As Blake reminded us, May is bike to work month.  Hopefully you’ve all pulled out your cycles and gotten moving – HOK certainly has!  Based on our success last year, we’ve again joined the Cascade Bicycle Club Community Health Challenge.

With 10 teams and 78 riders at the time of this post, we’ve logged over 2,800 miles, putting us in the top 20 companies participating (again)….and if some of our regular riders remember to log their miles, we’ll be even higher!

Anyway, the point of this post is not to brag about how awesome HOK is (or specifically about the WDC teams) – it’s to reach out to you to see …

It’s no lie, I am a hot mess when I get to work after my 14-mile bike ride.  Fortunately for me and anyone who has to interact with me during the day, HOK has a shower (and my gym is right next to the office and has an even nicer shower).

One thing I struggle with is how to dress appropriately for work on cycling days.  One solution is to drive in the day before and leave a bag of clothes.  The other is to cram everything in a backpack and roll on in.  Either way, there are two major risks: 1. forgetting a critical wardrobe element (from recent experience, I …

One of the comments we hear a lot is, “HOK’s such a big firm.  Don’t you feel lost there?” 

Coming from a very small firm (I was one of eight there; here I am one of 2,400 or so), I ’ll admit I was a little intimidated…but I’ve found the size issue is a misconception; HOK truly does provide great opportunities for collaboration that you wouldn’t find in a small firm.  In addition to having outstanding resources to help with project work (like the Denver project that used staff from San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, DC or the KAUST project that involved up to 400 HOK’ers at one point in time), it …

As you’ve read, HOK is big into sustainability, and part of our committment is personal – we’ve signed up numerous teams to compete in national bike-to-work month, sponsored by the cascade bicycle club (see Blake’s posts on HOK vs. Copenhagen and Calling all HOKers).  Tim O’Connell cooerced me into signing up using fear of public humiliation as his primary tactic. 

It’s a bit of a long ride for me (13.824 miles each way, according to Gmaps Pedometer) and I’m not much of a cyclist, but what the heck!  My route takes me along Cameron Run in …

They may not look like what you would first imagine. 

They may not look like anything TV makes them out to be. 

But they are . . .

the St. Louis HOK Biker Gang!
 
  

[It may be necessary to say "the St. Louis HOK Biker Gang!" in your best dramatic theatrical voice over; go ahead, try it again, I'll wait]

[l-r: Seth Teel, Jason Kerensky, Paul Wilhelms, Derek Prior, Brett Kostial, Tim Gaidis]

[l-r: Jon Cohen, JoAnn Brookes, Bruce Brunner, Derek Prior, Seth Teel,
Brett Kostial, Matt Snelling, Jason Kerensky, Tim Gaidis, Mark Rosen,
Paul Wilhelms, Steven Crang,

…

To help encourage biking to work tomorrow, I’d like to flash around the designated HOK Bike to Work 2009 Route…

TADAAAAA!!!

Also, we’d like to give a plug to Bike St Louis and their killer bike map.  And, although your route is already planned for tomorrow, you can always check out TrailNet where they’ll even give you the best route suggestion for your desired destination.

Also, check out the sweet shirts you’ll get to wear if you ride your bike to work on Friday in the HOK Bike Gang…

BIKE ON!!

Last week in the Toronto studio, Guillermo (Gil) Peñalosa, Executive Director of Walk and Bike for Life and the former Commissioner of Parks, Sports and Recreation for the city of Bogotá, Columbia, joined us for a talk about his work, both past and present. The nearly 2-hour presentation, which could have easily been 6 if he wasn’t forced from the microphone, was one of those occasions where you left the room feeling motivated to create change. Now while most people would write an eloquently written article about the information he was conveying, I’m not about to do that. But what I am about to do is talk about the faults of his presentation.

I’m not sure about anyone …

Today’s installment of 5 Questions features Tim O’Connell, a boomerang HOK employee. Tim worked at the DC office first in 2000-2001, moved to Boston, and then decided he simply couldn’t stay away and rejoined HOK WDC in 2006. 

Q: What five words describe HOK?

A: Versatile, Exciting, Innovative, Influential, Design and Quality-Focused,

Q: What is your role at HOK?

A: I am a jack of all trades,

…