San Francisco bike peoples—the CLIF BAR 2 Mile Challenge team wants to treat you to a free day at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. And all you have to do it hop on your bike!

On Sunday, August 22, Clif Bar’s hosting what we’re calling a “Fun Ride to the Academy.” If you’re San Francisco Bay area-based, you probably know of the pure awesomeness that is the new California Academy of Sciences. So here’s the deal. We’ll give away free tickets (that’s up to $24.95 per ticket!) to the first 100 people who arrive by bike.

As a bonus, those first 100 people also get their bikes parked safe and secure at a San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s free bike valet.

And don’t think we’ll let you go hungry. Clif will sustain you on your journey through the museum with free CLIF BAR samples. Believe me, you’ll need it...the California Academy of Sciences is the only place on the planet with an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum and a four-story rainforest all under one roof.

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UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who submitted a comment and for supporting Jay’s new book. The winners (who will receive signed copies of Jay and Gary’s books and a month’s supply of CLIF BARs) are: Samantha, jnylyn78 and mommaof3ontherun. Congrats!

Way back in 2006, Clif Bar & Company founder, co-owner, and co-CEO, Gary Erickson published his book Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar & Company recounting Clif Bar’s origins and our journey to become a different kind of company. Today in 2010, Clif Bar is once again the subject of another great new book: Design is How it Works, How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons, by Jay Greene. In this book, Jay Greene, former Seattle bureau chief for BusinessWeek and an award-winning journalist, explores how Clif Bar and other successful companies have made design thinking part of their DNA.

Jay visited Clif Bar & Company for a few days in October, 2008. He caught us at a particularly exciting time — not only did he visit us a few weeks before the 2008 presidential election, his visit also coincided with our Annual Epiphany Ride and Halloween festivities. In celebration of Jay’s book hitting shelves, I asked Jay to tell us about his book and his visit to Clif Bar & Company. We will also be doing a little giveaway — leave a comment on this blog post today and three people will be randomly chosen to receive an autographed copy of Jay’s book, an autographed copy of Gary’s book, and a month supply of CLIF BARs in your favorite flavor!

Kate: What is “design thinking”?
Jay: It’s really the practice of applying the skills designers use to create products to solve all sorts of business challenges, even ones that don’t require a focus on aesthetics. Designers intuitively use creativity and empathy to help them create something that has an emotional connection with customers. They prototype concepts and collaborate with colleagues to test theories and come up with novel approaches to new products. Design thinking applies those concepts to businesses where appearance doesn’t count for much. Design thinkers use anthropology, sociology and psychology to study customers in order to understand their unstated and unmet needs. 

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Clif Bar & Company is often graced with special guests, and this week we were lucky enough to be visited by Colin Beavan. For an entire year, Colin and his family lived as environmentally as possible, meaning no electricity, no fossil fuel based transportation, no...well, you get the picture. Definitely an extremely daunting task considering that Colin and his family live in the heart of craziness: Manhattan.

Colin documented his journey in a book and movie of the same name, ”No Impact Man.” It’s an incredibly interesting and eye-opening project that is parallel to many things that Clif Bar is trying to do on the sustainability front. So what he went though hit home for us.

Later in the day, I was able to grab Colin to give us the lowdown on the No Impact Man project and answer a few questions along the way, including small steps you can take at home to cut down on waste. After checking out the vid, do yourself a favor and hop on over to Colin’s website for a heap of great info.

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Summer is here and the 4th of July is just around the corner. That means outdoor barbecues, family getaways, camping and the like. It can also mean that your carbon footprint gets bigger, what with things like increased air and car travel, trash from all those cookouts and air conditioning. So what can you do over the holiday weekend to stay eco-friendly? Here are a few ideas:

• 1. First, Grill Smart. If you can, use a natural gas grill, or to be even greener, an infrared one. Either is better than burning charcoal. Charcoal briquettes contain coal dust and sodium nitrate, and they emit more soot than a gas grill.




• 2. If you do have to use charcoal, use Hardwood Lump Charcoal. Yes it comes from a tree, but natural hardwood charcoal burns cleaner than briquettes and you can find brands like Whole Foods 365 Brand that use wood from sustainably managed forests. Oh, and ditch all that lighter fluid—it’s just nasty, toxic stuff. Use electric charcoal starters or a chimney starter.

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The CLIF BAR 2 Mile Challenge is underway – and the competition is already heating up! Glad to see so many of you have taken the charge to heart. If you’ve yet to join in, you can read all about it here.

Speaking of heart, I’ve been remiss in getting back on the Clif Bar Blog to talk about the three key elements in keeping the 2MC extra super enjoyable for the participants throughout the summer. And of course I’m talking about the 2MC Team Leaders. I went on an exhaustive search over the past few months to find three of the most incredibly inspiring and fun-loving individuals this side of the International Date Line. Their mission: to take the 2MC Red, Blue and Gold teams to the max! And if you need more than the “required 15 pieces of flair,” you got it – we’ve got an NYC bike messenger, a former Mr. Kool-Aid Man (Ohhh yeeeah!) and the cherry on top? An international tax consultant/beer snob! I think those things are somehow related?

So without further ado, I’d like to present YOUR 2MC Team Leaders (in no particular order):

• Heather M. – RED TEAM LEADER, Brooklyn, NY
  (follow @heatherbikes and @2MCRed on Twitter)
  “I am passionate about cycling! Whether it is commuting to a desk job, touring through Europe, or messengering in the streets of New York City, I love to ride my bike and need to do it every day! A native New Yorker, I graduated from NYU in 2006 and am now part of Mess Kollective, New York’s first bike messenger co-op. I am very excited to be leading the Red Team for Trips for Kids and hope to get people all over the country out of their cars and turn them on to the joys of cycling!”

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