I presently drive and sometimes ride the bus to work, but I want to start cycle commuting during bike to work week (and after). I could use some advice and creative ideas on how to best do it. There are a lot of complications. Here are the particulars:

Work has bike racks, showers and a place to store clothing. Dress code is shirt and tie.

The drive is 33 miles each way. First 20 miles (going) are country roads. At 22 miles there is a narrow 4 mile stretch with ONLY one road - a high speed freeway - river on your right, mountain cliffs on your left. Cycling this stretch in rush hour would be suicide.

At 26 miles there are a couple places to safely park. From there to work it is a 7 mile city type commute –with a choice of roads and/or paved bike path along the river. I used to use this option, but it seemed that with the commute, change and shower I had less time to ride than if I drove the whole way and then took a ride after getting home.

There is a commuter bus option but it runs only once a day. There are 2 bus stops I can use, one is 13 miles towards work, the other is 4 miles away from work (over a mountain). Because of the weird buss route in the afternoon, the bus arrives at the stop that is only 4 miles away about 30-60 minutes later then the 13 mile away stop, so even though it is closer to home I would get home the same time as the first stoop. The 13 mile trip is fairly hilly – it takes me 65 minutes to bike it.

One thing more - for the next 6 weeks I have to pick up my kid at the school (which is right next to the 13 mile buss stop). She gets out about the same time the bus drops me off, so this works out for saving gas, but If I ride the bus and then pick up my kid, I use less gas but I don’t have time for a bike ride that day. So I have been loading the bike in the car driving the whole way to work. In the afternoon I get to the 13 mile point about an hour before my kid is done, and I squeeze in a quick ride then.

Any ideas on how to increase my bike commute for the next month?

Which way would you use the combination of bike, car, bus after my kid gets out of school?

And Please don’t tell me to move closer to work. We LOVE where we live – the hiking and cycling are great around here and we have been putting in our roots for over 25 years. I want to bike commute, but not more than I want to live here.

Thanks