First things first, if you celebrate: merry merry! But if you need a quick respite from the festivities, I’m going to talk about something decidedly un-festive: bike commuting.
Last time I wrote (a while ago) my e-bike had just arrived. Now we already have a few commutes under our belt so I quickly wanted to check in. It’s been going reasonably well. I say “reasonably” because I didn’t get as many commutes in as I’d hoped so far.
The main obstacle, on which many other things hinge, is that I don’t currently work in my usual office. Our building is being renovated and we’re a few kilometres down the road at an interim location. So my routine is: put kid in trailer, zoom up the hill, get kid out and deliver him to daycare, unhook trailer and lock it at the campus bike storage, zoom to work. And back in the afternoon. It’s a bit of a schlep. It’d be so much easier if once I was at daycare, I wouldn’t have to bike another 3k. It’s not far, but it takes time and… logistics.
Then there’s the weather. I’m a fair weather cyclist as is, but we don’t have showers at our interim offices and I can’t show up soaked because I’d be freezing and feeling like a wet mouse for the rest of the day. So when it’s raining, or threatening to rain, we don’t bike.
And there’s time. It’s been stressful at work and with daycare hours, I have to power through. It’s an “every minute counts” kind of situation. I go to work, emerge bleary-eyed from my office at lunchtime to grab a sandwich and munch it at my desk, and then emerge bleary-eyed again to run off to daycare pickup. The bike commute doesn’t take a lot of extra time, but it adds up.
I know all these things are going to improve once we move back into our building, but right now I’m unimpressed because I’m LOVING my bike commutes and I wish I could do more. Anyway, onwards and upwards. Better times will come!
For wet days, one word: Gore-Tex. Years ago, the editor of our state-wide bicycling federation newsletter pulled up next to us at a stoplight on a winter commute (me on bike, one child on trailer bike, the other child behind that in bike trailer) and said he wanted to take a picture of us to run, with the caption “What’s your excuse?” In the winter, the plastic windscreen on the trailer helped a lot – it’s a lot colder sitting still, but blankets come in handy.
I know, and I have all the rain gear/gore tex. The problem is the lack of showers at work. When I wear the rain gear, I sweat. In normal cycling clothes I can just about get away with not showering on arrival.