So What type of riding do you do?
Road- Mountain biking- Street cruising- Gentle trail type stuff- etc.
Commuting and other utility riding.
How fit do you class yourself? Fit- Ultra fit- getting fit- or just getting on top of the downward spiral to couchdom.
Able to pass my FAA flight physical
How often do you ride?
Twice every workday, year round. I spend many summer weekends on an island where there are no car rentals -- when I'm there, I ride on weekends as well, going to the beach and restaurants.
Do you get any achievement rides in?
Maybe you regularly do Century rides- perhaps you do a few mountain climbs a year or perhaps you are in training for your first 25 mile organised ride
No. It's hard for me to think of bikes except as transportation. Maybe that's because, when I was growing up in the 1950s, cycling was simply not a sport, although I sometimes saw grainy magazine pictures of hunchbacked foreign people with upside-down handlebars.
On the other hand, I do derive pleasure from completing a trip in deep snow or tricky rough ice, or carrying a lot of groceries or my daughter somewhere. This week, I was the only person in my company to make it to work each day. I could not have done that by car.
Any other points to note in that you ride for a reason?
To lose weight- To get over an illness- You have ro ride as a commuter-
DC is a beastly place to drive -- parking is hard to find and there is severe congestion during rush hour. If there is snow or ice, the result is total gridlock. I'm too lazy to drive my cars except on weekends.
Cycling is also the only way I can imagine getting any exercise. I'll jump on my bike and ride off, perfectly happy, into an ice storm to get to work, but I could never regularly ride just for exercise, let alone hamster away on a trainer. If I didn't commute to work, my blood pressure would doubtless be totally out of control, and I might even have had a bunch of heart attacks.
You see things on a bike that you would never see in a car, like a moonrise reflecting off snowfields at night. You notice how the sky is starting to get a bit lighter or darker on the trip home, and feel the march of the seasons. You stop for a few minutes to watch a huge Red Tailed Hawk perched in a tree just a few steps from you.
There are some real money savings as well -- about $20,000 net (mostly in parking costs) over eight years. It also keeps my car from being driven in corrosive salt or on short trips that promote engine wear-- that's worth thousands right there. Possibly as a result, I've been driving the same car for over 20 years.
Paul