sitting next to each other in a Volkswagen. Basically, they want to make sure that we could adapt to deal with the un-expected. If we hadn't already passed that test last year, riding our bikes through all 50 States, we were lucky enough to be put to the test once more on our flights in and out of Boulder.
On the way home, an unexpected overnight in Charlotte allowed us to reflect on the exciting day we had.
Today, we fly out again to Boulder for the start of our new job- (and to pick up our new car!!). You all kept telling us that our challenge of riding through all 50 states would open up doors for us in the future. We're just blown away that the doors have opened so quickly with a job that fits us so well.
Can't wait!
