Ryan has been a driver in our community since the beginning – and we’re so lucky to have someone this enthusiastic and passionate as part of the Ridejoy family.

We really can’t help but feel like mother hens now that Ryan, a recent graduate of the University of Nevada, is embarking on a three-month, 12,000 mile roadtrip around the United States in a VW Westalia named Bernie. He’ll be writing extensively about his trip on his fantastic blog, Travel Socially and  more specifically, will be utilizing collaborative consumption networks (like a certain Ridejoy!) in order to complete his trip in a social, sustainable and wallet-friendly way.

He’s aiming to spend under $1,000 for the whole trip, or an average of $11/day. That’s quite the tall order, but if anyone can do it, Ryan can! (Fun fact: we considered titling this post: “RyanJoy,” but I was ultimately outvoted.)

Our community manager Margot showing off our famous "Share Rides and Spread Joy" Shirt

In 1939, the United Kingdom had just entered World War II and its leaders realized that it would be important to maintain morale in the event of an invasion. They knew that people need in uncertain times is a strong, confident and reassuring message to keep in mind. And so the government created a series of posters to rally the country, including one with the words “Keep Calm and Carry On”.

Some 70+ years later in another time and place, we still encounter moments of uncertainty. We worry about the price of gas. We find ourselves stuck in Seattle with our girlfriend in SF. Everyone just seems a little grouchier than usual. We’ve got a free weekend but no car, or we’ve got a car but no travel buddy.

In times like these, a strong, confident, and reassuring messages is what we all need. And that’s why Ridejoy is proud to have the words “Share Rides and Spread Joy”, emblazoned across our company shirts. We find it lifts our spirits and the spirits of those around us, bringing a sense of collaboration and delight to all.

Note how happy everyone looks in the photo from our article in Vanity Fair. =)

Get the Shirt!

It’s such a great shirt, in fact, that we’ve decided we can’t keep it all to ourselves any longer. We’ll be offering it to the general public sometime later this fall. If you’re interested in snagging one for yourself, leave your email address and we’ll be sure to let you know!

Enjoy!

Will gets a car (and boat) ride to New Orleans

Will Brown is a recent graduate of Claremont McKenna College and is traveling the country using collaborative consumption services like Airbnb, Grubwithus, and Ridejoy! He’s gone on 4 rideshares thus far, including one on Ridejoy where he posted a ride request from Atlanta to New Orleans. Here’s what happened next:

Within three hours I had an email from Ridejoy informing me that they had found a match with someone who was headed my direction. And that’s how I met Jessica. She’s 26 and was preparing to drive from her hometown of Greenville, SC to her current home of Austin, Texas and she was looking to split costs along the way. I was really impressed with Ridejoy for two reasons: its quick response time and that they matched me–who posted a ride from Atlanta to New Orleans–with Jessica whose starting and ending points were both different than my own.

Read more about the trip and how Will ends up on a sailboat and in his blog post: I’m On A Boat (and How I Got There With Ridejoy)

Alexandra coordinates a family trip with Ridejoy

Alexandra Samuel is the director of the Social + Interactive Media Center at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, the cofounder of a social media consultancy and blogs for publications like the Harvard Business Review. She’s also a mom raising two kids in Vancouver. When the family decided to roadtrip down to San Francisco this summer, they realized that it’d be nice to take the train home to save time. But then, how would the car make it back?

In the course of looking for one-way car rentals, I came across the phenomenon of “drive away” services, which could provide a driver to take our car back to Seattle while we took Amtrak. Cost: $500.

I decided to check for independent drive-away offers on Craigslist. Mixed in with the “ride wanted” and “ride offered” ads on Craigslist, I saw the occasional request for one-way drivers. And appended to one ad, I saw the intriguing line, “contact me on Ridejoy”.

That’s how I discovered Ridejoy, a ride-sharing site that matches drivers and riders in 790 cities across North America. Ridejoy cross-posts to Craigslist, so you still get the benefit of Craigslist’s rideshare board, but you get a much better search and matching tool.

…

Ridejoy has opened up a whole new horizon for family vacations. Now that we know it’s possible to do a one-way drive, I can see us organizing future vacations throughout Western Canada and the U.S., or even across the continent.

Learn more about how Alexandra coordinated her family vacation in her blog post: Take a One-Way Roadtrip with Ridejoy

Since rolling out the first version of ride arrangements in October, we’ve helped thousands of people share trips and learned tons in the process. Based on feedback from our stellar community, we’ve streamlined our arrangement system and made it 10x simpler to book and pay for rides on Ridejoy!

Our improved, no-hassle process lets either the driver or the passenger make the first move in confirming the ride and should make things much more clear for both sides. And remember, you can only get reviewed on rides that are booked through Ridejoy

Check out the video at the top!

Ridejoy is partnering with Outside Lands, the epic 3-day music festival taking place in Golden Gate Park August 10-12, 2012, to offer rideshare to a series one-off events that tap into the pleasures of summer weekends spent outdoors with music, food and drink. This is the second year they’ve put this program on and we’re excited to offer a sustainable, affordable and convenient form of transportation to the events.

Outside Lands has also partnered with our buddies at the social dining site Grubwithus to facilitate group dining and friendships across the events: grubwithus.com/outsidelands

RIDESHARE TO SUMMER PAIRINGS!

Summer Pairings Series I: Sunday July 22, 2012; 5:30-8:30pm

Sustainably grown Sonoma wines from a 100% solar powered winery, artfully prepared, gourmet street food, and full-spectrum Americana sounds meet with the first Summer Pairings Series. Click here to purchase: medlockames.com/summerpairing

Summer Pairings Series II: Sunday July 29: 4-7pm

In the Gourmet Ghetto, Vintage Berkeley Wine Shop, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Paul Grieco’s Summer of Riesling and The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen close down part of Vine Street for the ultimate summer block party.

Summer Pairings Series III: Sunday August 5, 2012, 3pm

Long Meadow Ranch Winery and Farmstead brings American singer-songwriter Sean Hayes up to Napa Valley in advance of his Outside Lands performance. Click here to purchase longmeadowranch.com/Events/SeanHayes

Born From Playa

Ridejoy was founded in the summer of 2011 but our first big rideshare endeavor was actually called BurningManRides.com. We wanted to make finding a ride to the playa easier and more fun.

We threw up a simple barebones rideshare site and thanks to an incredible outpouring of support and love from the Burning Man community, we had over 1600 Burners sign up, posting over 1200 rides to and from Black Rock City. It was an honor to offer this gift for the 2011 Burn.

We found rides ourselves to the playa, camped with the Wigg Party Camp, danced aboard mutant art cars, climbed dubiously constructed structures, watched the fire dancers with glee and hugged a lot of people. Then we found a ride back to the default world through our site, flying back on a plane with a Burner named Michael who looked suspiciously like Indiana Jones (see above photo).

Back and Better Than Ever

Over the past year, we’ve worked hard to improve on our initial site. Our goal has always been to offer the friendliest and most easy to use rideshare service on the planet, and so we built features like partial route matching, reviews and references and secure online transactions. Since launching Ridejoy.com in the fall, we’ve helped thousands of people share rides all along the West Coast, and heard lots of awesome stories about their trips.

We’re excited to relaunch BurningManRides.com for 2012 and show off how much the service has improved over the past year.

Coming into a Few Extra Tickets

We always knew we wanted to head back to Burning Man(and bring any new Ridejoy team members along for the ride) so we were proactive in purchasing our tickets, jumping in at the first ticket lottery.

It turned out we got more tickets than we needed, and we know how fortunate we are for this given the awful ticket crunch this year. Many good friends have asked to buy these tickets from us at face value – far more friends than the number of tickets we have.

Rather than choose between friends, we thought best thing to do would be to gift these tickets back to the community. BurningManRides.com was what launched our foray into rideshare, so now we’re honoring that community.

Our Plan for the Burning Man Free Ticket Gift-Away:

• Anyone who posts a ride on Ridejoy to Burning Man, or signs up for the gift away via the link on the BurningManRides.com home page is entered to win one of two free tickets.
• We’ll close entries on August 1st, 2012 and announce two winners shortly thereafter.
• It costs nothing to enter the gift away and we’re not making any profit off the rides posted on BurningManRides.com
• That’s it! Tell your friends about BurningManRides.com, the best way to share rides to the playa and we might be gifting you a free ticket to this years Burn!
• Click here to go to BurningManRides.com and enter!

Note: anyone who tries to “game” our gift-away by creating fake accounts or doing anything else sketchy will get banned =)

We’ve been polling our users for their thoughts on who they’d like to go on a roadtrip with, living or dead, and now we’re going to share the answers with you!

One of our most popular answers is, unsurprisingly, Hunter S. Thompson, the infamous journalist, author and all-around mischief-maker.

As one of our users, Sheena S. said:

“Probably Hunter S. Thompson, though if that actually happened I may end up regretting that choice.  Adventure, guaranteed.  Safety and well-being, most likely in peril.”

Yeah, we agree. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t get some fantastic and hallucinogenic stories out of it! You Ridejoy users like to live on the edge.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” – Hunter S. Thompson

Obligatory photo of Hunter S. Thompson in a car. There's an empty seat, just for you! (photo credit: spad's literary potpourri)

One of our favorite facts about him? He used a typewriter to re-type out all of The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms to get a sense of their authors’ writing styles. (Fun fact: I once tried to do this with Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao during my lunch breaks in Hong Kong and I nearly had a nervous breakdown. But man, it totally worked.)

We’ll be back next time to share another one of your roadtrip picks! What do you think about Hunter S. Thompson as a roadtrip companion? Let us know in the comments!

When poking around the internet around the idea and practice of “eating with coworkers” brings up a variety of illuminating articles on common office food culture. We see people talking about how to avoid social, but pricy, out-of-office lunches, deal with annoying habits of other desk eaters, protect your lunch in the company fridge, and cope with the food habits of others that are sabotaging your dieting attempts.

I think these are all symptoms of a problem that is characterized by a lack of positive food culture at work. Food should be something that makes people satisfied and happy (food, shelter, water, and companionship are, arguably, all a person really needs), not be a source of conflict and resentment.

The Challenges of Creating a Positive Food Culture

A few weeks ago, based on my experience in cooking for large groups and as a way to add variety to our lives, we began weaning ourselves off of Costco’s extensive selection of prepared foods (although the chocolate-covered strawberries and as much fruit juice as you can drink have stayed). We started getting a CSA box and I began cooking dinners from the team.

With two Paleo-dieters, two more meat fiends, a carb lover, and an intermittent vegetarian, I have my work cut out for myself staying creative enough to keep everyone fed, body and soul. There needs to be enough animal protein, an optional grain, preferably a vegetable protein, and lots of veggies and greens. And, I’d prefer the dishes to complement each other.

But, once you beat those logistical challenges into a delicious pulp, you get to bring ingestible joy to Ridejoy!

How We Found the Balance

While eating meals in the office isn’t for everyone, it’s something we enjoy doing at Ridejoy. Our work hours and personal lives happen to make it convenient for us to eat together for dinner twice a week. When we sit down and share a meal together, we reify our commitment to working together, and getting along. Good food is a great way to share happiness with others. It’s also been a wonderful excuse to invite interesting people into the office!

Great meals don’t happen by accident, it takes some planning and coordination. Here are some of the steps I took to engineer happy group meals – if you’re interested in doing this at your company, maybe you’ll find them helpful! This can be applied to meals eaten out and meals catered in, not just ones made in-house.

1. Sit down with the group
   Starting a conversation about food will take time and you need to create a space for people to discuss openly. If it’s too hard to coordinate a group sitting, be prepared to get and send a lot of emails.
2. Find common denominators and set common definitions
   - Ask about food allergies, dietary restrictions, spiciness tolerance, and absolute deal-breakers. Keep any allergens out of the kitchen.
   - Make sure your definitions match (does vegetarian mean “strict vegetarian” or vegan, or eggs and milk?).
   - If only one person hates asparagus, just don’t have asparagus play a major role in any dish and keep it as a side. But if three out of five can’t stand asparagus, take it off the menu.
   - Have everyone send you an example of their ideal meal and favorite flavors.
3. Cook a few meals
   Based on what you’ve learned, put some meals together and see what people think. As long as you follow what you learned from Step 2, the meals will be fine, and there shouldn’t be any disasters.
4. Gather feedback
   We post our meals on a spreadsheet and ask people for feedback. Takes notes on favorite flavors, themes, preferences of dark vs light meat, proportions of veggies/protein/carbs. Remember these notes, look at them all the time because they’ll help you stay focused and be creative (limits can be awesome).
5. Mix it up
   Once I got the hang of what people generally like and don’t like, I was able to start exploring new ingredients and dishes. Great places to find good recipes include Epicurious (for when you know what you want to make), Foodgawker (for inspiration & window shopping), and the many amazing food blogs out there.
6. Be nice, don’t judge, and have fun!

Palak paneer, daal vada (lentil fritters), kadhai jhinga (curried shrimp), sweet pepper & yogurt salad, and brown rice.

The Payoff of Shared Meals

Everyone knows that home cooked meals are so delicious because they’re just chock-full of love. But, cooking for 5-8 adults who have traversed life on a path of their own dietary preferences can be more challenging than feeding picky toddlers. But, that is also why it’s so important that we eat together– to keep the common ground firm and well-packed.

When you make an effort to accommodate the food choices and requirements of others (including their other commitments to family or other friends), you break down some huge barriers to collaboration and satisfaction. Studies on why diets and dieters fail implicate the psychological stress of societal pressures. A lot of recent writing on workspaces and effective workflow arrangements emphasize comfort and ergonomics– your workspace should be a comfortable place for you, so you can concern yourself with your work.

If by cooking dinner for Ridejoy, I abolish some of the stress that gets in the way of great ideas, awesome. If I’m also creating a forum for friends and colleagues of Ridejoy to gather and talk shop, even better! There’s nothing holding anyone back from exploring the amazing culinary treasures of San Francisco, but if you’d like a hot meal before biking home, it’s here for you!

Want to Give it a Try?

Sharing a meal is a tried and true practice of building community. It’s been a trope of TV parents for decades– “Damn it, Junior, you will eat dinner at this table with this family!”– and a mainstay of diplomatic and business negotiations since the first early hominid handed an antelope leg over the fire to another. And here at Ridejoy, obviously, we’re all about sharing–sharing rides, sharing ideas, sharing stories, sometimes we share sweaters, and most nights we share dinner (then fight like cavemen over leftovers the next day)!

I hope this post has given you some ideas on how you can build a better office food culture. Obviously it’s more than just sharing meals – there’s establishing rules on the fridge, keeping common eating areas clean and more. But as you can probably tell, we think the rewards make the effort worth it.

Have any tips to share on your experiences with food at work? We’d love to hear them in the comments.

An early dinner of Moroccan stew with meatballs, sweet potato fries, pilaf, and yogurt cucumber salad.

“I was just talking to my mom about you guys.”

This was the first thing, Ridejoy user, Monica T. said to me when I called her. Which is when I knew she was a keeper. Not only did she send us an impromptu email about her delightful experience on Ridejoy, she also directed her mom to the site. Joe Gebbia, one of the co-founders of Airbnb, has said one of their design goals was to create a website their own grandmothers could use. We’re getting one generation closer to that goal with Monica’s mom! Woo!

Who: Monica T (Passenger)

Job: I’m a professional photographer. Mostly for local musicians in Portland.

Route: Portland → Redding

Why? Visiting the mom.

How was the ride? So fun. My driver (Chris, aka “CJ”) and I talked every single moment. I didn’t expect to have a whole lot in common with him, since he’s a woodworker and I’m a photographer. But we had this excellent conversation for seven straight hours. He turned me on to a really cool podcast and we just yammered at each other the whole time. He plays the fiddle and the banjo and I happen to know a bunch of local musicians, so when we both get back to Portland, we have plans to hang out and swap contacts.

Joyful moments on the ride? I eat all day, every day. And I have a grocery bag, full of my snacks and stuff. Which I hardly had to touch because he had the same sort of snack setup and oddly enough, he had all my favorite stuff. So we were pulling over at rest stops and he was pulling out the bag, like “I got this” and “I got this.” It was like exchanging lunches in elementary school – “I’ll trade you my goodies for your apple.” When he brought out the salami and cheese and it was my favorite cheese, I was like, “Are you serious?”

Why Ridejoy? The way it’s set up, it’s just so easy. I haven’t looked at Craigslist at all, I use your guys’ matches. I can’t even think of a single thing that you could do better. You guys even check back in with me. I was like, “Holy crap! That’s a real person! She wants to know if I got a ride!”‘

With Ridejoy, it’s like this community of people who understand that we all need to save a buck today, and tomorrow, and probably next week. Because it’s not the greatest economy right now. I actually took the time to read other posts just to get that general feel of folks out there and it seems like from what you guys have in place, it really attracts honest, down-to-earth people.

Final thoughts? I’ve traveled all my life and love being on road trips. Now that I know there is this option available, I’m going to be using Ridejoy a lot. ♥

Do you have your own User Joy story?  We can’t get enough of ‘em. Let us know at team@ridejoy.com! 

Ridejoy (and friends) waiting for their cue to grab a plate! (credit Garry Tan)

At Ridejoy, we’re on a mission. We’re excited about creating an awesome service to share rides with friendly people, and we’re inspired to bring together people in their cars and create a more sustainable society.

But a strong mission isn’t worth much without a strong company culture to bring that vision to life. By bringing ourselves together first, we can set our goals clearly and do our best work.

I think how Ridejoy hires and who’s been brought onboard demonstrates dedication to an amazing company culture. But at Ridejoy, we’re not just a team, we’re a family, and families eat together.

That’s where I come in.

The Back-story

I originally discovered Ridejoy deep in a Hacker News thread. I loved what they were doing, so one night I sent them a long email expressing my delight at the thoughtful way they’re building community, and asking if they needed help.

That began my journey from enthusiastic ridesharer to a part of the Ridejoy team. I came onboard part-time to lend a hand as Office Hero, helping out with administrative and social media tasks.

A week later, inspired by Thumbtack’s Food Rules post, we decided to experiment with home-cooked meals based on my experience as a cook and kitchen manager in 100+ member housing cooperatives. It’s worked out great and the Office Hero evolved into the Ridejoy Happiness Manager.

Dining Well

We now eat healthy meals together most nights of the week and it’s been fantastic.

As someone who’s spent her formative years in the East Bay’s local and organic food movement, I’ve witnessed the power of how food can bring people together and build community. Our team dinners let us sit down, savor the moment and unwind for a bit together.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
-Virginia Woolf

I believe that by sharing and accepting what others share, life can be more satisfying, sustainable, and safe. By making meals in the office, we get to reify our beliefs about sustainability and community by buying raw ingredients from Farm Fresh to You (a CSA program that delivers in San Francisco) and sourcing more ethical meats. Quality meals turn into quality time together.

This is just the beginning! In my next post, I’ll share specific tips on how we make food work for us and build community within our team through food.

A dinner I made last week: mesquite-rubbed pork, sweet potato cakes, pan-fried chickpea salad, roasted asparagus, and brown rice