baron von trail 

I ride a little over 20 miles in the morning. No shower here or lockers. No real problem.

What I do is I shower before leaving the house. I also bring clothes into work ahead of time by car--about one week's worth--along with various toiletries. I always ride in bike clothes, clean up and change in the bathroom.

Some tricks: Large alcohol wipes are great for clean-up. In summer, I also sit in front of a small fan at my desk for about 5 minutes before changing.

All in all, no shower or locker room with an office job is far less trouble than I at first expected.

LottoAdecco02

I've commuted in all work/shower situations and have tried just about everything. The real challenge is that rain gear can make you even extra sweaty - to solve this I switched to a cape and left for work a tad earlier as it slowed me down. But it allowed more ventilation. I did a sponge/wipe/towel ritual in a bathroom stall until I convinced my work to install a shower as part of a "green initiative." Turns out they got a tax break for having employees commute by bike.

SylvainG

How about a wet towel in your bag. True, it's a bit heavy but would 'clean you off' better than some baby wipes. Let yourself dry off, may be with the help of a fan, put some antiperspirant and dress up.

Edit: Or better yet, wet the towel in the rest room...

PaulRivers

For many people (including myself), if they shower before sweating and wear clean clothes they don't stick. The smell comes from bacteria on your skin (or clothes), wash it off before you leave and you're good.

Take it real easy on the last 5 minutes of your ride to let your body cool down. When you stop exerting yourself, the wind going over you will dry you off before you get to work, except in the hottest and most humid of conditions.

Either keep your dry clothes in your office/desk, or just put a rack on your bike. They make racks specifically for bikes that don't have rack mounts. Not having a rack on your commuter is like trying to drive your sedan across a field that you should be using a tractor for - it just doesn't make sense.

sweeks

I second this^^. I'm a dentist, so I *have* to be careful about being stinky.
It's usually the *second* time I sweat that I start to be a bit ripe, so that's on the way home.

Now, my "normal" commute is 50 miles each way; however, all but about 4 miles are on a train. So the only times I run any real risk of sweating are when it's 90 degrees and humid, or it's raining and I have to wear my waterproof-and-supposedly-breathable outer clothes. The bike goes on the train because it's a folder in a bag. This is something you might consider if there is public transportation in your area. I've been doing this for 15 years.

On rare occasions, I have ridden all the way to work and back. This is what I call the "Bike-to-Work Century". The *one* time I had a patient, I did the "bird bath" in the men's room before the appointment, so I wasn't stinky. But the charlie-horse in the hamstrings made me realize this wasn't a good idea! Now if I ride to work on "Bike-to-Work Day", I don't see patients.
Steve

tnburban

One thing I did when I commuted in a similar situation about 10 years ago was take a week's wardrobe to the office on the weekend and leave it there. Just hung up a garment bag on the back of my door, no one ever noticed or asked. That way when I biked in M-F I didn't have to worry about bring clothes with me. And then on Friday I just stuffed all the clothes from the week into a bag and took them to the cleaners. You need to have 2 weeks worth of clothes to do this.

frndlyfire

My (obvious) trick is just to ride super slow. I can do this is Chicago as it's flat - I couldn't do this when I lived in Sydney as I had over 1k of climbing to the office on the route I liked, so it didn't matter how slow I went! I have to make sure the wind isn't blowing to hard from the south, and that the temperature is under 75. Then I'm fresh as a daisy. The 15kms can take 45mins instead of under 35 though - but the lakes nice.

Abe_Froman

It's usually pretty darn cool by the lake even on hot days.

And I second the bring clothes to work thing. I typically being a weeks worth of clothes to the office on tuesdays; I need to drive quite a bit out of the way to drop my daughter off anyway.

aaronrob222

This is my pattern and, from my experience, the most difficult part is bringing your clothes to work without them getting terribly wrinkly--unless your using a car like BVT. I finally found a locker that I can use, so it fits 4-5 shirts that I loosely fold in my pannier. Lots of garment bags are available in pannier styles, so that would very pretty helpful. Since you're dressing pretty formally, it may be worth to see if a dry cleaner delivers. It's a pretty common service in the US.

SylvainG

Try rolling your clothes instead of folding it. Far less wrinkles that way. You can also use a fabric steamer to unwrinkle your clothes. I don't bother ironing my dress shirts anymore. I simply steam away the wrinkles when I get to work Takes only a few minutes to get wrinkle free dress shirts.

rumrunn6

how's it going?

tclune

Damn, me too...

ara_biker

Depends on ambient temperature and time on saddle. I live in a tropical country. More than 30 minutes of saddle time, one is going to sweat even if temperature is 18 deg Celsius with a breeze and the cycling pace is 12-15kmph. I enter my office drenched in 32-33 deg C weather and wipe off the sweat in restroom with a towel.

ara_biker

Are you sure....I have a lot of energy while pedalling to office and still left with some more to do the work that earns my bread. However I feel a little bit tired while commuting back, maybe the sedentary nature of the job is to be blamed.

Abe_Froman

****ing grease on my ****ing suit pant leg again. **** me!