It's kind of an odd thought that seems reasonable to me so I thought I'd bounce it off the hard-core commuters here. I think that with bicycle commuting we inadvertently condition ourselves psychologically to associate unpleasant sensations with driving.

At first I would drive one day a week on average to rest, run errands or I'll admit it, just to feel like a normal commuter sometimes. As time went on that changed to the point where I'd only drive during the worst inclement weather. Thus driven commutes became exclusively unpleasant, slow, frustrating and dangerous. That peaked with me last year during the ice madness, a three hour ordeal.

By only driving when it is almost certain to be unpleasant, and almost always enjoying the bicycle commute, it seems to me to be, literally, a extended application of aversion therapy. Personally I get the unpleasant gut feeling when considering a drive to work, more so on the return leg. But not when driving to the supermarket, convenience store or anywhere else - those feel perfectly normal.

From wikipedia -

Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations in order to stop the specific behavior.

It sounds exactly like my driving commutes. The stimulus is driving, the unpleasant sensations are those arising of the worst of driving conditions. What do you think? Do you, the hard-core commuter, have that unpleasant "aversion" feeling toward driving to work? Or have I just conditioned myself somehow in some unusual fashion?