I love the bike

Downtown Washington DC. Morning rush hour. Connecticut Avenue closed from the Washington Hilton all the way down to E Street in anticipation of a motorcade - but who still gets to ride down the middle of the road?

Other People's Content, redux

Someone in the CityBike.com forums linked to this video, which is well worth reposting here. It's local to the region, and, while it's largely preaching to the choir, captures the pros and cons pretty well.

(What I really want is to figure out how to mount a camera on my bike frame like these folks did!)

Pedal Power Final Cut from Mike Kurec on Vimeo.

Weather immunity

Regular bike commuters enjoy a liberating indifference to weather. Take rain. A pedestrian caught without an umbrella is forced to wait out the storm or dash from awning to awning until they reach the protection of the Metro, bus shelter or parking garage. And even with an umbrella, their clothes below the waist are quickly soaked. The cyclist by contrast doesn’t care. There is only one weather metric on a bike: warmth. If you’re warm, you’re fine. And staying warm on a bike is usually pretty easy. (On perhaps the 15 hottest days of the year, the opposite holds – if you’re cool, you’re fine. Those days, drink a lot of water and ride slowly.)

In summer rainstorms, all you get is wet. And you quickly discover that wet, by itself, isn’t unpleasant at all. (One long day in the rain in 1995 revealed this truth to me.) The warm air, plus the heat you generate by riding, are usually enough to keep any chill at bay. In the cooler air of spring and fall, add a rain jacket or perhaps another insulating layer on rainy days. And of course no matter how wet you may get on the bike, when you get where you’re going, you peel off your wet bike clothes and climb into a dry set of duds. (The ordinary commuter by contrast has little choice but to wear the day’s weather until merciful evaporation completes its work.)

Staying warm in winter is largely a matter of the right clothes. With good layering and proper cold weather selections (like special lobster gloves and a balaclava), you can ride for half an hour or 40 minutes in temperatures down to 10-12 degrees Fahrenheit and honestly pronounce the weather merely “chilly”. Snow is not much of a problem because it doesn’t make you wet. The worst days are rainy ones right at or just above freezing, and I confess that I don’t really look forward to them. But even they aren’t that bad, and I ride in them too.

After a while at this you really do begin to believe you possess a special, personal kind of immunity to the weather. A couple of years ago I had to spend eight weeks in Chicago in October and November on business. I couldn’t ride to work so I deliberately chose a hotel about a mile from the office so I could at least get in a little walk each day. I know what Chicago weather is like that time of year but in packing I completely neglected to pack an umbrella, raincoat or hat. Only later did I realize I had come to believe that weather was just not something that I ever needed to worry about in travelling between home and office - having completely lost sight of the fact that this was thanks only to the bicycle and was not some superhuman trait. Luckily, taxis are abundant in Chicago even in the rain; I spent enough time in them that month.

. . . because all their lives men have been telling them that this – [---------] – is 9 inches!

And so it is in cycling as well - many things are not as substantial as one might imagine or wish them to be. I've already noted how hard it is to achieve 10,000 hours in the saddle, which turns out literally to be a lifetime accomplishment for the non-professional cyclist. Another surprising figure is how little money one actually saves on gasoline by riding instead of driving. At 25 mpg and $3 / gallon, my 2,500 bike commuting miles works out to a gasoline savings of a modest $300 / year. Of course I avoid many other costs (e.g., DC's confiscatory parking lot fees; auto depreciation) which may be even more substantial, and there’s no question that bike commuting is a money saver. But I’m not going to put my kids through college on the difference. Hell, I could save more than I do on gas simply by giving up my second cup of store-bought coffee each day.

What sucks?

There are of course drawbacks.

You have to build in transition time at both ends of work – cleaning up / drying off and changing into work clothes when you arrive; and then when it’s time to go home, changing back into bike clothes. It gets old. Some days the simple act of undressing and dressing yet again seems like the hardest part of the whole practice.

You are solely responsible for your safe and efficient progress. You’re the motor, you’re the driver – and you’re vulnerable. You must pay attention – to cars, pedestrians, other bikes, the road surface – so say goodbye to the 40 minutes or hour on your old commute when you’d read the paper or listen to the radio or books on tape. (I do see some riders with iPod buds in their ears but they are idiots.) In the same vein, when something breaks, you have to stop and fix it. This can be particularly unpleasant during dark and cold winter months. (It is a particular disadvantage compared to cars, which today are fantastically reliable, but perhaps not as much vis-à-vis Washington’s increasingly doddery subway service.)

Some days you’re just under the weather and biking is a chore, not enjoyable at all. Actual weather, remarkably enough, is not a downside. It’s just data. I’ve heard it said that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. It’s true on a bike, where if you’re warm, nothing else matters. After a few weeks of riding you’ll gain an accurate sense for what jersey, jacket, socks or gloves are appropriate to what conditions. (Write down the temperature and what you wore to help you remember.) You’ll know you’re a pro when you realize you’ve become completely indifferent each morning to the quality of weather you’re about to set out in. It won’t take as long as you think!

Eat your vegetables

Over the years I’ve noticed that a lot of bicycle / bicycle commuter advocacy sites try to encourage new bike commuters with a list of virtues, reasons that people should forego their cars in favor of their bikes – it’s “greener”, your carbon footprint is smaller, you save money, it’s “one less car”, and so forth. Here are a couple of examples: Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; Washington Area Bicyclist Association . These are all indisputably noble and true but probably about as effective in persuading people to ride to work as “it’s full of vitamins” is in getting kids to eat their peas or spinach.

Virtue may be its own reward but it’s even truer of fun. Bike to work if you enjoy it. If for some reason you need to maintain a certain level of social consciousness cred, just pretend that you don’t.

What's so great about it?

Here are a few fun things about biking to work.

Most obviously, you get to go for a bike ride! And even when you’re crushingly busy at work, you’re outside, in fresh air, for at least the length of your commute. Of course you might not feel like riding every day (some days I dread it), but a lot of those 50/50 or even 20/80 days will tip over to the positive 10 minutes into your ride, and suddenly you'll be grateful to be out on the road again - days that start out bad don't have to stay that way.

You are miraculously able to opt out of the tedious and enervating commute that everyone else, in their cars, buses and subways, must endure. You ride through the chaos, it surrounds you, but you’re not in it any longer. Their problems aren’t your problems. Traffic jams may slow you down but won’t stop you; you can always find a way through or around. Problems on the Red Line? You don’t have to fight for a taxi or stand in line for a bus. Sure, you’ll encounter some new, small and unaccustomed indignities – like, in the rain, you get soaking wet – but you may even come to enjoy the seeming drawbacks (see below).

You’ll almost never be late again because of traffic. Ninety percent of my morning rides take between 21 and 26 minutes. My (longer) return route home requires 38 to 47 minutes. Three or four times a year a Presidential or Vice Presidential motorcade stops all traffic, including me, but bike commuters in other parts of the country can safely discount that risk.

Spontaneity flourishes. Wondering what’s down that side street? Go see. If you ride past something interesting – a new public art installation, or someone’s handing out free samples – you can just pull your bike out of the road and have a look. You won’t slow anyone down and you don’t need to find a parking place.

You’re more aware of, attuned to, the weather. And because you’re regularly out in it, extremes don’t bother you as much. I have come particularly to enjoy summer downpours. “Wet” doesn’t matter if you’re not cold, and it’s a wonderful luxury to be able to enjoy the feel of warm rain on my back and arms while all around me pedestrians are holding newspapers over their heads and scrambling for cover.

And of course, you get exercise – real, every day, aerobic exercise. It clears your mind and dissipates stress; you’ll sleep better, and you know it’s good for you in the long run.

Why bike commute?

In my case it's nothing complicated. It works out well and it suits me.

I lived for 11 years in the Mt. Pleasant area of Washington, DC, where I had a simple and ordinary commute to and from work. A Metrobus picked me up two blocks from home and dropped me off two blocks from my office. The return was just as easy. On crummy days or when the buses were running slow, I’d grab a cab – which under DC’s bizarre taxi zone system, cost just $4.20. Easy peasy.

In 1998 I moved further out into northwest DC. I loved the new house, but it wasn’t near any meaningful mass transit, so my commute came to entail either an unreliable and time-consuming walk-bus-subway combination, or a drive through DC’s dispiriting traffic. I thought I wouldn’t mind the new routine but I did. Then, one cold, snowy day the prospect of waiting at the bus stop seemed particularly grim and I decided, pretty much on a whim, to try riding my bike in. I’d always been a pretty active cyclist, on occasion even venturing out in snow for a change of pace and a challenge. I had a mountain bike in the basement with fat tires and knobby treads, and after throwing on a couple of layers of wool and some long tights, I set out for work.

It was a blast. I wasn’t “commuting” that day; instead I was going for an invigorating bike ride – which, conveniently, left me off at the office where I needed to be! I rode in the next day, and the day after that, and so on until one day the bike simply became the way in which I got to work.

That was 12 years ago. Since that first day I’ve gotten married, moved again and had two kids, but have continued the bicycle commute throughout. I ride year-round and whatever the weather. (Black ice is the one exception, a hard-learned lesson.) My current commute varies from about 6.5 to 10.5 miles, depending on the route, which in turn depends on how late I am to where I need to be. In those 11+ years I’ve logged more than 26,000 commuting miles – those little numbers add up.

Bike commuting suits me because I like to ride bikes and because I live both close enough (and far enough!) from work to make it practicable. And, I have been able to do it so regularly and consistently because it does not interfere materially with work or family obligations. (My wife, realizing that this may be all that stands between me and 270 pounds, is in fact highly supportive.)

These highly favorable circumstances may not hold for everyone who is thinking about commuting by bicycle, but of course there’s nothing wrong with bike commuting three days a week, or “sometimes”, or until the first kid comes along. In the series of entries I’m planning for this site (or “blog”, I’m not sure what it will turn out to be) I hope to make it a bit easier for prospective bike commuters to get underway. I’m also hoping that folks who are already riding to work will stumble across the site and find it enjoyable or useful in some fashion. It's Bike to Work Week right now, and Bike to Work Day is tomorrow - it seems like a good time to get started. Let’s see how it goes.