Meet Your 2022 Sonoma County Bike Champion Of The Year

Press release from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission:

SONOMA COUNTY, CA — Bay Area Bike to Wherever Days organizers have named the winners of the 2022 Bike Champion of the Year awards. Given to individuals for inspiring bicycling in their Bay Area communities, this award recognizes individuals in the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties for their commitment to bicycling as the primary mode of transport.

The 2022 winners included Juan Chavez of Sonoma County.

Every Tuesday evening at 5:45 you will find Juan Chavez setting up his custom stretch cruiser bike and speaker system at Humboldt Park. Soon he is walking around greeting new and returning riders, helping folks with last-minute fixes to their bikes. Between 50 and 70 riders arrive from every walk of life — individuals and families, cargo bikes to BMX/cruisers, every age, race, gender expression, and ethnicity gather to build the most diverse, creative bike parade that fills the streets with music, laughter, and joy.

It was just over a year ago when the pandemic inspired Juan to reach out to his friends Chad Hunt and Juanes Rios with the idea of the Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday ride.

“People needed to get out and connect to one another! What is a better way to do that than on a bike and sharing tacos together!” he says.

Each week more riders heard about the event and started sharing photos, videos and letting more and more people know about how much fun they were experiencing and the new friends they made. By last summer the Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday Bike Ride was featured in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, resulting in over 75 riders arriving the following Tuesday! The Taco Tuesday Facebook group now has over 500 members. In addition, the ride was recently featured in the city of Santa Rosa’s Out There Insider’s Guide.

Juan has been part of bike culture his entire life. As a young adult living and working in Roseland, he learned to wrench on his own bikes and took those skills to the neighborhood, helping kids repair their bikes in his front yard. Over the past several years Juan has been part of the custom stretch bike community as a member of NorthBay Kruzers and 707 Bike Life, building two-wheeled works of art and showcasing them at events all over the West Coast. Prior to launching the Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday ride, Juan hosted a pop-up bike show in downtown Santa Rosa that drew over 170 riders.

Seeing multiple and overlapping needs in his community, Juan joined the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition and utilized its cargo bicycle lending library to help volunteers with the non-profit Impact Foundation distribute emergency supplies and offer help to homeless individuals living on the bike trails. In addition, Juan collaborated on a bike-inspired float for the local art happening Winterblast and rallied members of the community he’s built to donate to the purchase of twenty bikes he and a team of volunteers assembled for local kids at Christmas.

Juan has inspired hundreds of people throughout Sonoma County to come together on bikes and build a joyous and diverse community. His steadfast dedication, his willingness to support the creative efforts of others, and his hopeful outlook toward the future are just some of the reasons Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition chose Juan Chavez as our Bike Champion of the Year.

Each winner will receive a Lezyne Strip Pro Alert Drive from Mike's Bikes, a bicycle-only membership for 24/7 roadside assistance from Better World Club, a laminated, boxed set of San Francisco Bay Trail map cards from the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), and a customized cycling cap from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).

Don't miss Bike to Wherever Days during the entire month of May, as well as Bike to Work Day on May 20! Details can be found online at Bayareabiketowork.com. Follow us on Facebook at @biketoworkday, Twitter @BikeToWorkSFBay, and Instagram @biketoworkday_bayarea.

Bay Area Bike to Wherever Days is presented by MTC (the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area), 511 (the region's traveler information system), and Amazon. BTWD 2022 also receives regional support from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), as well as from many sponsors at the local level. Prizes for the Bike Champion of the Year winners were donated by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), MTC, Better World Club and Mike's Bikes.

This press release was produced by Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The views expressed here are the author's own.