I gotta admit, for me this is a big part of it. If you travel in Third World Countries, you're constantly besieged by poor people holding out their hands for money. Here in North America, you are constantly besieged by corporations holding out their hands for whatever they can get away with charging. I see they're just now starting to charge for secure bike parking & showers, and I can see it getting worse as numbers reach a "critical mass." But for now, I can still "screw the system," defeat the corporate transportation infrastructure. Like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, I can use the existing infrastructure for free, avoiding the frustrating gridlock of being one bit in a serial synchronous half-duplex communications model (and once downtown, the stream gets packetized by the stoplights). Allegorically, bikes operate at a measly 300 baud, but it's all full duplex and parallel!

So bike commuters come out far ahead in terms of minimizing cost and aggravation. I remember seeing a survey of bike commuters, done back in the 70's (I recall John Forester mentioned it), and most bike commuters of the time were engineers and technical people, folks who think about how to make things better. I don't think you see too many stupid people riding bikes; those people are still stuck in their cars because that's the way it's always been done, and they can't think beyond that.

And beyond that, I just love being on the bike, regardless of weather or time of day.

Luis