Next week marks my one-year anniversary as a bike commuter! As such, it only seems appropriate to put down some thoughts and reflections on the blood, sweat, and tears of the past year in biking to and from work (fortunately, I can’t actually recall any blood).
To give some background: a year ago, UH announced that they were closing the lot where I usually parked. We in the library were fortunate to have an inexpensive lot right next to our building, but an expansion to our campus power plant meant that we were soon to be slogging across campus like everyone else. The thing is, Houston in July is HOT. Here’s a screen shot of the weather yesterday. In the time it took to walk from our new lot, my hair generally increased in volume by about 300%, my makeup would largely have sweated off, and I just generally looked pretty bedraggled. One day I joked to a colleague that I might as well just be biking to work for how sweaty I was, and save $20 a month at that. It really stuck with me. Why COULDN’T I be biking to work? I’ve always hated driving in rush hour traffic anyway. Our fiscal year parking passes expire at the end of the August, so I decided to try it for the remaining 6 weeks or so, and see if I thought I could handle canceling my parking and just bike commute.
My ride is 4.5 miles each way, which may sound like a lot if you don’t live in a perfectly flat city like Houston. Here it’s pretty easy. While I would say that I was in fairly decent shape when I started biking in, I certainly wasn’t an experienced rider, and it hardly took any time at all to get used to the distance. I’m generally pretty sweaty after my ride, but I’m primarily sweating from heat, not exertion. I don’t push myself in terms of speed, with the exception of rare occasions when I’m running late or the weather looks threatening. Door to door, I can get to work in a half hour on my bike – about the same as driving, when you consider the time it took to get all the way around campus to my designated lot, found a parking spot, and walked the nearly half mile in to the library. Of course, for about half of the year I can’t just ride door-to-door, and I actually ride from home to the on-campus gym, where I clean up and change into work-appropriate clothing. In the heat of summer, I need to leave my house at least an hour before I plan to be in my office.
I only have a few major frustrations with the bike commute. First of all, obviously, it adds commuting time in the morning. I am NOT a morning person – in fact I often refer to myself as being the “morning monster” for the first hour or so after I wake up…sort of like an evil twin who comes out until she can be tamed by a minimum of twelve ounces of coffee. It’s a pretty huge concession on my part to get out of bed in time to physically and mentally prepare myself to get on my bike. I really need an hour for this, most of which I spend silently drinking coffee in the dark, and then a little while to pack my bag for the day with a change of clothes and anything else I need. If you’re keeping track, this means that I am waking up a full two hours before I can reasonably expect to be at work. That probably isn’t unreasonable for a lot of people, but I’ve been a roll-out-of-bed-and-go type for my as long as I’ve been setting an alarm for school/work. Additionally, I miss a couple of minor things that went along with a car commute. As it turns out, I was getting a lot of my news from NPR during my commute. I’ve tried to pick up my level of news reading, but I still feel like I’m absorbing less – probably because there is so much more competing for my attention online than there is on drive-time radio. I also miss the ability to easily bring food with me to work. There’s only so much that I can carry with me on the bike every day, and it’s pretty difficult to bring much more than a granola bar or sandwich. Dining options on campus at UH are pretty sparse, particularly during the summer, so I end up spending more money and eating less nutritious food in general.
Still, these complaints haven’t convinced me to abandon my bike. I do quite enjoy the ride most of the time, particularly in the morning. It’s usually quiet and calm, I have time to collect my thoughts, and the route is pretty scenic. I enjoy the feeling of getting to work under my own power, and it saves me money on parking and gas. Dealing with rude drivers has helped me learn to just roll with frustrations that I can’t really do anything about, and carrying everything with me curbs my pack-rat tendencies. I appreciate that biking helps me squeeze in some exercise, even though the ride itself isn’t exactly strenuous. I change clothes at the campus gym, so it’s not very hard to convince myself to work out a little bit since I’m already there. To be honest, if there was a viable public transportation option I would probably go for that over biking, but I dislike driving in city traffic enough that this alternative is just fine with me.
I often get comments about the safety (or lack thereof) of my commute, particularly related to traffic and the economically depressed neighborhood that I ride through. I follow a city-designated bike route, which is pretty low traffic. I’m almost entirely on neighborhood streets, and even on a bike path for a little ways. I can’t say I’ve never been nervous about traffic, or threatened by drivers, or even bumped by a car, but overall I feel that my route is about as good as it gets for an urban bike commute. I also ride at normal commuting times – almost always between 8am and 7pm, during daylight, so I never feel unsafe in terms of crime. I do make a point to be friendly with people who I pass frequently, say good morning and generally establish myself as friendly and respectful, but I would do the same in any neighborhood I rode through. Realistically, the most consistent threat to my safety that I encounter is stray dogs. Some mornings I have seen as many as EIGHT loose dogs on my ride in. Most of the time they ignore me, but some will come running up and even chase me a little bit. I don’t have a good solution for this, I just do my best to stay on the opposite side of the road and get past any strays as quickly and quietly as possible.
One last note: I bike about 90% of the time, but I do drive to work when necessary, such as when the weather is bad or I need to run a car-dependent errand during the day. When I drive in, I have two options for parking – $3/day to park in a remote student lot, or $9/day to park in a garage that is located pretty close to the library. If the weather is bad, I usually spring for the garage. However, I’m lucky in that my husband can usually just drop me off and pick me up when necessary, so I don’t always have to pay to park if I don’t ride. If I didn’t have this luxury, I’m actually pretty sure that it wouldn’t be cost-effective to not have a parking permit. I would love if UH would adopt some sort of incentive program for cyclists. I know many companies give registered cyclists 1 or 2 free parking passes a month to use during inclement weather, or free/discounted gym memberships so that they can clean up. As it stands, I get no benefits related to bike commuting whatsoever, which is a pretty big bummer.
