After a rough bout w/tick-borne meningitis and encephalitis over the holidays and beyond I'm just now getting my strength/grit back. Was out of work for a month and off the bike for almost 6 weeks. Rode 3 times this week M-W-F and will stay there for a couple of weeks. My commute's long(42.2 miles rt) so there's no 'working up to it'. One just has to grind it out until the conditioning is back. Well, I'm just about there as I look forward to all the ancillary parts of being a commuter. I.e., maintenance, getting dressed for winter, riding in the dark, etc., etc. My attitude when the alarm goes off is no longer one of dread, but anticipation.

Driving costs us 40.00 per minimum for a 5 day work week. @ 4.33 weeks per month works out to 173.20. Times 12 is a whopping 2078.40 per year! That's a used titanium Litespeed or a LHT frameset w/Phil Wood hubs laced to Mavic A719 rims and Ultegra components...well, maybe not quite, but you get the idea.

We live rural, so we've made a commitment to living on the cheap. We sold our other vehicle and bought a 75-90 mpg scooter and a bike cargo trailer for grocery shopping. One cart is equal to one trailer load.

I, also love the feeling of packing in/out @ work. My 2 bike commuter system consists of a multi-geared mule for clothes/food for the week on Mondays and a fg w/a seatpost rack/expandable trunkbag combo for bringing home my daily items be they clothes and/or food containers. Before getting sick I was up to 5 days w/t 3 in the middle on the fg, M&F on the multi and a metric century on the fg every other Saturday. Hope to be back to that level soon.

What I guess I've been trying to say is that I really miss commuting when unable to do so for one reason or another. And reducing one's carbon footprint to the best of one's ability is all of our responsibility.