Cortland Mayor Brian Tobin usually walks to work at City Hall after dropping his daughter off at day care, but on Monday he opted for the bicycle so he could participate in Bike to Work week, which runs from May 17 to May 23.
At 6'5, Tobin usually opts for a larger bicycle frame when choosing a bicycle to ride, but the bike he rode to work Monday is a standard-sized 19 1/2 inch frame. He purchased it in 1994 on a whim.
"I was a dumb college kid, and I said, 'I like this one!,'," said Tobin, of the Gary Fisher Marlin mountain bike he owns.
Tobin rides the bike with his seat jacked up as high as it can go-not a move he recommends. Doing this can actually make the seat post more unstable and prone to cracking, he points out.
Tobin used to compete in triathlons, everything from local sprint races to the Lake Placid Ironman, which he did in 2011 and 2013. The Ironman is a grueling triathlon that starts with a 2.4-mile swim, then has a 112-mile bicycle leg before participants embark on a full marathon.
Tobin, a bicycle enthusiast who's also a swim coach at SUNY Cortland owns three bikes, including a sleek carbon fiber road bike, but he often prefers to hop on his vintage steel-framed Marlin.
Gary Fisher is considered one of the inventors of the modern mountain bike, according to Wikipedia. Fisher coined the term 'mountain bike' in 1979, and was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 1988.
Tobin likes the bike because its namesake is a pioneer of mountain bikes, and because the thick tires handle the bumps in the road better than his road bikes.
To learn more about Bike to Work Week, visit the national Bike League website here.