Originally Posted by SkippyX

Oy, this is going to be a long post.

1. My truck broke last September. I was still paying child support a the time (it's done now, thank goodness) and the repair was an expensive one. I started riding Houston Metro. An average day was two hours bus stop to bus stop, and that didn't take into consideration the time spent walking to the bus stop. Add another twenty minutes each way. A bad day was three hours stop to stop. I tried riding my bike to the bus stop and then putting it onto the bike rack on the front of the bus, but far too often the bus I needed would show up w/ two already in the rack, which meant another half hour wait to catch the next bus.

2. I went to the doctor, stepped onto the scale and found I had broken the 300 lb barrier. I moped about that for a couple more months.

3. I started hearing people who were about my age (47) complaining about the pills they were taking for high blood pressure, cardiac disease, high cholesterol levels and diabetes. According to my doctor my blood work numbers were good, but it was a bit spooky to hear that my brother (two years younger than me) had started taking Lipitor, or that my brother-in-law (three years older than me) had a defibrillator implanted in his chest.

4. One day I was at the bus stop after work and the bus was 45 minutes late. I thought "This is ridiculous. I could ride a bicycle home faster than I could make it taking the bus, and I'd probably lose weight. I bet it would help stave off all those health issues that I keep hearing about from others as well...."

So I started riding to work.

Well, actually, I started riding 2/3 of the way to work; to a convenient bus stop about 2/3 of the way there. I couldn't manage the whole commute to start. Now, three months later, I'm commuting the entire way (20 miles each way) daily. I feel great. At last count - about three weeks ago - I had lost twenty pounds. My heart rate is down and so is my blood pressure. When I first started riding the entire distance it took 1 hr, 50 min to do the ride, and I was just hosed out from the trip. Working was difficult, but I stuck with it. Now my average trip is around 1 hr, 30 min, and today I did it in 1 hr 26 min. My goal is to get to the point where I can do the ride in something close to one hour. I know that's going to take a while, but I figure it only took me three months to knock twenty minutes off my average time. I have much more weight to lose, and I have gotten faster as I've lost the weight. I believe ~ one hour is doable. If I can get to an hour each way I'll match what my average drive time used to be.

Houston traffic is maddening. I miss all of it when I ride since I'm moving through residential neighborhoods most of the way rather than down congested highways.

It's just a much better way to move my fat rear end from point A to point B.