Originally Posted by
CliffordK
So, is it "shift labor" in an office?
How many people bike commute? Is there a logical.secure place to put personal lockers for bike commuters? Perhaps you could come up with a plan to present to your office management. It never hurts to ask.
No, not really shift labor; just a standard IT industry hot-desking arrangement, which is very common in large organizations (at least in Australia!). I'm a standard sort of senior IT professional, and almost no-one gets offices, or personal cubicles anymore, even managers. The rationale is that people spend a lot of time in meetings or at other offices/customers, and that the overhead of keeping personal desks that have maybe 50% utilization is inefficient. Welcome to the modern world! I worked in one place where you had to give up the desk if you were going to be away for more than 2 hours. I hate it personally - the office becomes a completely impersonal space and you might as well sit in a a library or cafe.
John, it seems to me the challenges you face are more related to your job/office situation specifically than to bicycle commuting generally, which leads to some unhelpful advice. Each of us has a different job, a different commute, and a different way of making it work. And those of us who've been doing this for many years have forgotten many of the challenges we faced when starting out.
I suggest you get a briefcase that attaches to the bike like a pannier and carries only work-related things, not clothes or bike stuff, so you can carry the same briefcase whether you ride the bike or the ferry.
Is there no way to adjust your mode of dress so that you can wear the same clothes on the bike as you wear at your desk? Many of us do that. Others cannot. This might mean you change your bike to suit your clothes, rather than the other way around.
Slowing down, as many suggest, may be part of the answer. If you could ride the bike in "business casual" attire, even if the ride takes ten minutes longer, you'd save time.
If not, is there possibly a gym or the like somewhere near your office, where you could rent a locker on a monthly or longer term basis?
I think some sort of common bag for the bike/non-bike days would a good idea, so that I keep my stuff in one place. I could just ride with my backpack I suppose, but it's not ideal - I prefer the weight lower down, which is why I have expensive panniers!
I really don't like the idea of riding a bike in work clothes. I basically wear a suit without the coat / jacket, and these are not comfortable clothes to ride in (& I'd risk getting chain oil on my trousers, or pulling a button off my shirt. I have several hills to content with and this requires physical effort, which equals sweat (for me!).
However, I have found that the gym next to the bike storage facility *does* rent lockers for long-term storage. I think it's AU$30 / month. This may be the practical option in the end, but I'd obviously need to cycle regularly to ammortize this. With the Sydney autumn & winter rain, I'm not sure whether I'll be cycling that often. Darkness & rain doesn't sound like a lot of fun :-(
Originally Posted by
jimmie65
Prep the night before.
Then just accept the extra 25 minutes since it's far less time that it would take you to go to the gym.
If I commute by bike, it takes about 1 hour with prep and packing time vs. 15 minutes to grab everything and drive to work. That's an hour and a half a day I get to work out.
This. I view the bike riding time as a substitute for doing exercise at some other time in the day. I can extend my homeward journey to make it a bit longer if I want more of a workout. I estimate I burn 500 calories cycling in any case, so this is worth at least 30-45 minutes in the gym.