bicycle commuting – two years!
June 1st, 2011I’ve had a blog post about this in drafts since January, when it was easy to get disbelieving looks over biking to work. In April and May, bike racks fill up around here, and my lifestyle choice suddenly seems a little obvious. But now it’s June! Bike Month’s over! It’s hot outside! People think I’m nuts again!
I’ve been using a bicycle as primary means of transport around Norfolk since July 2009. (Ok, so I lied about two years. But just by a month.)
I had only taken a handful of bike rides between the year I turned teenager and the time my car broke. That end of 2008 to mid-2009, I took the bus most places but started riding the old Schwinn cruiser I’d gotten for $30 at Goodwill for small grocery trips when Jesse was out of town.
Then we moved to Norfolk and life changed. Suddenly I worked 3 miles from home, and riding there every day was feasible. And fun. My office just moved to 6 miles from home, so now it’s a bit more time-consuming but still easily doable. And more fun – fewer stop lights mean I get to go FASTER! Besides increased giddiness over the flying sensation induced by speed, this means the time increase really amounts to maybe ten minutes. Ten minutes is simultaneously not that significant a chunk of my day yet significant enough to make me less likely to beat myself up over not getting to the gym.
Norfolk’s flat. The biggest hills I regularly encounter are railroad underpasses and bridges. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but not unreasonably so. When it downpours enough to make getting to work impractical, there are usually bigger problems to worry about — like the water flooding the roads downtown. (Unfortunate infrastructure issue, but I have to admit it works in my favor — the office liberal leave policy tends to kick in if it’s THAT bad. I do take occasional rides from kind co-workers and keep a taxi phone number handy just in case, though.)
There’s something, too, to being in the open air. I know more about what my city smells like, what it sounds like, than I ever did when I was in a car. Maybe it’s strange, but that’s done more than bringing in a sports team ever could for making it my city. I wave at the elementary school crossing guard. Sometimes people at red lights roll down a window to say hi. Other cyclists around here are almost always friendly, chatty if you happen to pull up at the same red light at the same time. And while time/energy constraints keep me less than fully active, Bike Norfolk is the stuff if you want an inclusive, awesome community that’s doing all kinds of good.
My commute is generally one of the better parts of my day.
In bad weather, maybe not as much, but I’ve adapted. Extra pair of clothes at the office, waterproof bag. Warm coat and gloves in the winter, thermos coffee mug with a handle that can dangle over the handlebars. For super-hot, there’s the packet of wet wipes to quickly cool off and clean up a bit.
I’ve learned to haul stuff, too. My main bag is a Knog netbook pannier/messenger bag; it’s a shoulder bag with an adaptor in the back where you can attach a little set of hooks to make it clip to the bike rack. It’s heavy duty (this was the problem with extra-cute and cheaper Basil bags – they’re great, but hanging with me EVERY DAY was just too rough on them), really hard to get water into, and big enough for a Kindle, purse stuff, a book or two, etc. These days I usually get groceries by filling up pannier bags and piling whatever’s left into a canvas bag, then hooking it to the top of the rack with a cargo net. I don’t know that I could feed a family without going to a cart system, but it’s great for just me. The picture below was a stop on the way home from work one day, so not even a full load.
I like to tell people I’m funding school by not owning a car, and that’s basically true… (In fact, if you use the default values here, average car ownership comes out to $613 a month; six grad level classes a year averages out to about $600 a month.) Yes, I’m more vulnerable to needing help getting around; yes, there are still some expenses, and my tire-changing skills are ever-increasing; yes, life’s a little less convenient sometimes; yes, if I get hurt I’ll maybe have to do some major revamping to figure out my life. BUT. It works for now, and the unexpected’s unexpected and requires adjustment no matter how you’re getting around.
So that’s that. I love bike.




