We’re working hard every day to make San Francisco reflect our members’ dreams. Through our annual member survey, input on our Strategic Plan, emails, phone calls and conversations in person, our 10,000 members make their hopes for our city clear.

Our members want improvements across San Francisco, including a network of protected bike lanes criss-crossing the city that everyone can use comfortably. They want smoother roads and more secure bike parking. And our members demand a city where no one risks life and limb visiting friends, heading to work or picking up groceries.

And tens of thousands celebrate our members’ victories for safer biking every day. City Hall staff heading up the protected bike lanes on Polk; a family pedaling along Oak or Fell between the Wiggle and Golden Gate Park; folks riding along the calmer and safer stretches where we’ve seen improvements on San Jose Avenue — these little celebrations could not be possible without our members rallying to make their voices heard.

Even in our daily rides, joined by people from every corner of San Francisco, these celebrations don’t do our members and partners justice. Sometimes you have to take a step back, take a deep breath and just marvel at some of the ways that San Franciscans are working with us — and on their own — to make our city a better place to live, work and play. And sometimes it feels good to get together with other people who bike and give some bike heroes a round of applause.

Better than good, it feels great to celebrate everything our members and partners have accomplished in San Francisco.

We’re celebrating a few bike heroes on Thursday, July 30 at our annual Golden Wheel Awards — heroes like the founders of San Francisco Yellow Bike. We’ve teamed up with San Francisco Yellow Bike to provide people who couldn’t otherwise afford a bike their own set of two wheels, along with the training to maintain and ride their bikes safely. San Francisco Yellow Bike is a completely volunteer-run operation, making the fact that they’ve salvaged and repaired hundreds of bikes for locals even more impressive.

While San Francisco Yellow Bike is building community through repairing bikes, SF2G is giving people the chance to completely reimagine what a bike commute can be. Between San Francisco and Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, SF2G riders regularly commute at least 42 miles down the Peninsula, with some rides exceeding 60 miles. In addition to expanding people’s idea of what a ride to work can be, SF2G also advocates for safety improvements in southeastern San Francisco’s troublespots for people biking, like the Hairball, the Alemany Maze and Bayshore Boulevard.

With these bike heroes, our members and civic leaders, it’s not just important that we work together for people biking in San Francisco. Sometimes we have to pull together to applaud our accomplishments.

I hope you can join us for the Golden Wheel Awards on July 30. We’ve got a lot to celebrate.