I started riding again in 2008 when my office moved and I was only 7 miles from work. I got the old dusty bike down off the hooks in the garage and tried riding to work. For two years, I had that 7 mile commute and rode the bike most of the time.

Then my office moved again and it's 17 miles each way. I only ride to work once or twice a week now, primarily for two reasons. First, time out of my day. Especially in the afternoon, being stuck with an hour and a half commute instead of a half hour if I drive takes an hour out of the "prime time" of my day and makes things much less flexible. If my wife calls during the day, for instance, and wants to meet me somewhere for dinner, that's easy in a car, but if I ride I arrive all sweaty.

The second thing is that while I have problem riding 40-50 miles in a stretch, if I ride 17 miles to work, allow my body to think it's in a recovery mode for 9 hours, then ride 17 miles again later in the day, then go home sleep, and try it all again the next day, I get seriously whupped. It isn't so much that I'm riding 34 miles in a day, it's that the ride is broken up by a long period of relative inactivity in between.

And as you not, bent, the weather matters a lot more. Around here the key weather feature is rain and thunder storms. I didn't worry so much about them with the 7 mile commute; I could get home pretty quick when I needed to, and even change my route to go around storm cells. I don't have a smart phone, so once I leave the office now I don't really know how the weather is changing during my ride. After being caught in a thunder storm, I am much less likely to chance it with the longer commute.