Originally Posted by
Roody
I'm sure others will agree that with minimum of experience, seven miles is nothing. Within a week or two, you will be doing it in well under 30 minutes, you will not be getting sweaty, and you will even be able to eat WHILE you are riding the bike, if you decide that you want to.
The exertion required to pedal a bike is very light, even to maintain a decent speed. We're not talking about the Tour de France here! The ones who are laughing are the naive ones, indeed.
Seven miles might be nothing for an occasional jaunt across town but for an everyday commute, it is substantial imo, especially if hills are involved. It also depends on the speed you can ride comfortably at. I can remember a time when I started commuting @7 miles to work and I had to work at keeping my speed above 15mph. Now I might easily keep up 16-20 for a reasonable distance, but my average will still be below 15, not that I maintain the batteries in the cyclocomputer anymore. Anyway, I think a seven mile commute is very doable, certainly nothing to discourage bike commuting, but I would still consider a significant ante in living car-free, definitely not an endeavor to scoff at.
I also feel bad for people who work in office clothes. i used to do it and, although you can wear an undershirt and shorts to bike in and then change at or near the office, it's a pain to transport clothes back and forth to work, especially shoes. If you can leave dress shoes and/or a few changes of clothes at the office and tote them back and forth a couple outfits at a time, once or twice a week, that gives you a little more flexibility in terms of choosing which days you do and don't want to ride with a load of clothes on the back of your bike.
Fenders/mud-guards and flat-free tires are a must for work commuting, imo. It's so stressful fixing a flat when you feel the clock ticking down, especially when you know there will be people who give you extra blame for being late because you ride a bike (as if cars don't break down and get flats). I have always made it a point to give myself plenty of time to get to work on time so if anyone ever questions the reliability of cycling as transportation, I can cite my record of showing up late or missing work as being less than most. You shouldn't have to be extra reliable to prove cycling isn't a hinderance, but I end up doing it anyway because it's easier that sitting everyone down and explaining to them that they are biased against bike-commuting because of normative bias in their minds and that driving can also let you down or get you injured or killed.