Biking DURING work

My year-round cycling is nearly totally intertwined with my commuting to work; even my long-distance rides are usually an extended commute on a Saturday. I have a great job, with reasonable flexibility, but it's very busy, and as noted above, I may work (non-continuously) from about 5 AM to 11 PM.

Due to a previous cycling injury, I’m very sore from from extended sitting by about 4 PM so I tend to take a long break in the late afternoon. My choice is to recline on my side, or ride my bike, which I can still do comfortably.

Previously I had replied to the thread “Describe your Commute,” under Amenities:

I used to ride for JJs too! I was one of the only women who did it for more than a few blocks, and at the Arizona store I was the only person to deliver only by bike (car got totaled...). It is a great workout, great fun, and excellent money if you get the right shifts. In AZ I would average 20 - 40 miles a day, in 0 - 6 mile sprints. When they still tracked delivery drivers by average delivery time, I was always among the top drivers because biking was so much faster in traffic.

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=504036

My current job occasionally involves traveling offsite for meetings. My employer keeps a few beaters in fair working condition, but none of them fit me. I just make sure to ride to work that day if I want to ride.

I keep my bike in an unused triage room at the er in which I work; after my shift I ride it through the halls down to the locker room where I change...does that count?

Very cool!!! I hear that there is one female rider and she is the only one on a bike at one of the local stores but that is unconfirmed. Our manager likes to keep us close for the quick blasts onto campus (right across the street) because we are so much faster. I timed myself once to the library on wet roads with lights. 1:26. Finals week was fun, and I can't wait until it comes around again after this semester.

I am not sure what your carry setup is, but I bet a "real" cyclist with racks and grocery-getter panniers could blow most other guys out of the water during super busy times like finals by just being able to efficiently carry and organize a bunch of bags. Got 10 bags going to the same location? No problem. Not that the other guys aren't in shape or fast, but in my experience, most are young and vain about looking cool on the bike. My old coworkers didn't want to mess up the look of their bikes with racks and things (I didn't either, if I am honest). Digging around in your giant messenger bag is just inefficient and smashes the bags. I used a structured soccer backpack that kept the bags in better shape, but a rack would have been so much smarter.

Old and still vain here. No racks on any of my bikes that I use to deliver. Most of the time I am on a fixed gear track bike that weighs about 16.5 lbs. Super easy to just hop off and carry it right in the building with me. No time to stop and lock up, just throw it over my shoulder CX style and keep going. I don't think any of the drivers ever take that many orders at one time. I have taken maybe 4 to the same building at one time. I organize them in order in my personal messenger bag (can't stand the bags they use). I put a box in there so that the bags don't get crushed and remain upright. Last bag is always closest to me, so I always know which one is next.

What, exactly, is a real cyclist? Also: 10 bags? 10 small bags I hope. I'm not sure I understand this at all.

I used to work as an office equipment technician. It was not uncommon to be parked a long way form the office I was working at. I started carrying my bike in the back of my van and I would ride to different offices. This allowed me to pick a single, cheap, parking spot instead of spending as much of my day looking for parking.

Poor word choice. You got me.

What I meant is that a fairly large percentage of the JJs drivers I knew would not ride bikes at all if it was not ridiculously faster than driving. Some, like TenSpeed, specifically seek out a job where they can ride their bikes. Many others only start riding only after they keep getting lapped by bikes, and don't ride outside of work. Or something in-between. It depends.

These paper bags usually carry one or two sub sandwiches. They are pretty small, but people prefer to get their food in a bag that looks relatively unsquished. Most of the time a messenger-type bag is the perfect tool. Lunch rushes would routinely see 6 - 8 bag runs, which would just barely fit in my bag without squishing. During particularly busy times, I wished I had the option to experiment with something bigger.

Used to have to transit between corporate campuses. If I rode to work, I rode to the other facilities (on the clock). Company mileage reimbursement policy said, 'use of personal vehicle', so I charged mileage.

>>>>>"When man first set woman on two wheels with a pair of pedals, did he know, I wonder, that he had rent the veil of the harem in twain? A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Typewriter Girl, 1899.<<<<

Have you read "A Social History Of The Bicycle?" Best cycling book I've ever read, but it's out of print now.

I had to go evaluate another college professor at an outlying campus. I bike commute, so I rode to my home campus, then the 15 or so miles to her campus, then back then home. It was a wonderful day. I didn't put in for mileage, but I should have.

https://www.instagram.com/p/0X08tjBE...en-by=cccorlew

This all sounds fun, you guys that get to incorporate biking into your actual work. I'm just one of the joes that rides to work, and (very) occasionally goes out for a recreational ride at lunchtime.

I heard an interesting podcast report on people that work in ebusiness order fulfillment warehouses (Amazon etc), their whole day is trekking around giant warehouses with a smartphone directing you what to gather, and constantly telling you "you have 30 seconds to pick up this product, you have 20 seconds to pick up this product, you have 10 seconds to pick up this product, you should be picking up this product, you are 10 seconds behind when you should have picked up this product..."

Apparently it's common to do that job on rollerblades, but I wonder if any of these places have successfully integrated bikes? You'd have to carefully design aisle widths and intersections if everybody's on a bike, but I bet it could work.

women are the ultimate motivator ...:innocent: nice photo btw

I got an unexpected one today. Nice day for it. Can't believe we're getting 70F sunny weather in February.

I bike back and forth between meetings, up to about 2 miles for the furthest places I usually go. The base just put in a new bike path along my most frequent route, which is super awesome. Hopefully they maintain it better than some of the other trails... They are currently looking into getting funds to do some sort of bike share.

Very well, I gotcha.

Last week I 'biked' into the college president who was walking around the campus. It was 27degrees out. She was impressed that I was so hard core. Paying me to ride is like paying me to breath. Too bad its only a part-time job and I'm off for the summer.

Good to see this isn't too zombified a thread. I just got out of a meeting at our hospital, discussing the idea of how to go about offering bikes for employees to share between buildings around the area. I'm a little surprised, reading this thread, that this isn't a more common practice more places.
Any suggestions and ideas from people who have worked somewhere that offered this transportation option, I'd love to hear from you.
I do understand there's more to this than strikes you when first considering this concept....

Be safe, the JJ bike delivery guy here in Chapel Hill is... "adventurous", let's say. :twitchy:

I attempt to get out of downtown a bit on the bike once or twice a week, and then there's always the lunchtime errands. If I have the time, I sneak down to Jordan Lake, a 20mi round trip. But 10mi or so at lunch is more common.

I am maintenance in an auto glass factory and we have three wheel bikes with baskets for out tools. I ride it a couple of miles a night I would guess. I could use an electric cart but why.

Where I work (University of Minnesota) our campus straddles both sides of the Mississippi River, so distance between meetings can easily exceed a mile. Campus parking is at a premium and pushed out to the edges of campus, so traveling by car is impractical. Luckily, the campus has several Nice Ride (bike sharing) stations and the University has negotiated significantly discounted memberships, so it ends up being a fantastic way to get around campus. Campus is crisscrossed with dedicated bike paths/lanes/bridges, so hopping on your own bike or a Nice Ride is often the quickest way between two points on campus, as well as into nearby neighborhoods or up and down the river trails for lunch. I really appreciate that as a benefit of working here.

I've had a few conference calls that I knew would be complete wastes of time and were in the afternoon, so I just took them with mute on while riding home.

Very few people ride bikes on the college campus where I work in the Bronx (Manhattan College, misleadingly named). It is built on an extremely steep hill made of granite. One of the streets isn't a street for a portion, it's an eight-story-tall set of stairs. In most cases other than the quadrangle, each building is a lot higher or lower than the adjacent building. I'm one of the few who cross the campus on bike. I see a handful of male students getting around on skateboards. I love watching them. It's poetry in motion. Just going around campus on foot can give a person plenty of exercise.

when it's nice (above 40 and not raining) I try to ride to and from work every day. I also take rides at lunch and usually do my workouts (intervals, hill repeats, etc.) at this time. this morning I took the "long" way and got 20 miles before breakfast :-) I have my own office so nobody cares if I'm steeping in my smelly bike clothes all day lol!

We have two main job sites 4 km apart, and I work at the one farther from home. Occasionally I have to go to both sites in the same day. However, ironically, I usually I manage not to get in any extra biking in as I try to go "on the way" ie. go to the other site late in the day, then go home, or go first thing in the morning and then on to my usual site. Since the other site is not far off my usual route, I am not actually adding any noticeable distance to my daily commute, just doing part of it during working hours.

Man, so jealous right now. You have everything, LOL. You can commute to work. I probably could do that, but I think I said in another thread, if I'm getting up earlier to go to work, I'll just take the 10 minutes in a car earlier and get a bigger paycheck.

You get a lunch break. I'd love to get a lunch break and be able to go out for a ride. They talked about putting my coworker and I on salary, but that would force me to shut equipment down and go take a lunch break. I don't want to have to shut my equipment down for lunch. An hour lunch would mean about 2-3 hours of lost production.

20 miles before breakfast! I assume you aren't waking up at 2 am to go do 20 miles before breakfast then?

And finally, your own office. This is probably the greatest thing you have. I share office space with 3 others in 4 corner cubicles with entrances facing the center of the room. If I'm working on the computer, 2 of the guys never shut up and they're turned around facing me blabbing away. It was so nice back when I had my own single office that had a door I could shut. It was also in a office mobile home out side of the main manufacturing floor and away from management. I had peace and quiet out there, it was lovely.

Hardly. I have a 1 year old at home, so commuting early allows me to get miles and time alone without inconveniencing anyone else, which is a major issue in my house. My bike habit is something about which I have to tread very lightly lol.

I can commute to work, and the shortest route is about 7 miles if I ride straight there. Honestly, the bike takes the same amount of time as the car, and if there is traffic, it's actually faster. If you worked on your fitness and traffic riding/route finding skills, you might find the same to be true for you. I usually only leave about 15 minutes earlier, which gives me time to get 12 miles or so and take a less congested and more mellow route. So I end up at work at the same time.

I don't get a lunch break per se. I'm salaried as a corporate recruiter, so I manage my own desk. I also work on commission so I can't just eff off all the time, or I'd never make any actual money. This usually means that I eat at my desk and take 45 mins or so around 2pm to go do laps around the park.

In order to do 20 miles this morning, I left at 7 am, and arrived at work at around 8:10, my usual in time is 8:30. So I was early AND I was able to ride some gorgeous miles before the traffic picked up. I prepped last night and woke up at 6:30 to be turning the cranks by 7. I usually wake up at 7:15, so it wasn't a big deal. Honestly it was GREAT and I will try to do it a few times a week all summer.

My own office IS nice, but I'm probably more like one of those guys who never shuts up, and I prefer company lol. The nice part is that when I get bored, I can just turn around and work on my bike and nobody knows :-)

I often used bicycle as a means of transport during work since I have some "field" work often. Saves fuel, gives more available company cars, doesn't use more time in traffic jams and keeps me happy. :)