What They Don’t Tell You About Bike Commuting
by Grant Petersen

I’ve been a bike commuter for 30 years, and two-thirds of that time the commute was more than an hour one-way and hilly. That doesn’t make me an authority, just experienced and full of opinions. I apologize in advance if the opinions aren’t helpful and the observations are boring!

1. Be wary of heavy-handed, save-the-air, guilt-based bicycle commuting propaganda. The difference one commuter (you) can make is not significant, and you ought to know that. Anything you do for reasons other than personal, with immediate positive consequences, is something you aren’t likely to do for long. There are personal, positive, immediate benefits to bicycle commuting, but they’re no different than they are for any bike ride. If the feeling you get by “being green” is enough of a positive consequence, great. If it’s a feeling of smugness, or getting to feel “better and greener” than motorists, great. But don’t think your individual contribution is measurable beyond being just one less car in traffic. (Hey, that counts!).
2. If your commute is a physical challenge to you in the best of circumstances, you won’t do it when you’re tired, cold, sore, have cold sores, are running late, the weather is wet or threatening, or you have an extra widget to carry, no matter how small. If your commute is going to be regular, it has to be easy for you. If it is not easy and your force yourself to do it anyway, you will grow to hate riding, and will be an unhappy person.
3. It is hard to get up a head of steam for bike commuting if your job requires you to look neat and well dressed in fancy clothing.
4. I t is also hard to ride a bike to work if it takes away family time in the morning or evening or both. What’s more important to you—your personal fitness and a contribution to a cleaner world, or eating breakfast and dinner with your family? Sometimes, there are tradeoffs, and if you choose your bike over your family, why?
5. If even in ideal conditions your commute is a physical challenge to you, then you won’t do it when you’re tired, cold, sore, have cold sores, are running late, the weather is wet or threatening, or you have an extra widget to carry. If your commute is going to be regular, it has to be easy for you.
6. There are only five types of people who commute on bikes:
   • Athletes who use their commute as training or time-on-the-bike.
   • People who don’t have cars or access to convenient public transportation.
   • Bad drivers who’ve had their licenses suspended.
   • Practicalists whose commute is easier by bike than it is by car.
   • People who just plain like pedaling a bike.
7. When your commute, work circumstances, and personal life are right for commuting, you will find a way to do it, and the more you do it, the sooner you’ll become an expert at what works for you, and uninterested in anybody else’s “bike commuting tips.” So, before that happens, here are my tips. I know you’ll find them fascinating, insightful, maybe even life changing.

Clothing For Commuting
If you commute on city streets, dress as much as possible like the motorists who ride along with you. That way, they’ll see you as one of them and be more likely to treat you well. Lots of bike commuters dress up in “record attempt” clothing, or replica pro team jerseys, then add a super garish helmet and aerodynamic sunglasses, completing the effect of “not looking normal.” This sort of look brings out the xenophobic in any motorist, and that’s not something you want to do. What you want to do is look like the xenophobic motorist’s favorite cousin or best friend, because that doesn’t get his blood boiling the way the fancy pants look does.

Bikes for Commuting
Think of your commute as a bike ride, and just ride an appropriate bike. If it’s on bad streets and in traffic, that dictates a stouter bike and a more upright position than a typical road bike will give you. On the other hand, if your commute is on open roads and includes long climbs and you tend to leave the house late, ride a road bike and call it a commute bike, if you like.

Carrying Loads
There are three ways only: Bags, baskets, and packs. They all work. You probably have a pack, so try that out, and if you get sick of carrying weight on your back and maybe sweating through your shirt, you’ll move to bags or baskets. Between the two, bags are better for wet weather, but you can always stick your stuff into a waterproof bag (or daypack) and put that into the basket. And elastic net over the basket holds things in. Without something to stop your load from bouncing out, it will.

Observations
Don’t expect your commute to get appreciably easier, unless you’re in really bad shape when you start out. Riding never gets easier, you just go faster, but the effort remains about the same. What happens, is it becomes more tolerable. After you’ve ridden through the wet season or cold season, and had a flat or two and some semi-regrettable experiences with cars or crashes—if you grind through that and don’t give up, you’ll become remarkably resistant to quitting.

The every day commute changes with the seasons, and you’ll find that on days when you’d really rather not ride, the familiarity helps you get through it. You become familiar with the most mundane things on your route—mailboxes, cracks in the road, splashed paint that never got wiped up, remodeling projects in the neighborhood, the same dogs that always bark and think they’re winning when they see you ride away from them as though they’ve done a job protecting their owner’s turf, the same retired people walking their dogs.

On a steep road I commute on, there was a deep gouge, almost a scoop-out, about 4-inches by 4-inches by 4-inches deep. One day, a roundish landscaping rock appeared in it, and I doubt anybody actually put it there. A house nearby and up the road has a lot of these rocks for decoration or whatever, and one must have gotten dislodged and rolled down the hill and plopped into the scoop.

It filled in most of the area of the scoop and sat below street level, but not by much, and over the next 14 months or so, the area around the rock and inside the scoop collected enough debris and dirt and rocks to fill in the space around the rock, so it looked sort of like a big egg in a sandbox, with only the center of the rock peaking out. Then, grass started to grow in the scoop, and grew up to the street level, about half an inch above the rock. In summer, the grass died, and now it’s winter again, and it’s green again, and the rock is barely visible.

It’s not a life-changing experience, seeing that happen, but it matters to me and my daughter, who ride by it every day. When you commute by bicycle, little things like that don’t have to matter, but they start to matter whether you plan for it or not. I could tell you another story about a mailbox, but you should go find your own mailboxes, or abandoned cars, or nice homes lived in by people who need help maintaining them but don’t get it, and end up filling the house with plastic garbage bags, and their cars too, while they live in a tent in the backyard. They’re out there, and you won’t see them or notice them if you’re in a car. Commuting by bike gives you things to think about and time to think about them.

Grant Petersen was the Marketing Director for Bridgestone Cycle USA until in 1994 when he started Rivendell Bicycle Works, a bicycle company based on refined, time tested products and fabrication techniques. During the Bridgestone years Grant gained a sage reputation as a talented bike designer and straightforward marketing writer. Honing his skills editing the Bridgestone catalogs and ads, which are now considered timeless resources, Grant has since found his passion in the Rivendell Reader, a quarterly cycling publication of insightful essays, stories, and eclectic tidbits. Grant has been bicycle commuting nearly everyday, for the last 30 years. Go to http://www.rivendellbicycles.com and find out more about Rivendell.